Category: father ted

After 10 years a joke can become a reality

Sometimes I just don’t know. Comedy writers sit down and try to be ridiculous and then a few years later the thing they were trying to be funny about because it seems so unrealistic becomes a reality. The Simsons in the season 10 episode, Make room for Lisa, have the TV in the background with a stupid reality TV show called “When Animals Attack Magicians” :

Magician: Pick a card, any… (noise of animal attacking) Aaaaaagh!!!

Roll forward 5 years and in the wake of the attack on the Las Vegas magician, Roy Horn, of Siegfried & Roy, by a tiger they used in the act. NBC couldn’t believe their luck when they were able to secure the rights and produce a show where Roy discusses the attack and his recovery in Siegfried & Roy : The Miracle. The joke has become a reality.

The same thing happened again with Meet the Parents, there is a whole lot of humour behind the fact that Robert DeNiros character trains his cat to use the toilet instead of a kitty litter. Type “toilet trained cat” into google and see what you get (or this link) not only are people doing it, people are making money off it, there are YouTube videos as well. Again the joke is now a reality.

Finally there was the Father Ted episode, Flight into Terror, when they feature the Virgin Mary Tape dispenser, which tells you how much tape to you and “God Bless You!”. Stupid ridiculous, right? Is it much difference than this Virgin Mary USB flash drive, with beating LED heart. I especially like the :

“Oh Maria, Keep my data safe”

which is inscribed into the halo. All it needs now is a button that tells you how much space you have left and “God Bless you!”

D’Officials – No Hoodies!

In Ireland there are two constructs, “The Man” and “A boy”, that are used by parents to corral their kids in. “A boy” is usually a person that got himself injured doing something stupid and is used as a warning to other kids, “A boy broke his legs climbing over those rocks”, or “A boy almost had his finger cut off climbing in that window”. (There is a window in the primary school of Dungeagan in Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry and I was that boy that people get warned about).

“The Man” however is the marginally empowered person that flexed it when ever he can. You meet them all the time when you go through metal detectors in airports and they take away nail clippers, or the security guards that tell you you can’t take pictures of a building. The comedian’s John Kenny and Pat Shortt, also know as D’Unbelievables, capture the phenomenon excellently at the start of the performance on D’Video :

I was reminded of “The Man” while reading Bruce Schneier blog, where in the UK a four year old girl was asked to remove her hoodie for vague “security” reasons:

“She had her hood up on her cardigan, a young lad came across and asked her to take her hood down because of security.”

When Ms Lewis learned what had happened, she spoke to the worker. She said: “He said ‘It’s policy, they don’t allow any hoodies in there.'”

While it would be great in society to slap these upside the head and tell them to stop acting the maggot that usually doesn’t help so we’ll always be stuck with them. Here’s another example of “The Man” from Father Ted :