(pieces I’m thinking about)
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for The Sunday Dreadful Issue #24 - 13th August 2023
co-written with the comedically imacculate yet culinarily inept Caitriona Dowden
We need to submit our piece for Benjamin and the comedy newsletter The Sunday Dreadful - things we have seen at the fringe (non-comedy), what about:
We begin sat in a park in the centre of Edinburgh (Scottish Capital), me (Nate Kitch; the comic alongside Caitriona Dowden (award-winning comic and semi-catholic person) except we are not, I am in the pub and Caitriona is in the flat (where we reside) who will now continue for up to a maximum of 500 words.
Caitriona Dowden (me) am, as Nate Kitch; the comic (him) mentioned, currently in the flat, contemplating non-comedy things I’ve seen at the Fringe so far. I actually was in the park earlier -specifically St. Patrick’s Square - and while I was there I saw some cigarettes on the ground. On the way home I saw several things, including but not limited to, cars, a lemon on a doorstep, and the error of my ways (I forgot to buy milk). I arrived home to see a message from Nate alerting me to the fact that I was writing this article, which he will now be continuing.
I also saw the cigarettes but not the milk which was not purchased. I was both involved and an audience of both Glang show and FootFace (a drag horror show at Banshee Labyrinth 8.35pm) but both in and of themselves shows.
I also saw - a twig, a man, a boy, a man, a hand (mine) and also some feet all marching as part of a very fast moving flow of people along the pedestrianised walkways of this town. It was like a mass of fish, cascading on the ground , like river, probably. What does Caitriona make of this? Seen anything watchable with your eyes? (Handing back to Caitriona now from a milkshake and burrito place which temperature matches it’s choice of music (unacceptable.))
I (Caitriona Dowden) am questioning Nate Kitch’s above reference to the burrito place’s choice of music. Whilst I (also being in the burrito place) do concur, I was under the impression that the topic of this article was to be non-comedy things we have seen rather than non-comedy things we have heard. Prior to sharing in Nate Kitch’s acoustic displeasure, I saw an absurdist play called ‘Ginzel’s Little Córdoba’ and on my way out of the venue I saw a proliferation of people, buses, and rain, amongst them the comic Nate Kitch, which led to our present convergence in the Burrito Place. Currently I can see with my eyes and sense with my intuition that Nate Kitch (; the comic) is bored of waiting for me to finish writing, so I will hand back narrative control.
Thank you for that whilst I was aware of the delay I was also aware of your thorough editing and composing in comparison with the immediacy of my stream of consciousness writing as it pours out of me in it’s blackness and glory like the many Guinnesses I have also seen, consumed and succumbed to. Guinness after Guinness after Guinness after Guinness & Chess and Fags and Chess & tick full of tock full of all these things.
Thinking about tocks, maybe it’s time to end this piece, but unlike this paragraph the festival is far from over, go and see many things, out from the centre, the absurd the unsettling, be free and see the free then donate generously with time coin and hearsay.
Agreed Caitriona? Indeed, this is an appropriate place to conclude, as I see it.
Be seeing you.
Shorten Better
for The Sunday Dreadful Issue #21 - 9th July 2023Growing up in an egg we didn’t have much comedy on TV but when something did reach us, it was amazing. One day, my dad was watching TV and Jim Davidson was on, he called me to the living room and we watched it together and just laughed our asses off. He was making a bloke quiver. I didn’t understand it at all, but it felt brilliant. Even before I knew what brilliant meant.
From that moment on I knew I wanted to do comedy and it be nothing, no context, no deeper meaning and most importantly almost no length. What is the point of something long and nothing with pointless tethers of repeated ideas that serves no purpose only to exist in and of themselves? After years and years finally the wind is blowing in the right direction. Not only is the form of stand- up going that way but even how we ingest it has found it’s natural home. I’m talking about instagram and tick-tock.
I adore these platform as they have created the new and quite simply, only way to consume the art form. Sure you can lose that “tension in the room” some talk about but can it ever be compared with the tension and release of human faeces falling from your human ass as you scroll through comedians discussing where they are from, what they look like or calling someone a “cunt” or a “Karen”. And don’t get me wrong, I love the bits*, I just wish they could be shorter.. and the jokes too. if you know what I mean.
We as comedians need to go shorter and we need to go harder, like a vice grip on the throat of your own material ; don’t kill your darlings suffocate them and then shake them like a tiny wooden mannequin used to study postures.
And with that I have consolidated my best bits into simple vowels. I always open with “A”, (it’s a nice throwback to the alphabet), and always end on a vowel, usually “O”, They never teach you that but don’t end on a consonant like “K” it just isn’t as good, end on a vowel like an “O” or an “A”. Sometimes in the big clubs I’ll go “A”, “I”, “T”, “H”, “J”, “Z” then “I”’ll call back to the A , - “A” then drop in another vowel “I” or maybe even a “U” or a little “E, I, E, I, O” completely negating the “A” & “U”.
It’s early days and so far has never worked but perhaps it will grow into some farmyard utopian community of ideas, where everyone follows each other and likes the fuck out of everything with the like button. Like a farm where all the animals live side by side and have food.
Perhaps, perhaps. But at the moment I’m reminded of that old Jim Davidson line I saw back in that old egg when I was young at the beginning of the piece:
“shorten, shorten again, shorten better.”
*I’m talking about shit here.
- - - ︎ - - -
What I have done;
Over the past few days and hours I have realised the magnitude of what I have been doing in my life and how when I really think about my actions,
it is simply not right.
Last night I threw my gun away into the bin,
the time for shooting has stopped.
I walked away and that was that.
Killing bins is neither funny, clever nor morally correct. I know that now.
But then I change my mind immediately and went inside the bin and hid in the darkness, sitting in all the rubbish,
then I used my hands to find the gun. I went outside the bin (with the now found gun) and turned around and then shot the bin.
That’s right I did not find redemption,
I found another bin and it found another bullet in it,
because I shot it.
Bang Bang; this is my life now.
(This is from a time when I was shooting bins)
- - - - - - - - - -
Bath Man
There was a little man in the Bath, he stared up at me from beneath the water. I thought I recognised him but was almost certain I’d never seen him before.
I couldn’t deny the lingering feeling of knowing; it all felt like an echo from a former life.
I drowned him.
︎- - - - - - - - - -︎
Give the Dog a Bone
I went to give a dog a bone the other day,
but I accidentally gave it a cat.
Not to worry though,
it soon savagely attacked the cat, tearing the feline body apart in a catastrophic bloodbath.
When he had killed the cat and eaten all it’s flesh, the dog ended up with loads of bones.
