Seattle Night of Stars
No rest for the weary: I’m on my way to Seattle to do a few west coast dates with the John Hodgman book tour. Please note that tomorrow night, Thursday November 6, John and I will be performing at Town Hall in Seattle. Joining us, local treasures and actual famous people John Roderick and Sean Nelson. IT IS GOING TO BE VERY BIG AND FUN (all caps courtesy of John Hodgman).
I can’t figure out how to put a proper link in this iPhone WordPress app, so I’m afraid you’ll have to cut and paste (which I also cannot do from here, ha ha). Regardless, buy your tickets here:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/47299
Also: yes we can.
Bernie Defeated
An entire pot of tea and a few adjustments in the set list got my voice through the show last night, with much assistance from the lovely people of Birmingham. It was a short show squeezed in between other things and it was set up and announced at the last minute, but turnout was still impressive, especially considering I am from another country entirely. Thanks to everyone who came out on a cold rainy night and tolerated my raspy honking. I haven’t spoken aloud yet this morning, which is part of the plan.
I’m sitting here in the hotel room enjoying my last opportunity for a little tea and biscuits, a lovely tradition that I wish was in my life always. I still can’t believe I just did six shows here on this side of the Atlantic. I’ve been thinking a lot on this trip about, guess what, the internet. All these crowds here in all these new places. It’s yet another example of this increasingly important global internet culture that’s happening – it no longer matters much where you live, you can still find your way to LOLCats or Numa Numa or Skullcrusher Mountain, or any of a thousand million trillion other dumb, funny, important ideas. There’s a group of people who are literally spread out all over the planet, and they’re all talking and thinking about the same stuff, and that has never ever happened before. And that group of people is just going to keep growing until it’s all of us, and what happens then?
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: the internet is going to be big. You may want to buy some stocks or something.
Thank you, accented strangers. I’ll be back soon…
Nottingham
I met the Sheriff of Nottingham. I didn’t know there was an actual sheriff, but there is. He’s a nice old man, I don’t see why anyone would want to give him any trouble. I was able to meet him because I played “Re: Your Brains” at the Guiness record-setting zombie gathering event outside in a square filled with zombies (he counted the zombies, I guess that’s one of his many duties). This is unquestionably the weirdest moment of the trip: me there in the green room tent next to the stage saying hi to the sheriff and seeing zombie faces everywhere. How did this happen?
And then of course we played the GameCity Halloween party that night – the standard semi-crappy sound of a large hotel conference room, made even more crappy by my then even larger throat frog. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get through the set. But an audience of zombies doesn’t care about this sort of thing, really all they want is brains. And of course Paul and Storm kicked ass as usual, so I figure even if I was terrible there was still some decent entertainment on stage.
I can only hope that they’re as forgiving here in Birmingham, because the frog is still with me (I have named him Bernie).
London, The Return
What can I possibly say about London? There were over 500 people in the audience, and though the beautiful Shepherds Bush Empire holds many more, it felt nice and full and fun. The sound and the lighting were both exceptional and seemingly effortless, and the incredibly warm crowd was just what I needed to re-energize me in the middle of this long trip. We did “Always the Moon” for the second time (the first was in Manchester, and a little rough for it) and it actually sounded pretty good I think. Got a few compliments about it afterwards, which means I’ll probably keep putting it into the show when I can.
The one drawback was the very beginning of a little frogginess in my throat, which I think went mostly unnoticed by everyone but me, but returned the next morning with a vengeance. The Nottingham attendees will agree with me…
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