Goat Boy and cocktails

Went to the Bill Hicks 11th Anniversary Tribute at Jongleurs in Camden last night. The evening featured stand-up sets from Mark Steel, Glen Wool, Brendon Burns, and a funny Irish comedian whose name I can’t remember for the life of me, interspersed with lots of footage of the great man performing (some well-known, some rare stuff). The proceeds went to the Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife Rehabilitation, and it was well worth the entrance fee just to see the clips of Hicks doing his Elvis routine, a very funny Satanic eye doctor sketch and the infamous Bill loses it in Chicago moment.

I’ve never really been impressed by Jongleurs clubs, and last night was no exception; although doors were meant to open at 6.30, the show went on past midnight, thanks in part to everyone having to queue up once to pick up the tickets from the box office, and queue up again to get into the club. Once inside, we were crammed in like sardines, and the three of us ended up having to share a table with the most miserable three people to ever set foot inside a comedy club.

Still, don’t mean to whinge, as it was a very enjoyable night nonetheless. Judging by the uncomfortable shuffling during the Rush Limbaugh and Goatboy “quivering rabbits nostril” clips, I guess quite a few people in the audience weren’t all that familiar with Bill Hicks’ work. Good to know that 11 years after his death he still has the power to challenge.

Unfortunately I spent the entire night sipping nothing but mineral water, having been left a barely-functioning wreck by a weekend of over-indulgence. Friday evening started off with a meal at Thai restaurant, and from there we went on to OQO, a rather trendy (but not too wanky) bar on Islington Green. Simon knows the bar’s manager from his time in the Alps, so we spent the evening chatting to him as he guided us expertly through the cocktail menu. Suffice is to say that I have never had so many cocktails in one evening — who’d have thought that a spring onion would be tasty cocktail ingredient? — and we were pretty lashed by the time we staggered back to East Dulwich. Of course, that didn’t stop us from feeling the need to open a nice Spanish red when we got there.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit, but that’s actually two weekends in a row that I’ve been plastered in over-priced cocktail bars. The previous Saturday Rob and I had been invited to Match Bar in Clerkenwell by a client of ours. Although we’d been working on his soon-to-be-launched for several months, we’d never met him, just spoken on the phone and exchanged dozens of emails. So to be honest we weren’t quite sure what to expect (we feared a dull evening of geek talk), but our client turned out to be a thoroughly nice guy, not in the slightest bit nerdy. He was there with about a dozen of his friends, all of whom were friendly and interesting (web producers for the BBC, graphic designers, magazine sub editors etc.), and it turned into something of a piss-up. Unfortunately Rob’s joke about wanting the most expensive cocktail on the menu backfired, and we found ourselves drinking Zombies (5 different rums plus absinthe) soon after arriving. Although the evening’s a bit of a blur from that point, at least the client’s still speaking to us.

Anyhow, back to this weekend. Saturday afternoon was spent watching the rugby in the East Dulwich Tavern with four friends, all of whom were Welsh. Needless to say, we weren’t exactly sober by the time we rolled out of there. At Matt’s suggestion we then went to Hisar, a turkish restaurant on Lordship Lane. I’d not been in there before, as it doesn’t look anything special from the outside, but I was pleasantly surprised — the food was good (the calamari was particularly impressive — so many places manage to turn it into rubber). From there we went back to Rob & Em’s, where the wine flowed freely until about 3am. When Matt, Troy and I left there, we decided we needed a little nightcap, so came back here to polish off another bottle of wine… I believe I finally hit the hay at 6.30am.

I’ll leave you with a short Bill Hicks quote. Long may he continue to squeegee our third eyes.

The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world — which it would many times over, not one human being excluded — and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.

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