Category: Uncategorized

The Shat

KILL BILL Shatner
I recently started doing a bit on stage about William Shatner and how I don’t think he acts, but people create this world around him, like the Truman show, and just film his response.  I must have tapped into the zeitgeist as there is a big write up on “The Shat” in the New York Times and on page 3:

“Denny was a wun-der-ful role. There’s a little bit of every actor in a role. The sadness of the character was very close to my consciousness. It’s hard to play an old fool, non sequiturs, which is all Denny was. Then I realized he thought his life was a TV show. That helped me.” It helped because Shatner’s life seems at times to be a TV show lived in public, a benign “Truman Show.”

Is there nothing “The Shat” can’t do!

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.

Silly Season has begun

This year I became an Australian citizen and one of the rights associated it with that is the right to vote. I say “right” but you actually get fined if you don’t. I find the whole process crazy. While a person can be smart, people are idiots or in this case sheep. There is a lot of whinging in the media about how Julia Gillard was not elected by people of Australia to be Prime Minister. These people are idiots! You may have been watching the West Wing or 24 for too long. In most democracies you vote for the party and the party is the one who picks the leader. If the party wins that person leading it becomes Prime Minister, simple. It also extends to during the party’s term in power, if they don’t like who they have they can change it.  In my home country of Ireland the standing Prime Minister, Brian Cowen, (or Taoiseach as we call them) did not become so until his predecessor, Bertie Ahern, stood down. In the UK a few years back Tony Blair stepped aside to let Gordon Brown rule and even here in New South Wales at the state level Kristine Keneally, replaced Nathan Rees, who replaced Morris Iemma as premier, all without elections being called. Even in the United States, where they have gotten every thing ass backwards with two party politics and the electoral college, the Vice President gets promoted to President should the President be unable, it happened it Lydon Johnson after Kennedy and Gerald Ford after Nixon.

I was very disappointed last night while watching Q and A, on it they had deputy leader of the opposition, Julia Bishop, further muddying the water. She was unusually on Kevin Rudd’s side in all this, but felt that because a standing Prime Minister of Australia has never been replaced before, means it shouldn’t ever happen:

JULIE BISHOP: Oh, well, it was such a fair question. I’m a very loyal deputy and, yes, there have been changes within the Liberal Party, but we are in opposition. The last election our leader was John Howard. The last election Kevin Rudd was Labor’s leader and that’s who we put up. The Australian people chose Kevin Rudd and, of course, we’re now in opposition and so we have had some leadership changes but the public chose Kevin Rudd and he should have been allowed to go to the election as the leader and let the people pass judgment.

TONY JONES: Let’s get a microphone down here. We’ve got a gentleman with his hand up in the audience and we’d like to hear from him.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Are you the Steven Bradbury of Australian politics? They all fall down and you just slide on through.

JULIE BISHOP: This isn’t about me.

TONY JONES: Okay, Waleed?

WALEED ALY: I just find all this a bit convenient, well, the invocation of principle here. This idea that prime ministers should only ever be removed by the Australian people because…

JULIE BISHOP: In a first term. It’s never happened, has it? It’s unprecedented in their first term.

WALEED ALY: No, look, I agree with that but…

JULIE BISHOP: Give the guy a break. Let him go to his first term.

WALEED ALY: I’m very…

JULIE BISHOP: I…

TONY JONES: Julie, give the guy a break. He’s trying to say something.

JULIE BISHOP: Sorry.

WALEED ALY: I’m very moved by your concern for Kevin Rudd.

JULIE BISHOP: Yeah, I am concerned. I’m concerned by the precedent.

WALEED ALY: No, but – no, but I just transport myself back to the end of the Howard era and everyone remembers that John Howard was under a lot of pressure to stand down. He was constantly asked about whether or not he would stand down. Other figures in the Liberal Party were asked about whether or not they would ask him to stand down. In the end he didn’t, and he wasn’t asked. But at no stage did he or any other member of the Liberal Party say that it was a matter of principle that he wouldn’t stand down because he was elected and only the Australian people could remove him. What he said was I will be there as long as the party wants me. Now, I’m not saying that was the wrong thing to say. I’m just saying that the principle that operates here is that the party elects the leader. John Howard knew it. The Liberal Party knew it when they were in government and they forgot it in opposition because they Labor Party lived by that principle. You might feel…

JULIE BISHOP: Well, I was actually party to these discussions so…

WALEED ALY: You might feel that it was brutal, and that’s fair enough.

JULIE BISHOP: No. No. No.

This is dangerous media and hence dangerous politics.  A standing politician should get away with trotting out this crap, because it confuses the sheep. Even Julia Gillard is using it as an excuse to call the election at such short notice. If you think the vote is being called because the people of Australia didn’t vote for Julia Gillard to be Prime Minister of Australia you are a fool and an idiot and should probably not be allowed vote any way. With Julia’s position being “compromised” she may not win an election if there was some decent competition on the opposition.  While the Mad Monk Tony Abbot is in charge Liberals haven’t a chance of winning, Julia for right or wrong will get the “Anybody but Abbott” vote, which in itself is brilliant.

Any way here’s looking to my vote being diluted by mis-educated and masterchef addled sheep, where are the chaser in all this?