Wednesday, November 08, 2006

I'M TAKING BLOGGING AWAY...UNHHH...

So it was either switch to another blogging format or put my fist through the screen. The former is cheaper.

Presenting:

:: BRING THE FUNNY V.2 ::

Update your links to http://samishah.wordpress.com. Just testing this out but I love the templates available and the usability is alot more customizable.

Here's to V.2.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

I'M BRINGING BLOGGING BACK...UNHH...

Okay, I am really flattered by the number of emails I got complaining about lack of updates. Seriously. I had no clue so many people read this blog and I think it kinda gave me stage-fright a bit.

A bunch of reasons for the lack of updates. I am not just slacking off, nor have I lost interest in blogging.

Basically I did three things that got in the way:

1) Started the new job. Lots of working late and working hard. The news doesn't just make itself dammit!

2) Discovered an inability to say "no" to anything that's offered to me. Right now I am working on, other than the day job, a series of articles for a tech magazine, Black Fish comedy festival promotional material, a freelance graphic design gig, new stand-up comedy material and a theatrical production on Aids for December. More on the last in a bit.

3) Switched to Blogger 2.0. Saw it available, got all excited and decided it was the new cutting-edge thing to be a part of and then after switching over, discovered I can't access the blog at home. So blogging hours are now limited to 9-5.

How I will make it up to you:

a) Audio and video files from the LUMS show I did a while back, coming up soon.

b) New material posted here in the next few days.

c) Details about a blitzkreig (I love that word!) tour featuring me, Saad and Danish. Three comedians, three cities, three days. End of November.

Keep coming back. I will try to start doing this better. Need to make time for it because it's worth it.

(see how well organized the whole post was? That's training from my new job paying off! How's that for value add. Funny and neatly organized!)

Monday, October 09, 2006

CRABS AND FUNNY SHIT...

Action = Eating mass amounts of crabs yesterday evening.

Reaction = Spending the night on the pot, straining and whimpering.

Been getting alot of feedback from LUMS students about the show who have, I assume, googled me and found the blog. Mailbox full of praise, although oddly some people were offended by the material on Pornography. Oh well.

Before the show started, when I was standing outside the auditorium waiting to be called in, a woman stormed past me yelling at her friend, "If this shit isn't funny I'm leaving in ten minutes."

When the show ended I looked around the auditorium and found her near the stage, sitting with her friends and clapping.

That was my greatest personal victory of the night.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

AND IT'S DONE...

God what a great audience. What a great goddam show.

Got to LUMS straight from the airport. Was already kinda burnt out because of not getting much sleep over the past week or so. I meet the people who are hosting the whole show, members of the LUMS dramatics group, "Dramaline."

I check the auditorium space, marvel at the huge poster for my show with "SOLD OUT" written across the top and then go sit in an empty class room for 3 hours with 2 cans of red bull and stack of cigarettes and start structuring my material.

Basically I have all my stuff written down on individual pages, organized by topic and I lay them all down around me and then start shuffling them till I get an order I like. Ended up deciding to risk it by doing a bunch of new stuff as well. By the time that was done still had 45 minutes to go before the show started and so just sat in a corner and fought back panic-attacks.

The MC called me up at 10:15 on the dot, infront of an auditorium packed with close to 300 people jammed right up against the stage and I just launched into it. Did an hour of the best set I have ever had. They got every bit, they laughed at the right times, their reactions helped me pace myself and they weren't even thrown when near the end I had a two second brain fart and had to riff for a but before I got back on track.

Just a solid one-nighter. The best kind I could have hoped for.

Thank you LUMS. Now if you'll excuse me I need to pass out. Apparently they recorded audio as well as video of the show so will be posting that at samishah.com as soon as they send it across.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

LUMS DOES SAMI...

Just got off the phone with the guys at LUMS who are organizing the show. Apparently 250 tickets were sold in two hours.

250. Two hours. Wow.

I touch down in Lahore at 5:30 Friday evening. Go meet my grandparents and then head over to LUMS by the 7. Show starts at 10:00 so that's ample time to check last minute stuff. Y'know, stuff like what the hell I'm going to be saying up there!

I have all my material printed out and ready. I just haven't memorized chunks of it well enough yet and still have to decide what order it all goes in. Kinda hoping my brain will suddenly become super-powered on the flight to Lahore and it will all be done in the hour and a half long flight.

God, if this goes badly I'll look like an idiot.

Do any other performers of any kind (music, theater, comedy...anything!) visit this blog? How do you relax prior to a show? My technique currently is vomiting violently in a corner for 3 minutes and then weeping manfully into my notes until they call me on stage.

I need something better.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

NEW SHOW!

Finally some Stand-up!

This Friday, October 6th, I'm performing at LUMS. Solo show. One hour of me standing up and doing comedy.

I've been having nightmares again.

Been wanting to perform at LUMS ever since Black Fish did a show there for 1000 people (which I am positive is some kind of Improv comedy record). The show was one of the best we ever did, and that's entirely because the energy the audience brought and the level of intellelle...intelee...entilligance (sp?) at LUMS is exactly what we have been yearning for.

I want to make smart people laugh. My friends mostly do it because they are high at the time.

So this Friday, if you're in Lahore and have a friend at LUMS, spring for the Rs. 50 ticket and help me try too...dum dum dunh!...BRING THE FUNNY!

God I puked in my mouth that time.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

DIGNITY FOR SALE. PLEASE CALL...

I put an ad in the newspaper for my car today.

Correction: I gave the text to a friend who works at the newspaper to put the ad in. The text I gave read, "For Sale - Olive green Cuore. 2003 model. CNG fitted. Call *** *** ****" (like I'm gonna put my phone number on the internet!).

The text my friend submitted read, simply, "Cuore for sale. Call Sami at..."

I got woken up at 9:00 in the morning by an irate caller whose opening sentence was "Why didn't you give details about the car!?"

Yes that is an exclamation mark and then a question mark. That's how irate he was.

From that point on, some 150 people called me today. All with the same complaint. I cannot understand the psychology of these people. Maybe Karachi has exhausted them to the level that they feel the need to voice their frustration to every problem they have.

I gt lucky though, and sold the car at the asking price. Time to get those bastards at Standard Chartered to lease me a new car. That should be a simple process of making a downpayment, signing over the rights to my first-born and sacrificing a goat while standing in the centre of a pentagram made from menstrual blood. While naked.

Friday, September 22, 2006

MULLAH LOVE...

Was watching TV tonight and a panel of Mullahs were justifying their squashing of the Hudood Ordinance. That's when I realized the real issue here:

Everyone in the MMA is ugly.

I'm not talking hook nose or unsightly mole. I mean really truly f*ugly.

These are a hideous group of men. One of them had an overbite so severe, if he tried kissing you he'd scrape your lips off. Another looked like the unfortunate child of an illicit union between a troll and an ork who just happened to be first cousins.

And that explains everything.

First the beards. Those aren't grown out of piety or tradition, they are an attempt to hide as much of the offending growth (head) as possible. If I looked like a member of our Religious Party I think I'd be rubbing Rogain on my forehead and cheeks as well as my chin.

Secondly, the hatred for women. We all ask, "Why do they hate women so much? Why? Why? Why?" And the answer has been staring us in the face all this time, except we never noticed because we were too busy shielding our eyes. Women keep turning them down!

Don't agree? Skeptical? Okay...visualise this:

You are 14 years old. Puberty just hit you like the Bubonic Plague in Mumbai. Nipples are hardening. Underarms are sprouting. Crotch is itchy. That uncomfortable growth under your Shalwar doesn't seem to be going away no matter how many times you hit it and dammit sometimes hitting it just seems to be making it stronger. It's like the Incredible Hulk rampaging up towards your naara. And then you see her. Your first girl. They aren't easy to come by in the small town of Chak 42, but here one of them is. All long hair and bouncy jiggly parts. And all of a sudden a small flower blossoms in your chest. Running a finger over the three strands of manly mustache that adorn your upper-lip you call forth on every bit of courage that God can provide you with. You look to heroes of the past. Heroes like Timurlain and Saladin, heroes your teachers at the Madrassah taught you about while you sat on their lap focusing very hard on everything but the wrinkly liver-spotted hand that's been climbing up your thigh. There will be time to scream into the pillow later. Besides, say the older boys, it's all a part of growing up...um...what was happen...oh yes! The girl in front of you! She walks with a grace that makes the goat that was your first lover seem ungainly and awkward. You wish she had horns you could seize, a beard on her chinny chin chin that you could grip. Lacking that you promise yourself a search for placeholds on her later. First to talk. Then to...

You walk up to her. A group of friends hoot and whistle at you from the corner. It's getting harder to tell if they are mocking you or hitting on you these days. Better talk to her quick. You stand in front of her, hands clasped behind your back. Then...then you ask her:

"Would you like to become my first cousin?"

Her laughter is cruel. She catches her breath just long enough to tap her long fingernails on your
upper row of horizontally protruding teeth, then bursts into another fit of giggles. Two days later you see her making out with that muscular army cadet from the military training camp down the road.

You will get back at her. One day. You will get back at her.

And then, several years later, when the wound has festered and ripened, along comes a man named Zia-ul Haq. A military man. Unlike you. But an ugly man. Just like you. And with his power and your hatred, vengeance is had.

A tad extreme I admit. But possible. Heck, looking at those Mullahs you can see they've never gotten an affirmative response to a request for a dinner and a movie. And so they hate the women that hurt them so.

So how do we fix things? Am I suggesting women start sleeping with the members of MMA. I would never condone such an action. But still,that would be an interesting NGO Charter now wouldn't it...

Thursday, September 21, 2006

WRITING WITH A HERD OF HUMP BACKS...

It's 6 in the AM and I've just spent the last 4 hours writing Stand-up. Haven't written a word in months and then tonight my mind turns diarrhetic.

I'm sure when I get a chance to edit this stuff it'll turn out to be mostly useless, but dammit if I'm not having fun right now. Synapses are going off in my cerebellum like firworks at a Memon wedding.

I can hear traffic on the main road that runs past my neighbourhood starting to increase. Used to be birds chirping or a rooster crowing would signal dawn. Now it's the cacaphonic blast of a Truck horn.

Two more just sounded.

Diesel burning tin whales in heat. Their blow-holes jetting plumes of black smog into the Karachi morning.

I guess I'll just sleep at work.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

POINT BY POINT...

Things to say:

- Finally a new Stand-Up show coming. After months of procrastinating I am finally setting up a show at LUMS. If Saad hasn't left for holiday by then he will perform as well. If he has, then I go solo. End of this month at the earliest. Time to rehearse new material. Let the anxiety begin.

- Watch The Wire. Go get the DVD sets now. I wish all TV was this good, but the fact that this exists makes up for the rest of the shit out there.

- I am still waiting on my damn DSL installation.

- Ramadan is almost here. And then Eid. I am already dreading hairy-lipped aunties and lumpy desserts.

- Watch The Wire.

- Go now.

- I you're in Lahore help me spread the word about my coming show. Will post details as soon as I get them.

Monday, September 11, 2006

WEAK...SO...WEAK...

Metallic stink of fever-sweat. Neural chaff causing static on the brain. Dull throbbing ache in my shoulder.

Either I played too much X-Box last night or I'm in the early stages of flu.

Probably a combination of both.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

PLEASE BE GENTLE...

So it looks like Maxcom is my new DSL provider. I feel so nervous. After the way Worldcall hurt me, it's quite unlike me to be jumping into bed with a new provider so soon, but I need to do this to heal the pain.

Plus Maxcom apparently picks up after itself and is gone in the morning. Lets see if it leaves a breakfast of waffles and boiled eggs or just steals my watch and silk underwear.

I have no clue what I am talking about at this point.

Need...internet...at...home...

...life...seems...shallow...and...empty...

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

DSL ME BABY...

It's time for me to switch DSL subscribers. My current WorldCall connection has become about as fast and reliable as Reagan in his Alzheimers-riddled latter years.

Whats the word on good DSL subscribers in the KDA area? Orbit, who everyone sings praises of, isn't available here, which leaves me with Maxcom and Cyber Xtreme. The former is hideously expensive and the latter is Cybernet owned which makes me doubt its reliabilty.

Any advice would be appreciated. My stunted porn-collection thanks you.

Monday, September 04, 2006

WUNCH OF BANKERS...

Raise your hands if you work in a bank.

Raise your hands if you are in any way affiliated with the world of Banking.

Wow. That's alot of people. Okay, here's what I want you to do:

Fuck off and die.

No seriously, go to fuckery and die while there. And try to make the death a painful one.

For example, if you are using a noose to hang yourself with, try to substitute the rope with razor wire. You combine hanging and garroting. If, maybe, you decide to insert air bubbles into your blood stream, add some acid into the syringe. That'll do things juuuust right.

I have never, never in all my life, met a more repulsive and loathsome group of professionals than those associated with the Banking world. Banking is a system designed specifically to destroy any joy in your life and rob you blind of any dignity you own.

For starters, who in a bank is actually doing any work? Everyone I talk to forwards me to someone else who is even less involved with any day-to-day work processes. It seems like Banks are just a building that provide free seating to any moron off the streets who can wear a shirt and tie in the correct order.

Their work hours are ridiculous. My bank still functions on the same schedule laid out by Jebediah McBank, the goat-humping child molester from the hills of Scotland who in 1654 decided he was tired of going out and finding people to torment and would instead create a system that required innocent hapless victims to come to him. The schedule requires that doors open at 9:00 A.M., however no employees be found in any working capacity till 11:00 A.M. Those employees will mince churlishly for a full 4 1/2 minutes and then disappear bank into the dark gimp-cellar from which they had been released to feed on children's souls and the blood of virgins and rabbits.

Their fiendish policies include charging you money for not having money (even the Mafia has the decency to break your kneecaps or cut off your fingers - those I can provide when lacking money, how am I supposed to give you money when I don't bloody have any!), forwarding your call to an infinite number of drooling reprobates whose only real-world skill is not defecating in public and answering any question aimed at them with a sneer or a savage animal grunt.

The latest creative method of tormenting you that Pakistani Banking has devised it out-sourcing their call-centers to a group of lonely rapists whose only way of getting off is to hear you scream in rage at 11:30 at night. That's right. 11:30 at night. That's the time that Standard Chartered sales people decided to call me two days ago to sell me a credit card. Upon reminding them that I already have a damn credit card of theirs they then asked me to pay my bill. When I pointed out that the bill had not yet been mailed to me they said that it's my responsibility to pay it before the due date or suffer late fees. When I pointed out the due date is not for another 20 days they told me they will send someone to my office in the morning to collect cash! When I told them they can suck a weasels cock in hell they thanked me for my time and then called me half an hour later to offer me a credit card.

In the words of Bill Hicks: "Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever."

I can't take it anymore. I am a calm guy who has almost never lost his temper. In the last month I have thrown a bankers keyboard across the bank floor until it smashed against a wall. I have cursed like a Punjabi in heat at two bank managers and I, just this morning, promised to beat a banker so hard his as-yet-unborn-children would have bruises.

I am also informed by friends who work in the system that Banks have policies that include kidnapping and black mail. That's the Pakistani Banking system for you. They actually will have your child kidnapped if you don't pay back the loan on their ridiculous timeline that causes your future generations 20 centuries down the line to incur interest costs.

I am hereby keeping all my money in a mattress. I also solemnly swear to treat any banker I meet as the scum of the earth that they are.

9 years ago I made an observation: Every banker I knew, graduated IBA, was grossly overweight, had thinning hair, masturbated to BMW's and was dating a girl almost 10 years younger than him. My understanding is their mating rituals involve hanging around outside the Kindergarten branch of Convent of Jesus and Mary and then emotionally tormenting little girls until they can cop a feel.

I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

Fuck of and die. Really.

Monday, August 21, 2006

TAKE THIS JOB AND...

After 4.5 years in Advertising in Pakistan, wading hip-deep in a sea of mediocrity and frustration, things are changing. In a months time I won't be waking up every morning thinking "what the fuck am I doing with my life", nor will I end my days with "where did I put that damn gun?" Or atleast not for the same reasons.

I won't be an Art Director. I won't be a Copy Writer. I won't be ignoring a life-time of training in design and writing to churn out some crap that the client is positive is the greatest ad ever, just because their mediocre IBA/CBM education has ill-prepared them to do anything other than change the diaper on a diarrhetic chimpanzee.

No more lying about projects to friends so that they don't mock me or beat me. No more putting up with the useless and entirely idiotic opinions of a bunch of self-important idiots who have decided that since they are "Brand Managers" their words carry some weight, even though a dyslexic retard with a drinking problem, tourettes syndrome and an epilepsy attack could make a more useful point.

I am ready for frustrations on a whole other level and about a whole new series of issues, but I'm sure I'll be able to sleep better at night because atleast I can say to myself it's for a worthwhile cause.

And that's worth everything in the world to me.

What am I going to do? I'll tell you in a while. It will be something new and challenging and (for me) scary as fuck. But damn if I'm not looking forward to it.
In the meantime you can go to www.samishah.com and ogle my artwork or you can trawl through my archives and read some old stand-up material.

Now if you'll excuse, I need to start watching the third season of Entourage. Johnny Drama is my new role model.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

THE HEAVENS DOTH WEEP...

Last night I stood on my balcony in nothing but my underwear, arms raised upwards as the sky turned electric.

Arteries of light pulsed, freeze-flashing raindrops that looked like tear shaped diamonds.

Rain sizzled on the leaves around me. 

Now that's a proper bloody storm.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM FALLOUT...

Yesterday I spent 4 1/2 hours in a traffic jam.

Foru and a half hours of my life that I will never get back. This is how it went:

HOUR 1: Started to get angry. Sat in my car composing articulate rants against the condition of the country to be delivered to President Musharraf if we ever meet.

HOUR 2: Resigned myself to the situation. Still promised to kidney-punch the President if I ever meet him but otherwise just allowed a general malaise to set in.

HOUR 3: Started to worry that maybe I (and the thousand or so other cars that were gridlocked with me) was trapped in a sort of Space-Time Continuum trap. Caused by the collision of two anti-matter quarks in the Quantum Foam, a rupture in the fabric of reality had sucked us all into an infinite loop wherein we would just keep inching forward endlessly, forever trapped in a moebius strip of cruelty. Alternate theory was that the Apocalypse occured somewhere between the time when I left my house and the time I got on the Baloch Colony Flyover, and all of the people in this traffic jam were actually in a sort of hell. Our punishment being to stay in the traffic jam together for the rest of eternity, a situation made all the more cruel by us clinging to the hope that the next time we move we will be able to drive out to our freedom.

HOUR 3.5: Societies start to form. I find myself a member of a group of truck drivers and van drivers. We share cigarettes and laugh, all the while trying to decide who we would eat first when it came time.

HOUR 3.9: Insanity sets in. Fantasy realities in which I can transform my car into a Jump Jet and fly over the traffic jam start to take over. I find I have spent almost ten minutes making jet-engine sounds and pressing imaginary buttons on the ceiling of the car.

HOUR 4: The radio plays "STREETS HAVE NO NAME" by U2. I decide, despite my aethiesm, that God does indeed exist and he is a sadist.

HOUR 4.5: One of the van drivers spots an opening in the barrier that runs alongside us and decides to risk driving through it and over mountains of rock and rubble until he can get to the tarmac on the otherside. We let him go first and after he makes it safely across, follow suit. My axle scrapes the ground and my tires squeal in protest but I have the devil on my mind and Evil Kneivel in my passenger seat. Crest a final hill of pebbles and reach civilization. Drive home at a 120 miles an hour, laughing like a maniac with a burning need to urinate.

All of the above is true.

-------------------------------------

Don't forget to bookmark www.samishah.com.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

WEBSITEMACHINE GO!

Behold! The fruits of my labour (as opposed to the fruit-of-my-loins, or even the fruit-of-my-looms):

http:www.samishah.com

Samishah.com was my site for several years, then around 3 years back I lost the domain in a credit card bungle. Since then I have been happy to blog here for free. Finally bit the bullet and dusted off the old site. Had to relearn html and javascripting and whatnot.

The site is currently just a gallery for my illustration stuff. Soon will migrate my blog over there as well, and also set up space where you can download audio and video of my comedy and whatnot. It'll become alot more comprehensive and will offer alot more as well.

Soon. Soon.

I am thinking of committing to mid-October as time to launch my second Stand-up show. One full hour of new material.

Monday, July 31, 2006

OLD MEN AND DRIVING DRUNK...

Proof that I don't just draw naked women all the time. Sometimes I draw half-naked decripit old men.

Did this while watching clouds recycle water molecules onto the street. Drops caught in the wire-mesh stretched across my window forming tiny transparent pixels against the fractal pattern of the sky behind them.

And just so you don't start thinking I've given up the comedy thing altogether, here's a new bit written yesterday. Less funny, more angry. Based on a chance meeting with someone who got away with killing someone while driving drunk and how said person is accepted back into polite society with nary a upraised eyebrow. Thus the venom.

---------------------------------------------

You just drove your car through a van full of disabled children? And you got off scott-free because your dad encourages his employees to swallow condoms full of cocaine while taking long-distance flights to help finance his industrial empire and your mom is the designated jizz jar for half the political elite in the country? Come on over! It’s a theme night!

---------------------------------------------

Sunday, July 30, 2006

GUTTER RAIN AND GIANT DONKEYS...

After grey skies flirting with us and pissant drizzle teasing us for a week, it finally rained in Karachi. Everyone ran outside to celebrate and dance under the torrential downpour, only to flee inside moments later when the gutters ran over and turned the roads black with ancient fecal matter.

Once the rain let up, a friend and I went out for sandwhiches, ploughing our way through submerged roads. We get to the closest McDonalds (I likes me quarter pounders..."Supersize Me" indeed) and find our way barred by a wall of a wall of thick back insects with wings. They crunched like glass underfoot and I wasn't feeling brave enough to find them in my burger so we left (that's also the same moment when I realized I'd never last on FEAR FACTOR).

So lets see, in the last week we've seen War in the Middle East, Flooding (those upchucking gutters can can really cause some damage and a plague of insects. I feel a Judgement Day coming on! When are the zombies supposed to rise up? Was that before or after the hail of frogs. I think it coincided with the one-eyed giant astride a donkey that rides out of Jeruselam and the army of super-powered midgets that couldn't figure out how to defeat a wall for a millenia but will now take over the world.

(If you don't believe me just look it up. I speak the truth!)

In the meantime, while I wait for the mountains to be torn asunder and the sky to rain blood, I have decided to order some snazzy new stuff from Iron-on Resistance. I'll be the best dressed man in line for God's Judgement.

Bring on the End of the World.