DeDomenici Blog: 2006

Chistmas Eve in Watford

Wine on draught.

Stay classy, Watford.

Guess what this is:

That's right - It's me expelling saliva from my mouth in a Wetherspoon toilet in order to avert being sick.

Please Note: From hereon this process shall be referred to as "The DeDomenici Maneuver".

Proof Of Concept

Part of the Tulca Season of Visual Arts 2006

I like working in grey areas.

Trading Standards

How much would you say these bottles of wine cost?

€1.99?

No Dammit! €7.99.

Watch out, they write sevens differently here.

I propose the harmonisation of sevens across the EU.

I've been having trouble adapting to the fact that I'm no longer in the UK.

The other day I spent an hour looking for a post box, only to realise that they probably don't have red pillar boxes here. I then tried posting my letter into a variety of possible street furniture candidates:

Before finally correctly identifying an Irish post box:

Only then did I realise that I probably needed to buy different types of stamp too.

I feel sorry for the Irish in three respects.

1. Very few Irish names are predicted by predictive text.

2. They don't have postcodes! How can they not have postcodes? Amongst other things, how do they find places on streetmap.co.uk?

3. Ah, They don't have streetmap.co.uk

It’s been raining every day since I got here, except for on Saturday, when there was a hailstorm:

Last Thursday I appeared with a bunch of Tulca Festival artists and curators on RTE Radio 1's 'The Eleventh Hour' presented by Páraic Breathnach:

Páraic is an accomplished theatre and film actor, producer, director of theatre, writer and all-round arts expert.

Click here to listen to the interview (I'm on about 35 minutes in).

I've been going a bit mad cooped up in my little freezing shop:

On Sunday I was planning on staying in, maybe going to Abrakebabra for some tea:

when I received an anonymous text message telling me to come to dinner.

Turns out it was from a collective called Domestic Godless. Here's one of them:

Here's the menu:

(Click to enlarge)

And here are some of the dishes:

It was an unexpectedly remarkable meal, and a steal at only €20.

A similar meal would cost ten times as much in London.

(That's a complete guess.)

If I ever kill a man and am put on death row, I would definitely get Domestic Godless to cook me my last meal:

Not only would it take four hours to eat, but I'd probably die of gluttony before they could electrocute me.

The event was part of the Tulca Festival, and, as such, has forced me to raise my game:

Tulca Festival 2006

I've just started doing a fortnight-long residency in a former tuxedo shop in Galway, Ireland, as part of the Tulca Festival 2006.

They've told me to just hang out and see what happens, no pressure to make a final piece of work.

I've got a feeling that my first subtle anarcho-surrealist intervention might be a bit *too* subtle, so in order to draw attention to it, I've posted documentation on this blog that nobody reads.

This is the front of the shop, as found when I arrived yesterday:

And this is what I've done today:

It's an anagram.

I’ve always found it a bit perverse how landlords put posters on their windows telling people not to put posters on their windows. It’s a bit like pre-emptively burning down your own house to deter arsonists.

On the monitor is footage of my 2004 project, 'The Big Flyposter Draw'.

I realise that showing a two-year-old film could be considered trading on past glories.

But in my defence, at least I'm aware that I'm past my peak.

Here Are The Rest Of My Edinburgh Reviews

http://www.list.co.uk/festival/index.php?w=module:article,action:view,id:368

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=52889250&blogID=157441821

http://carsmilesteve.livejournal.com/39972.html

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2006/08/adam-josie-and-priya-pathak-amongst-others/

In retrospect, 'Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back?' was a critical and commercial failure.

I initially assumed it was my fault for writing a rubbish show, but subsequent performances lead me to suspect that maybe it just didn't work within the context/confines of the Edinburgh Fringe.

For example, compare and contrast the following clips, one from Edinburgh, and one from the Exeter Phoenix on the 24th October.

What a difference a decent audience can make, eh?

I've done the maths, and more people came to see the show on one night in Exeter (192 people - an unexpected sell-out) than attended the entire 22 date run at the Fringe (at its nadir two people showed up).

The Edinburgh run lost about five grand, whereas the Exeter gig netted me a handsome fee.

Draw your own conclusions.

And then tell me what they are, please.

Fame Asylum

(Click to Enlarge)

Breaking News

The first two reviews of my show surfaced today, one very bad, one not-so-bad:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2006/story/0,,1853126,00.html

http://www.thestage.co.uk/edinburgh/reviews/review.php/13788/did-priya-pathak-ever-get-her-wallet-back-

Charlie's Angels

Here are some pictures from the Edinburgh Fringe opening party:

Radio Killed the Video Star

Nikki Bedi, BBC Asian Network host, has kindly pledged to help me in my quest to find out if Priya Pathak Ever Got Her Wallet Back:

Thanks Nikki!

The picture of Luke and Simon in the previous post was taken at Dr Roberts' Magic Bus, which got a marvellous write-up in The Guardian yesterday.

This was the accompanying photo:

Dr Robert's Magic Bus

And here is a video of that photo being taken:

It was the same photographer, Murdo McLeod, that took the picture for Pedestrian Congestion Charge last year:

Richard Dedomenici's congestion charge stunt

Richard Dedomenici's congestion charge stunt

Murdo obviously has a sense of humour, making Anthony make tilt his head sideways to uncannily resemble the Ron Mueck baby in the same issue of G2:

You Wait for one duck's arse to come along..

..and then two turn up at once. It was my great honour to document the moment that Simon Casson and Luke Wright's hairdos met for the first time.

It's the first time I've seen Luke look apprehensive.

Luke wants to be Poet Laureate, and performs a rather good show on the subject upstairs from me at the Pleasance Dome.

Doesn't Simon look young since he's gotten rid of his moustache?

(scroll down to my very first post to see Simon with his facial hair intact)

Ever seen a wasp eat a pigeon?

You have now.

"Inch by inch, the elephant fucks the ant."

My excellent New York friends The Wau Wau Sisters are in London to perform two gigs at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Go See!

Judy, Ben, Dan and Malcolm.

Competition. Guess which one of them is not an actor.

I bid farewell to New York and embark on a 1000 mile drive to Wisconsin.

This is Will:

We have been sleeping on Will's floor.

Will is an actor, but, controversially, does not work for the Apple Store.

In an attempt to escape the heatwave, I've gone to New York City, where the weather is much more British:

Whilst here I thought I'd do some warm-up gigs for my forthcoming Edinburgh run of 'Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back?'. In an attempt to lure you into purchasing tickets from edfringe.com, here a preview of the start of the show:

Pretty compelling, eh?

Despite the wet weather, it's still pretty humid, and so my American hosts have been busy devising novel solutions to the problem of keeping cool. #1 The Frozen T-Shirt, as modelled by Dave, who is an actor and works for the Apple Store:

#2 Sitting in front of powerful fan in Katz' Deli:

Katz' Deli is where Meg Ryan's fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally was filmed:

All sorts of famous people have been there:

Evidence that Katz' Deli is a strategic element of the Military Industrial Complex:

Ken is an actor, and works for the Apple Store too. He has the first Ipod ever released:

What's reassuring is that, even though Great Britain has lost much of it's standing in the world, young New York kids are still listening primarily to crap British music:

I travelled by train to Ipswich recently for the launch of the Pulse Festival 2006.

At Liverpool Street I walked to Coach A, at the front of the 10:30 'one' service to Norwich, to get an empty table with a a forward-facing window seat.

There's only one other person in the carriage.

Two Deutche Bank colleagues get on the train. The lady asks the man which seat he wants. He replies:

'I always sit with my back to the train. Ever since I was in that train crash.'

A chill goes through the carriage.

I smile at the man as if to say: 'Go on, tell us your story'. He continued to expain to his colleague, possibly his diary secretary, that in 1986 ('you probably weren't alive!') he was at the rear of a train passing through Stafford which crashed on a crossing. The crossing had always given priority to trains from London, but one day they changed it, and they didn't tell the driver, and by the time he realised, it was too late.

The lady sitting opposite him had been flung into the table ('Where you're sitting') and a woman in the toilet came out covered in blood. Three carriages were on top of each other when he got off of the train.

It was quite funny how detatched the man seemed as he recounted his story. I suppose he's had twenty years to mull it over.

Interestingly, no one else in Coach A, myself included, changed seats. I guess we all felt a bit too self-conscious.

You have to balance the increased chance of death with the desire to have a nice view.

It's a bit like a Larry David anecdote I heard once:

"I did once try and stop a woman who was about to get hit by a car. I screamed out, 'Watch out!' And she said, 'Don't you tell me what to do!' I tried to save her life and she screamed at me. That's all it took, I got out of the 'nice' business at that point."

only a bit, though.

Here's a picture of the train crash:

Further info about the accident can be found here.

I arrived at the venue in Ipswich to find my face plastered all over it:

(Click to Enlarge)

It was mildly unsettling, a bit like in that episode of I'm Alan Partridge when Alan walks into his obsessive fan's living room to find it covered in pictures of himself.

On the plus side, they'd stretched my face vertically, which made me look rather svelte.

(a method used in the video for "Promise of a New Day" by Paula Abdul which employed anamorphic lens compression to stretch images of her vertically on the screen, thereby making her appear taller and thinner.)

Let me assure you that such jiggery-pokery is not part of my technical rider. In fact I often supply venues with pictures of me looking quite ugly, so that when people come to the show they're impressed by how fit I look in comparison.

Tricks of the trade.

Here are two potentially conflicting videos pertaining to Belgian escalators:

They've got some pretty good Brutalist architecture in Brussels.

It's a bit like Birmingham in the mid-nineties in that respect.

And in that respect only.

Go see it now before they knock it all down!

I feel your scorn and I accept it.

I've been accumilating quite a collection of close-up insect photographs. This is a Belgian fly (Click to enlarge):

In Brussels we visited the Musical Instrument Museum.

It is housed within a beautiful art-deco building:

The museum holds one of the most interesting displays of musical instruments in the world. Visitors are provided with infrared headphones. Standing beside an instrument, you can hear music played by the instrument on the headphones:

Me and Luci went to Brussels and visited.. THE ATOMIUM!

It had just been refurbished and looked just as futuristic as strange as it must have done when it was built in 1958.

Here is a video of the restaurant in the uppermost sphere:

We also went to a Belgian themepark, but it was too expensive so we didn't go in. In the themepark's terms and conditions it said:

"We would like to point out that that the freedom of each of us is limited by respect for the freedom of others."

Which I thought was pretty existential for a themepark.

That's Belgium for you.

At the height of the bird-flu scare we threw caution to the wind and entered the bird-flu surveillance zone in Scotland to visit Luci's Friend Hannah, who's parents live in St. Andrews. Hannah lives in Nicaragua. She and her Nicaraguan freedom fighter boyfriend sung us a song:

The next day we went to the beach:

Also to a children's playground:

We listened to revolutionary records:

And talked politics late into the evening.

I noticed that Hannah's parents' biscuit tin had Che Guevara and Fidel Castro on it:

No one else had ever realised this, and, in all the excitement, red wine got spilled on my favourite tshirt:

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

These are the toilets of poncy restaurant Sketch in Conduit Steet, London.

I promise this is the last toilet related video. At least for a while.

I got this counterfeit Teletubby toy from a little chinese shop in Soho for about three quid (including batteries). It broke a couple of days after this video was taken, but with thanks to this blog, it's legend will burn on long after its candle ever did.

The 2nd Most Powerful Handdryer In The World

is at Gordon's Wine Bar.

Here is the most powerful:

I went to the gentlemen's toilet of The Hamilton Hall JD Wetherspoon's pub in Liverpool Street, London and this is what I found:

All I can assume is that the previous occupant had a nosebleed.

Karaoke King

If there's one thing I've learnt from my brief stint in the music business, it's that all boyband managers secretly want to be in a boyband themselves.

But most are either too old, too ugly, or too untalented.

Here's a video to illustrate my point:

This footage is from 'Karaoke with Lucifire' in the Caberet Tent at Latitude Festival, last weekend in Suffolk.

It was a really great festival, perhaps a little undercapacity at times: