Despite the fact that Google rules the world of the internet, I have to admit that I am a BIG fan... I don't know how we could have survived without it. I'll give you an example:
I have a vague memory of when I was younger and going to a number of comedy nights around my home town of Birmingham (UK, not AL). I saw all sorts of people who are now considered British comedy greats as they honed their performances. I remember seeing New
man (as in Newman and Baddiel), and Jack Dee as well as a confusing encounter with 'Vic Reeves Big Night out' which, when you see it for the first time leaves you thinking 'what was that??' - it's only when you see it for the second or third time that you start to get it. There was a bunch of people at the front of the stage who knew what was going on and they were shouting '
what's on the end of your stick Vic?' and other responses which to the uninitiated seemed very funny, but you couldn't work out why....
Anway I digress, as part of this venture into comedy as the new rock 'n roll, we went to some smaller venues and I remember one in particular where a comedian invited a member of the audience up and got them so ill (smoking something questionable) that they had to be taken home in a taxi. I remember the night was hosted by Frank Skinner (in the days where if you didn't swear fifteen times a minute, it wasn't comedy) and for years I wondered whether the comedian in question was American Denis Leary, but couldn't figure out why he would have been in Birmingham all those years ago (I reckon it would have been around 1987...). Anyhow, on the off-chance, after seeing a news article about Denis Leary, I 'Googled'
Denis Leary and Frank Skinner to see if there was a connection and sure enough there was, they used to share a flat!
Mystery explained, no doubt Frank got him the gig and it really was Frank Skinner and Denis Leary me, my mate and a motley bunch of random Brummies all those years ago in the upstairs room of a pub watching this poor girl go through her first experience of getting stoned live on stage, in an act which clearly had little rehearsal, but was nonetheless pretty funny in a raw kind of a way.
I have long suspected that it WAS Denis Leary, but you know what it's like when your brain suggests unlikely memories, and you start to doubt your memory banks. Thanks to Google I can confirm that I have not mis-remembered the details of that random night twenty years ago.
I got carried away, I actually spent some money out of my own pocket.... I was looking for a CPU upgrade for my main desktop and got involved in an eBay bidding fracas which extended beyond my Paypal means. I had to raid my current account to fund my purchases, all for a measly extra 400Mhz processor speed. I am now torn between going the whole hog and buying another motherboard (one that will hold 4GB as opposed to my current 2GB max) or raising enough funds to pay something back into my current account.
