Clever Penguins

As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University. Aside from the idea below being a splendidly marvellous icecream cone of clever book promotion, it is also just basically a brilliant idea. And snooping around the website is a lot of fun. Check it out.

YOUR WORKING SPACE COULD WIN YOU A BOX OF PENGUIN BOOKS!
To celebrate the publication of Alain de Botton’s
The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work, we have created
http://www.myworkingspace.co.uk/ where you can not only share
the true joy or horror of your working environment,
but look at other people’s too, and even win prizes.
What does your working space say about you?
(Do you sometimes wish it said something else?)
What are its pleasures and sorrows?
Have you ever wondered about other working spaces,
like sheds or motorways or rivers or tops of cranes?
Now is your chance to reveal all, take a peep at where
other people spend their 9-5 and possibly win some
delicious prizes.
http://www.myworkingspace.co.uk/

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

St Patrick’s Day. A ragbag of all things synthetically green, parades, drunkenness and telly watching. One of my earliest memories of Paddy’s day is my mother running around the supermarket in a blind panic because the orange and green jelly cubes had been purchased.  I can also recall several years of standing in the biting cold, waiting to march in the parade. It must have been a school thing because god knows I would have been dangerous with a baton. There was also a year in Athy when nobody organised the festivities and so everyone just lined the main street (which is long) and shouted at passing cars.

Yesterday I found myself in the city centre, I had to catch a bus. There were children dressed like moss and wearing hats/zogabonds in all directions. There were parents too, tired and frustrated looking parents. There were throngs of tourists, some elated and some borderline terrified. There were teenagers hanging from street lamps or sitting on public phone boxes. And yes, there were drunks, though not as many as I had feared. I hate crowds and have a short fuse, so I made my way through the masses on a wave of expletives.

After boarding the bus I learned that we were to listen to the 2fm countdown of great Irish songs. ‘How is maniac 2000 going to fill me with national pride?’ I muttered to myself, manically. Could I have put on my headphones and drown the whole thing out with my own music? Of course I could. But l wouldn’t have had such a wonderfully multilayered cake of complaints about March 17Th. My very own grumble crumble.

Some people have a genuine love for the feast day, and some people like colour coordinating their offspring. Some Irish people, lets admit it, love a good old clap or chant in unison. And then there’s the sessions. Me, I seem to like the sound of my own constant whining. It’s a terrible affliction, one I groan about often.

How does everyone else feel about Lá Fhéile Pádraig? I’m sure  there are more upbeat opinions than my own. One thing I will concede is that I didn’t see any snakes on my travels yesterday. Not a one. Some leprechauns, a banshee and Shergar, but not a single snake.

Emma Brokes gets to meet Eric Carle and i haven’t met anyone.

Not that i’m bitter mind….

I bet you’re like me and you’re genuinely delighted that he looks like the nicest human alive in this photo. You saddo!

Actually I was talking to my wonderfully strange friend Darren a little while earlier and he complained about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He said that it’s rubbish because there aren’t more words, and kids wouldn’t care because they aren’t discerning enough. I’m still hoping he’s joking. The mad man.

Read the super, brilliant turbo interview from the Guardian here!

Another phone bites the dust.

Paul (my most recent cellular device) has departed like so many of his fallen brothers before him. Yes that’s right, Paul fell down the loo. Actually, it looked more like a jump from where I was standing. Oh Paul, I hardly knew ye.

I’m offering a deep felt apology to all my family, friends, colleagues, men about dogs and women about sandwiches. I don’t make myself particularly contactable at the best of times.

I shall endevour to purchase another mobile post haste. I’m thinking of calling it Paula. What are the bets for her lasting longer than a week?

Bizarre. But it works…..

Disco Horse

I was thinking about picture books on the train earlier. Surprise, surprise. The train was passing fields full of new lambs and docile sheep, and beautiful horses. And then there was this one horse, I called him Simon. He was showing off a bit, jerking his head about for attention. He reminded me of Adrian Mole for some reason, or a kid who has just gone to his first school disco.

There should definitely be more Simons in picture books right now. Rabbits have been allowed to peddle their furbrained sentiment for too long. Guess how much I love them? You’re wrong, even less.

An awkward horse is the perfect comedy animal. Simon is my hero. It’s bothering me that I don’t have time to mess around with the idea properly, right now. But mark my words, one day there will be an attempt at Simon- Disco Horse Of Course. It want it to be bright, and loud, and anarchic. He deserves nothing less…..

Keep an eye out for him if you happen to be on the train from Dublin to Waterford.

Spot of art.

The Child’s Bath (The Bath) by Mary Cassatt, 1893, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago

I absolutely love the intimacy and warmth that comes with Mary Cassatt’s work.

Yowsa! Curb-a-rific!

 

 

The Seinfeld cast is making another must-see appearance. EW has learned exclusively that the four stars of NBC’s long-running comedy — Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards — will be featured in a multiple-episode story arc on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm this fall. The cameos will mark the first time that all four actors have appeared together in a scripted TV show since Seinfeld went off the air nearly 11 years ago. No date has been set for this event, or for Curb’s seventh season, which will run for 10 weeks. Curb, of course, was created by and stars Larry David, the cocreator of Seinfeld.

In Larry we trust….

This is good news….

I’ve been working on a really fun project the last 4 months or so, but have been unable to chat about it until now:

Thespian toddlers beware, today the Kennedy Center in DC announced the inclusion of Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical on their 2009-10 schedule.

The musical was commissioned by the Kennedy Center, and unlike the British Touring Production of the Pigeon Books, the book and lyrics will be written by, uh, me…

I promise the show will be a wild ride, filled with clever projections, Bunraku Puppets, dance, and at least one song in utter gibberish.

Tentative plans are for the show to run at the Kennedy Center in DC starting in May 2010 and then to travel around the country. I do hope you’ll make plans to check it out if it comes to your neighborhood.

Fresh from Mo Willems’ blog, read full info here!

Fingers and toes crossed that Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical makes it to our shores.

 

Funny Ladies?

Beaten to the punchline

Germaine Greer does not think men are the funnier sex. But they are better at banter, innuendo and clowning. So what’s holding women back?

Click to read Greer’s essay on women and comedy here. There are elements of this article that I totally agree with, and a few I don’t.

The greater the pressure, the faster the firing of neurons in the male brain. You get your best results from women when you take the pressure off. Men do the inspired lunacy; women do droll.

These days Greer seems to be too busy commenting on other women’s weight to keep up with the comedy circuit. She is omitting one fact, the most successful and controversial stand-up of the last two years is Sarah Silverman. You may adore her, you may detest her, but she is out there at the top of her game, an international comic.

(Check out the comments made after Greer’s article. You’ll find some excellent recommendations of female comics, see an awful lot of angry ranting and a fair bit of out and out sexism. Enjoy!)