Cybershrink and his Awful Advice

So once in a while, I delve into the haunted world of Agony Aunting, and this week a guy is having trouble not being in love with a girl who is dating a guy he introduced her to, while still being in a relationship with someone else:

A friend I work with has started dating a woman I have feelings for, they are both unaware of my feelings towards her and I want to keep it that way. I am in a relationship and I love my girlfriend but it still bothers me. They wouldn't have become acquainted if not for me so I feel doubly stupid. I can only distance myself so much because we work together. He's a nice guy but constantly talking about it and asking for advice, it would be great if I could just get him to shut up about it.

Here is what this 'supposed' psychologist has as an answer:

You are in a relationship with a woman you say you love. How, then, do you feel justified in continuing this secret concern for the other woman, such that you begrudge her a friendship and maybe deeper relationship with someone you know, as a friend, to be a good guy ? Isn't that what you should want for her ? Or is she on your reserve list, someone to switch to if something goes wrong with your current relationship ? What was "stupid" about having introduced a pair of friends who are apparently happy together ? There's a rich irony in him asking you for advice on wooing her.  It reminds me of  the famous French story by Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, splendidly filmed in 1990 with Gerard Depardieu and well worth watching : Cyrano, is deeply romantic but has an enormous nose, which people mock him for, so he feels inadequate and dares not approach the lovely young lady he deeply loves.  Then he is approached by a handsome but rather dim young friend, who has fallen in love with the same woman, and wants help in wooing her.  So Cyrano stands in the shadows, whispering marvelous messages of love for his friend to say loudly to the lady standing in her window above. And in agonies as his words bring her to love his friend, and not himself.   Look it up, it may be instructive

My response to this shitty CyberShrink"Agony Aunt Advice" column which I've sent, and waiting to see if it goes live...

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Tinder Decoder 2.0: Does she want to date you or destroy you completely?

I read a lovely piece on W24 entitled "Tinder Decoder: Does he want to date you or just sleep with you?", a wonderful example of literature lifted entirely from a Grade 10 student's essay book, the kind that sits forever under that dusty DVD copy of "He's Just Not That Into You" after you've watched it with your ex-boyfriend.

I enjoyed it, and the first line caught my eye so:

"Okay, let's face it, the majority of Tinder users are on the app for one reason and one reason only - to get laid!"

And yes, the little man brandishing his gnarled stick at the sun inside me began to cry havoc and stomp his feet, as I reacted angrily to how double-sided this article was. It's all just the men, she says, it's just them that do it, she says, men on Tinder want to fuck women and that's all they're there for. Meanwhile, the soft-padded little man inside waited patiently before reminding me:

"She's right, and you know it. But the other side of the cake has the same frosting."

So, in the interests of fair play, I've come up with a similar list of common traits I've found women to have on Tinder:
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I painted my nails pink yesterday

I painted my nails pink yesterday.

 

It started as a friendly game with my love interest as she straightened her hair, and I looked at the nail polish she had on her table. I picked it up and wondered, "What would she say if I started painting my nails pink?"

We had just returned from a brunch meeting about our relationship, highlighting our differences while keeping our emotions from flying. We intended to be upfront and straight with each other but, I'll admit, it's pretty hard. I keep everything close to me, I couldn't admit being the soft one when the man in me should be huffing and puffing his chest around like a baboon with a huge erection.

Ok, I'm not a baboon.

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I wake up to Louis CK...and I'm not ashamed of it.

For years, the sound I've used to play on my phone to wake up me up every morning has usually been the standard tones Apple adds preinstalled for the iPhones they've created...from the wistful yet semi-annoying "Bells", to the utterly annoying and relationship-destroying "Radar" that, on many an occasion, an elbow has connected with my ribcage by an irate girlfriend who has already tolerated a few hours of my awful snoring.

But then I discovered the ability to load Louis CK's "Shameless" as an MP3 onto my phone to listen to, and that's become my new wake-up call. Hearing the familiar white-noise HBO introduction, followed by a pattering of conversation before the announcer clears his throat and begins the performance with the familiar, "Ladies and gentlemen...Louis CK," to thunderous applause.

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Becoming a Script-Writer

One day, in my short little life, I'd like the idea of someone saying, "Hey Nelson, I loved your script. Can I buy it from you?" or "Hey Nelson, can I produce your script for you?"

Throughout my career, I've heard of this wonderful little world where people hunched over type-writers or computers make an OK living out of ideas fleshed out in a step-by-step script that people will enjoy and, while I've dreamed of turning these ideas into reality, the truth of the matter is I don't have the time, patience or love of many friends to convert these into plausible videos or radio shows.

So I'm making them available to you for free. Here it is, there they are. Feel free to browse, read and be amused by them. Steal them, go ahead. I'll be proud to just have a credit and enjoy my work out there for people to see. Paul Arden encouraged people to give away their ideas in his book, "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be.", my motivational Bible and I'm following suit.

And if you want to buy the rights and make it the way you see fit, my contact details are right up there, go ahead and get a hold of me.

And this disclaimer, by the way, was encouraged by my comedy hero, Louis C.K.

You can find them over at my Scripts page by clicking the link, or follow the menu options above above, and I'll let you know via Twitter when new ones are available.

Did my parents teach me anything?

I'm pretty ok with money a lot of the times. When you're living by the seat of your pants every day your blood begins to boil at the sight of the petrol price rising up like cake flour, you tend to forget you have limited funds, and you venture off from the petrol station sulking that your idea of buying an iPad mini seems further and further away.

And then I thought, why didn't my parents teach me how to be good with cash? I mean, they did, to constantly save for a rainy day. In London, that's a silly notion to forget considering its island status, but the notion for never over-spending was drilled into me.

Forget that, I want to know how to invest.
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Hiding

Yes, I've been hiding.

I had a change in my circumstances so fundamental, I've just been both languishing and basking in its gloriousness for too long. I'm swimming in its rapture, I'm bathing in its golden light, and I haven't had the strength to kick just to break the surface and breathe in.
And it's been my excuse for a while now.

I'm 33 years old; it means nothing to most of you, some of you or ev en the ones that classify yourselves as "all of us", since really we're not all of the same age all at once. But I had given it up, just plopped on the couch and went, "Eh."

My dad did that and look, there he is staring at Portuguese television waiting to die.
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To all my ex-girlfriends...(SERIOUS POST)

So, I know this will be perceived as a very narcissistic or self-effacing post, but as I struggle to understand my own hurtful behaviour, I feel I need to be brave and write it in public, not just for you, the person I wiggled my willy at, but to the public.

All this website really is, is a façade hiding a human being that doesn't know how to be with other people. I do comedy to break that barrier and promote not just the humour within me, but the exploration of a human spirit moulded into a consumer, a sponge, someone who takes and never gives back. And each day, I hate myself for doing that.

And today, I saw something specific by one ex-girlfriend that pained me, but a selfish pain, and I realised it's the same with every ex-girlfriend whose company I've had the privilege to enjoy, and I just feel that they deserve an apology.

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The little things...

Ok, I'll let you in on a little secret...

...I let the SMALLEST little bloody thing get to me.

Whether it be the move someone makes in their car that annoys me by a fraction of a millimetre, the ignorance of another's venomous speech where they proclaim in a terribly loud voice, "HOW DO YOU NOT LIKE JUSTIN BIEBER??" or someone I've never met before in my entire life adds me the one day on Twitter, and unfollows me the next.

I'm tracking who has unfollowed me. I'm a reverse f***ing stalker!
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9 things I do when I live alone

Just discovered Lili Radloff's "9 things you learn when you live alone", a wonderful list of little things you do when you're alone in your abode. I like it, it's a wonderful piece featuring things she does which we relate to, etcetera, blah blah blah.

But my 9 things are a little different:

1. You tend to walk in after a long day at work, sit down in front of your desk, and realise...you have no internet. So you eat yoghurt and stare at the wall.
2. You switch off the geyser during the day because there's no one there...and forget to switch it on in the morning after being awake for an hour watching your favourite TV show you enjoy to forget why you're even there.
3. Your meals, that you make while naked, are increasingly simple and quick to make.
4. You forget to sleep on your own bed, with the couch increasingly convenient in front of the TV.
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REVIEW: "So...You Think You Can Love?" - Sonia Esgueira

"A Portuguese man, to the people of South Africa, is like a grizzly bear: hairy, growls and eats fish." - Nelson de Gouveia

Yes, that quote up there is mine, I'm a comedian and I'm Portuguese. I'm also a man living in a woman's world, if Sonia Esguiera's new one-woman play, "So...You Think You Can Love" is anything to go by. And it's hard to write this review objectively with my own credentials as they are, but thankfully there's no negative aspects to find in this one-hour circus; she's worked hard and the results are, well..."she's a good" as my father would say.

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What does my Dad dream?

As I hear the dragon-esque screams from the aeroplane flying above the home of my two terribly incongruent but tremendously loving parents, lying on my mom's bed as she's recovering in hospital from nose surgery and my father in the next room tucked away in his own slumber, I feel a moment of sheer terror as I begin to imagine these dark and twisted thoughts that would be running through his mind as he lays there…a man haunted by death.
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Please Like Me - Comedians should date more.

Comedy is like dating.

At first, it's awkward, then a little familiar, but if you don't keep a close eye on it, it can tell you to move out and warn you never to try and contact it via its mother.

And like the incongruent facade of everyday courting, comedy is very match a game of cat-mouse-promoter. Can you impress a crowd of people immediately, can you keep the crowd interested, can you give them your number and they'll call you back three days later asking when the next gig  is? 

Uggh. Bluggh.

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Post Holiday Blues - What I'm thinking when I'm at home eating chicken

When your birthday’s in the middle of the year, like mine, you tend to see every milestone as a bout of renewal. 6 months down the line from the anniversary of your birth, you share in the same period of coming together with family and friends that everyone mills around on, like flies on a cake.

A rather LARGE cake.

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Savvy Granny - How my mom knows more than I do

While I was away in London, my mother grew up.

 She’s a 71 year-old Margaret Thatcher matriarch of the Portuguese community within Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs, with fellow residents from as far afield as Paarl travelling down to get their age-old sequin dresses hemmed and stitched by her soft and wrinkled yet experienced hands. She doesn’t quite skateboard down steep hills or listen to thrash metal locked away in her bedroom but, like a teenager squabbling to her parents for the next Nokia, she seeks out new experiences with youthful aplomb.
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What I do/don't want from Comedy

I find that I do this little thing called Comedy and enjoy the standing up in front of a strange crowd, telling jokes about my past awkwardness and misadventures, while at the same time edge quietly towards being edgy as a host, but I've got the feeling my public persona doesn't fit a profile that either hits the mainstream hard or swims in the obscurity of cult status.

So, to explain my motives, here are my ambitions and avoidances of Comedy:

• DO: want to eventually be performing in front of big crowds. I feel at home with a lot of people warmed up to the idea of a stock comedian making them laugh.
• DON'T: want to continue into my 70's performing in front of tiny open-mic crowds.
• DO: want to work with talented people I gel with, to brainstorm awesome ideas and create a semblance of community that serves the general public in many forms of entertainment.
• DON'T: want to work with guys looking for a quick jump-start to short-term fame.
• DO: want to develop television or radio schemes with others and be part of a creative group with resources to turn it around in a short space of time. I've already written a few, need to start pitching it to a talented guy I've recently met.
• DON'T: want to agree to flimsy promises that never take fruit thanks to ignorance.
• DO: want to write for a magazine, newspaper or website that accepts my unexplored views on everything from life, love to laundry.
• DON'T: want to be limited only to this blog.
• DO: want to make the people I love proud, to show that their support for my abilities aren't unfounded and that they can share in the fruits of my efforts in hichever way they wish.
• DON'T: want to be told I'll never make something of myself because I'm white, single, foreign or never attained a degree/diploma (that one was based on funds).
• DO: want to "stand before kings, and leave a name to be remembered." - Benjamin Franklin
• DON'T: want to be forgotten.

Love Star Trek much?

There are few subjects I can usually relate to people about. Sports are as functional to me as sex, I just don't know the people performing in both. Even an ex-girlfriend successfully stood me up when I tried to open up the fuel-tank for a van I hired to move home.

But Star Trek...hold onto your ridges, Mister Worf.

A comedian I joyously got to meet last night was held accountable for his days playing on the PC videogame Star Trek Online, and I saw how he backed up like he was apologising for indulging in the practise, that it diminished his deserving cool factor.

I say to thee, new friend...never be ashamed.

All of us on this planet fly through this life so quickly, so fleetingly, and I bet you ten bucks that the majority don't really place enough passion into something they love. Yes, there's music, movies, other people, politics, endangerments to things they care about like the environment, social inequalities...

And for a select few, creative fiction of unimportance to the grand scheme of things that bring joy to the few that know nothing else.

But for me, I look towards the future of the human race, and Star Trek has always been the definitive representation of how we as a species can evolve into something more, devoid of aspects that divide us like territory, currency, violence and prejudice. As a television series though, it was the ultimate situational experiment set in the vacuum of space, placing the human condition in all its forms in a futuristic setting that explored facets we tend to overlook in ourselves in this modern agenda.

Furthermore...who wouldn't want to captain a starship, with warp drive and phasers?

And, finally empowered with social commentary that places me into a pigeon-hole that I am fully capable of decorating with fictional innuendo and passion in my voice remarked, "There's nothing quite like seeing your ship that you've set up YOURSELF floating with fantastic speed through the stars. And I'm proud to proclaim myself commander of the best starship a young, stupid Trekkie can ever have, the USS Fantastic."

At least one comedian laughed. :)

JohnnyCranko.com
IAmComic.co.za

 

Cape Town Blog - Waking up to a brand-new world

And a wonderful to you all from a finally overcast Cape Town, South Africa. 

From my little room I share in my brother's wonderful house in the suburbs, I woke up dazed and confused early this morning to find two things that perplexes even the most astute of single gentlemen that walk the earth as directionless as I am:

1. A phone call from my sister demonstrating a cheap car on Gumtree called a Ford Lazer (yes, I write this wishing I could show my fingers making the Dr. evil signature move)

2. A black cat called Peanut licking itself in area devoid of appropriate testicular contents.

It's been a surreal week and a half getting to know my family once again, regaling them with wonderful anecdotes of stories from the colonial master land that is the United Kingdom, and wishing them health and love as best I can without sounding TOO droll. As yet, I have not had the chance to meet up with old friends due to a distinct lack of transport (public utilities usually consists of a man driving a van with a monkey-wrench for a steering wheel) but when I do, I hope it will be fun and interesting.

And yes, hun, I'm still waiting for you to answer.

Monday night saw me perform my first set for over a year at a lovely little bar in Rondebosch, expecting droves of UCT students eager to giggle their sides, and to be fair the 10 guys staring at me gave me the challenge I wanted most: a chance to test my mettle as a all-round entertainer.

And true to their word, they tested me.

Still, it was nice to walk off stage and blokes coming up afterwards saying, "China, you was ace, eh?" followed by a handshake and a shoulder-bump, a clear sign of me being accepted into the audience acumen of approval.

Ever been shoulder-bumped? It's like an audience Jay Leno nodding and saying you'll go far.

So today I'll be setting up a portfolio of shots thanks to a wonderful photographer I know, looking for menial work, openings up the money-grubbing bank account and reading up on the day's stories for new and exciting material, to mold and shape it into wonderful jokes that will leave them thinking that their lives can be for the better if they look past the errors of yesteryear and just accept that inside, we...are all...pink.

Cape Town, bring it on.

See me Thursday night at the Chilli Bar in Southfield where I'll be sweating it yet again.

I don't have a Title, you can call me "Sir"

I see a fresh new yellow-brick wall in front of me, a stark contrast of the life I’ve been living for many years now. I wrote in pieces of paper, “Beginning”, “Development” and “Conclusion” and I’ve stuck them to this very same wall, hoping that the words may empower me in some bizarre Ancient Egyptian incantation that encompasses my entire being.

I’m talking bullshit, this is my brother’s room in his house and the only thing encompassing me is a hug from my mother tomorrow.

I’ve laid out the photographs of all the important people in my life in front of me, my parents and nephews/niece, I’ve laid the iPad next to me like it’s going to spring out a great idea that only digital media gurus can conjure. A glass of mediocre red lays half-drunk and my tongue feels like its berry goodness has already stained it with the shame of self-defeat.

My breath stinks of smoke. It must be from all the rolled cigarettes I’ve forced myself to ingest. Poor me.

The soundtrack to “Scott Pilgrim vs the World” is playing through tinny speakers on the desk which, too, shares the space for my affections. You know what, I have tried and successfully “attempted” to write something creative, a bleak outline of my only year in CityVarsity, a city college I attended back in 1999 in Cape Town, which really opened my eyes to progressive society that lay beyond the walls of suburbia and all the racism I swam through.

I also found out that my dad is extremely funny and quick-witted, and I’m so glad I’ve spent time with him. He is a genuinely warm and funny man, and my mom is the same person that throws up jibes that, had you been in her company were you down in the dumps, could’ve encouraged you to jump in the lake for her lack of empathy but yet her warm embrace which melted many a chill.

Yes, people, I’m back with my family…and by golly gosh, I’m loving it so far.

Now, can that person please call me back so I can work, earn money, get a car and do f***cking comedy?!!!!!

Going Offline - Day 26: Sorry I forgot your birthday...

Remember the days when you knew the birthdays of your closest relatives and friends based solely on your relationship and proximity with them?

Like, your actual relatives and friends, not Facebook followers?

For years I spent wishing people "Merry Christmas" on friends' Facebook walls as a constant parody of the blasé attitude people have towards the constant childhood need to be recognised as the lucky sperm that made it, thankfully not wiped away with a tissue or swallowed, which put me in a position not to offend anybody by relying on the social networks to remember those incredible moments in OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES.

But I still do remember before we even had portable telephones in our pockets the important ones, the days we truly wished each other well on the day we realise we survived another year on this planet.

My mom's, for example, I remember constantly growing up as she received phonecalls from people in the community, which to me was akin to a personal status update. Or my very very FIRST girlfriend's just cos from age 8 to 12 I really liked her, to the lady that broke my heart as it soon before her 21st we got together.

I remember THOSE birthdays, but for the life of me I can't recall anybody else's, even my nephews (sorry boys and girl, I'm coming back to rectify that).

So today is both my sister-in-law's and my housemate's birthday, which I remember from last year where I quipped about it over the kitchen table and he went, "Oh yeah?" and returned to his conversation with a hot girl on Facebook chat, but as per usual I'd forgotten a card.

Or should I leave a card for a male housemate to a male housemate? Is that really appropriate to actually go out into a shop and pick up a birthday card for a male? Not a best friend, but a man sharing my house with me, that is a friend and a comedy colleague.

To me, I would say I'd have the same relationship as if I sent him a text message with an "x" at the end of it, and thankfully that is not what I do.

Nor would I do it...for he shall look at me like I've been painting "I love ####" all over my chalkboard with the door closed while listening to Celine Dion.

Celine specifically cos they're both Canadian.

No, his day will be spent getting lurid messages from friends and colleagues and I'll probably just come home with a few beers.

So, Merry Christmas from me. :P

Here's today's weird recommendations:

• @ryan_cull and @CelesteDG whose birthdays are today
• CuteCats just because my workmate asked me to spread the love