Right, first up - apologies this has taken so long, had a couple of interesting articles I couldn't seem to finish, then just as I was about to finish one of them my laptop died. I dug out various scraps of paper and started trying to piece them back together, and then something interesting happened. Cyclone Nagris tore through Burma in South East Asia. Well, I'm not going to speak too much about the politics of the situation over there, as I'm in no way qualified to - but it's an interesting, and pretty sad story for those of you who want to read up a little bit about it.
What I thought was most interesting was about a year ago - a comedian friend of mine told me, not only had the junta banned comedy in Burma, but many of it's leading comedians had been jailed. Immediately it brought rushing back images of Lenny Bruce, full of piss and vinegar saying things like "take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government" and it resonated. For a while plans were made to do a benefit show (not quite sure what we were thinking, if the UN can barely get aid in after a cyclone destroys vast swathes of the country - what change did a bunch of comedians have?) and then, like a lot of well intentioned but ill thought ideas, the excitement died and the show never happened.
It’s kind of crazy to think that in the 21st century you could be jailed for telling jokes (I'm not sure why this seems so crazy, we already have legislation in the UK that could, feasibly make this a reality in the not too distant future). Funniest thing about the story is that none of the comedians were altogether that political. Jokes such as the joke now making the rounds about a chat by an Englishman, an American and a man from Myanmar, also known as Burma.
"Our man who had no legs could climb Mt.Everest," brags the Englishman, and the American shoots back, "Our man sailed across the Pacific with no hands." Then the Burmese chimes in: "That's nothing. Our country has been ruled for 18 years by a group of men who have no heads.". Funny, but hardly the searing social commentary that here in the UK and over in the US, is not only accepted, but also accoladed.
Anyway, the ban was partially lifted last year, and some comics were allowed to perform. Under the conditions that they did it in their own homes. Now I've played some strange rooms, but the idea of standing in your own living room, badly lighted and under-illuminated would terrify me. The most uplifting part of the story is that, apparently, slowly but surely jokes started to be overheard by interested people and once they were told - they then started to spread. Within 20 days a joke could have gotten around the entire country, just through word of mouth. I don't know why, but as a comic that story made me both proud and ashamed at the same time. Proud that my comrades, who I'll probably never meet, have the courage to stand up (excuse the pun) in the face of such adversity and ashamed, partly because I've done nothing to help them and also because I don't know how I would react put into the same situation.
Earthquake Weather
Congratulations readers, we’re all survivors. Survivors of an earthquake.
Before we get ahead of ourselves here though, this has really me thinking. It was a very strange sensation to be jiggled about in my bed, in that state of mind, drifting between waking and consciousness (and the possibility of having a fourth wank) before the realisation struck – it must be an earthquake. How long did it take you to figure it out? Not too long I’d guess, although it was reassuring to read that was the case in the Manchester Evening News the morning after (quite what a paper named like that is doing printed before 4 in the afternoon is beyond me, but that’s for another time).
For some people however it took a bit longer.
Take my friend Albert for example, who admittedly has strange ideas at the best of times, but he actually outdid himself in the aftermath of the earthquake. Seemingly the only person in Greater Manchester to have failed to hear about it on the news, he had come to the conclusion that it must have been a ghost. A fucking ghost. And then went on to tell anyone who would listen about his encounter with the supernatural. I despair to be honest. He has children. God knows what they will grow up believing. They may grow up the only children who ever wished they’d been raised Catholic, if only for the fairy stories they’ve been told to seem somehow more believable than what daddy has told them.
What strikes me more than anything, is how fundamentally rubbish people in this country are with any sort of crisis. I mean even though the quake clocked in at 5.2 on the Richter scale (which I guess is somewhere between a mild tremor and full scale ‘Arizona bay’ style devastation), and as far as I can tell only resulted in one unfortunate soul being injured when his chimney fell through his roof, thousands of people started calling the emergency services. I shudder to think how those operators got through the night with endless callers telling them “my house is shaking”. I’m still unsure which of the police, ambulance or fire brigade deals with shaky houses.
Quite how we’re all going to cope in the end times is a mystery to me. Let us hope that Albert’s children, and many more like them can cope better than we can.
How come it’s always the “offensive” comedian? Who gets barred from clubs.
Who punters think it’s fine to argue with after the show.
Who can make audience members leave the club.
Really – who in their right mind would be an offensive comic? Even the one’s who’ve made it to the top of their game have ended up at best damaged by the experience (Pryor) and at worst dead (Hicks, Kinison, Bruce). Only the other day I was talking with one of my friends and he asked me – “What is the deal with the great comedians? It’s obviously not a good one…”
We do it, and I’m not putting myself in the company above – merely using them as examples people will have heard of, because it is something that we have to do, as opposed to something we want to do. And, I think, try as we might, a lot of us just can’t write in another way – not that we’d want to.
A lot of the time, it’s not the greats, like the aforementioned comics who inspire – quite the opposite in fact. A surprising amount of comedians started simply by watching people and thinking “Well, if anything else – I have to be better than that”. Yet those same comics who inspire (for all the wrong reasons) continue to get booked. It’s an interesting fact that audience members will only be too happy to complain about somebody who has offended them, yet will generally say nothing if they find the comedian boring, or they are stealing somebody else’s material, or they are just not very good. That’s right, thieves, hacks and the terminally boring prosper as the more interesting acts put up with abuse.
In my opinion, it all has to be about context at the end of that day. I’ve always sat, bewildered after someone has confronted me about a joke I’ve done and wondered if the person who had been so vocal in their disapproval had noticed the big sign outside the building they have just walked into. It says “comedy club” and the comedian is only making a joke.
Over the last couple of years I’ve got used to arguing the point with people after shows about various jokes. It’s mainly the topics that you’d expect (and to some extent want to) that really seem to push people’s buttons. 9/11, BNP, Israel etc…
Now I’m aware that sometimes the point might go over people’s heads. Probably for every Jewish person who has become offended when I’ve been talking about Israel/Palestine there has been someone else laughing away, not at the point I’m making, but because they think somehow I’m having a go at the Jews. Not a pretty thought.
I was talking this over with my friend Dan a while ago, and we came to some interesting conclusions. It would seem that some words are capable of triggering knee jerk reactions to such an extent, that any context before or after them is almost totally lost, as people are so quick to assume whatever is being talked about must be “wrong” or “bad”.
There is a hilarious clip of Doug Stanhope playing in Manchester from a show we did a few years ago on YouTube. In it Doug is talking about Myspace Paedophiles and the funniest thing about it is one member of the audiences reaction. The guy went wild, to the point of accusing Stanhope of actually being a paedophile – almost just for saying the word! I remember in Newcastle people walking out as Rogan started a routine about Lady Diana. That’s right, they got offended about a Lady Diana joke at a Rogan show. I could almost imagine them muttering as they left “Well, the bit about the baby getting a blow job was funny, but to mock the “Queen of Hearts”? That’s just too far”.
The people who miss the context and wish to sweep the word under the rug are those who are actually damned to see history repeated in their lifetimes. For burying a problem isn't solving a problem, it's just covering it with dirt and it will dig itself out over time. If nobody mentions paedophiles I’d imagine it is unlikely to make them go away.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, it is easy for people to get offended. What's not easy is for people to question why they think a certain way. Hicks once said "Good comedy helps people know they're not alone. Great comedy provides an answer." and maybe that's what sets the greats apart. Perhaps the most offensive thing a comedian can do is challenge somebody’s worldview.
