i like this piece of marketing from the No To AV crowd. for a start, it's the first one that appears to resemble anything truthful. by that, i mean i can believe that someone called "Alice" lives in a place called "Islington". it's far better than some of their other propaganda.
the reason it amuses me, is the poster relies entirely on the concept that popularity is directly linked to how good something is. it puts faith in the theory that 'if more people like it, then it must be good / if less people like it, it must be bad'.
but loads of people like The X-Factor. Whigfield had a Number One single with Saturday Night. Katie Price's latest morony still sells thousands of shitty twat-mags, and the film Titanic won several oscars. none of them have even an inkling of any value.
and don't forget BetaMax, MiniDiscs, Banksy, The Sex Pistols, sharks, De Lorean cars, linux - all very unpopular, but nonetheless all fucking brilliant, and usually much better than their rivals.
that poster, No To AV folk, is an argument with as much validity as saying "this new shampoo can give you ten times more colour radiance".
AV takes more points of view into account than just one very basic sum. the election of who runs our country should be more complicated than it is. you should be able to have an opinion if your first choice is that of principal. politicians should have to work harder.
totally fascinating and in some ways beautiful documentary about The Aokigahara Forest at the base of mount fuji.
it is japan's most popular suicide spot, and more than two people every week go there to take their lives. this doc is sympathetic and wise, but by no means for the faint of heart. seriously, if you are easily saddened or disturbed... do not pass go.
this is pretty beautiful. yes, it's dangerously close to crossing The Cheese Line, but the message is clear and valid.
now, if only they could make one for creative, geeky people who don't fit into the nonsensical structure of the academic education system (which was probably about 90% of Pixar staff), that'd be ace.
i am regularly asked how my stand-up comedy is going; "how's your stand-up comedy going, arsehole?" "you got any stand-up gigs soon, monkey-boy?" "hey ugly man, you do stand-up don't you, ugly man?" .. that kind of thing.
many improvisers are familiar with this kind of faulty questioning, it is a common series of mistakes. as soon as you mention that you do comedy people immediately consult their limited library of reference points and assume that you do stand-up comedy. i don't do stand up comedy. i have done, i enjoyed it... i prefer improvisation.
stand-up is really very fundamentally different to improv. i'm going to have to generalise, but basically stand-up is one person on stage telling jokes that they have thought up, written, improved, worked on, honed and then put into an order that makes them compliment each other and provide a calculated series of laughs. you know that, you've seen stand-up, everyone has. stand-up is well known and the 'stars' of stand-up comedy are like rock gods in the comedy world.
improv is better. i reckon. improv is better because stand-up comedians try and do it and they usually can't, and when i saw 20 improvisers do stand-up as an experiment they were largely brilliant. that means improv is harder (fight me). you probably won't have seen the improvisers-try-their-hand-at-stand-up show (most of the population of the world didn't make it), but the standard of stand-up was surprisingly high. actually, using the word 'surprisingly' takes away from how good it was. it was consistently brilliant.
as a contra, try watching an episode of Mock The Week - a quiz show that's apparently a bunch of stand-up comics improvising funny answers to questions and mini stand-up routines based on suggestions. but you see that it's not improvised, right? you see that they have rehearsed the show and had all day to come up with the 'funny', right? you can tell by their delivery, right?
okay, if you don't see that you should definitely get yourself to an impro show, because your mind will literally be blown out of the top of your head. literally.
i find impro better because it is about improving the world. it is about collaboration. it is about people working together to make something wonderful happen. an impro group will work as a team to build something out of nothing using only the power of their wit and the relationships they've formed with each other. new worlds, new characters, new situations. new places, stories, relationships, issues, songs, ideas... more more more
"improv is constructive, stand-up is destructive." - me
there's a tag line for you.
stand-up seeks to - yes - explore the world, but then it deconstructs it into it's component parts to find the subtle and not-so-subtle nuances that make life on earth ridiculous and amusing. it is holding a mirror up to ourselves and taking the piss out of the crazy nature of living. "people do silly things at weddings, don't they?" "the government are a bunch of numpty's, aren't they?" "here is a pun" that sort of thing.
stand-up uses what's already there. improv makes something new.
there are of course, exceptions. there are a lot of great stand-ups who do great comedy. it tends to be the ones that have a constructive comedy routine that make me laugh the most. - eddie izzard, for example. he creates weird and wonderful situations out of every day objects. he adds to the world to find the comedy. (he is also a trained improviser, trained by a brilliant improviser i know called alan marriott.) - bill bailey... creates songs for his performances. - ross noble is brilliant. ross noble improvises his entire set and it's different every nigh... what..? wait a minute.. yes, he improvises every gig. oh. he's an improviser. - daniel kitson is warm, generous and offers you comedy on a plate of his mum's best china. he also writes plays. - steve coogan created alan partridge. - russell howard .. is animproviser. - michael legge .. is an improviser. - nina conti is hilarious, has a fantastic relationship with her ventriloquist puppet monkey and... oh yeah, hang on, she's an improviser too.
there are brilliant stand-ups who don't particularly add to the world to make their comedy, but they are less in numbers. stewart lee, dylan moran, lee evans in his heyday. god bless their existence.
if i was going to publicly list stand-ups who i think are vastly, vastly over-rated (of course i won't, that would be terrible).. that list would include ricky gervais, jason manford, russell brand (ohmygod), michael mcintyre (holyfuck)... people who are more famous than talented. a bit like paris hilton.
i don't do stand up. that's brilliant, i do improv. it is less well-known, but it is better. do you remember who's line is it anyway?.. ? good wasn't it?
there are shit-loads of impro shows going on, every day. just because it's not on TV all the time doesn't mean the improv community isn't alive and thrilling. the only reason it's not really on TV is because TV execs want to know the exact content of something before they give it money. before it goes on air. that's probably why 'improvised' mock the week is rehearsed so many times and then heavily edited. you see that, right?
basically, our choices about what comedy we get to watch on TV is governed by people in business suits. not even funny people in business suits.
you could have more of it in your life. and it's cheap too. a fiver will usually get you a whole evening of hilarious comedy that'll will only happen the one time. and if you speak up, the show could be all about something you shout out. better than telly, that. start here for your next show. if we all start going to them, the TV executives might notice.
it's tempting. richard herring attempted to bring it back into the mainstream last year with his hitler moustache themed show, and according to interviews seemed to get reactions that ranged from down-right horror to total apathy when he walked round the streets of london.
some real great men have sported the toothbrush moustache. that bloke from On The Buses, what i never watched because it looked a bit average. charlie chaplin had a hitler moustache and he was one of the funniest men in the world... hmm... wait.. actually that sentence is not entirely correct.
adolf hitler had a charlie chaplin moustache and he was one of the funniest men in the world.
... that'll have to do.
moustaches in general are pretty fricken ace. even if you don't care for a magnificent fascist one you could grow a lip-adornment reminiscent of burt reynolds, ron jeremy or jason lee and be satisfied.
or a generic cowboy situation on your face would burst pleasure all about.
i've just signed up for movember and invited a fair collection of sea-faring gents and lady-hangers-on to join together in raising some money for prostate cancer... when i say for prostate cancer, i actually mean against it, but thats the way the english language works sometimes.
if the team comes together we will spend the entire of november forcing out some facial sprouts and hopefully get some financial praise for our efforts, which we will deliver (indirectly) up the rectums of men around the world who've had to suffer from the frightening infection of the smooth muscle just up behind their perineum that helps us all provide a steady and fluid ejaculation. and we all like ejaculating, don't we?
you can join my team if you like. we're called 8-foot M0LEcule. i'm not exactly 100% on why, but that's the name i gave the team. in hindsight, i wish i'd called it Smooth Ejaculate, but that's what you get for doing the research after the team name. cart before the horse and all that.
anyway, speaking of come .. come and join us! grow a tash! make money for some bloke's gunpowder!
the best thing, the BEST thing, the best thing about my job so far has been watching this go on outside the window.
when I finally move on from my job, my fondest memory will be the warmth I felt while watching boat-cranes and barge-mounted diggers scoop out the riverbed and turn a canal into a dry building site. many a time I've stood staring out of the window at hundreds of little men in fluorescent jackets driving trucks about and moving thousands of tons of earth out from under the water and on to barges. then with glee I'd study every detail of a little tug-boat coming to tow the gunk-filled barge away and replace it with an empty one.
slathering at the lips, I've seen every size and shape of construction plant come and go and bring and take away; slowly and surely turning a little man-made section of the Thames into the underwater foundations of an underground train-station and a seven-level shopping mall.
the pope is in the country today. the furore around it has sparked fine conversation between intellectuals, and nonsense from publications such as the daily mail. it put this video in my periphery...
... which spoon-fed a fair amount of chat between me and some of my cohortry.
comments included the quoting of this:
"(Religion) With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
it's a quote that is almost easy to accept in the modern world, if you don't pause for long enough to justify it or think of a counter. lest not ye consider the idea that religion could equally lead evil people to do good things, and has throughout history.
the thing I respect most about the stephen fry video is that he doesn't tar all religion with same brush. he takes pains to distinguish that he doesn't disagree with religion, and that for millions of people it's just a way that helps them understand a complex and mysterious world.
the problem is the imperialism, the self aggrandising, the arrogance of people in power drunk on the power of that power. this is not limited to religion. bankers didn't fuck up the economy because god (or god's "earthly representative") told them to. oil companies and governments don't rape and raze countries because of the words of Allah in a book somewhere. a man doesn't sexually abuse children because Jesus said he should in John Chapter 4 verses 11-19.
some people are evil. some of those people end up in religious organisations. some of them progress high up in those organisations.
for good people to do evil doesn't only take religion. it can also be greed, coercion, desperation, despair, fear, peer pressure, depression, ignorance, mental breakdown. yes, these things appear (far more than they should) in religion, but not exclusively.
religious belief/faith in a god isn't bad. organised religion can be, sometimes, depending on who is running the show. it annoys the fuck out of me when those two get mixed up.
the catholic church isn't evil. a 'church' is a collective of people gathered to worship. the modern catholic church is mostly a vibrant community of good people who gather for coffee mornings and toddler groups. unfortunately their organisation is run by self-righteous self-appointed gods on earth, who would rather cover up unforgivable crimes against humanity than consider the fallibility of human beings. the appointment of a human as god's representative on earth is the problem. it is a joke. especially when he is granted infallibility. that's just screwed up. and the get-out clause of all sins forgiven and forgotten, whatever they are, after confession is nonsense... but not a far cry from what people get away with under diplomatic immunity.
ramble ramble ramble. hierarchy of humans pisses me off.
... was my offering to the conversation.
a good man called robert suggested this:
"when push comes to shove, the lovely people believe in God, and they believe that the Pope is God's first chosen representative on Earth. If they didn't, they wouldn't be Catholics. And so, nobody shouts too loudly about their gay friends, or contraception, or child abuse. They just mutter over their cappuccinos, pretend they don't use contraception, keep putting money in the collection box and hope silently that one day it will all change."
i don't know who said it originally, but this reminded me of a hugely important and concise thing i heard once:
the best way for evil to flourish is for good people to stand by and do nothing.
this show is tomorrow and i am in it, innit. i love the spring. it is the season of sunshine and romance and wing-nuts and fresh cherries and friendly maggots and savagery.
do you know what, though? it just wouldn't be complete if we didn't do a massive collaboration with the King & Queen of london impro: Hoopla!
thank goodness this poster came along. yes, it's pink, but it's more than that - it's a call to order, it's a fanfare, it's the knowledge that you are a ferrari's gear-change away from the night of your life. yeah, it'll be like a rock-badger playing Van Halen records:- you wouldn't want to miss it or you'll feel bad about your life and the direction you're going.
after speculation that this guy was Ben Folds, ben folds himself started putting chatroulette into his shows. my favourite recording artist doing impro and taking the piss out of internet weirdos? ja bitte.
i tried chat roulette once. my experience can be summed up in one picture:
i would fully expect to discover that everything girls aloud had ever recorded had been put through an Auto-tune, or something similar. their empty expressionless eyes and blank faces don't sing to me that they have too much awareness about the world, and therefore i find it impossible that they would even notice if they were out of tune. they remind me of dustin hoffman playing rain man.
i like this piece of marketing from the No To AV crowd. for a start, it's the first one that appears to resemble anything truthful. by that, i mean i can believe that someone called "Alice" lives in a place called "Islington". it's far better than some of their other propaganda.
