June 16th, Monday. Gig No. 54, Hideaway, Archway

Let’s talk about expectations. And the inevitable ego shrivelling disappointments they bring. At most gigs lately, I’ve been doing fairly well. (Horrible statement. What an absolute twat. My apologies to all. I promise after this, I will punish myself for such disgusting, gross immodesty by going into hiding as an albino monk, and spend months weeping naked in a dark lonely room as I whip my back with a silver claw) So tonight, with a pretty boisterous and energetic front row, I sort of, well, expected to do well. How wrong can a man be. How fucking wrong can a miserable sack of shit possibly be. Wrong?? I was more wrong than when the Captain of that ferry said ‘They won’t mind if I get off the boat and go home will they? After all, I’m just a Captain, why do they need me?’. Or that time when I decided wiped my cock on the curtains during the Queen’s speech at Christmas. Oh, wait a minute. That’s a different kind of ‘wrong’.

But there’s nothing wrong with being optimistic I hear some of you say. (Yes, I can hear what you’re saying*. Not only am I a comedian, I’m also a practicing psychic. If the comedy doesn’t work out, I will spend the rest of my days in a shitty tent, waving my scrawny fingers over a cheap mystical orb and proclaiming people’s futures by reading teabags. And you, reader 12, yes, you. I know EXACTLY what you‘re thinking about. Don‘t even go there. I will know where you are when you do it. Put the gloves away, and the crotchless underpants, and get back in the van. Go home to your wife and kids. Nurture them. Love them. Get back in touch with your better humanity. And don‘t read my blog ever again you dirty, dirty bastard.) There’s a difference between expectations and optimism. Optimism is good. It’s healthy. There’s no harm in fostering beliefs that things will generally maybe work out alright in the long run. That you’ll do well at this gig and that gig. That if you try this bit of material out it might lead to something interesting and new. Or if you’re not a comedian, that yes, you’ll probably get that promotion in 10 yrs if you knuckle down, you will get that little pay rise and the golden Rolex watch. Your lessers will probably not overtake you. You will not be overlooked continuously until you are in your late 50s, and probably won’t be forcibly retired and die before your time a broken man at the wasted, mediocre life you’ve just led. Yeah. Optimism is a good thing. (But most of the time, you’ll be fucking wrong. Shove that imaginary Rolex up their arse and leave the job now, before it’s too late. Cash in your redundancy money, go to Cuba and become the limbo dancer you were born to be.)

Optimism is plucky, it’s hopeful. It gives you vitality and drive, and the courage to plunge forward in the face of your obvious shortcomings. (Thus the England team go to Brazil with no expense spared, carrying plane loads of experts and super analysts, plus 22 moron ball kickers, all travelling in earnest to Rio in full optimism that they will go far in their collective search for World glory. What utter arseholes they all are)

Expectations are different. Expectations are fucking mental. Expectations, well, EXPECT.
They’re a demand. A demand to the Universe. They’re you saying ‘I EXPECT this to happen, this MUST happen. And if it doesn’t, I will grab the nearest tangible object and go on a crazed hammer attack’. Expectations are irrational. They’re what anger is about. When you actually poke through your anger logic, at the root you will find a set of unreasonable expectations and demands. Thus, when Luis Suarez decides to bite someone’s face, at the root of his anger is the expectation: “All players not wearing the same shirt as me should politely step aside and allow me to walk the ball into the goal. Or at the very least not be too touchy feely when they tackle me.” See? MENTAL. As if the biting isn’t mental enough.

And for my expectation of doing well? At the root: “I should do well at this gig, cause I did well at my last gig.” That’s bollocks. Every gig is completely different. The audience is different, the room is different, the levels of drunkenness are different.. Expecting one gig to go as well as your last gig is about as logical as wiping your penis on a mango to make the flies in your mind go away. (“THE FLIES, THE FLIES!!!”)

The lesson? Don’t write blogs. Before I wrote this one, I was a normal bloke. In just 500 words, I’ve become a self flagellating albino monk psychic tea bag reader, wiping his nob on mangoes. That’s nuts. I’d better be careful or I will genuinely go mental. Oooh look! A mango! Zzzzip.

*I’m pretty sure I’ve written that joke or similar somewhere before in this blog. But I can’t be arsed trawling through the tons of shit I’ve written. If I have written it before, and you know where, write it on a postcard, get a 1st class stamp, address it to the Queen, draw a penis and some curtains on it, and shove it up your arse

Gig No.54 done. MC Calum Ross