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Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman

Started on April 21st. Finished on April 21st.

I love Chuck Klosterman. I’ve had many different writers that I wanted to “be like” when I grew up. Dave Eggers was number one for a while, as was Chuck Pahlanuik. Klosterman is top of the charts right now, because he writes the type of smart, funny and incisive essays that I adore. The simple fact is that he thinks about pop culture more than anyone else in the world. There are plenty of people that write about popular culture but there are very few that put the depth of thought into it that Chuck does. For once, I’m going to be concise. This book is awesome. Read it.

American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson

Started on April 21st. Finished on April 23rd.

I’ve never actually watched an episode of the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Nor have I seen Craig Ferguson perform standup comedy. I vaguely remember him from The Drew Carey Show, and I’ve seen a couple of clips online of his rather successful tv show. I’m not what you would call a ‘Craig Ferguson Fan’. All of that being said, this is probably the best book I’ve read in the last twelve months. It’s astounding and funny and true and it warms your heart and breaks it all at the same time.

There are a few reasons for me feeling this way. He’s from the same city as me, he was a standup comic before he went into the realms of late night tv. He’s funny in a very Scottish way, but has an incredible affection for all things American. He loved the idea of New York city before he lived there. I identified with his story on a very personal level, especially given my recent defection from Scotland to Canada. He’s a very rare breed: a Scotsman who is considerably more famous in the US than in Scotland. Read this book, please, as soon as possible.

Show Me The Funny by Peter Desberg & Jeffrey Davis

Started April 30th. Finished May 11th.

This is a book about comedy writers. Or at least, that’s what I thought it was about when I bought it. The book is a collection of interviews with various people who have been employed as comedy writers at some point in their career. Some write for TV, others for movies. All identify themselves as comedy writers. They are given a very basic premise for a comedy project, and then are asked to explain what they would do to the premise to turn it into a fleshed out tv show or movie. I’m a huge comedy/writing nerd, and I’m always looking for books that pull back the curtain on how things work in a writer’s room. I thought this book would be great. This book kinda sucked.

The quality of writers involved varied wildly, as did the quality of the interviews themselves. Clearly, all have done well to get involved in what is a very difficult industry to break into, but some of them are responsible for writing really bad movies and tv. Like, really bad. As far as I’m concerned, the value of your experience and opinion is equal to the quality of your work. If you’ve written shitty tv, I don’t want to learn from you. Some of the interviews stuck with the premise breakdown, and others just flew past it. Often the writers would be recycling old plots from previous shows. The level of insight offered was minimal. It got repetitive and old pretty quickly. Don’t read this book. Read And Here’s The Kicker instead.

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

Started 11th May. Finished 17th May.

Terry Pratchett is an amazing writer. His books are criminally underrated. You can write them off as funny fantasy books if you want, but there’s an intelligence and sharp satire in his writing that blows me away. Interesting Times is about China. Of course, in Terry Pratchett’s world, there is no such place, which makes it easier to be satirical. It’s hilarious, too. I know of no other fiction writer who is as good at crafting throwaway jokes. Put another way, I laughed more at this book than I did when reading a book that involves professional comedy writers making jokes. Highly recommended - it’s the best book involving wizards that I’ve read this year.

The Year of Living Biblically by A J Jacobs

Started 12th March. Finished 20th April

A J Jacobs is a very funny man. I thought this would be a funny book. It turned out to be more than that. The premise of this book is interesting, and asks many questions: what would happen if you tried to live your life by the rules set forth in the bible? How would that change your beliefs about religion and spirituality. Just how big a beard can you grow in 12 months? I found this book to have a lot more heart than I expected it to. In the hands of a less talented writer (or a less genuine human being) this could’ve been a cynical project which made fun of religious types and pointed out all of the stupidity that is caused by people taking the bible literally. Jacobs somehow manages to make it clear just how silly some of this stuff is, but commits to it anyway, just to see what would happen. His journey remains compelling throughout. Jacobs (and his family) are the emotional core of this book, and it ends up being more heart warming than laugh-out-loud funny. Good book, though. Well done, God!

[This is a continuation of a particular format of blog posts. There are five previous essays, which you might enjoy reading. One is about comedy, one is about my home city of Toronto, and the third is about, um, cats. There’s a fourth, but it’s terrible and I don’t want you to read it. The fifth was about books.]

1. I don’t want Scotland to get mad at me, so I thought I’d bring Glasgow into the action today.

2. Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland. I lived there for the most part of ten years (1999-2009). It’s a wonderful place.

2a. According to Wikipedia, about 600,000 people live there. It’s the third biggest city in the UK. It would be the tenth biggest city in Canada and the 26th biggest in the US. It’s a large city in a small country. Around 41% of Scottish people live in or around Glasgow. If Edinburgh didn’t have the castle (and the Scottish Parliament) then Glasgow would be the capital. For a Canadian equivalent, think Ottawa and Toronto. Where would you rather live?

2b. If you have to choose between going to Glasgow or Edinburgh, go to Glasgow. It’s just better. I recognise that I may be somewhat biased.

3. I first moved to Glasgow to go to university. There are multiple universities in the city, with differing levels of prestige attached to each. The ‘best’ is the University of Glasgow. It has the prettiest campus and has a rich history attached to it. It’s located in the west end of the city. The west end is where the cool kids hang out.

3a. The second ‘best’ is the University of Strathclyde. It’s a relatively young university, and is based in the centre of the city. It’s main claim to fame is that it has the largest University affiliated bar in the whole of the UK. That’s the one I attended from when I was 17 to 21. I also ended up working in the bar for a few years, doing a variety of different jobs.

3b. The third university is Glasgow Caledonian University. It is not thought of in very high terms by students of any of the other Universities. It’s where I got my master’s degree. The majority of my time living in Glasgow was spent affiliated to an institution of higher education. As a result, my memories of the city are skewed very much toward a student-esque lifestyle of late nights, both drinking and studying.

3c. For most of the year, Glasgow is very much a city filled with young people. Young drunk people.

4. Glasgow has the second-best music scene in the UK. Only London is thought of in higher terms. It has two of the best music venues in Europe (King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut and The Barrowlands Ballroom). I worked as a music journalist for a year in Glasgow, and it was the perfect city to do it in. I saw more gigs in 6 months in Glasgow than I have in two years in Toronto.

5. As is the case with Toronto, I ended up staying in quite a small area of Glasgow and only rarely venturing outside my comfort zone. I rarely went south of the river. My time in the east end of the city was very brief. The majority was spent in the west end. I love the west end. I think the rest of Glasgow is okay.

5a. My favourite bar in the west end is a place called the Belle. It’s hipstery and comfortable and small and cramped. It has a real fireplace and great beers on tap and I can’t wait to go back. 

6. I never did standup comedy in Glasgow, mostly because it was a scene that I was aware of, but never really immersed myself in. There’s two standup comedy clubs in the city, and both were seen as kind of expensive.

6a. I actually lived about a three minute walk from The Stand Comedy Club, and was on very good terms with the bar manager there. I wish I’d had the balls to actually go and perform there years ago.

6b. I was kind of tangentially involved in comedy in Glasgow, though. I used to work in bar which had a comedy night once a week. It was called Canvas bar, and it was a room that was completely unsuited for comedy. There were pillars blocking the view, so at any given point an audience member can’t see 60% of the stage. I got to see some amazingly funny people perform. Janey Godley was the host of the night, and I shared a cab with her a few times. She’d never remember me, but it’s strange to me that she’s good friends with Joanna Downey and Todd Van Allen, both of which have booked me for shows in Toronto. It’s a small world.

6c. I’d like to go back to Glasgow and perform, but I worry that my material that works in Canada wouldn’t work in Scotland.

6e. Jokes about kilts and haggis aren’t funny in Scotland. The joke is based upon a stereotypical view that other people have of Scots, rather than the reality of what it’s like being Scottish in Scotland. I’d have two and a half minutes of material if I was to do a show in Glasgow. This is not good.

6f. There was also a comedy night once a month in the bar I used to run, but I wasn’t involved in that at all. Looking back, it was another missed opportunity.

7. I haven’t been back in Glasgow for just over 2 years. Due to the complexity of the immigration system here, I’ve been advised to stay put until all the correct paperwork has gone through. I’m looking forward to wandering around Kelvingrove park again.

7a. It would be good to catch a Celtic game, too. 

[This is a continuation of a particular format of blog posts. The first three essays are here, here and here . One is about comedy, one is about my home city of Toronto, and the third is about, um, cats. There’s a fourth, but it’s terrible and I don’t want you to read it.]

1. Books, huh? You’d think this would be fertile ground, given that books are made up of words, but after yesterday’s horror show, I’m not too optimistic. Let’s see where this goes, shall we?

2. I read a lot. Like, A LOT. It’s something that Holly and I have in common. We have three bookcases that are full to the point of overflowing. I think if we both had nothing in our apartment but books, paper and pencils, we’d be happy enough. I try to make a point of reading every day, and I’m a pretty fast reader. 

2a. One of the first things I did to try and sneakily work out if Holly liked me before we started dating was to give her a book as a gift. It was a two part test. First, it was one of my favourite books, Fight Club. If she liked it, then my suspicions of her fantastic taste would be confirmed. Secondly, I jokingly wrote in the inside cover that I expected a book report by the end of the month. When she actually wrote one, I knew I had a keeper on my hands. The opening paragraph:

I AM a beautiful and unique snowflake. 
That being said, I still think Chuck Palahniuk is a little bit genius. 
This is a book report for Fight Club.
For Jon.

I didn’t stand a chance.

2b. It occurs to me that I often write about how great Holly is. That must get pretty old for anyone else reading this. It’s not a conscious choice that I make. She is pretty awesome, though.

3. Fight Club is a really fantastic novel. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you think that seeing the movie is enough, then you’re wrong. There’s nuances to the story that the movie has to skim over. There’s the skill and complexity in the writing that you can only really appreciate in the novel. For what it’s worth, I’ve got a copy of the screenplay and I’ve read it more than once. Chuck Palahnuik remains to this day one of my favourite writers. Choke is a fantastic novel. Invisible Monsters is awesome, too. Diary creeps me out.

3a. I still don’t know how to pronounce his surname. I wonder if his mother calls him Charles.

3b. Charles Palahnuik is nowhere near as cool as Chuck, which is weird. 

4. Chuck Klosterman is another one of my favourite writers. His essays have a clarity of vision and a forthright opinion running through them that I can only dream of. Whenever I write anything, I’m constantly watering down any kind of opinion, simply because I’m convinced that I’m wrong 90% of the time. This is probably a mistake, since people like writers with strong opinions. Or at least I think they do, I’m not sure.

4a. See what I did there?

4b. This numbered structure that I’ve been using in these essays has been stolen from his book Eating the Dinosaur. It’s a great book and you should read it as soon as you can.

4c. It’s strange that two of my favourite authors are called Chuck, especially given how rare that first name is. I’ve never met a Chuck.

5. In case it hasn’t been made clear previously, I’m a massive nerd. Case in point: I have bookmarks that I’ve bought from Chapters which have a space for you to write in the name of the book, the date you started it, the date you finished, and any notes you have about good/bad/interesting it is. I love them more than is healthy. I religiously fill in a bookmark for each book I read. It makes me sad that I only found these in January.

5a. I love that I can keep track of how many books I read, because my memory is really terrible. I’m aiming to read 52 books this year - one a week. I’m reading at a slightly slower rate than that at the moment.

6. I favour non-fiction over fiction to a 3:1 ratio. I’m not a big fan of biographies, even though I’ve read two since January (My Shit Life So Far and American on Purpose, both books about Scottish standup comics. American on Purpose is by far the better book, but both are enjoyable. AoP is in my running for book of 2011. According to my bookmark, I read it in two days.)

7. I always have a ton of books to read at any given time, and yet I always buy more books (usually 4 or 5 a month). This behaviour is illogical. There are some books that I’ve had for months and haven’t touched, despite my really wanting to read them (Oh, hello, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid!). I do this with DVDs, too, but on a much smaller scale. I bought the complete boxed set of Arrested Development back in January, and I haven’t watched it yet.

8. I’ve wanted to write a book for as long as I’ve been writing. The closest I’ve come is when I wrote about 15,000 words in 2005ish. A few people have read it and liked it. I went back to it recently and was horrified and embarrassed that I actually gave it to other human beings that were capable of reading. Wow, was I ever self indulgent when I was 23.

8a. I’m aware that writing a blog post called “What I Think About…” is hardly showing a lack of self indulgence. Personal growth remains one of my weak points.

9. I very rarely decide to give up on a book. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve stopped half way through and just not finished it. I think the last was Three Sheets to the Wind, but that wasn’t because I hated it - I just had a bunch of awesome other books to read and I forgot about it.

10. At the moment I’m reading Show Me the Funny by Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis. It’s good. In fact, I might just go and read some more of it now.

11. Time to race to my conclusion: reading is great. You all should do it, as often as possible. In my youth it was a form of escapism (I spent a lot of my teenage years hiding in the library, because bullies don’t generally go places that make them smarter) and today it is greatest source of inspiration and education that I have. I want to write because I love reading. This applies to every ambition I have.

11a. I urge you: go buy a book. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘good’ book - every single novel ever written has value. My favourite books as a teenager were written by John Grisham. He’s as far from critically acclaimed as you can get, but I loved his books. Then write a book report. Figure out if you like the book, and then try to work out why you like it. In doing that, you’ll learn more about the world, and just as importantly, learn more about yourself.

[This is a continuation of a particular format of blog posts. The first three essays are here, here and here . One is about comedy, one is about my home city of Toronto, and the third is about, um, cats.]

1. These topics are completely random. I have no idea how I’m going to get 1000+ words out of this. 

1a. I feel like this won’t be particularly entertaining. I apologise in advance.

2. In the overall scheme of things, I think I feel positively about Facebook. It’s officially A Good Thing in my book.

3. I first opened my Facebook account in 2005. It feels longer ago than that. At that point you needed a university email address (ending in .ac.uk) to sign up. I worked for a university then, so I cheated the system a little bit. I remember being immediately impressed with how clean and simple the site was. The two main social networking sites at the time were Myspace.com and Bebo.com. Facebook was way better, even from the start.

3a. God, Myspace really was horrible, right? I’d forgotten how much of a shitshow that site was.

4. There are 477 photographs of me on Facebook. The vast majority of those have been uploaded by other people. I’ve only owned a camera for a very short space of time over the last ten years, and there’s very little photographic evidence of my existence.

4a. I’d guess that roughly 65% of the photographs of me on Facebook involve me being drunk.

4b. Maybe 80%.

5. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly photogenic. I’m actually glad not many photographs exist of when I was a teenager. I was not a handsome child.

6. I’d like to think I’m more aware of how to use Facebook than most people. I was  employed by a couple of companies to help them set up and maintain Facebook pages/profiles. It’s a very, very powerful site. This skill isn’t something I’m proud of. “I’m good at using facebook” isn’t a boast that impresses people. It’s kind of like saying you’re good at programming VCRs. 

7. The lack of privacy thing bothers me a little bit, but true privacy is really a thing of the past. I think the current generation will be very comfortable with sharing every aspect of their life with everyone else. Facebook (and Twitter) are only going to become more powerful in the coming years.

7a. Everyone should learn how to use the privacy settings in Facebook. They can be incredibly specific about how you share your information. I have seperate list for every ‘friend’ on Facebook. Certain people won’t see anything I post. Others can see EVERYTHING. Most are somewhere in between.

7b. Don’t try to work out what list you’re on. Nothing good can come of it.

7c. Don’t take it personally if you’re on a restricted list. It’s not that I don’t like you. I just don’t want to bother you with the minutiae of my life.

8. Now that I’m doing standup comedy, I’ve started a facebook fan page. I’m not convinced it’s important, but lots of other people are doing it, so I figured I might as well follow the crowd. You can ‘like’ me here.

8a. It’s weird that I can count the number of people who ‘like’ me. I think that focussing too much on that particular number can’t be good for my self esteem.

9. Facebook events are a good thing, but the constant updates can get annoying. If you have an event on Facebook, don’t spam me every day in the week leading up to your event. If I’ve said that I’m coming, I’ll be there. If I’m undecided, it’s because I might have something else that I have to do that day. If I say I’m not coming, it’s either because I don’t like you, or I have something else going on. Neither of those things will be changed by a message that says “Hey you guys, remember my event is tomorrow! Come along!”. Facebook does a really good job of reminding people of upcoming events in the sidebar, so one message is enough.

9a. There are two different types of marketing: interruption marketing, and permission marketing. Interruption marketing is when you stop someone doing whatever it is that they were doing to yell at them about that thing that you want them to know about (think TV commercials). Permission marketing is when I’ve said to you that I’m interested in what you have to say, so I’m giving you permission to tell about stuff that you think I’ll like (think signing up for a newsletter for a store you like). Permission marketing is good, interruption marketing is bad. Facebook events start out as permission marketing. The more messages you send out, there more it turns into interruption marketing.

9b. I’ve signed up to a lot of comedy show Facebook pages. Some of them are okay, but none of them are great. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to start up my own room in the next few months, and I’ll try to do things a bit differently.

9c. For example: seperate pages for comics and audience members. They are two different audiences that deserve two different pages.

9d. Another example: One central event page for each week that features videos of each of the acts. People should know in advance what they’re letting themselves in for.

9e. One more: Each of the comics on the bill should be administrators of the page, and should invite as many people as possible. I’ve seen four different event pages for the same show before. Social proof is important - if people see that a bunch of people are coming to the show, they’ll be more likely to come along.

10. Enough marketing talk.

11. My favourite thing about Facebook is keeping in touch with people that I live very far away from. It’s nice to see what those folks are up to.

11a. It’s weird seeing pictures of people that I haven’t seen for years and how they’re changing. A dude that I worked with in 1999 added me on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. He looks very different, and he has a kid now. I don’t think that will ever stop being weird.

11b. Facebook allows you to compare how you were years ago, to how you are now. I can think of no other place that allows you to do that - even with old fashioned printed photographs. The longer facebook goes, the weirder this will be for everyone. In ten years I imagine there’ll be a lot of people with “I looked like that?”

11c. This might lead to increase in plastic surgery. Through Facebook you’ll be reminded of when you were young and handsome more than in any other point of human history. People will either feel great about getting older, or feel like they have to change something. I’m betting more people will feel the latter. We can’t all grow into our looks.

12. The overall point I guess I’m making is that we can’t really say for sure how important Facebook is going to be, or predict the long term effects of it’s technology. All I know is that 17 year olds nowadays care a lot less about their privacy now than I did in 1999.

13. Yeah, so that essay wasn’t that great. Tomorrow is another day. Good for you for sticking it out to the end.

[This is a continuation of a particular format of blog posts. The first two essays are here and here. One is about comedy, the other is about my home city of Toronto.]

1. I live with two cats. One is called Marty, the other called Luda. They have very different personalities. One is difficult to live with, the other is a wonderful pet. I wonder if you can guess which one is the nightmare when the only information provided is their names.

2. Luda’s full name is La Muerte Peluda. Marty’s full name is Mardi Gras, or Marty McFly. As you may have guessed, I had no input in the naming of either cat.

3. We also call Luda other names, such as McGurnigles and Squeakers. As far as I’m aware, everyone who owns cats does this. One name clearly isn’t enough, and yet the animal does not seem to be confused. I can think of no rhyme or reason as to why I would do this, or why we call her half the names we do. I don’t feel embarrassed about it at the time, only once I sit and think about it.

3a. The only other name we call Marty is “asshole”. There’s no mystery to that one, we just don’t like him very much.

4. I only started living with cats when I moved to Toronto. Now that I think about it, most places I’ve lived in Canada had some kind of animal involved. I have only came to this realization now. I’m not sure why I’ve never connected those particular dots before.

4a. When I first moved to Toronto in 2003, I slept on a couch for the first 3-4 weeks. This couch was donated to my cause by an unbelievably nice guy called Jeff. He had a cat called Indy. Indy slept on the couch. He wasn’t happy about my encroaching on his territory, so he woke me every morning at 7am by sitting on my head. I’m apparently allergic to cats, so this wasn’t an ideal situation. I remain in Jeff’s debt for his hospitality. If anyone wants to crash on my couch, you totally can.

4b. I lived in an apartment with a lady who had two kittens. They were unbelievably cute and determined to get into my room. I was equally determined to keep them out. It was a constant battle to keep them from running under my bed. I can’t remember their names. They were also on heat all the time. It turns out that cats are pretty annoying when they’re in heat. I didn’t know that until the kittens started yelling at me and humping things.

5. Luda is incapable of meowing like a regular cat. She opens her mouth in the same way as normal cats do, but no sound comes out. It’s like she’s got a mute button that got switched on, and now we can’t find it to fix the sound. She should have subtitles. The most she can ever manage is a squeak when you pick her up when she doesn’t expect it. This is a surprisingly pleasing arrangement.

6. Marty takes huge shits in the litter box, and yells the whole time. At this point, I’m 90% sure I could take a dump in the litter box and Holly wouldn’t notice the difference.

6a. After Marty has pooped, Luda refuses to poop in the litter box. They sit there, steaming and stinking up our washroom and she just won’t get near them. She shits in the bath instead. This is a convenient alternative for all parties concerned. 

6b. In case you’re wondering, Luda has very small, appropriately cat-sized poops. The only exception to this is when I woke up and saw that she had six inches worth of poop hanging for her bum. I spoke about it during my standup comedy (near the end of the video). It is a true story, and remains to this day the only remotely annoying thing Luda has ever done.

6c. I’m going to stop writing about poop now.

7. Marty is an asshole. He wakes me up in the morning, every morning, but never at the same time. He’s the most temperamental and unpredictable alarm clock you’ve ever had that is capable of hiding in your closet. 

7a. Most of the time he’s waking me up so that he can get more food. I feed him just before I go to sleep, so he always, ALWAYS has food in his bowl in the morning. He never goes hungry, he just likes being fed. Apparently ‘fresh’ cat food tastes better.

7b. When he’s not hungry, he wants to go outside onto our deck. Most of the time, he wants inside again immediately. This is one of his least annoying behaviors, because when he is outside he is no longer annoying me.

7c. There are three things Marty needs every morning; fresh food, fresh water, and clean litter. I will get out of bed and ensure that he is looked after. He will yell at me if I don’t. If the yelling doesn’t work, he’ll jump on the bottom of our bed and meow at us. If this fails, or we tell him to shut up, he’ll move to a corner of the room and talk to himself about how horrible we are. This is usually enough to get me up and about. Once I am out of bed, he will go back upstairs and wake Holly up. For no reason at all. I can only conclude that he hates us, and doesn’t like us sleeping any longer than absolutely necessary.

8. Marty is pretty fat. There seems to be little we can do about this. We don’t feed him very much, and he runs around the apartment endlessly, so I’m sure he’s fine. There are times during the day where he’ll just go insane, running around for no reason whatsoever. He’s weird.

9. Marty used to drink from the tap in our bathroom. It’s a behavior that he picked up from Holly’s old apartment where the faucet used to drip. There’s no drip in our new place, so he’d jump up beside the sink and yell until someone turned it on for him to drink. I’m slowly training him to drink from the water bowl instead of giving everyone a hard time.

9a. Training cats is exactly as hard as you think it is.

10. Marty also seems to be fascinated by what Holly does when she goes to the bathroom. He paws at the door as soon as she goes in there, often hard enough to open the door. I’m not sure what he’s hoping to find, but knowing my wife as I do, it’s sure not going to smell good.

10a. I couldn’t resist making that joke.

10b. I’m sorry, I promised no more poop talk.

11. I love both my cats dearly, almost against my will. I can understand why crazy ladies like having them around so much. I still want a dog, though, in the vain hope that it would be able to make Marty shut the fuck up.

I kinda liked the format of the last post, so I’m going to try it again.

1. I think I like the last post because I didn’t have to worry about structure or trying to say anything meaningful, I just wrote down what was in my head.

2. Toronto is an awesome place to live. I love it dearly. Most of you knew that already.

3. When I first moved here in 2003, it wasn’t with the intention of moving here permanently. I was just looking to break out of the monotonous lifestyle that I had in Glasgow. If I hadn’t moved, I’d probably be working for a bank, doing pretty dull paperwork. That was the motivation for moving. I was offered a promotion at my job (which I hated) and although I knew that it would’ve been a positive step to take the position, I didn’t want to have the same existence as everyone else. I wanted to travel to see if it was possible for there to be a better way, and I knew that if I didn’t do it then, I’d never get to. So instead of taking the promotion, I quit the job and moved to Toronto three months later. It remains to this day the best thing I ever did. Everything good that has happened to me in the last 8 years were a direct result of that first decision. 

3b. It was a pretty big gamble. I didn’t have work or a real place to live when I came out here. I slept on a couch for the first month.

4. Toronto and I got on almost immediately. As soon as I got a bus downtown I knew that it was a place that would work for me. Something about the bustle and the scale of the city suited me. I spent the first six hours or so wandering around the downtown core, with everything I owned strapped to my back. The adrenaline of actually doing it didn’t wear off for days.

4a. It helped that I moved here at the start of the summer. Never underestimate how important the weather is to your first impressions of a place. If it’d been raining when I first got off the plane, I’d probably have liked it a lot less.

4b. My accent also helped. Being different is good, sometimes (usually when trying to get hired, or when talking to the opposite sex).

5. Most of my first week was spent walking around, but I didn’t venture far from the downtown core. In fact, the whole first year was spent in a very rigid area of the city. There was the part that I knew I liked, and I very rarely ventured out of it. I didn’t go north of Bloor. I didn’t go east of Church. I didn’t go west of Grace St. Looking back at it now, that seems kinda weird that I’d travel so far to be in a new place and then restrict myself (even unconsciously) to a small area. Having said that, I’m willing to bet that the size of that area would be roughly comparable to the size of Glasgow. Maybe it was my way of dealing with the intense scale of the city.

6. Toronto (and Canada) is absurdly huge. It blows my mind every day. I hope it continues to blow my mind. People who have lived and grown up here accept the scale of the buildings and city and country as normal. I’m glad I can see how impressive it is. I’m in awe every time I see the CN tower. I don’t ever want to be unimpressed by it.

7. When I moved here I’d arranged with the local newspaper back home to write a column for them. It went pretty well until I met a girl that I liked. I didn’t write so much after that. That was the first time I thought that I’d quite like to do this writing thing for a living.

7a. Column is another word that I have trouble spelling. I usually put in too many ‘l’s. Weird.

7b. The girl actually works as an editor at a very popular magazine now, which is cool for her. 

8. After I left Canada the first time, I knew that I wanted to go back, and I did a couple of times on holiday. I still wasn’t sure if it was where I wanted to live permanently, though. Most of my time in Toronto to that point had been spent getting drunk and having fun. Very little thought went into whether it’s actually somewhere that I could live and settle down. That all changed when I started dating Holly. In the space of maybe 48 hours everything flipped on it’s head. There was no doubt. I had to move here. She was here, that’s where I wanted to be.

9a. I met my wife in 2003, when I first moved here. She wasn’t my wife then, just an awesome bartender with a cool tattoo. She continues to be an awesome bartender with a cool tattoo. I’m a lot more sober now than I was back then. We didn’t start dating until 2009. I was officially in idiot for 6 years.

9b. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m glad that we didn’t start dating until I was older. I was kind of a douche when I was a kid, particularly when I first moved here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still kind of a douche, but I’m more aware of it now. I had to date a bunch of women before I was capable of appreciating just how perfect for me Holly is.

9c. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn this essay into a whole thing about how great Holly is. She knows already.

10. Moving here permanently is hard. There’s a lot of money to be made by people looking to take advantage of the fact that you’re not from here but want to be. I’m willing to bet that one of the main reasons for illegal immigration is simply that people can’t afford to go through the official channels. It’s not something I ever considered (thankfully I’ve always had the money) but now that I’m getting close to the other side of the immigration system, I can see why some people go a different route. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if I had to leave my wife behind. It’d be worse if we had kids. I have the greatest amount of respect for people from other countries that are trying to make a better life for their families.

11. I live in Leslieville now, which is cool. It’s a part of the city I didn’t really know about until I started working here. Little Italy, the downtown core and the Annex suited me when I was 23. Leslieville suits me now that I’m 29. Read into that what you will.

12. Cabbagetown is a pretty cool area, too. I’d like to spend more time around Ossington in the west end. I’m pretty sure I’m a hipster.

12a. I apologise if I haven’t mentioned how cool the neighbourhood you live in is. I have no doubt that it’s awesome. I just can’t list all of them.

13. It just occurred to me that I first landed here on May 1st 2003. It’s pretty awesome that I wrote this today. It’s weird that seven years have passed.

14. Toronto is a pretty expensive place to live. In my old apartment in Glasgow I paid the equivalent of $400 a month in rent. I pay double that now. I still prefer it here.

15. I recognise that there was a tremendous amount of luck involved in my relocation here. If I hadn’t gotten a job so fast (or even if I’d gotten a job at somewhere other than the Hard Rock Cafe) I would never be in the incredibly fortunate position that I find myself today. I wouldn’t have met Holly. I wouldn’t have made so much money. I would never have met Melinda and I’ve never have considered trying to get on stage and be funny. Life would be very different. That is not to say that I’m playing down my influence on my own situation. I did pretty well, things just could’ve worked out different.

15a. To be clear: the one thing that I’ve learned about moving here is that you have the power to change your situation. You’d be surprised at how resilient and capable of embracing change you are. You make your own luck. You just need to put yourself in a position to take advantage of it. 

15b. Oh, and if you don’t live in Toronto, you should give it a shot. You know what they say, if you can make it here, you’ll make it in most other places in Canada.

I’m going to do this as a numbered list, just to see how many numbers I can write. It’s also a scientific fact that human beings love stuff being written down in a list.

1. I’m unsure as to what is the correct grammatical arrangement for the words stand up comedy. Stand-up comedy? Standup comedy? I’m going to go with standup comedy. This may require more research.

2. Most people that do standup comedy call themselves comics. Very few call themselves comedians. I call myself neither of these things, because I feel like it’s a label that can only be placed on me by other people.

3. It has just occurred to me that I do call myself a comic on my twitter profile, but that’s just for show. I recognise that creating an image is important, particularly when no-one knows who you are. 

4. Standup comedy is very, very popular. There are a lot of people that want to do standup comedy for a living. In the city I live in, Toronto, there are literally hundreds of people looking for stage time on any given night. For example: over 200 people signed up for the Toronto Comedy Brawl. That’s just the people that are motivated enough to sign up for a competition. There are literally hundreds that would’ve missed out either because they don’t have the time or didn’t find out about the contest until it was too late. I’m not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

5. Quite a lot of people aren’t very good at standup comedy, but do it anyway. Now, I don’t say this to suggest that I am in any way good at standup comedy. I get a couple of laughs every time I go on stage - not great laughs, but laughs nonetheless. I’m talking about the people that I see that go up and just die. Four/five minutes of silence. Trust me, I’ve had two minutes of people looking at me in silence and it’s the worst. To have a full set of it would be more than I could handle. It happens to these folks and then they come back tomorrow and give it another shot. I am in awe of these people. I admire that kind of mentality. I can only hope to have that level of determination.

6. On the 6th of May it’ll have been 7 months from my first steps on stage. I did okay. I look back at the video now and I’m a little embarrassed, but I did okay. I’m proud of that guy for actually getting up on stage and doing it. It’s not often I do stuff, so that was a big deal at the time. Now I just wish I had been a little bit funnier.

6a. To clarify my point: I feel like I’m better at this now than I was 7 months ago. This is both encouraging and probably the minimum amount of acceptable progress. If I’d been doing this for 7 months and not gotten any better, I should probably just give up.

6b. As an aside, there are some words that I simply cannot spell properly, no matter how often I write them. Embarrassed is one of them. There are too many ‘a’s in the word, and not enough ‘e’s.

7. Since the first gig (on the 6th October 2010) I have performed a number of times - let’s call it X because I’m actually too embarrassed to type it out. X is way less than you think it is. This is not something I’m proud of. Of those sets, about 80% have been done in the last three months. It’s good that I’m performing more regularly, but I’m not performing nearly enough. There are comics in the city that do X number of shows in THREE WEEKS. I repeat: I am not proud of myself.

7a. One of the best pieces of advice that I’ve been given since I started out was at an open mic at TKOs at the end of February. A dude called Mike Harrison (who is a very talented comic) called me out on my bullshit. He made it clear that my lack of stage time was purely down to me. No excuses. He was right then, and he continues to be right. Not coincidentally, he’s doing very well. I hope he continues to do well.

7b. Again, for clarity: one of the great/terrible things about standup comedy is that you have no-one to blame but yourself. If it’s going awesome, it’s all because you’re awesome. If it sucks, then you gotta take a long, hard look in the mirror.

8. I miss having someone to blame.

9. Starting out can be/is pretty soul destroying. This is a good thing. Humility is important. There’s a lot of performing to rooms that are either empty, or completely unsuited to comedy or both. Getting booked in good rooms happens once in a blue moon. It makes you appreciate the audience more. You get hungry for a good crowd.

10. Making people laugh is a lot of fun. I like how I feel just after I’ve been on stage. I imagine this is what narcotics would feel like.

11. People in the Toronto comedy scene are (for the most part) absurdly nice, but I don’t really know any of them. I feel out of place because I still feel like I need to earn my stripes.  As a result, I’m awkward and quiet when I’m in a room with them. I never know what to say. As a 29 year old guy who thinks he’s pretty sociable, this is difficult for me. It’s like being back at high school. I did not have fun at high school, so this is a feeling that I look forward to getting rid of. My detachment from the ‘scene’ is entirely my own fault. I refer you to number 8 on this list.

12. Writing for standup comedy is (for me) the same as talking out loud and imagining if anyone would laugh at what I’m saying. A large percentage of my ideas happen in the shower, yet I haven’t written any jokes about soap, shampoo, or pubic hair. This confuses me. 

13. Initially I was reluctant to write jokes about the fact that I’m Scottish because I didn’t want to be thought of as a Scottish comic. This was stupid. Being Scottish is part of who I am, and the whole point is to express my point of view. I just look forward to being able to write about my Scottishness in a way that isn’t quite so shitty.

14. I spend an uncomfortable amount of time dreaming about the time where I’ll actually be better at this than I am right now.

15. I’m performing twice next week: once on Monday at the Imperial Pub comedy contest and once at Betty’s Corktown Comedy Show on Wednesday. I will most likely use the same material for both. Again, this is not something I’m particularly proud of.

I shall most likely continue this list at some point in future. I guarantee at least 75% of this list will be a source of embarrassment to me at some point in the future. It is also worth noting that I spelled embarrassment correctly in the previous sentence. I typed it wrong the second time. 

I started my first blog when I was 20. I think. It was a while ago, but I’d been writing for a few years before that. It strikes me as strangely apt that it was called Writersbloc.co.uk. It was only when I started the blog that I really started being disciplined and actually writing something (almost) every day. That was nearly ten years ago. Today, I’m as blocked as it’s possible for someone to be. I’ve written a maximum of 3000 words in the last 4 months. I used to do that in two days.

The writer’s block has gotten so bad that I’ve started questioning whether or not I’m really cut out to be a writer. Do I actually have anything to say? Is my voice really that interesting? What if I don’t have any stories in me? I’ve been calling myself a writer for so long that I don’t know what the alternative is. I’ve been calling myself a writer without actually writing. I’ve talked myself into a place where all of my dreams and ambitions are tied into writing words on a page, but I don’t have the ability to get any words out any more. And it terrifies me. 

I’ve used the temporary nature of my work situation as a crutch for the last couple of years. I say that I’ve been unable to get work in the creative industries because I couldn’t guarantee that I’d be in country any longer than the limits of my 12 month work permit. Who would want to hire someone that won’t be available for the long term? Truth is I just didn’t apply for any jobs. The temporary work permit excuse made so much sense that it seemed stupid to try and prove it wrong. It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now it’s getting very close to the point where I will no longer have that excuse (since the immigration stuff is very nearly over) and the pressure that I’m putting myself under is ridiculous. I’ve put my work life and ambitions on hold for the last two years, working a variety of shitty jobs to pay my bills and haven’t been pursuing any kind of creative or intellectually fulfilling work. Now I’m nearly thirty and have very little to show for my efforts.

It feels like I have to do something now. I just don’t know what, and I don’t know how. I’m flailing around, telling myself that I could do this and do that but the simple fact is that I have to sit down and do it. And the blank page is kicking my ass.

I can tell you that I love writing. I love sitting in front of a keyboard and getting into that state of flow. I love that point where you can just keep going and going and hundreds of words are coming into your brain and then suddenly a sentence comes out and you have no idea where it came from. I love it when your brain takes a sudden left turn and goes to a place that I was never aware of before. When I write stuff for my standup comedy, that’s the place that I aim for. But there’s a voice that keeps popping up, and it asks the same thing over and over:

“Who gives a shit what you think? You know nothing. You’ve done nothing. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I’ve sat at my computer for hours, staring at the screen. I write 100 words and then delete them all and hate myself because they suck. I go to a coffee shop and sit with my notebook and write a page and a half of utter drivel. I read it back and it’s terrible. Then I question why I even want to do this in the first place. I remember when I used to be able to write and get excited about it. I’d write things and actually like what I was putting down on the page. I’d walk through the city and be inspired by all of the stuff going on around me. 

Now I know that the block is nothing new, and my fight with resistance is common among creative types. It’s happening to me because I want so badly to do something that allows me to change a large part of my life for the better, and it feels like I can’t just force my mind and body into a state where that is possible. I don’t want to work in the service industry any more. I’ve done it for ten years, and that’s enough. Hell, it was enough five years ago. And it’s this pressure of ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’ that is killing me. 

My personal life is awesome: I’m married to a woman I adore and I live in a place that I love. But I want to be able to start a family with her. I want to be able to support them while doing work that I enjoy. I don’t want to be 35 and a bartender. So how do I make it better? How do I do work that fulfills me? I don’t know the answer, but I know that if I keep typing, eventually the answer will come out. Eventually I’ll be able to reply to the voice in my head.

“I care what I think. I know what I’ve experienced. I’ve lived life. I want to write it down.”