Fourth

I began work on “Stories We Told” today. Managed to knock out a completed first episode which immediately makes me think that the August deadline may well actually be accomplished! I only have to write, record, edit, mess about with a further 9 and we have it!

And seriously gang, how hard could that possibly be?

Along with this, the draft episode which will kick off the second round of Cage Fight has been recorded and edited. And this evening, initial prep begins in Ernest for season 2 of “Another Here”. So it’s all coming together now. You see, I worked out (or rediscovered probably) the other day that all I need in order to perpetually play for a living, is to acquire 1000 people willing to give me $5 a month. Which doesn’t seem like a huge ask. Shall we see how we get along with that?

Third

You know how it takes me a good few years to finish any of these little projects I have? And most of those years are spent being distracted, formulating the plan and having snacks, and the actual creating part is all done in about 2 evenings? Annoying that isn’t it. Let us consider ‘Gomorrah’, the musical about Sodom’s mate that I have been knocking about in my head for about 10 years. The plot is simple enough (if ever changing), but for some reason I just can’t find those couple evenings needed to get round to writing the damn thing.

And it’s that distraction that has been playing on my mind today. There’s perpetually a world of things pulling for attention, but - ah fuck it. I’m boring myself with this.

Last night I think I met a dog. We didn’t shake hands, but I think I met it.

What was I talking about? Distraction! That’s it. The main issue I seem to come across is a strong desire to have ideas and a lack of interest in following any through. I wonder if I can start an extremely niche style of writing which consists essentially of just jotting out rough notes of an idea and finishing saying “put that together somehow and hey presto, you got yourself a killer story”. Think I could get away with that? I reckon, with just the right amount of arrogance, I could convince people that’s a creative choice.

That’ll do.

Second

I wanted to tell you more about Better Bible right - you know how I have gone through the whole bible and rewritten it, explaining the stories book by book. As I mentioned yesterday, I love the idea of turning this into a stand up show and inevitably will do (within the next 5 years. I work slow), but in the meantime I really want to do a complimentary podcast called “Better Bible: Held Accountable”. Dead simple idea - my episodes are definitely wrong. Each take on each book will be down to me misquoting, misunderstanding, making wild leaps of logic that simply don’t work, or just forcing a joke so hard that it perverts the meaning of the stories. I really want to sit down with some experts. Have then listen to my shows and essentially, tell me off. The idea of a show which involves a genuine scholar endlessly saying “what the fuck were you thinking here?” And me having to dead sheepishly go all:

“Sorry. I … I thought I was being funny”

“Oh, I see. Think you’re the big ‘I Am’ because you record a few episodes saying that an old book is irrelevant. Think you’re a smarty pants do you for mocking something important to loads of people”

“No. I’m … I’m sorry”

That would end up being an outstanding show. Problem is, as you’ll pick up quickly if you haven’t already - that involves working with others and where ever possible, I try to avoid that simply because I cannot dictate how others work. And you know people right? They are the worst!

On a slightly more charitable note - imagine approaching a proper professional who is no doubt dead busy and saying “can you help me with this idea? No I can’t pay you. No I can’t use bullshit like ‘exposure’ either because I am just me. And here’s hours of podcast you have to listen to you homework”

Seems a bit too much to ask doesn’t it.

That exposure payment thing is irritating isn’t it. Reminds me of when I entered some comedy competition years back called “stand up hero” or “super star stand up” some utter nonsense like that. It was a competition that was put on by Jongleurs (dead now - but used to be a comedy club by pricks for pricks) and sponsored by The Sun (sadly not yet dead - it currently is a newspaper by pricks for pricks). I should have known it wasn’t for me. But I am nothing if not a glutten for punishment, so I rocked up on the day - 8 fucking hours we were there! About a million comics. Open spots, TV people, good and shite ones. All of us doing about 3 minutes in front of a judge panel of - I shit you not - the head lady of jongleurs, Rick Wakeman and her from ‘Ello ‘Ello who did the whole “listen carefully I shall say this only once”. Which I think you’ll agree, is the strangest panel of judges you have ever heard of.

So I go up, do a turn and have to listen to the prog rock free mason from fucking Yes, critique my set and stare at a woman who I was finding out, in real time, wasn’t actually french before fucking off the stage and being interviewed by some ‘journalist’ from the Sun.

This whole day was tedious and getting through to the next round only seemed to make matters worse, as the next round was advertised as a ‘Comedy Boot Camp’ which - right, was the worst comedy experience of my life. We each were sat at tables with another comic, had to go up and do the opening 30 seconds of our standard set (me and my buddy were whispering with nerves that we didn’t have a standard 30 second opener - and if anything, the first 30 seconds involve getting to the mic, having a look around and contemplating the best way to start.). They went on to try and get us to mould out sets into the ‘Standard comedy formula’ that they wanted us to adopt (open with something like “I know what you’re thinking, I look like they child of famous person A and famous person B”, the joungleurs crowd would lose their mind at such self deprecating formulaic bullshit. To this day, any comic who opens with a variant of this I distrust immensely, as should you). A few of us exchanged a couple emails saying this was bullshit, we should all drop out.

I marched up to the head of jongleurs and told her I was dropping out as this opportunity wasn’t for me and seemed to undermine any sense of integrity I may have had. I left, feeling elated. NO ONE ELSE DID! They stayed, they toed the line, they are now all extremely successful.

What the fuck has any of that got to do with exposure?

Anyway - Better Bible. Let’s see what tangent io find tomorrow!

First

After a mere 5 years of sitting upon a website I believe I have found out what to do with it. Let’s all act like its 1999 and indulge me a daily (ish) blog of various projects,  ideas, musings and shit like that which is cynically put together with the sole purpose of being able to generate material to use at a later date. You know, like exactly what Richard Herring did with ‘Warming Up’. Except this one is different as I have chosen to name the blog “Ambition Exceeds Talent”. Which is better.

Let’s begin with a brief rundown of the projects I am currently working on/planning on working on and we shall take it from there.

Cage Fight: We’re gearing up to start recording the second round of this one in the next couple weeks and I must say, I’m genuinely excited. This silly little project has turned into quite the adventure and has led us to befriending another Cage podcast (somewhere in Florida I think). This is definitely more of the way I’m hoping to push the show. Turn it into a veritable melting pot of other shows that are constantly befriending or be-enemying us. Oh, and if anyone knows Nick Cage, have him give me a call please.

Another Here: We are starting to get ourselves ready for the second series of this which I genuinely reckon should take the RPG world by storm as the show is ace, the content is endless and unlike your favourite RPG show, nothing atrocious will come out about the people involved in this one! As well as the base show, I would quite like to have a world of shows under the “Another Here” banner. Basically, I see everything we do on that show as a long form interview to work for Bully Pullpit Games.

Fucking Countries: Right - now this silly idea has been percolating for about 10 years. It has gone through a few changes and I’ve landed on this: instead of simply going through each country on the planet and chatting about it, I have limited it to merely going through the flags. Before I have started writing and researching this one - I’m going to predict that it will be extremely simple with absolutely no chance of controversy what so ever. Oh yeah, and I think I’ll change the title to a moderately less antagonistic one.

Stories We Told: This is intended to be under the “Another Here” banner. Essentially I wanted to take the RPG’s we played and write short stories inspired by our games, record them as tiny little radio plays. Do enough to fill 10 half hour episodes and put them out. I had this idea ages ago and have been arrogantly claiming it’ll start to be released in August. At the time of writing this - no episodes have been completed. How hard can it be to knock out 5 hours of short stories? Let’s see what happens shall we.

Better Bible: This is all recorded and scheduled for release. Should be finished by the end of July. And as much as I have considered moving on to the Apocrypha or other religious books, I think the next stage will be to convert the 66 episodes or whatever it is, into a stand up show. Which reminds me -

Stand Up: I’ve just moved countries and really want to find out where are all the gigs are so I can jump on them. But seems like, as I currently don’t know anyone this will take ages unless I start this other project

Gregory Networks: Which would be an interview podcast, where I speak to everyone I can find in the comedy industry round these parts. The promoters, the famous, the open spots, the venue owners, the reviewers. Again, to cynically get my name into all their heads. This show could go either way, but I reckon it would end up being dead fun and lead to -

Stand Up: As we were saying, I haven’t done any stand up in a few years. Itching to get back on stage, but accept that my first few times may well be shit. So in an effort to account for this, I have been compiling painfully tight 5, 10, 15 & 20 min sets based on the past 10 years or so of material. Feels almost like cheating, but it’ll be a fun start. But what were we talking about? oh yeah!

Better Bible: So turn it into a stand up show. That show would be tight as hell and fucking amazing. Also, it might finally satisfy my bible itch so I can move onto ANYTHING ELSE!

But I think that’s largely all the podcast plans. Other active projects include a couple of plays, a musical, a wonderful idea about dog conspiracy’s that I’m not sure what to do with. Maybe a musical, a play, a series of YA books or a comic. Each of these possible avenues are full of their very own specific problems. But it is a cracking idea that I believe deserves to exist in some format or other (deserves to exist. It does not need to exist). I was tempted to have a go at a crowd sourced musical with the idea. And not only because that’s a beautifully lazy way to pretend to be creative. The thought process goes like this: I would split the plot into 20 song titles. Write a few paragraphs mapping what has to happen and be addressed - do a straight to camera video of myself to post on TikTok just reading it and asking people to convert the thing into a song. Hoping that 1: people watch and join in, 2: they all start working together to create something special, 3: everyone is tricked into thinking that this still counts as my idea so when crediting it as “written by Gregory Akerman and the DVC” I will get away with it. You see, the collection of strangers who would pretty much be writing it for me would be referred to as the Diabolical Villain Consortium (DVC) which will make it seem fun (as oppose to simply feeling like they are being cheated).

Problem is that in order for this to be successful, you need a following. Tricky. But fuck all the other plans. I love that idea!

So yeah, loads of plans and lets travel along together and see just how much of this I get done. Place your bets!