Tag: seinfeld

Categories
ice shock writing zero moment

Completion Anxiety Provokes Muffin Humour

muffin-ms.JPG

I’ve been all the way through the desk editor’s comments on the proofs of ICE SHOCK. The ms is covered with handwritten new bits and changes. I only have ten very minor points to address from the proof reader.

Then it’s type up my list of page changes and down to the post office with it.

Meanwhile, the last chapter of Joshua 3 (current title ZERO MOMENT) is planned, a quarter-written and waiting to be finished.

I could do both things today. So why can’t I even get started?

Completion anxiety. (Hey, it’s a real thing…)

I’m not normally a big procrastinator but as I hurtle towards the finish line, time and again, mentally, the brakes scream into action and I slam to a halt.

Today, instead of working, I want to do something else. For example, spend the day thinking about muffin based-humour. (Hey, it’s a real thing.)

Here are my favourite bits of muffin-based humour.

1. The Muffin-Top episode of Seinfeld.

2. Ross Noble, standup comedian, talks about finding human faces in muffin tops.

3. Bob Kelso and the muffin (Scrubs)

Later today I’ll put a photo of my Starbucks muffin on this post. I’ll try to get one with a face.

“Now there IS a face. Next muffin.”

Categories
raves

The World According to LD

I am so enjoying the new series of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ on More4.

The premise for the series is as gloriously ridiculous as ever, some of the story concepts so featherweight as to be wholly insubstantial and yet still I laugh louder than at any other current comedy show (and it’s not like I’m not trying, I have started watching three other new comedy series this year).

Here’s Larry David (LD) doing his trademark ‘hard stare’. It puts me in mind of Paddington bear, who also had a famous hard stare.

It takes huge skill to make comedy out of ‘nothing’, but Seinfeld and 5 series of Curb don’t seem yet to have exhausted this guy. Mind you that’s not what some people are saying…some think that this 6th series shows signs of tiring. Well maybe series 6 hasn’t yet come up with anything as roll-on-the-floor-laughingly funny as ‘The Doll’ or ‘The Grand Opening’, but when the notion of comedy based on nothing-or-not-much has taken hold in lots of new comedy shows, CYE proves that Larry David is still…The Master.

All hail. Larry, you are untouchable! We’re not worthy, etc, etc.

Categories
raves videos

Believe It Or Not…

I’m considering changing my phone message to our own version of George Costanza’s (of Seinfeld) Believe It Or Not.

We did this a few years ago and it was great – it annoyed everyone who called us. I particularly remember hearing my mother-in-law tutting and clucking with annoyance. In those days I occasionally got phone calls from friends, but nowadays most people realise that I don’t like the phone and they write me emails or send texts.

So all that’s left are the telemarketers…

For those who don’t know and love Seinfeld, here’s the clip:

(my favourite bit comes when George is listening to it second time round, hears the line ‘where could I be?’ and shrugs, askance…)

Categories
nostalgia writing

Pie Season

There are fresh raspberries in the shops, and they’re not bad at all. Meanwhile, in the fields around Oxford, berries are ripening. The pick-your-owns will get going in about a month.

All of which signals the start of pie season. Thank goodness I had a fresh-baked apple and raspberry pie this weekend. We had an unexpected guest, a rather senior cleric, who was rightly put out at the misunderstanding that led to him arriving to an unprepared house. The pie, however, put a smile back on his face.

Mmm, mm. Yet another excuse for socialising. Yet another excuse not to write. Especially teenagers – they love apple pie. Whenever I bake for my daughter and her friends, it’s the pie they gobble first.

Pie…inevitably triggers a Seinfeld reference or three. There’s the episode ‘The Pie’ in which Jerry’s girlfriend refuses to share Jerry’s pie, and there’s ‘The Calzone’ where Kramer bakes a huckleberry pie (and so can’t use his oven to dry his pants)…and there’s ‘The Bubble Boy’ where they drive through what Kramer describes as ‘pie country’.

R1x really has me concerned with that whole Spidey 3 thing. Yes it was daft but I was SO entertained…which I can’t discount. I’m going through the story with a fine toothcomb trying to spot hideous errors that I missed due to chuckling and eating chocolate.

God help me, this blog has finally degenerated into a full-blown displacement activity.

But you know what? I’ve decided to think of it as ‘morning pages’.