First Sean Carroll gets to go on Colbert; and now Jonathan Dancy does a very creditable job on Craig Ferguson’s show. I just want to make it clear to TV producers that I am available for gigs. Now, unlike Jonathan I am not the father of a well-known actor, so I lack a connection to the world of “show business”. But, even so, comedy is kind of a hobby of mine. Well, actually, it’s a little more than just a hobby. Reader’s Digest is considering publishing two of my jokes.
From the category archives:
Audio/Video
If you are one of the few remaining people not to have tried it out, watch this movie or this Daily Show clip and then come back here. The rest of you know that Chatroulette is a human slot machine where pretty much every other round comes up with some guy abusing himself or demanding that any ladies within range expose themselves. As a trained observer of human behavior I was professionally obliged to investigate. Bearing in mind the second sort of modal user, I used the following image:
Selected perfectly SFW results follow.
Cosmic Variance‘s Sean Carroll doing a very good job indeed on The Colbert Report. That shit is hard. Along the way he makes deft use of a Dara O’Briain line (“Of course science doesn’t know everything — if science knew everything, it would stop”) that I believe I introduced him to, so therefore I take full credit for all the laughs he got and expect to receive a check for any royalties accruing from Colbert-related sales.
You’ve probably heard about this. Surely we can get a thread’s worth of comments, eh? I’m awaiting the inevitable backwash of an actual edition of Dante’s poem with imagery from the game on the cover. But someone came up with that joke already. What next? Obviously video game adaptation is most natural when you have ‘levels’ or ‘generations’, and episodic picaresqueness is a plus. Vanity Fair? (You play Becky Sharp, climbing the social ladder, winning over various representative males in the Boss Fights.) Buddenbrooks?
OK, then, what about this: it’s obvious that the way to do this right would have been as an installment in the Mario series: Mario’s Comedy. With Peach as Beatrice, Bowser as Satan, Luigi as Virgil, providing ‘super guide’ assistance’. Or maybe Virgil should be a Toad. I’m flexible. And the rest of the cast. Mushrooms and King Boo and Koopas and Yoshis and big biting metal balls on chains, disporting in appropriate spiritual attitudes. Lava and ice and howling wind. Various souls trapped in blocks you free by jumping on them, then carrying them to the end of the level, maybe.
Italian guy loves princess, Italian guy loses princess, Italian guy has to struggle through level after level, eventually fighting the Big Boss, to get Princess back again. Writes itself. Nine Levels. Plus climbing the Mountain of Purgatory. Then Paradiso could be the video you watch after you’re done. Boring stuff, but running on kinda long. Like the original. (YouTube mashup artists, take it away!)
Since this isn’t the way we’ve gone, apparently, I think our second best option would be to adapt, say, Super Mario Brothers, as a terza rima epic. So that’s your assigned task in comments. Something about ‘midway along the path’, ‘running always to the right’, ‘jumping on people’s heads’. That sort of thing. If you choose to accept your mission.
I’m writing an essay and I want to reference, in passing, Wilde’s quip that some women, so that they may be perfectly spiritual, strive to be very thin. They’re sort of like Descartes’ pineal gland that way, if it’s true, if you think about it. Only Oscar didn’t think to add that extra joke about Descartes. Getting to the point: I’m not even sure he added the thing about the women. Is it in one of the plays? Someone did. Surely a Edwardian/Victorian sort of someone. It would be altogether convenient to know who.
Sunday afternoon mashup: Fleetwood mac vs. Daft Punk. Good stuff!
Thinner, Better, Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, plus the constructivist implication of ‘you make’, being the spiritual red thread running through this post, as it were. Daft Bodies an all.
Lots of folks seemed to think that Japanese paper theater manga book sounded pretty interesting, and many had good suggestions for related material; so here’s something vaguely similar – proto-pop culture-bleg-wise. The new The Wizard of Oz
Fun facts! The Scarecrow of Oz – the 1915 book – is based on the film, not the other way around. Although I have to say: the relation is kinda loose.
The 1939 film we know and love was not, in fact, the first version to present Kansas in b&w, Oz in color. That honor goes to a 1933 cartoon included with the new set, which was originally released all b&w due to a lawsuit about the color process. You can watch it on YouTube but, again, quality not great. (Music by Carl Stallings!)
Also, The Wiz (1978) was not the first crazy blacksploitation installment of the franchise. That honor goes to the far crazier, Larry Semon-directed/starring, young Stan Laurel-containing 1925 version (again, YouTube provides, at least a bit). It has Spencer Bell as “Snowball”, the black farmhand who is send skipping to Oz on lightning bolts. (He is billed as G. Howe Black.) So far as I can tell, this version is not included in the new set, but one Amazon reviewer seems to think it is. I guess I’ll find out for myself. [click to continue…]
Watched the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer X-Mas special with the kids last night. I wonder: was such a message of tolerance, across color lines, considered faintly radical in 1964? (Did anyone object to this X-Mas special when it came out?) Well, anyway, Zoë (the 8-year old) was disturbed by the fact that Santa was morally in the wrong for most of the show, incapable of distinguishing naughty from nice. She expressed concern about the integrity of the system by which she is to receive her due. If Santa thinks it’s ‘nice’ not to let Rudolph join in any reindeer games, etc., until he needs the guy, he might “give all her presents to some racist.”
On the other hand, Rudolph may be one of those rare examples of a clearly color-coded ‘other’ who “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior” – only this time its the Great White Father, Santa himself, who is led by the tactically-acute, colorful alien.
Ideally speaking, what should Santa’s theory of naughty/nice be, do you think?
I’ll get the rest of the Dickens scans up a bit later.
Via David Friedman, a cool interactive music video.
The greatest living Irishman signs off. (Has anyone else noticed that the volume on the bbc iplayer goes to 11?)
Since we’re in the season….
Alex’s mention of Hancock reminds me that Alan Simpson, half of the greatest comedy writing team in the English language ever, is 80 today. If you’re English, celebrate by watching this. If you’re American, you can watch this instead (and thank Galton and Simpson for having a deeper understanding of American culture than the network bosses who persistently rejected Redd Foxx as the star). Happy Birthday, Mr. Simpson,and thanks.
From the uniformly excellent David Friedman, a short film.
I saw Michael Haneke’s new film, The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band) last night. A beautiful and disturbing evocation of childhood and evil in a small German village on the eve of World War 1. It really cements Haneke’s reputation as one of the greatest film-makers working today. The central thread of the film concerns a series of vindictive and increasingly sadistic attacks, first on the village doctor, then on small children, starting in the summer of 1913. Haneke doesn’t do “closure” (hooray for that!) , so, as with Hidden, we can never be quite sure what happened and who was responsible for what, though at the end of the film there is a very strong suggestion as to the identity of the culprits. Though such events provide the narrative thread, the real substance of the film is its exploration of the repressive family relationships that pervade the village: most prominently, the pastor’s rule over his children, but also the doctor’s vicious treatment of his mistress, and the cold of the Baron’s marriage.
Heimat is bound to be a point of comparison, though, of course, the action in Edgar Reitz’s work beings with a return to a village in the immediate aftermath of Germany’s defeat in 1918. Haneke’s characters are, with a few exceptions, much less sympathetically portrayed that Reitz’s.
Watching the film, which despite its length, was sufficiently engrossing to pass quickly, I was led to reflect on how close we are in time to the events depicted and how impossibly distant we are from them (two world wars and massive technological and social change stand between us and those villages of feudal deference and agrarian drudgery). A year ago seems nothing, but, iterate 96 times or so, and little remains in common. Still, the real-life counterparts of the smallest of Haneke’s child characters might still be living today.
One small semi-technical note. I believe that the film was shot in digital colour and then converted to black and white. The monochrome imagery is often superb, but a definite digital flavour remained in the tonality: a very small flaw in a terrific movie.
For the next several hours [sorry, you’re too late] Amazon has all four of the Eccleston/Tennant Doctor Who
Please feel free to argue about who the best doctor was/is.
Free MP3 for the night (via Stereogum): Pearl Harbor, “California Shakedown”. Sort of … I dunno, droney-droney-drone.
But I’m never going to read a long post on typography and philosophy, you object. There’s life! The whole world awaits me! Well, alright. Just look at this, then.