The DarkFlameboy Rises

I’ve been pretty angry recently, about a lot of things. At the same time you will note (presents pie chart and bar graph) a meteoric rise in occurrences of me standing up for myself, fighting back, and just generally ‘telling it like it is’. Is there anything more annoying?

So far instances of this phenomenon have been fairly contained, and have ranged from me getting into fights with friends previously un-fought-with over a stolen brownie to more intense defence situations. What opened the floodgates has a lot to answer for, especially now that I’m fighting back and I’m taking it...

TO THE STREETS!

BOOM!

I love a good sound effect.

This morning I did what may count as the coolest thing I will ever do in my entire life, and that’s really saying something (coz y’all know I’m cool as a... okay, well I can’t say ‘cucumber’ at the end of that, because that is terminally UNcool). Let me paint you a wee scene:

Picture it. Sicily. 2012.

Please note that ‘Sicily’ here translates into non-pop-culture-reference-speak as ‘Glasgow’.

After waking up from what can only be described as a prolonged night of rest (or, alternatively, ‘sleeping in’), I threw on some might I say fabulous clothing and left the house for the last day of work at Glasgow Film Festival, which I have been spending the last six months working on (I know, playing catch-up on the story here, aren’t we? Gainful employment, living in the big city – it’s all go).

Five minutes out of my front door, and someone in a shell suit started taking the mickey. That’s TAKING the mickey, not to be confused with an amazing joke I made last week about a friend’s interview for a technician job on Disney Cruise Lines: “teching the Mickey”.

cough

Anyway, it seems that the hat I was wearing offended him. He was obviously out of sorts, and I could see why (if two of my friends had turned up to a social gathering in the exact same shell suit as me, I’d be mortified too), so he decided to take it out on me.

“He’s wearin’ a HAT!”

(Resist temptation to say “does anyone still wear a hat?” – not the time for Sondheim)

His friends, obviously also riled by their fashion faux-pas, joined in. I can still hear the seagull-like echoes in my ears even now (was I just tripping and this whole thing happened with a passing group of seagulls?!).

My instant instinct (yuk, that sounds awful) is like a leftover survival thing from high school: keep your head down, keep walking, pretend you can’t hear them because you’re better than them and maybe they’ll leave you alone. And I was happy to keep with that. I was. I’m incredibly used to it (being a geek AND gay is just asking for it, really). I could do that for the rest of my life, and was expecting to. I never planned on standing up to someone that could just as easily have a knife in their pocket and carve me up to look like... well... a very carved up thing. I was fine to just walk on by.

Until one of them pinched my hat.

“Geez yer hat!”

Now I’d like to say that the hat is not mine. I’m borrowing it from a very sweet friend who saw how much I liked it and gave me it for the weekend as a good luck thing for an audition (maybe that’s what I should be writing about?), and obviously I had to get it back. If it were mine to gee, I would gladly gee him ma hat, but, alas...

Suddenly, my survival instinct left me. Totally left me.  Left me cold, alone and so stupid that I very quickly shot back with:

“Geez yer maw!”

I can’t believe it! What did I just say! Think of a way out, think of a way out – FIX IT RIGHT NOW!!!

Shoved him. Grabbed the hat. Ran. All the way to work.

It’s all pretty awesome til I mention the running away part.

Damn it. My feet are still geeks.

Ring-a-ding-Zinger

At the start of any production week, I make promises to myself for the duration. Usually it's stuff like working out every day, eating properly, forgoing alcohol and the heavy, heavy drugs that I'm all about (I'm wicked mad like that, yo). While each promise has its own individual benefits (focusing my energy, feeling healthy, staying conscious and keeping me tweak-free, respectively), the overall outcome is to make me feel at my best all week. Nobody wants to be going on stage feeling anything less than terrific (unless you're doing stand-up, in which case I understand it helps to feel like absolute shit about yourself).

My latest project with Glasgow Music Theatre opens this Tuesday and runs until Saturday. Company is another Sondheim one, but unlike West Side Story it's:

• less well known (despite winning a boat-load of Tonys)
• far less dancey
• much more grown up (imagine How I Met Your Mother if it starred Kelsey Grammer)
• a comedy (only subtle racism in this one. "Where is she from?!")
• completely lacking in the random dream ballet sequence league
• far more vocally demanding (at first sight of the libretto I wet myself with fear. Then I wet myself with urine.)

So, once again, I'm going through my pre-show rituals of taking good care of myself, starting today. But this doesn't just include taking care of myself, it also means avoiding embarrassment. Ever since the break-up of my relationship back in November, the universe seems to have been out to get me. Right, that's a bit extreme. What I meant to say is that the universe is determined to have me make a total ass of myself at every possible opportunity. It's stepped up its game recently, giving us such memorable classics as:

• "Germolene Gym Disaster"
• "The Elastic Band"
• "I Swear I Was Only Staring At Your Shirt"
• "The Day Yesterday's Underwear Fell Out My Trousers In The Street"

The God of Epic-Fail (GEF, or "Geoff", as I like to know him) is to me what Death is to Final Destination characters (the only major difference being that Death doesn't happen in real life). Avoiding these embarrassing moments for a prolonged period of time is something I like to call "cheating Geoff". A public Geoff-smiting is enough to ruin anyone's day, so it is crucial that I avoid similar incidents during production weeks.

I had planned on starting the rituals today. No junk food, no alcohol (which I was already off), no coffee, loads of exercise, no behaving like a total life-failure in front of people who will never know you well enough to forgive you for it. This morning went well -Special K, water, housework- and I decided it was time to go buy my wedding ring for the show (I play a married man. Talk about performing what you know!). After a little perusal in Claire's Accessories (from the looks they were giving me I'd put money on the sales girls having only ever experienced men who've robbed them, though I'm not sure how much facial movement either of them is capable of in those foundation husks they had on), I tried Primark. The Motherwell Primark is a funny one. There's not an awful lot in it, but from all the screaming red-headed children running around you'd swear there was a sweatshop in the back. No wonder there's not much for them to sell - their workers are clearly revolting.

Anyway, I was looking around their ladies' accessories section (the men's accessories section was just belts, sunglasses and one very lonely jelly watch with a snapped wristband), and there really wasn't anything appropriate. There were loads of rings (Primark has LOADS of rings), but they were all either too girly or had a bird on them. Still, one caught my eye. It was fairly discreet, it wasn't too girly. It was part of a four pack, and the others were just completely useless to me, and very, very feminine -big jewels, a flower, a seagull- but for £2 I'd buy the lot.

Deciding to try on the large (accounting for my man-knuckles), I put all four on at once.

'They fit! Fantastic!...fuck.'

They wouldn't come off. It was impossible! They had no problem going on, but now they wouldn't come off? I'm standing there, in the middle of Primark's ladies' accessories (which I'm now noticing is incredibly close to the ladies' lingerie), yanking at my finger to get off the very noticeable, very effeminate, very stuck ladies rings off my finger. At first I attempted to keep it as gentle as possible to avoid arousing suspicion. When that didn't work, I became a lot less concerned with people noticing me. Good thing I didn't care or else that ten-year old boy in the pink and red Elmo t-shirt shouting "Poof" might've hurt. Yes, I could've quite easily been embarrassed, or enraged, or defensive (when all you want to do is shout "I forgot that a real man lets his mother dress him" at a child, it's gone too far. Especially when you'd wear that t-shirt yourself if they did it in adult sizes).

But this week, I'm not getting embarrassed! I'm not getting worked up! No siree, nothing's bringing me down!

Though I have just devoured a pizza. And I still don't have a ring.

I can start again tomorrow.

That kid looked stupid.

One Limb At A Time: Part Two

...That McDonalds we just had was maybe a bad idea. Because here comes the callback.

The dance audition.

THURSDAY: My First Ever Real Audition, Continued:

The Feet

Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow. 3:30pm

I'm back in this waiting area again (which looks like it moonlights as a bar. Wow. Beer. What a good plan). The last group of singers are only just finishing their auditions, and it looks like there are maybe about 15 other guys here. Loads of girls, but who the hell cares about them? They're only doing this because they never worked out how to use an icing piping bag properly.

Other Girl has shifted from meowing to stretching in front of everyone else. I decide to do the same. When Ally and I meow out loud, I swear her eyes are burning into me (she's probably summoning the Ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bast, to smite me. Here come the locusts. Though why a cat goddess wouldn't just send a plague of cats is anyone's guess. Plague of cats. Nightmare.).

I get in with the dancers and warm up with them. I'm slightly less nervous about this. I can do this. Dancing is something I know I can do. More sure of it than my singing. This is going to be fiiiiiine.

Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow. 4:30pm. Main stage.

This is not fine.

This is a DISASTER.

For one thing, I'm not picking this up very quickly, which I didn't really expect. Pride, then fall. Pride, then fall. Stupid true-to-life clichés, always messing things up. Who comes up with these things anyway?! Trying to screw the rest of us over. If you're reading, inventor-of-that-phrase: screw you!

For another, I've made some really bad clothing decisions. My West Side Story rehearsal the night before means my usual dance-stuff is unusable (I hadn't expected it to get anywhere near that sweaty, but the masochism involved in singing and dancing the Jet Song at the same time made my skin pee). Instead, I thought I'd be fine with a pair of 3/4-length khakis and the shoes and t-shirt I had on, but a stupid vanity thing made me ditch the t-shirt, and just have my zip-hoody on.

Bad.

Plan.

Dude.

Once I started learning this dance, I got really hot. So now I'm sweaty, in a tight hoody and shorts, and small shoes that do NOT look or feel good with these shorts. I don't look like a star. I need to look like a star. I look like an idiot.

I know! Take off the shoes! Barefoot! That'll look better. Nothing I can do about the hoody, so may as well just feel more like a dancer, and take off the damn shoes.

Except this stage is painted, and it's giving my feet more drag than if I had Choos on. Crud. Work through it, I'm thinking. Work through. Keep going.

Five minutes later, I have glass in my foot. There's broken glass on the painted stage. The stage is painted, and there's broken glass on it. Know what else has broken glass on it now? Some veins in my mother-effing heel. There's no way I'm going to tell them, because that's just going to sound like an excuse, and no one else has bare feet (why did I think this would make me look like a dancer?).

So I've put my shoes back on, which has taken too long and too much energy, and the choreographer's talking to us and I'm hopping around with one bloody sock on. I'm hopping, shoeless, in front of a West End choreographer. There is no way to tell you how much of a mess this is.

On top of that, we're not going to do it in groups of 6. I haven't actually gotten it -jeez, I'm so distracted, what the hell is going on?- and everytime I do it, this one move is getting worse and worse...

The Knees

We've just been told we'll be doing it in groups of 6, and we'll be doing it twice in a row. Finish the first time and then straight into the second time. This is fine. I can do this. This is not any more complicated than the West Side Story choreography, and that only takes ten minutes to at least know what I'm doing (minus the polish, but right now polish is the least of my problems). There's one move, near the end, where I have to throw myself to my (bare - stupid clothes) knees, and throw my head and left arm backwards, before popping forwards, and then coming up. Every time I do it, I'm banging my knees off this damn stage (and I'm worried about broken glass - who the hell puts broken glass on a stage and leaves it?! This place seriously needs some better health and safety regulations! Wait...did they do this on purpose...?).

So I'm in the middle of my first time through. These clothes are making me so uncomfortable, but I'm just trying to go for it. Just sell it. No matter what. Throw yourself into it, Andi, come on! This is your chance to make something of yourself and finally get somewhere! Now the knees! GO!

F&*$&$*^%*^)"£(*£*£($()")CK!!!!!

Keep going! Smile, for crying out loud! Get back up! Sell the end! Don't fall into the crowd! Stand out!

Ooooh, Christ, that was bad. Owie, owie, OWIE! But it's okay: Chance number two! Just man up. Do it again - you're good enough for this! 

You're ready!

The Liver

Paperinos Restaurant, Glasgow. 6:30pm.

God. Thank you for inventing gin.

And dance classes.

One Limb At A Time: Part One

Owie.

Hi. 

So. 

I'm kind of sore. 

It could end up being worth it if I can milk the comedy potential out of the pain - except for the fact that this isn't a black-and-white film and a piano hasn't just fallen on my head from five stories up.

So yeah, this might not be worth it.

But, like every good adult male, I have miniscule injuries, and God-or-whatever help me, I'm going to moan about them as if parts of my body are falling off. 

"OW! Oh no! I twisted my wrist! This must be what GANGRENE FEELS LIKE!!!...What's that Doctor? Maggots?! Oh *cough*, no no, I guess I can just *cough* power through it! Like the really tough manly man that I am! ROAR!"

So without any further dudes, I present to you an epic tale of the highs, lows, broken glass and ill-fitting hoodies of my last week...all told...through a tour of my body parts! God you're all going to love this.

Sick bitches.

And it's all in ascending order! Effing crazy!

THURSDAY: My First Ever Real Audition (MAMMA MIA - International Tour)

B.I.: Before Injury

Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow. 9am.

"I really wish I'd gone to bed a little earlier." Thank God(-or-whatever) for adrenaline, because by now I have had 5 hours sleep, no breakfast, and have been up since 6:30. It. Is. Freezing. Who knew Glasgow in October in a wide-open river-adjacent stretch of land outside would be this cold? I've got my biggest scarf on, and gloves, but they're not really helping (at one point I hear a sneeze and then a sniff, and turn to say "bless you" to the guy behind me before realising it was my scarf sneezing. I don't bless it. People would think I was crazy. Blessing a scarf, jeez. Not like I'm a priest or anything - they get away with blessing all sorts of crap. Bread discs for example).

These sorts of things (I imagine, this is my first one), are probably always this early. I feel like I'm one of those people waiting in the queue to audition for X-Factor, except this queue is much, much shorter (about 40 people in front of me), and I'm by myself, which no one auditioning for X-Factor ever seems to be. And suddenly all of my mocking of X-Factor contestants goes up in smoke as I realise:

They must have more friends than me.

Oh God(-O-W), this is just tragic. I don't know anyone here. A couple of castmates were going to be here, but they're not. Those girls in front of me are speculating on what everyone else is singing. Talk to them! Casually! Risk looking like that guy who places himself in the conversations of complete strangers.

So they're quite nice. Ish. Maybe. They don't much care for my choice of song (not everyone is a Celine Dion fan, fine), but I don't much care for their choice in footwear. One of them seems to have travelled from London (crazy! Are they not doing this anywhere else?), and both of them have agents! I feel like the little poor girl in films, watching the older, more sophisticated ladies in their high heels and make-up, and dreaming of one day being like them. Agents?! Gee willikers!

"I did say to Clive that I could always do the closed-casting in London, but he said 'Darling (her real name, I guess), you can do the open-call, or you can pay £80 for the closed-call. Either way, you're a shoe-in, as always.'" (I can just imagine her agent charging a "bullshit tariff". I wonder if that's taxable, though it's hard to imagine anyone ever using the phrase "bullshit tax".)

Eventually they walk off to talk to people further back in the queue than me. BURN! By now, though, the 40 people in the queue in front has gone up to 50 from people having their friends show up and just skip right in front of everyone else (queue-jumping. How professional. Don't worry, the Universe won't let them succeed). The queue behind me is almost triple that. Which, I guess, would make it nearly 150-strong.

A man, a security-guard-looking man in a security-guard-looking-long-coat (O.M.G., is Beyonce here?!), walks down the queue, and tells us that if we need to go to the toilet we are to go now. Never before has that sentence caused such major panic. I'm looking around, and there are scores of people freaking out. Because someone said something to them. And suddenly, of course, everyone needs to go to the toilet, but you can see the oddest resolve in peoples' eyes -"NO! Going to the toilet now would be weak! WEAK!!!"- and nobody makes a move.

Twenty minutes pass, the cold gets worse, and I'm shaking a little, the cause of which I can't tell. It could be nerves, it could just be the cold. The fact that my shoes are filling with my pee gives me the indication that it's the nerves, but then that could just be because that man asked if I needed the toilet.

The man is back, and this time he's asking all performers to stand to one side of the queue. Again, panic. People freak out, and go completely silent. All apart from me.

"Oh, jeez, sorry!"

I collide (just a little) with the guy behind me. I turn to see that he's a little younger than me, a little taller, and much better dressed for the weather. He doesn't say much, but the girl right behind him does, and pretty soon the three of us are chatting about how worked up everyone seems to be. They're both dancers, they're both funny, and they both remind me of old friends that I haven't seen enough of lately. Best of all, as the man walks down the line and hands out numbered raffle tickets, we discover they're in the same group as I am.

Once we go in and register, they start taking people in groups of 20. We're in the third group. I'm number 52, and they're on right after me. From the first group we learn that we're auditioning on the main stage in the venue, which is huge, and has awful acoustics (I'm sure they're just blowing that out of proportion). Sarah, Ally and I are still having a great laugh, but there's the feeling that the nerves are just being held at bay. The rest of the room is still freaky. Other Girl from earlier has gone over to lean her forehead against a wall and vocally warm-up. Five minutes later, she quickly moves on to meowing loudly, over and over.

"MEOW!"

Church-giggles set in. She's such a wanker.

The second group go in.

"MEOW!"

It's still going. She's totally just trying to psych everyone out. This can't be beneficial.

"MEOW!"

And I'm actually laughing at her now. Stop it! Stop. It.

Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow. 10:30am

We're standing outside the theatre now, in a queue, waiting to go in. I can't believe how nervous I'm not! This never happens! I'm always a bag of wrecks! Wait, no, that makes no sense. Wrecks aren't things. Except for shipwrecks. Wow. I'm always a bag of shipwrecks! Who knew?!

I guess I haven't had the chance to overthink things or get myself worked up, because of these two. Turns out you can have a lot of laughs over things that rhyme with "LOL". And now we're going in. It's like Chorus Line, except Michael Douglas isn't here, and there are no mirrors. Just a big stage, a piano, and the audition panel. We're going to wait in the wings til it's our turn, and then we go out, sing, leave. We watch the others, and decide that everyone is standing too far back. We're going to stand further forward. As far forward as we can.

So it gets to my turn, and I go out.

"And what are you singing, Andi?"

"I Drove All Night."

He repeats it in a murmur. Oh crap! I didn't say who the artist is. CRAP! Say it now! No, it's too late. Damn, damn, crapitty damn!

I click out the tempo for the pianist (oh yeah, check me out, the consummate professional).

"Can you stand a little further back, please?"

CRAP!

I start singing. Wow, the acoustics in here are really BAD. Can they hear me? I can't! Did I just...I just missed a word. F*&%! Make it up, make it up, don't show it...

We get out of there, and we're asked to stand in our group over to one side, away from the other auditonees. The casting director comes towards us and has a pile of our CVs in his hands. There are some blue admin slips I can see near the back (the boys had the blue ones). He starts saying numbers and names, and I'm ready to turn round and head out the door behind me. It's never my number. I'm preparing myself with the usual: "Oh well, not this time"; "At least I had the experience"; "I knew I didn't do very well anyway".

"Number 52"

And my name! MY NAME! It's never my name! Is that actually my name?! They've called the wrong person...! I got a callback! For the tour of the West End production! They think I'm a good enough singer for the West End! WHAT THE HELL?! I GOT A CALLBACK! Why am I not jumping up and down and screaming in joy right now?!

Oh. Other people that didn't get it. Right. 

Yeah, don't jump. 

Or scream.

The Reason We Don't Throw Children In The Thames

There are very few things in life cuter than a small, unassuming and, quite frankly, dim child playing innocently with an animal of what we assume is a similar demeanor. And, possibly in some kind of kitty-defiance of the fact that Blogger's spellcheck doesn't recognise "demeanor" (but then it doesn't recognise the word "Blogger" either, just like Facebook doesn't recognise "Facebook"), the animal looks and acts as simple as the child does, so it's safe to assume they're on similar pegging, IQ-pegging.

So. This 7 year-old boy. He's a damn sight cuter than your average four year-old (they can't really say much, and are very infrequently the subject of cute adverts, books or films. Not quite babies, but not quite people yet. Society's pre-pubescent outcasts), and you won't find a 13 year old as adorable as this (all 13 year-old boys are bastards anyway). And he's not a girl, which is an adorable-bonus in itself (little girls in adverts are generally just precocious little madams with too much to say, ideas way above their station, and are, let's face it, a bit boring. Want to be a doctor, do you? We call them "nurses" these days. Get back in your kitchen. Do you know what a cupcake is? Welcome to your future). Not only is this boy cute, he has a best friend. His cat. His friend, the cat, is cute, though not as cute as the boy (which the cat must be sick of by now. Being the less-cute friend always sucks when you're in a bar, and for a cat it's embarrassing when your human friend is getting more tail than you), and the cat has a name that is no doubt utterly adorable in a modern let's-call-the-cat-a-real-person's-name-like-Toby way (although critics argue it's actually just new parents going through a let's-call-the-child-a-real-cat's-name-like-Toby phase).

So the boy, James (7, adorable, the Mary) is best friends with his cat, Toby (kitten, cute, the Rhoda), and he rushes home from school every day to play with his best friend. His cat.

Somewhere along the line, this boy's parents have dropped the ball (of string). I'm not saying that he shouldn't be friends with a cat. Some of my best friends are cats. I'm just saying that this boy is spending far too much time with this cat, and who knows what's going on there. Before you know it, James has been swept up in a whirlwind of late nights out of the house and catnip addiction, so out of it he's scratching passers by, running head-first into locked catflaps, waking the neighbours with his wailing, and peeing all over the couch. James' parents then make the difficult decision to stick him in a bag of rocks destined for the Thames, and this story that started off with a cute little boy and his cat has turned tragic. Someone needs to step in.

So thank God for Whiskas, who have decided that is a GOOD and MAGICAL and ADORABLE thing for this child to be in so deep with his pet that he forsakes all other children after school to run home and feed it. "Buy our cat food. Your child will never have to have a social life again, because even when the cat is no longer with you, you can bet that little Jimmy will take his own life out of grief."


The weird thing is: it totally works! It's not weird. It's not creepy. It's not sad. This little boy's best friend in the whole world is a cat, but it's not worrying! Because it's cute. And loveable. And there can't be anything wrong with something that loveable.


There is no substitute for likeability in this business (why Christian Bale's career is circling the urinal). It's pretty telling at the moment, then, that I'm worried. Recently, I've not been the best person to be around, and my self-involvement has been so off the scale of "good taste" that I've got Roy Chubby Brown zooming up behind me on his Vespa, trying to catch up, with Jim Davidson perched in the sidecar, clutching his knees, goggles covering half his face (proving, once again, that he's just as ignorant of how much of a tit he looks as he is of everything else). I've started to get a bit depressy and angry, just for nothing, and do seriously have moments of internal physical rage for very stupid reasons, which I'd like to think isn't me. In fact, it's my character in West Side Story, so I can use it all. I just didn't plan to method-act.

It's tension. And tiredness. And frustration. The last few weeks I've worked every shift possible at the theatres, and had rehearsals, and various other things. Friday night was the first real night out I've had since the middle of July. Yesterday I had a pretty nerve-wracking social engagement that I've been bricking it about for weeks. On Saturday night I had a fairly big mini-breakdown (which I'm quite ashamed of, and doesn't ever happen, because that's just ridiculous - you're more likely to see me go a week without making a Kerry Katona joke). 

By the way, Kerry Katona...mess.

On top of all this, I have my first ever audition for a professional acting job coming up on Thursday morning, and I'm really excited. So cue the usual stress of having lost my voice and having no suitable audition pieces prepared (finding new ones takes a bit longer than you estimate because you're never totally happy with your options). It's a very big step in the right direction given my goals for the next year, so I have to just hope I don't eff it up.

So generally I'm grumpy, and when I'm not, there's too much happiness and energy and I have no focus, like an exceptionally hyperactive blind person (but with far fewer forehead-wall collisions). Tonight's West Side Story rehearsal involved the first acting I've had to do on the schedule so far, and the number of distractions that I gave in to you'd have thought I was Tiger Woods. Once I start acting it feels so good and organic and half of me switches off while I go into auto-pilot, but that didn't happen during this rehearsal. My head and my emotional state were all over the place, and it really wasn't likeable. 

It was annoying. If I was little Jimmy, I'd have been sectioned by now for being that close to my cat.

But a conversation I had on Friday started to change things a little. 


Friday really was the first night out I've had in what feels like forever (also doesn't help - I'm a party animal with very little social life just now, like a disco-loving caged-hen), and during the night I had several conversations with people about work and such. One of them, who really knows what she's talking about, told me not to underestimate how much of an ace-in-the-hole it is to be good looking and Scottish when trying to do theatre in Scotland. This was not something I had thought of before, for several reasons:

1. I had just assumed that there would be less work for Scottish actors in Scotland because that's where all the Scottish actors are, but I suppose it's also where all the Scottish roles are.
2. I still find it hard believing people when they compliment me. Years of being overweight, unpopular, rejected and bullied have taken their toll (and even though you spend your childhood thinking "it's okay - in ten years I'll be a success and they'll be claiming dole", you go away to uni, come back, and discover on your way to the JobCentre that said bullies, who dropped out of school after 4th year, have gone on to better things than you can dream of right now, and that they're still good looking. Bastards). 

So at the moment I feel like the game has just suddenly changed a little in my favour, like I've been let in on a cheat code that could help me finish the game. But it's occurred to me - I need to start working on my appearance, and my confidence for this info to make any difference.


So I'm making a conscious effort to stop biting my nails. Given that I'm sitting here biting them in between sentences, it's maybe not going so swimmingly at the moment. The problem is that it's not something you can just stop doing, mainly because half the time you don't even notice you're doing it! Sarah Palin has quite a similar problem with not noticing she's an idiot (though it must be hard for her to keep up, especially if she's having to track her family too: "Hi, I'm Bristol, a teenage mother. And I'm telling you, teenage girls, don't get pregnant. IT WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE!!!...coochie-coo, who's mummy's best boy? You are! You are!").


As for the body, I'm not the tallest guy on the planet, and my build makes me look even shorter (it's very possible I have a long torso and short legs, which would account for how close to the ground my junk reaches - that's junk, as in, the crap I keep in my pockets, obviously. Sicko). My body shape is slightly strange too, and it's not that I want to be any skinnier, I would just like to tone up and look good naked without having to call in that insufferable half-Chinese tranny (*cough* sorry, the Vespa just caught up long enough for them to infect me with their venom - bizarre how the bigots are the bitchy ones). So today, after three months of eating, I'm going back to the gym. Time to work this all out, because if society has taught me anything, it's that no one wants a singing, dancing fat man. And what they want even less is a singing, dancing healthy man who stands, and behaves and talks like he's fat. They want confident. No nervous insecure wrecks, no fat dancers.


Although Robbie Williams gives me hope.


Time to stop biting all my nails and eating all the pies.


So this is what self-esteem feels like...

Dancing Nazis?

Today, I'm having issues. Not like Tiger-Woods-scale issues, or the sort of thing you hear about on "Family Court with Judge Penny - "You're suing yo mama fo' not buyin' you a bike? Boy, you trippin'!" (Do you think people who talk like that know that they're putting so many apostrophes into their sentences? It's murder on the ol' grammar-chops.)

My issues today, good people, are musical. And mostly they're just silly.

First, there's this whole Cheryl Cole/Tweedy (which one is she now?) X-Factor fiasco over who she put through to the live finals. Now I won't go into the details (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you'll be the sort of person who doesn't care), but I have a problem with people having a problem. Get over it.

I'm changing my name to Perez.

Second, I visited a website this morning that gets rid of songs you have stuck in your head by giving you new songs to have stuck in your head, and now I've got "Ease on Down the Road" from TheWiz crammed in there. This wouldn't even be a problem if it wasn't for the following factors:

a) The song is repetitive, boring and annoying.

b) So were the group of American school kids I heard singing it over and over and over every day at the Edinburgh Fringe (which, I have decided, needs to stop letting people enjoy themselves), and whose voices I can hear now, rambling through my coffee-addled brain, asking for a deterrent slap (which shall be henceforth known as "The Scarecrow", or the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow Connection-with-your-face!")

I swear we should've won at Georgetown (especially if this bunch were our opponents - how can you carry a musket if you can't carry a tune?). Then again, if we had won, we wouldn't have 'Brothers&Sisters' or Westernised Judaism, so I suppose America can be permitted on that basis.

My two greatest loves in life: Manhattan Jews and Sally Field. I plan to marry some amalgamation of the two.


But getting to the real issue-for-which-I-may-require-a-tissue, I refer you to last Sunday.

My rehearsal schedule for West Side Story had me down to start around 6pm, but I came in at 4 for some extra dance rehearsal (which quickly turned into me slave-driving my dance partner into a puddle on the ground like some kind of dance-Nazi. Or a dance blender. That's probably more accurate. And bloody. Though the concept of a blender being more dangerous than a Nazi isn't likely to go down well, especially not with my new Herbew-Sally-Field-esque husband. Jewish and passionate. What a man.)

Once we had finished with the ridiculous amount of mamboing (In the space of the last month, that track has made it onto my "25 Most Played" iPod playlist, which, as we all know, has nothing to do with how many times you've played a track and has more to do with whatever Steve Jobs has placed subliminal messaging in: "Buy another iPod. You really want an iPad. It's not totally pointless! The Mac's a piece of genius! WORSHIP ME AND ALL MY WORKS!"), we started work on the songs I have to learn as Tony's understudy, which was pretty cool.

Thing is, I haven't ever been taught how to sing. I have a good voice (I've been told), nice tone (again, told), but I have absolutely no technique whatsoever, and anything I have I've picked up from doing various musicals and stuff, but nothing significant (like Britney - got the goods, just a bit of a mess when displaying said goods. Actually, more like a Next clearance store). My rehearsal went well, but when you're singing "Maria", and are having more trouble with the middle-of-the-road notes than you are with the falsetto, something ain't right (by which I mean 'you're obviously crap at this').

So now I'm starting the search for a singing teacher, because I want to be really good at this. If I'm getting ready for the theatrical war-zone of auditions and castings, I've got to be able to sing better than a lot of other people, and that won't happen without help. In a battle between me and those American kids, it doesn't matter that they're annoying. Look at Lionel Ritchie! They're going to win at Georgetown, and I'm going to be hanging on the Next rack with mismatched plus-size dresses and patchy-glittered Christmas decks.

Lord-I-don't-quite-believe-in, bring me a singing teacher!

The Final Nolan the Coffin

Life's been a lot kinder to me than it has been to Kerry Katona. You know things are bad when you're relegated to days of watching ex-bandmates win Celebrity Masterchef by cooking fantastic, fresh, quality food - and now even Iceland don't want you! KICKINTHEFACE! Or, as I like to call it, "really getting Bjorked". Presumably the whole scandal was because she was caught snorting coke, while Iceland have an exclusive contract to peddle E to bored housewives - "That's why mum's go to Iceland." And why Colleen Nolan has managed all this time without self-harm.

The last few weeks have been particularly good, for example, because I have had loads going on. Contact from two different companies I've worked with before, my theatre sister moving away and leaving me -sad moment-, the emergence of a new competitor for me to beat in this race, and the awesome results of a very wet photo shoot from a month or so back. West Side Story is now the dream amateur scenario I prayed for, thus confirming that there is a God, and that God loves a musical, racist Stab-a-thon about as much as Colleen loves the pills (*allegedly* - legal understanding of any sort pending). So far it's been a blast. We're a bit like a (distant and unfamiliar) family already, which, after only 4 rehearsals, is a bit like meeting someone in a doctor's waiting room and deciding that, because you're both coughing and flailing your arms at roughly the same time, you should exchange phone numbers (it sounds like the patients are the weird ones, but at least they've had the foresight and good sense to see a doctor).

Speaking of doctors, I don't have one. Haven't been to the doctor in about 5 years. Might be an idea...

So anyway, things are great (apart from that lesion on my arm - getting itchier, turning blacker. Jet black, even. Note to self: Novelty will be hilarious - don't get it seen to til after West Side Story). We're getting t-shirts too, specific to the Jets and Sharks so now we can feel even more like we're in actual gangs ("Goooood, let the hate flow through you!") and possibly some kind of tournament consisting of different team games across the coming months: my suggestions include Shark vs Jets Game of Life - lets see who, after their leaders' deaths, managed to really make something of themselves, get married, have babies, before being dragged back to the mean streets after a bored Schranke kidnaps their kids. "BRING ME BABY JOHN!", Schranke will growl as Krupke delivers his newly sharpened hand-hook, a constant reminder of the day Anita maimed him and then swallowed a clock (she later found it hard to pass the time...euw).

Intense.

Thankfully, given that the lines between what is Game of Life and what is Hook have been blurred, this isn't the only thing occupying my mind at the moment. Drama school application time is fast approaching, and this year there are a few I'm probably going to have to turn down offers from. In fact, I might just be too busy deciding which school I should grace my presence with to do any housework. Bummer.

The thing with drama school is that there are a million different ideas about how they "cast" their intake, and almost none of the information is helpful, because it doesn't matter what you do, it's still crapshoot. I mean, obviously, if you're applying for an MA in Musical Theatre (which certain people who write this blog might be doing, I won't name names), it doesn't hurt to be able to act, sing and dance. The issue then is that, in certain circles, it is believed that you have to be fully mouldable, easily stripped back and built up again, so it's maybe not fantastic that you sing or dance or act particularly well. I have honestly come out of auditions for musical theatre courses and the one that got in was the only one that didn't got rhythm (and who could ask for anything more?). But then part of you knows that the more talent you show the better your chances. Unless your talent is arranging flowers while your wife sings opera, in which case you're not winning the damn thing in a million years. Though, if this is the case, at least you can console yourself at night knowing that you lost out to an obese child and his vaguely Grecian father who like to jiggle with their tops off. You never stood a chance! And you still have more fans that Kanye West (and fewer bees in your bonnet, which is odd given that you keep the flowers in your car)!

Another inglorious mystery: the audition pieces. When choosing audition pieces one should always pick contrasting monologues and songs, but somehow this is easier for everyone who isn't me. For someone who prides himself on being very versatile as a performer, I somehow always end up doing monologues that seemed varied when I picked them (Merchant of Venice followed by foul-mouthed sock puppet) but ended up being too similar (sock puppet spouts profanities about Jews).

Then there's:

Your appearance 

Your age

Your weight

Your size and body shape

Your hair colour

Eye colour

Skin colour

Height

Natural accent

Mannerisms

Posture

Previous experience

Previous degree

Does this seem too eager?

Does this seem too nervous?

Does this seem too informal?

Does this seem like I'm not bothered?

Are my clothes the right clothes?

"Do you speak much Welsh?"

"Do you consider yourself to be disabled?"

Is it a bad thing that they're totally in silence and she's shaking her head so much?

God, that's a big head for such a skinny woman.

...

She can totally tell that I'm staring at her head...

It seems that you just won't know that you did everything right until you get in, by which time it'll be too late, because you'll never have to audition for a drama school again. Thank God the rest of the world doesn't work that way or we'd have had people getting addicted to cigarettes for years before anyone pointed out that they cause you to be very dead. *Imagines non-sarcastic dream world where scales could tell you exactly how fat you'll be in three days if you eat the entire box of Pop Tarts*

So that's what's to come, folks. More auditions, more rehearsals, more applications. Surely it's not meant to be this complicated? Colleen Nolan has it easy! A life of musical family parties, frozen vol-au-vents and Jane McDonald? 

How do I apply for that?!