Month: August 2010

Sci-Fi Eye Chart

This proved to be a popular way to spend a friday afternoon.

[via the bite]

update

Here are some possible answers:

1. Star Wars
2. Blade Runner
3. Gears of War
4. Clockwork Orange
5. Battlestar Galactica
6. Tron
7. Terminator
8. Quantum Leap
9. Predators
10. Planet of the Apes
11. Resident Evil
12. Avatar
13. Matrix
14. Transformers
15. Halo
16. Hellboy
17. Star Trek
18. Wolverine
19. Thundercats
20. Jurassic Park
21. Independence Day
22. Metal Gear Solid
23. Futurama
24. QUAKE
25. TMNT
26. Stargate Atlantis
27. Voltron
28. Metropolis
29. Buckaroo Bonzai
30. Airwolf
31. E.T.
32. Robocop
33. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
34. Pac-Man
35. Buffy
36. Serenity

I still think 29 is the subscript Back to the Future ‘B’

Immoral Behaviour is Hilarious

I graduated with a degree in engineering.  I was presented with the offer of doing a masters straight after, this was during the dot com bubble, so I was keen to get out there and earn some mhulla!  I have thought about going back and doing a masters in any thing but engineering.  If given a choice I would love to have a masters in comedy. Alas I have yet to find the university that does that course.  However there is some hope. Here is a link to a paper that tries to find out why people find immoral behavior (sic) funny.

I think I can summarise the paper though.  We laugh at other peoples misfortune because deep down we know that it could be us and this time at least it isn’t.

Synthesizing seemingly disparate ideas into three jointly necessary and sufficient conditions (appraisal as a violation, appraisal as a benign situation, and simultaneity), we suggest that humor is a positive and adaptive response to benign violations. Humor provides a healthy and socially beneficial way to react to hypothetical threats, remote concerns, minor setbacks, social faux pas, cultural misunderstandings, and other benign violations people encounter on a regular basis. Humor also serves a valuable communicative function.  Laughter and amusement signal to the world that a violation is indeed okay.

That’s what I said!

Any way if you are student of humour check it out.

[via io9]

Shock Comedy

There was an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald about shock comedy around Sydney.  It turns out that Jim Jefferies got himself in a bit of bovver at the Comedy Store when he picked on the audience and instead of rallying the room ended up killing it a bit.

‘‘Some comedy draws on societal taboos as a way to generate laughter and indeed, this is part of the appeal. Laughing at something that is inappropriate. This is why comedians often walk a very fine line”

I find the whole piece interesting. I am currently playing in the open mic space and it is educational to see how many people are going for the shock value of comedy.  It reminds me of that line from “The Incredibles” – “When every body is special, no-one is!”

Audio Inception

Inception, the movie is awesome, (in fact inception the concept ain’t have bad either).  I have always been a fan of movie sound tracks going all the way back to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  I have enjoying the composers of Inceptions music, Hans Zimmer, for many years now. His work on Gladiator and Batman Begins are personal faves.  While I was visually blasted away by the movie, Inception, I was also left with those blaring brass horns.  Little did I realise that there were harmonic cousins to the the Edith Piaf song, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, that is used to syncronise the dreamer and the next level up.  When I read the SMH article explaining it, I just didn’t get it, but it is so easily explained by this you-tube video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVkQ0C4qDvM

I so need to see this movie again. I can’t believe my luck that they have it on at IMAX, bring it on!

Neil Gaiman on Triple J’s The Doctor

Graphic, originally uploaded by melpenguin.

Here is an interview with Neil Gaiman and Triple J’s The Doctor, Lindsay McDougall, which was recorded before Neil went on to read out a short story of his at the Sydney Opera House, for the Graphic festival.

I attended the performance, it was very good. I particularly enjoyed the Q and A with Eddie Campbell, he had a great sense of humour, he was not happy that the dwarf/midget and his wife are responsible for killing 12 Campbell’s in the dead of night.

Update:

Here is a link to the story that was read out by Neil Gaiman at the Opera House, “The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains“.

And the Sydney Morning Hearld have posted some images of the event.

Jerry Seinfeld on Enough Rope

My Own Jerry Seinfeld, originally uploaded by Lewis Reece.

I was surprised to find that the audio to Andrew Denton’s interview with Jerry Seinfeld, conducted when Jerry was promoting Bee Movie, is available online.

You can listen to the audio here:

Here is the transcript for the interview

And here is an interested nugget from Jerry:

ANDREW DENTON: Cos Jerry you’ve said that you’re obsessed with the art of telling a joke.

JERRY SEINFELD: Mhm.

ANDREW DENTON: What does it take to get it right?

JERRY SEINFELD: Sometimes you find yourself in the right moment with the audience and the audience, see the thing, the audience never knows, is, that they are making the performance. You can’t make an entire audience laugh if they don’t want to so they kind of will, if they’re in the right place or you can kind of manoeuvre them into the right place. They can make you give them a performance that’s better even than you thought you could give.

ANDREW DENTON: What’s not funny for you, what do you think, what do you consider bad taste?

JERRY SEINFELD: Bad taste?

ANDREW DENTON: Yeah.

JERRY SEINFELD: Um I, I don’t have any particular tastes, you know there’s only, I don’t find anything offensive as an audience member myself. To me I only care about what’s funny and what’s not funny. I have my own style that I like to work in, which is clean. I like, I don’t like to use any sexual situations or dirty words. It’s just, it just keeps me writing better jokes. You have to write a better joke to do well if you don’t use any of those things, so it’s just a thing that I, that I do for myself.