Born on State Highway 1

I saw Carey Marx at the comedy thingy a few weeks back in Auckland.

He was funny.  He made me laugh.

“I can always tell when the woman I’m fucking is about to….die.  She usually stops struggling.”

“The sign said ‘keep off the grass’.  Someone said ‘hey!  Can’t you read the sign?’  I said, ‘yes, I can.  I’m already on the grass.  You need a sign that says ‘get off the grass’”

Those were funny.

But by and large it was a derivative review of Richard Pryor and George Carlin’s almost-best-ofs.

And man how I miss Richard Pryor and George Carlin.

They died so close together.

I miss them more than my own grandparents – and not just cause they were slightly funnier.  (Seriously my grandparents were funny).

Pryor was the king.  He stood on stage and talked, for ages, about what a bad person he was. And he talked about race.

“I shot my car, jack.  Then the vodka in me said ‘yeah you shoot motherfucker one more time.’”

“I am tired of the police coming to MY house to put MY ass in jail.  Cops don’t shoot cars.  They shoot niggARS.”

“You go down to the courthouse looking for justice, that’s what you gonna find.  Just us.”

“Cocaine make you think some crazy shit.  ‘Ok, darling.  You stand on the top of this building and I’ll run around it.  On the third pass, I want you to jump on my face.’  I have a witness!”

“You get in an argument with a white guy and he says ‘hey man fuck you’ and you say ‘no fuck you’ and then he says ‘nigger!’ and you think ‘shit, I ain’t a man no more.’  I hope they give that shit up.”

Carlin was more absurdist and grew out of the so-called counter-culture.

Carlin did the seven things you can’t say on television.  (Marx did the 10 things you can’t say in stand-up comedy).

Google Jerry Seinfeld’s obit of George Carlin.

“Look at the two men who ran this war:  Dick Cheney and Colon Powell:  someone got fucked in the ass!”

“Anorexia.  Another all American disease.  Rich cunt don’t want to eat?  Fuck her.  What do I give a fuck.  ‘I don’t wanna eat!’  Fine.  Go fuck yourself”.

“Rape can be funny.  Imagine if Mickey Mouse was raping Donald Duck.”  (Marx did a bit on rape).

Marx also sounded a bit too much like Lenny Bruce.

Bruce was Jewish.  So is Marx.

Bruce was famous for de-contextualising the word “nigger”.

Pryor stopped saying “nigger” after he went to Africa.

Shannen Doherty eyes

Nigger was the number one on Marx’s list of 10 things you can’t say in stand up.

Bruce made the point — a point I agree with — that nigger is a word.  Say it lots of times fast.  It sounds weird and loses meaning.

Then again, I’m an anti-semiotist.

Marx made the same point about the word cunt:  cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt.

All art is derivative.  Nothing is being done for the first time.  I don’t profess to be an iconoclast comic.

However, the stakes seem low these days.

It’s been said in the aftermath of the British election, and subsequent parliamentary coalition, that the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg has led himself and his party astray by jumping into bed with David Cameron’s Tories. After all, the Liberal Democrats snapped up plenty of estranged Labour voters who now feel even more marginalized because their vote led to the dread Tories becoming the head of Government in Britain. Add into the mix that the Labour Party formed out of marginalized Liberal voters (the Liberal party, now defunct, joined with the Social Democrat Party to form the Liberal Democrats) at the turn of the 20th Century and one would assume that the natural path for the Liberal Democrats to take would be to join into a coalition with Labour. But we are here, now, in late May 2010 where Nick Clegg is now Deputy Prime Minister of a Conservative-led government. However, this is not as strange as it would seem.

First thing to consider is the agenda of the Liberal Democrat Party. The Lib Dems run on a platform of social liberalism, which one would assume would be diametrically opposed to the policies of the Conservatives. But you must throw it all into context. Since the September 11th attacks in New York, and July 7th bombings in London, the Labour Party have run a country which is slowly becoming more and more socially repressive. From illegally invading other countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where human rights and civil liberty abuses on the local populace have been rife and of great magnitudes, to domestic legislation which exceeds – in terms of penetration – the civil liberties abuses that Bush’s Patriot Act placed on the domestic populace in the US. Between Tony Blair and usurped Prime Minister Gordon Brown the Labour Party the United Kingdom slowly turned to an Airstrip One-like dystopia (see 1984). CCTV cameras everywhere, ID cards which need to be carried at all times, a relaxation of arrest regulations for Police and an increase in the Police’s ability to detain suspects – whether evidenced or not. For a Liberal Democrat with an eye towards social liberalism this would be totally unacceptable, and the Tories have offered a review of these repressive measures.

But also, interestingly enough, Nick Clegg shares more in common with David Cameron in background than one would expect. As we all know, or at least all should know, Cameron is a direct descendant of King William IV (great × 5 grandfather) and his mistress Dorothea Jordan (and thus fifth cousin, twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II) – although as an illegitimate royal descendant, Cameron is not in the line of succession to the British throne. Cameron was raised in a fabulously wealthy family as heir to a massive family fortune, attending only private schools like Eton is his formative years and becoming a member of Oxford University’s most exclusive trust-fund baby club. As is fitting for his party’s policies, Cameron is the ultimate trust-fund baby with strong ties to the aristocracy.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron strange bedfellows? Not if truth has anything to do with it.

Clegg’s background, which would seem anathema to his party and their mainly lower middle-class and working-class voters, is not too dissimilar. His father, Nicholas Clegg CBE, is chairman of United Trust Bank, and is a trustee of The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. Clegg’s paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, was a Baroness from Imperial Russia, whose aristocratic family fled the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Clegg’s great-great-grandfather, the Ukrainian nobleman Ignaty Zakrevsky, was attorney general of the imperial Russian senate. His great-great aunt was the writer, Baroness Moura Budberg. Clegg was educated at the private Caldicott School at Farnham Royal in South Buckinghamshire, and later at the private Westminster School in London. He then went on to attend Cambridge University, where – and this may come as some shock – he joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association between 1986 and 1987, with contemporary membership records citing an “N. Clegg” of Robinson College. (At the time, Clegg was the only person of that name at Robinson.) Large trust fund behind him? Check. Privileged upbringing? Check. Private-school education? Check. Member of right-wing groups at the most prestigious universities in Britain? Check. Even royal (though not necessarily English) blood? Check.

It should come as no surprise that these two men would see eye-to-eye more than either would with the Scottish son of a preacher man, Gordon Brown.

Add into the mix a politician’s lust for power, coming mainly from the sexual lust that it arouses in them (I’m sure more than once a British politician has ejaculated at the sight of William Gladstone’s portrait in the House of Commons), and you can easily see how the British coalition was not a strange fit between two opposed ideological sparring partners, but more a simple banding together of trust-fund babies. But public perception is what counts, and both parties may find themselves the losers from this coalition in the long-run. Unless, of course, the Liberal Democrats really had the support of true social liberals, rather than just the disenfranchised ex-Labourites. Only time will tell.

With a ukelele. The wait is finally over.

A brief rundown of shows currently or recently airing around the world. Probably a few minimal spoilers.

Heroes

When women give birth, their brains are flooded with hormones that cause them to forget how painful childbirth is, so they’ll do it again and propagate the species. Something similar occurs in my brain when I watch Heroes. I sit there thinking, “Holy SHIT, this is awful. This is just so bad. I am never watching it again.” And then the following week a new episode is out and I get excited and watch it all over again. Madness. Terrible show.

V

This series is like a superband of sci-fi actors. Firefly’s Inara (or SG:1′s Adria) is the leader of the alien Visitors, along with her daughter Kara from Smallville. They’re opposed by Serious Face Agent from The 4400, Flashforward’s Naughty Wife, Supernatural’s Castiel and this other guy who hasn’t been in any other sci-fi shows, but I shit you not the actor’s name is Morris Chestnut, which is pretty fucking cool. Oh, and Kees Van Dam from New Zealand’s terrifying drama Street Legal is in there, his performance utterly shown up by everyone around him. And Bailey from Party of Five (ROMAN NUMERAL V OMG) is the guy who we don’t know where his loyalties lie. Continues to be entertaining. Watch it.

Diana just looked over my shoulder at the images for this post, said "gay", and walked away.

Doctor Who

It took me until Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone to be sold on the 11th Doctor, but now I am. I’m going over well-worn territory when I say that David Tennant got a little bit too omnipotent while Russell T Davies was a lot too panto. Matt Smith’s Doctor doesn’t know what the shit he’s doing and Stephen Moffat’s wasted no time in introducing this season’s overarching storyline with some cool dark stuff, and the reoccurrence of the Weeping Angels wasn’t as shit as I thought it would be.

Smallville – season 9 finale

This season has been a bit of a drop in standards, with only one stand-out episode: Absolute Justice, starring Stargate’s Michael Shanks as Hawkman and a bunch of DC Universe legends showing up (including Doctor Fate and the original Sandman). The finale was okay, but the cliff-hanger would have been better if the season had managed to raise any tension at all.

Supernatural – season 6 finale

The thing about Supernatural is, it’s a love story but with brotherly love instead of romantic love. I tell people this and they say, “Oh, yeah, bromance is all the rage.” But “bromance” doesn’t do Supernatural justice. It’s a genuine brotherly love story. The main highlight of the last few seasons for me is the actor who plays Castiel, who’s some kind of comic genius.

The season finale followed the usual pattern of showing “the road so far”, a montage of the past set to Carry On Wayward Son. The ending was great. So great that it could quite satisfactorily be the end of the series. Sadly, it doesn’t look like they’ll let it die, so I hope they’ve got some good plotting set up, because things feel really complete.

Stargate Universe

SGU is consistently pretty good. It’s beautifully shot, perfectly acceptable stories, good acting, good characters, cool premise. It’s really now just a matter of giving it a chance to take all of those elements and turn them into something that really stands out. Slowly developing situations and characters are all very well, but before this first season is done, there had better be some really fucking cool surprises in store.

Flashforward

I lost track of Flashforward sometime during the 70-year hiatus the United States apparently likes to impose halfway through seasons. Kiwi viewers have not suffered the same irregularity and are probably enjoying it as much as I was at the time. I want to get back into it. The casting and acting were great. There was just this growing sensation that the story was going to get away from the writers. If the flashforward is to six months in the future, how can the series last past one season? Without, of course, having another flashforward again, and again, and so on, which gets us into Heroes territory. Dominic Monaghan is fucking cool, though.

The '80s intro to the '80s episode of Fringe. Nice.

Fringe

My friend Morgan got me into Fringe, and he was right that I would like it a lot. There is something unsatisfactory to me, though, about the two-universe cosmos in which it takes place. If you’re going to have more than one universe, why have only two? Maybe there are more in store, but it’s in danger of becoming a cul-de-sac of story potential, again the threat of Heroes territory, but the Bishop characters are cool enough to keep me watching. Still can’t decide if the female lead is the most annoying person alive or not, but Daniels from The Wire is consistently b’dass.

I started reading Penny Arcade in… 1998. Working on the ihug helpdesk, there were a few sites that kept us in good spirits in between telling elderly people to turn their computers off and then on again. Red Meat was one. The Onion was another, of course. And Sinfest and Penny Arcade.

It’s been years since it was the correct URL, but I still type in www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3 to get there. Mike’s online proposal to his girlfriend was one of my first lessons in how moving unexpected vulnerability can be. Just a comic, but also just about the sweetest goddam thing ever. She said yes, by the way.

I recently reconnected with a couple named Helen and Jamie. They had sort of become mythological to me, something like imaginary friends from childhood. I knew them in 2001 as they frequented the net cafe I was running, and I never thought to get their contact details, or even their surnames. They turned up in a Westpac ad a while back, and I tried a few Googlings to find them, but failed. Turns out we had half of Auckland in common, including my stepmother having lectured Helen at Auckland University of Technology University. Weird how things turn out – things turn out weird.

It was Helen who first delighted in telling me that the guys who wrote/drew Penny Arcade looked nothing like their comic personas. I felt a degree of disappointment, I think. I had forgotten about that.

Penny Arcade became an institution in the world of computer games, which despite my occasional addictions has never been my thing. They’re regulars at gaming conventions, got into an hilarious dispute with one Jack Thompson, and Mike came up with a law of the universe – the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which posits that given anonymity and an audience, anyone will become a total fuckwad. Half the internet explained, and porn accounts for the rest.

And they made the Time magazine 100.

Both Mike and Jerry suffer from forms of clinical depression, and have found relief through medication. Their candid discussion of it is interesting partly because of the contrast between their experience and what we tend to see on awaresness ads in New Zealand. As someone who has suffered from depression and been recommended medication in the past, I found their concerns about drugs taking away their “spark”, their good-crazy, particularly interesting.

You’ll have to watch through an ad first, and will have to disable your AdBlock to do so, but it’s worth the watch.