I feel slightly guilty that this exists

The blog is for the masses, not the few. It is also a verb! I blog because I have things to say. They tend to be left wing because I'm a dirty commie. I hope you like it.

[i-should-calm-down]

Why I’m Not Okay With The Doctor Being Played By A Woman

I’m a massive bell end

[i-should-calm-down]

Here’s me doing some comedy. Enjoy.

[i-should-calm-down]

Rodney Pump, the seasoned big shot Hollywood producer, director, caterer, carpenter and guy, takes to the stage to explain how he's going to save the movies.

This won a tiny tiny trophy.

Recorded by Adrian Tauss at the Cavendish Arms of the 26th of July 2016.

[i-should-calm-down]

HELLO! I do stand-up comedy. Here’s a clip of me doing a stand up about life in Suburban North London, a religious infliction, my mental well-being and my fondness for wearing dresses. Recorded in Barking in the Broadway as part of the MOVEment for change event. (Please enjoy my legs, I’ve been told they’re very good).

[i-should-calm-down]

Jeremy Corbyn is not on the ‘hard left’

Arguably, between 1994 and 2015 there was no mainstream left in UK politics. Globally, there had been a shift towards free market libertarianism since the fall of the Berlin wall and ‘the end of history’. To quote the comedian Andy Zaltzman, ‘Capitalism got a little bit overexcited in the aftermath of its points victory over Communism in the cold war, which it had been helped by the fact that Communism spent the entire fight standing in the corner punching itself in the face.’ The shift towards capitalism was felt globally in what we call the democratic world, from Klinton’s free market economics, to Mandela being forced to abandon some of his more socialist goals in his presidency, and in the UK. 

The shift towards the right had begun since the leadership of Neil Kinnock, and his casting out of a Trotskyist tendency within the party, and was further cemented by the brief leadership of John Smith, and subsequently Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. During their time in leadership, Blair removed Clause IV, pledging common ownership of the means of production, from the Labour Constitution, maintained icy relationships with trade unions, and pursued ‘third way’ politics, somewhere between free market capitalism and social democracy. This was continued into Brown’s turbulent premiership and Ed Miliband’s leadership of the opposition.

Labour had become a party of inept capitalism. A more limp version of the Thatcherite conservatives. There was investment in the public sector, but with compromise to the private sector, with public private initiatives in building schools being a recent cause for concern in Scotland. The promises for a kinder ‘new world order’ capitalism, one where engaging in the markets led to peace and democracy because it seemed the most attractive option, of course didn’t last. There are places where the rot could have set in: 9/11 and the realisation that violence, as well as capital, could be stateless, the global financial crisis and capital’s failure, or maybe at the very heart of this compromised mix of light socialism with heavy capitalism. Either way, the right of the left can no longer answer the questions of the 21st century.

We’re now in a situation where we, in the UK had five years of crushing, swift, austerity, while the opposition cried that it should be a slower crushing austerity. But the culture of anti-austerity has been bubbling under with real media coverage for so long that it’s starting to come to the surface. Both here, and in the US.

Jeremy Corbyn’s election success in the Labour leadership contest was exciting. What seemed like it would be four Blairites arguing over who has the nicest genitalia turned into a fight for the soul of the party, and one that Jeremy Corbyn won. Arguably because he represented the soul of party members, as well as those the party had started to lose. Finally it felt like there would be a counter argument to the politics of the day, to a right wing consensus, and to a fractured left that was punching itself in its face. Capitalism failed and the goal was left wide open, but no one took the shot. This government has acted so maliciously that the counterargument should have been easy. They’ve killed people. They’ve dodged taxes. They’ve burned money in front of the homeless while they were in uni. They’re the baddies.

Corbyn been branded as a member of the ‘hard left’ by a media that despises him, partly because of their economic interests, partly because of their political affiliations, and in some cases, partly because of who they went to school with. He’s been presented as a bumbling Marxist, compared with Michael Foote, electoral cancer (despite Labour winning in Wales, England, London, Bristol and many more places), and as an ineffectual leader. The BBC, scared, compromised and infiltrated, has been at his throat, while the more left wing press has been wringing their hands in panic. And yet, he’s still leading the party, and as fractured and badly behaved as Labour were, the Conservatives too are reading their knives for their leader over old problems within the party.

Personally, I like Corbyn. I’m relieved for the sake of our democracy that there is a voice for an alternative to Thatcherism. I love the idea of a National Education Service, or of building more co-operatives as a socialist alternative to nationalisation. I’m not writing this to complain about his leaderships skills, or be pessimistic over his election chances, because I don’t know what they are, and neither do you. And, deep down, neither does the press.

But Corbyn is persistently regarded as a figure of the far left, the hard left, the militant left, or the nasty left. And he isn’t. A new settlement for capitalism, forcing limits upon it so that people may live is not communism, it is the only way capitalism can function for humanity. Because capitalism isn’t for humanity, and the only way to make it work is to break it’s rules. Profit before people means paying less and less, it means harder work, more hours, and eventually outsourcing the work somewhere else, or giving it to machines, and leaving the would be workforce to starve. Profit before people means making deals with devils, means that in your trade agreements, you disregard what may be sacred. Believe it or not, Jeremy Corbyn is the best hope capitalism has to buy it some time. The Queen recently told us to live within our means, this is something corporations must learn before they outstay their welcome in more places than they can handle. 

Jeremy Corbyn does not want a totalitarian Trotskyist state, whereby all business is owned by a central planning committee. Jeremy Corbyn wants a reasonable mixed economy, in which we recognise that some things cannot be made for a profit. This is something capitalism does have a capacity to understand within it’s own frame of reference. For example, Disney is one of the largest businesses on earth, yet the live stage show, the Lion King, does not make any money. In fact, it runs at a loss. Yet it is so important as a piece of marketing, that Disney continues to bankroll it. Why can we not do this with a workforce. Workers, humans, consumers are all important to capitalism, yet it cannot bankroll them? It cannot back off where it needs to?

Jeremy Corbyn does not want a red army parade every Victory Day. Jeremy Corbyn wants a world in which we remember  that not everything is up for sale. Is this the far left? Absolutely not. It is dangerous situation we find ourselves in that this is considered a radical idea. Anti-austerity has been confused with anti-capitalism

We must afford ourselves to go further left than anti-austerity. We must afford ourselves to want for more than a better capitalism.

As I said, I support Jeremy Corbyn, and the constant criticism of him is infuriating as he is on the right side, his heart is in the right place and a Corbyn government would be far better for the people of the United Kingdom than the Cameron government. But, he is a centre-left politician. He is not a Marxist, he is a democratic socialist. I hope for a world beyond capitalism. I hope for a world in which people can work less, use their time in ways they want, in which no child has to starve, no one is forced into slavery, or into working that is bad for them or that is dangerous just to survive. I hope for a world in which we have a democratic say over who represents us, and in what way they do, beyond our current menial understanding of democracy. Can Corbyn provide this post capitalist idea?  I do not think so. But, I think it is the best starting point we have been given for a long time.

[liatheartist-blog]

A perfect gift for:

Weddings

Anniversaries

Bat mitzvahs

Birthdays

Cocktail parties

Dinner parties

Cock fights

Inn laws

Lovers

Children

Christmas

Beloved pets

Old people

The generally confused

    If anyone’s interested I will sell these. Really.

[i-should-calm-down]

as a one time Agamemnon, I can confirm, these are dead good

[i-should-calm-down]

Donald Trump is the Opposite of a Good Comedian

Chris Rock once said that good comedy should always be punching upwards. It is the plucky underdog, the hangdog loser, the happy go lucky oppressed that we vouch for. We like people with their foot in their mouths, who wears the wrong clothes, who’s unappreciated, over worked, underpaid,l who say the wrong things, and fall through bars.

The loser is integral to comedy. Because we’ve all been losers. Even if we don’t like to admit it, we’ve all been absolute, monumental, unequivocal plonkers at one time in our lives. Some might say we laugh at the loser because it happened to them. The conservative philospher, Thomas Hobbes thought we laugh at the loser because they have not learned what we have. Others might argue we laugh because we have been there before. Because while it happened to someone else, it is us.

Donald Trump is funny. But Donald Trump is funny like a malformed turnip that looks like a penis is funny. Donald Trump is not a great wit. Donald Trump is not a funny person. Donald Trump is a funny object. You do not laugh at Donald Trump’s jokes. You do not think he is a funny person. You laugh at the absurdity of Donald Trump. 

He looks comic; he’s an orange, sagging ageing man who has taken to hiding his scalp in the most ridiculous of ways.  Many people ask how a man who can’t keep his hair could run a country. However, the greatest Prime Minister of my country was a weasely bald man with a moustache. What I ask is, how can a man with no limit on resources, yet is still blind and stupid enough to settle for the hair he has now be trusted to run a country. If I go for a job interview with terrible hair, I do not expect to get the job. Donald Trump, however, expects to run what is still the biggest economy in the world.

Delving into his policies, many intellectuals have said that he is not a fascist because he does not follow fascist party lines. Fascism has no party lines. Fascism is the ultimate absence of ideology other than the adoring of the great other, the self, the figure, the godhead. Donald Trump presents himself as that Godhead. But he isn’t. He is a sagging, orange ageing man with terrible hair. He does not need to follow fascist party lines because most fascists don’t. Hitler never ran as a fascist, he was a National Socialist, Francisco Franco was a conservative monarchist, and two of history’s biggest fascists, Stalin and Mao were Marxist-Leninists. Fascism is more something to be attributed from the outside. But it’s very easy to foresee Trump’s authoritarian Neoliberalism as being a form of fascism. This is not funny.

But if he himself is funny to look at, then why isn’t he a comedian? Because he punches downwards. Reagenomics always will punch downwards. Taking any safety net away will hurt those who fall to their deaths.But he also presents himself as the ultimate winner. He is not a humble man. He is not a simple man. A small loan, to him, is a million fucking dollars. He is a billionaire with his name on sky scrapers, planes and products. He’s a real winner (and that says a lot about the game). 

He’s not an outsider, or an underdog. He’s no Clem Attlee, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders or Frank Underwood. He’s establishment. He’s not Chaplin in the Great Dictator, he’s not Formby in any of his films. He’s not plucky. There is nothing plucky about Donald Trump. Donald Trump has presented himself as an unlikely saviour. He has promised to make America great again. Donald Trump will always have died rich, no matter what life he lead. His father’s millions would have seen to that. Anyone with that assurance is a bad clown. Anyone who believes, or at least fools themselves into thinking they believe that they are an ubermensch is a bad clown.

Stewart Lee once wrote an article for the New Statesman. He ended with this:

You can’t be a right-wing clown without some character caveat, some vulnerability, some obvious flaw. You’re on the right. You’ve already won. You have no tragedy. You’re punching down. You can be a right-wing comedy columnist, away from the public eye, a disembodied, authoritarian presence that doesn’t need to show doubt. Who could be on a stage, crowing about their victory and ridiculing those less fortunate than them without any sense of irony, shame or self-knowledge? That’s not a stand-up comedian. That’s just a cunt.

[i-should-calm-down]

Frank’s Eulogy

We all knew different Franks. To some he was a port in a storm, to others he was a personal diary to pour their hearts and feelings into, to the shul he was a clever charming young man, to his family he was their little Franky bubbles. I want to put a public invitation out there to share him. Share his memories with one another, so that we can try our best to find what Frank was to everyone. In our family, we knew he was kind, but we didn’t know how much work he put into being kind. Talking to some of his many friends over the last few days has given us a snapshot as to a Frank outside of home, and I hope we can continue to build on that.

Frank to me, for many years, was a mascot, a familiar and a funny little imp. I remember his first steps, I remember him as a toddler screaming, babbling and laughing, and I remember him doing his utmost to make me laugh, to make me happy and to make me proud. He rebelled, quite rightly, and took different paths than I did. Some of them planned and backed up with thought and feeling, others not thought out at all. But he did it anyway.

Over the last few days I have been touched by all the tributes his friends and family have made, from the constant stream of messages left on facebook, to the memorials organised by his school and his friends. I was also touched that so many people went out of their way to try and find him, who took over social media or who pounded the streets. Thank you. While nothing can repair the damage that is done, to know he was loved by so many, and that he loved so many, is beautiful. I am also amazed at the money raised by well-meaning fellow travellers in this grief for the Young Minds charity, surpassing many times over what I initially expected it to raise. To quote a film Frank and I watched endlessly, let’s save the next one.

In times like these the old photographs come out. I’ve seen pictures of grandparents and relatives gone, of people fallen by the wayside, and of the little brother I will never see again in my life. One thing I have to keep reminding myself is how lucky I am. Many of us, I think most, and I pray all of us are in a position where we will never know why he did what he did. Good. That’s quite right too. I don’t ever wish to know what it is to feel that way and I hope you don’t either. We are also lucky that for 16 years we were blessed with the company of a funny, clever, talented (to the extent that it was becoming ridiculous) and chronically embarrassed young man. He lived, laughed and loved and that’s how I suggest we remember him. Not mournfully, but wonderfully. When I think of how he was for the last week he honoured us with, he was not down, he was not distressed and he was not a grunting mess. The last night with him was wonderful. He showed me some of his favourite television shows, we ate pizza and soup and we made stupid jokes that only we would understand. This is a terrible memory of Frank, but it doesn’t strip away all the wonderful times we shared together, nor will I let it, in fact these memories are so strong and he had such a presence in life, and that’s how we should remember him. He did die, but for an overwhelming proportion of his life, he lived.

Let’s have our heartbreak. Let’s have our loss. Let’s have our tears, our anguish and our agony. It’s quite right for the loss of a brilliant man like Frank. But once we’ve had our wailing and gnashing of teeth, once we’ve raged against the dying of the light and once our tears have sodden the old baby photos, which is all for the best, let’s remember and do something. Make something colourful from it. Put words on a page. Make a rhythm or a melody. Make something useful. Make something funny. Make something for Frank George O’Donoghue.

[i-should-calm-down]

HELLO TUMBLE STICKS. In May of this very year I performed my first solo performance: Zero Point, a show all about Starbucks and stand-up, using Starbucks and Stand-up. Did you miss it? Of course you did, because I’ve only performed it in Aberystwyth and Cardiff. Sound like something you’d be interested in? Well to quote a wise old man ‘GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!’ I'm performing Zero Point again at the Broadway Theatre in Barking, East London, on Wednesday the 7th of October. It will be at a reduced run time, but certainly not a reduced FUN time! Please enjoy this clip of the show. Please. I’ve got nothing left. 

[i-should-calm-down]

HORROR FILM MAKERS

NEW RULE! OTHER PEOPLE’S FEARS ARE NOT SCARY.

Don’t try and scare me by the fact you have a clown, I’m not afraid of clowns.

Don’t try and scare me by the fact you have puppets, I’m not afraid of puppets.

Don’t try and scare me by the fact you have an old doll, I’m not afraid of old dolls.

Don’t try and scare me by the fact you have children, I’m not afraid of children.

Don’t try and scare me by the fact you have satanic stuff, I’m not afraid of satanic stuff.

Don’t try and scare me with old music. Old music isn’t scary with no context. It’s just old music.

All of these things can be scary IF YOU MAKE A SCARY FILM. THEY ARE NOT ON A CHECK LIST OF HOW TO BE SCARY, THAT IS UP TO THE TENSION, CONTEXT AND EVENTS OF THE FILM ITSELF.

Enough bullshitting us on occultism. Have you done ritual magic? Obviously fucking not. No one tries to summon daemons. Thinking logically, you’re more likely to try and banish than to summon. Do you want to know what a ritual looks like? Go to church, go to a theatre, talk to someone like Grant Morrison or Alan Moore. Or if you want to look into freaky stuff, look into Aleister Crowley 

Enough found footage. It’s always too convenient the bits that get filmed, and a lot of the time it gets in the way of genuine artistry.

Enough shaky cam. I’m in a cinema, not at sea. Why do I need to get seasick?

Enough total reliance on jump scares, being shocked is not the same as being scared. Flinching is not a shudder.

Enough rehashing. I don’t need to see another version of Evil Dead. I’ve seen The Evil Dead (and Evil Dead 2). You can go over familiar tropes, sure, but be creative (Cabin in the Woods). Constant remakes just aren’t... groovy!

Enough with swearing ghosts. Imagine you go to bed and you sense that you’re not alone. After a while of being unable to sleep you eventually drift off. You awake after an uncomfortable dream comprised of thoughts that aren’t yours. You lie uneasily and through the darkness you see a figure, a nightmare made of shadows and dread. Slowly, deliberately and inevitably it creeps towards you. The ground that it stands on starts to perish, the carpet frays and moulds, the wood cracks and warps. You try and run but you just can’t. Then it calls you a goddam bitch. You’re not as scared now that you know that this monster is Charlie Kelley from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If you have a monster it does not need to offend you verbally, the fact of its existence should offend every molecule in you. It should sicken you to your core and disgust your integral decency. If it swears at you then it is on the back foot. Its authority is challenged and it knows it. And so do you.

Try and be sensitive when making a horror film. Do I mean don’t go over sensitive issues? No, do I mean be respectful? Yes. Why not address an issue many people suffer with (guilt: The Exorcist. post-natal depression: The Babadook, pedophobia: The Omen), don’t just use something horrific for a shitty by the numbers affair (The Chernobyl Diaries).

I love horror movies... but there are a lot of absolutely terrible ones out there. There’s nothing better than something that psychologically shakes you, that fills you with fear and wonder. Those will stay with you far longer than something that makes you jump but offers you nothing else. That’s just fast food horror and, much like fast food, it doesn’t offer anything too substantial.

[britishcomedyoverflowing]

[i-should-calm-down]

YOU SILLY SAUSAGE!

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer have been comic heroes of mine since stumbling across their anarchic panel show, Shooting Stars, one evening. Their blend of mishmashed art student nonsense as well as music hall showmanship struck a chord with some peculiar part of my brain. Over the last two years they have produced two series of House of Fools, a situation comedy on BBC Two, in which they play versions of themselves living in a flat in London. They are joined by Bob’s psychopathic Scandinavian son, Eric, as well as Vic’s ex-con brother, Bosh. Their neighbours include Julie, a sex obsessed eccentric (a woman in a sit com who is not there to be the straight man is still a rare thing even today), and Beef, a sonorous lothario (played brilliantly by Matt Berry, another comic hero of mine).  

In one episode, The Wig Affair, Vic and Bob both drink an energy drink that transforms them into some form of ultra macho muscle men. They become Frankenstein’s monster style creatures in their physicality and posture. ‘AT LAST, THE PROPHECY IS FULFILLED!’ Vic yells in a deep, booming, modulated voice, as he runs around the flat. At one point he is distracted by a china pottery model of a child and a dog. ‘FRIENDS! FRIENDS! Young Christopher and Benjy. Friends forever. UNTIL BENJY DIED!’ Vic and Bob fight one another in these monstrous forms, which they inhabit by flexing and pouting. They then throw insults at each other.

I feel at this point I should give some more context to the world of the show. This is a comedy in which a character, Bosh, has a catchphrase comprising of two words: ‘You twat’. Swearing is used frequently and creatively (my own personal favourite being ‘this whole day has turned to shit on biscuits!’) and yet, something very different happens. In the deep, booming and modulated voices Vic and Bob start yelling these insults at one another. ‘YOU CHEEKY MONKEY’ ‘YOU SILLY BILLY’ ‘YOU SILLY SAUSAGE’ ‘YOU DAFT HA’PORTH’ I nearly cried with laughter watching this, far more than I have at a Malcolm Tucker-esque outburst (not to detract from the brilliant writing and performances in The Thick of It). But why?

Firstly, the mixture of brute strength and childish cursing creates a conflict between the thuggish and the innocent. We expect Vic to yell something threatening, instead it is delightful. It confounds our expectations and surprises us with a situation that is unique but has recognisable elements.

These recognisable elements are a reason why we laugh. Gruesome transformations are hard-wired into popular culture, from werewolf myths, to Jekyll and Hyde, to The Incredible Hulk. The fear that humanity’s reason could be stripped from us is a sophisticated fear (as opposed to a primal fear). But when childish insults are added we recognise them as just that. We have been called a daft ha’porth perhaps by a loving relative of by a child trying to grasp for an insult. It is muted and somewhat cuddly.

However, first and foremost, it is silly. I define silliness as the mixture of the mundane with the bizarre. It is pitching one logic against another. It is street Countdown (The IT Crowd). It is a voodoo healer crocodile called Eric Philips (The Mighty Boosh).It is a Peruvian bear looking for a family at Paddington Station (Paddington Bear). It is a group of soldiers looking ready to parachute out of a jet and instead running out of tube train in suburban North London (Big Train). It is a man’s nose becoming a statesman (Gogol’s The Nose). It is Keith Allen being the father of invention (Josie Long). It is a bureaucratic institution giving allotted times for arguments (Monty Python’s Flying Circus). It is two ‘pumped up’ men throwing things and calling each other silly billies.

It is  humour without a victim. It does not hate anyone. It does not profess that an entire denomination of people are the same or say the ‘unsayable’. It is the verbal equivalent of of slapping someone with a fish. It should not be there. Brutality should win. Yet fond childish gay abandon cannot be beaten. It is possibly, a brilliant act of resistance against brutality.

Or perhaps it is simply a silly idea. I shouldn’t have read too much into it, but I wouldn’t let it lie... you twat.

[i-should-calm-down]

Talking Shit

Barry Crier was at a party with Stewart Lee and –err, Stewart came over and he said ‘Oh hi, Barry.’ And Barry kind of, just didn’t really say anything to him and Stew was going ‘have I said something to Barry or whatever?’ and every time Stewart went to Barry, Barry would turn away crossly. So Stewart went over and said ‘have I done something, Barry?’ And Barry said ‘I think you know what you’ve done!’ ‘What do you mean?’ he goes ‘Well you stole my vomiting into the gaping anus of Christ routine!’

-          Robin Ince on Robin and Josie’s Utter Shambles (12th August 2010)

Adam Buxton once stated that the faecal is a great unifier. To my mind, this is true. The comedian’s body must be funny, because so is everyone else’s. The abjective truth of humanity is that most of us defecate, bleed, urinate and, on occasion, vomit. For the comedian to be human, so must they.

In Stewart Lee’s 2005 show, Stand Up Comedian, he begins a set that 9/11, the media and national myths, with a story about farting at a urinal in Granada on the day the towers fell:

‘But it was only a really tiny fart, like the kind of fart a vole might do. Or Anna Friel.’ (Lee, 2010 p.49)

The comedian must be a human being. For Eddie Izzard, this means showing his sexuality on stage, for Jenny Eclair it is her intimate health and embarrassment, for Josie Long it is her hope, optimism and the times that they might fail, for Robin Ince it is his ire and passion for science, and for many comedians it is their involuntary bodily functions. In doing this they present themselves as flawed, something the comedian must be. They may not need to look ridiculous in costume or physical appearance (though many do and many benefit from it, such as Justin Edwards’ Jeremy Lion Character), but a fact about humanity is that the body does ridiculous things as it functions. The term for our response to this is abjection. Abjections is the contemplation of things we find disgusting but are part of you (Stott, 2014 p.65). We are socially programmed to be repulsed by the inalienable functions of our bodies. Part of the comedian’s joke is to dismantle taboos (or at least give them a poke) in order to get a reaction from the audience. I would rather that the taboo used for shock value is a bodily function then a lacklustre Jimmy Carr/ Jim Davidson gag about the disabled, ethnic minorities or missing children. That said, this does not mean to say that humour must be all toilet based, as has been the way in Jup Apatow comedies in which grown men tell penis and fart jokes for one and a half, to two hours. But, the comedian must be one with the abjective.

The comedian must also be on the verge of divine revelation and clarity, permanently on the verge, but always failing at the final hurdle. Dara O’Briain is incredible at this. He speaks about ideas such as religion, evolution and science and sacrifices the correct answer with the flawed one. He may, at one moment, effortlessly cast away Islamophobia (‘‘you make jokes about the Catholics, you’ll make jokes about the protestants, but you won’t make jokes about the Muslims will you?...’ to which I would say ‘there are two reasons I don’t make jokes about Muslims a) I don’t know a fucking thing about Muslims b) neither do you’’) and then do a set about his obsessions and weaknesses at videogames (Dara O’Briain 2010).

When the comedian fails to do this, they become a preacher. Russell Brand may humanise himself in his stand-up comedy, but fails to do so convincingly in his The Trews youtube videos. In these he dangerously teeters on the edge of mimifantism, a pseudo preacher without answers. That is not to say that they are worthless, but they are another satirical take on the news, much like The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight. You can gave a rousing Bevanite political speech, but it must be human. It must be punching up in a heroic little struggle(Rock cited in Lee 2013). You must have the answers to the questions you raise, but always undermine yourself. The ideas are bigger than you.

There are times where this rule has been broken. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator jumps from comedy into an impassioned political plea. The physical humour at the beginning is wonderful (although it then become as somewhat dated melodramatic formulaic comedy of mistaken identity) but the famous speech in the third act is where comedian becomes preacher. Here he sacrifices laughs for a speech full of hope, love and a classical Marxist revolutionary zeal. But if you fail to reach this height then the sacrifice of comedy is for nothing. If you fail to reach that then it may as well be a moral at the end of a sitcom in which the humour is put to one side and a heavy handed message is clumsily spelt out in front of the audience.

Comedy needs the levellers to drag the comedian from the pedestal. It needs nervous breakdowns, faeces, blood and things to go wrong. The comedian must be one with the abjective but not sacrifice comedy unless you are bound to be successful. As George Bernard Shaw said 

‘if you’re going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh: Otherwise they’ll kill you’ (Shaw cited in Stott, 2014 p.149).

Be ridiculous. Be silly. Be human.

   Russell Brand (2015) The Trews [online] available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/russellbrand (accessed 25th March 2015)

Robin Ince and Josie Long (2010) Robin and Josie’s Utter Shambes [podcast] Comedy Central. 12th of April. Available at: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/robin-josies-utter-shambles/id394641784?mt=2 (accessed 25th March 2015)

Stewart Lee (2010) How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian London: Faber and Faber

Stewart Lee (2013) Where Are All The Right Wing Stand-Ups? The New Statesman [online] 16th April. available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/04/where-are-all-right-wing-stand-ups (Accessed 25th March 2015)

This Is The Show (2010) Filmed Stand-up show written and performed by Dara O’Briain [DVD] UK: Universal Pictures UK

Andrew Stott (2014) Comedy (2nd Ed.) Abingdon: Routledge

s

[i-should-calm-down]

Exorcising Starbucks

Hello there Tumblesticks,

I’m currently studying in the Welsh seaside Town of Aberystwyth. It’s a town that has a beautiful heritage, surprising history, wonderful local people, wonderful students, some incredible lecturers and teachers, career and performance opportunities and a brilliant arts scene. 

It also has two branches of Starbucks Coffee. One in the student union, and one right in the centre of the town. 

It is a town with plenty of coffee shops, tea rooms, cafés and restaurants. 

I have been inspired by Slavoj Zizek, Mark Thomas and Reverend Billy and I want them gone. I will at one point stage an exorcism of the large multinational corporation in this Welsh Seaside town. It will be non violent, non religious (as a secular reform Jew, I doubt other people will join in with me if I did it in half remembered Hebrew), and very silly. 

I am tweeting Starbucks at: @Starbucks every day with a fact about Aberystwyth with the hashtag #TwoMany. This is an invitation to join in with me. This is a non violent way to show that a town or place has its own history and its own identity before Starbucks arrives

Starbucks Coffee has a detrimental effect on local businesses and therefore local livelihoods. It pushes cafés out of business, fuels gentrification and the pushing out of local people, and has a dubious tax history. 

Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher and documentary maker has spoken about how Starbucks’ constant reassurance on free trade isn’t as cozy and cuddly as it may seem internationally, and I will link this bellow.

So, I humbly invite you to join with me in supporting local people and telling Starbucks to politely leave. 

Aberystwyth doesn’t need them.

#TwoMany

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P18UK5IMRDI

[i-should-calm-down]

Potter, you little shit! You may be the boy who lived, but you will never be the man who lived, because you fail to live up to your social responsibilities and stand up for what is right! Remember, vote in the upcoming Ministry of Magic elections!

[lotus-flow3r]

[anzozi-everywhere]

Looks like North London…

[i-should-calm-down]

Not Enfield. Looks nothing like Enfield

[i-should-calm-down]

The begining of the Pervert's Guide to Ideology sounds like a Woody Allen joke. 

'You put on those glasses or you start eating from the trash can'

'I already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology'

... but I don't know, if he said 'my mother' at some point. 

Well, let's hear your Slavoj Zizek joke if you're so high and mighty!