Leam Comes Clean Shocker!
First up, a real surprise: Kevin Leam admitting to and apologising for a theft! Just the one, however, and he still claims to have written everything else he had stolen. It turns out he got caught once before, although no-one suspected and nor did he admit to the vast scale of the deception:
'26.8.2003 Apologies
I've been collared, I'm afraid my last entry wasnt the result of my brain going into overdrivae again, i have infact nicked it from somewhere but i cant remember where. I apologise but i couldnt think of anything funny to write about that time but i adsure you i promise never to nick any more gags ever again, i feel cheap and ashamed and i hop you all find it in your warped little minds to forgive me for my booboo.' [All illiteracies, sic.]
Needless to say, not just the preceding entry but all of the preceding entries, and all of the following entries, were stolen. The only bits on the journal he did write were little intros where he says things like 'im back funnier than ever rock and rolllllll!!!!'
The prick.
Sick
This one I found really bizarre and, well, sick. Kevin Leam pretends to have been sick. But it was Steve Hofstetter who had been sick.
http://www.collegehumor.com/school:53/articles/2003/11
Leam: the German TV Years
I've been having great fun comparing and contrasting Leam pretending to be a struggling actor with Steve Hofstetter's true account of being a struggling actor which he copied and slightly adapted:
http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=98
(The above is a link to the web archive as I can't get the Hofstetter column to load: perhaps he has collected it in a book now.)
The first difference is Leam's intro. He has just moved to Nottingham from Grimsby to follow his dreams:
'Well here it is my f**kers, the first official update of a newly relocated wannabe partime comedian/musician.
Being in the business I'm in deciding to move and live in Nottingham was a pretty smart move...'
However he laments: 'The musicians I've met have been pretty damn cool, the actors on the other hand, well, read on.
I have met a lot of people who say that they're actors. But the only acting they're doing is pretending to be an actor.'
It was actually Hofstetter who wrote the second line. But how could Leam even dare to copy it without blushing?
But forget that, forget that. Here's Hofstetter on being an extra:
'This weekend, I shot two scenes in "Synergy," a forthcoming movie from Universal that stars Dennis Quaid along with a very well cast red-headed blurry thing in the background. I, with the 200 other people getting paid virtually nothing, was an extra. I was furniture with a mouth. This was not my big break.'
Leam dimly realises that people won't wear the idea of a Dennis Quaid movie having been filmed in Nottingham. They would have noticed it. So he has to change it. Disappointingly his invention fails him a bit at the start. It becomes 'a new indie film (its so new the script hasn't even been finished and there's not even a name)'. But then he rallies: it stars 'various failed soap actors and childrens television presenters' and him in the background.
Later on, Hofstetter's anecdote about three extras being chosen 'to be in direct line of the camera, just over Dennis Quaid's shoulder' becomes in Leam's hands 'in direct line of the camera, just over the guy who plays Eric Pollard in Emmerdale Farm's shoulder.'
But forget that, forget that. Here is the bit I love:
The Hofstetter original:
'I was also on an episode of Ricki Lake, during which I was paid to make fun of people.'
Transmuted by Leam's genius this becomes:
'I was also on an episode of of a Trisha like show in Germany back in 99, during which I and other band mates at the time where paid to make fun of people.'
A Trisha-like show in Germany, featuring a band who make fun of people. The mind. It boggles.
(It's like the kind of impromptu lie a five-year old might come up with in the schoolyard. 'I was on a TV show.' 'Oh really, which one?' 'Um... one in Germany. You won't have heard of it.')
Leam, like Hofstetter, continues:
'The only role I ever play is myself.'
Indeed. And Steve Hofstetter, and me, and...
But forget that, forget that. Here is my favourite bit, here is where this changed from being a disgusting, demeaning chore to something I would pay to do for my personal entertainment.
Two Nations United by a Common Language
OK. Leam pretending to be Hofstetter working as an extra describes 'a crowd scene at night in front of Nottingham city hall'.
But then he simply can't be bothered changing any more. He's worn out with all the copying and pasting. So observe the Nottingham accent on his fellow actors:
'When the staff brought out some food, one woman pushed her way up to the front of the line and started filling her plate with as much food as she could grab. A gentleman smiled at her and said, "hungry, huh?" The woman snapped at him, while still taking more food.
"Look, we all hungry," she said. "I hungry, you hungry. Don't say you ain't hungry. I just being real. Don't fake the funk. You gotsa be real."'
I could go on pointing out similar all night. Leam really doesn't see any incongruity in transposing American language, attitudes and social scenarios into provincial England. Another couple of favourites in this line:
Leam's entry for 29.3.2004, 'Vangellis' Arch Enemy', also stolen from Hofstetter but dating from Leam's Grimsby years. In Hofstetter's
original, there is a reference to 'the corner of 65th and Queens Boulevard'. Translated by Leam this becomes, splendidly, 'the corner of Westward Ho and Bargate'.
Or the entry 'Love love hate hate which side now?' stolen from JD Rebello:
http://www.pointsincase.com/columns/justin/1-4-04.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20050308172235/silentdogma.easyjournal.com/entry.aspx?eid=2036780
Contains, among other delights:
'Any white guy who wears a bandana, says "'sup" like a Puerto Rican, rocks bling, and calls his friends his "niggaz" deserves to be disemboweled with chopsticks.'
There is of course a large Puerto Rican community in Grimsby. This apparently annoys Leam because he continues:
'Hey, Enrique, stay away from our women. It's bad enough you took my job, ruined the suburb, and f**ked up the economy, now you gonna take my white girls. I'm gonna require that girls start wearing INS jackets to bars and clubs, just to avoid this.'
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