jamesofwalsh
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The Brunswick Open Mic in Brighton is a Very Good Open Mic
i start on a salty note: this open mic isn’t an open mic in the most important of ways. I don’t mean “anyone who turns up on the night gets a slot” – I understand why even open mics would like to operate some form of quality control – it’s also a good way of… Read more
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We’ll need a bigger boat this time
You know you’re in trouble on an English train when they start handing out tiny bottles of water. Such was the case on a rainy Sunday afternoon at York Central. My train home was on time until, two minutes before it was due, it wasn’t. An announcement: “for the attention of passengers on platform 3:… Read more
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Guesting with The Krayzies at Hoopla Improv Mixer Night
I write from a smoky Thameslink train stuck at East Croydon. We are non-moving for one of two reasons: either the ongoing signal failures, or the guy in the back carriage with the massive reefer has set off the internal fire alarms. Or possibly both? [1] I just had a really fun evening at Hoopla… Read more
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The New Muppet Show is Just Okay
The thing with puppets is you can’t kill them. When their human operators shuffle off this mortal coil, the puppet remains – gathering dust for a few years, perhaps, but waiting patiently for another unholy union with a fresh human soul. [1] Kermit the Frog is on his third human handler, and he doesn’t sound… Read more
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Relationships Relationships Relationships (or: people fear he’s writing about improv again)
Saturday was the last of my performances as part of Hoopla’s rolling House Team programme, in which they stick together a bunch of promising improvisers (and, on this occasion, me), try out some new formats, and see what comes of it all. I wasn’t able to make all the sessions, which consisted a couple of… Read more
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Who has the power: architecture, politics, and social hierarchy in 1980s He-Man
Due to insomnia I’ve been rewatching Filmation’s original 1983 He-Man, a cartoon designed (successfully!) to sell the child version of me toys of body-building blue skeletons and ripped, blonde, quasi-barbarian heroes. In terms of plot, dialogue, character development, and animation, He-Man is largely dogshit, with one exception: Skeletor’s relentless commitment to evil is pleasing and… Read more
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Comedy Competitions Were A Mistake
Comedy competitions are silly things to take seriously, but sometimes you see an injustice so egregious it makes you wonder if David Cameron’s meritocracy was a scam after all. Someone more cynical than me would decry the Brighton New Comedy Award as a thinly-veiled marketing campaign for the Jill Edwards stand-up comedy course. At the… Read more
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Sea of Stars is the first video game I’ve properly fallen in love with since Breath of the Wild
Hark at me with my zeitgeist blog posts, but I’m really enjoying 2023’s charismatic tribute to the golden age of Japanese RPGs, Sabotage Studio’s Sea of Stars. I bought it for my quiet Christmas in suburban Luton, as part of what’s become a bit of a theme the past few months; an attempt to relearn… Read more
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