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Sep. 16th, 2012 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWent to Eugene Mirmam Comedy Festival at the Bell House last night which is literally a ten to fifteen minute walk from my flat. I prefer the word flat to apartment. It works better.
Not the nicest area of town - it's in the Gowanus, or the industrial area which has now become artist studios, tech companies, bars, nightclubs, and yuppie apartments. In short, it's the new Chelsea (or rather the old pre-21st Century Chelsea), even has a body of smelly water close by.
See? I knew if I just stayed in Brooklyn long enough it would eventually become the best of Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chelsea combined. All it requires is a bit of patience.
We had drinks at the Halyards, prior, where I discovered that I could have been watching True Blood and Breaking Bad each week while downing expensive cocktails.
The comedy festival was fairly good - I did laugh, hard. But for some reason and perhaps you can explain this to me? The humor sort of devolved into stupid sex and bodily function jokes. Mirmam kept trying to raise the bar, as did his compatriots, but it was hard going.
The festival was set up as a bit of an improv contest centered around a faux forensics and speech competition. People were given topics to either debate, speak on, create a song, or
do a dramatic interpretation of. They ranged from a power point discussion of an "anal canal", animal husbandry, emotional eating, toms of Maine (which the comics wisely choose over topless sunbathing and bros vs. hoes), Kate Middleton's breasts, the anniversary of the Nazi Flag, killing Canadian geese to prevent them from flying into plane engines, and the NYC soda ban. The dramatic interpretations were of Night Mother (which was good but not funny) and how Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey applies to...the movie Showgirls.
The debators:
Moderator - your topics are the merits or demerits of Topless Sunbathing, Bros vs. Hoes, and Toms of Maine.
Kitsch (debator one who has a thick English accent): I'm thinking Toms of Maine, since I have no idea what it is.
Mirmam: It's either that or bros vs. hoes.
Audience member: There's always topless sunbathing.
Kitsch: Shut-up, who asked you? Get your mind out the gutter.
Mirman: Yes. We didn't forget the topic. We selectively removed it from contention. Have to limit it somehow.
Kitsch: Exactly, he's manipulative that way. So, again what is Toms of Maine?
Mirman: organic toothpaste, deodrant, stuff like that.
Now you'd think this would become about sex. But you would be wrong. Kitsch who is defending the merits of Toms of Maine explains how it works as very good alternative to viagra and goes on and on about it.
Have to admit sex is an easy topic to make fun of. Unlike politics which they skirted around quite deftly, although it was definitely made fun of.
I did rather like the parody/satire of Hollywood's desire to turn every movie into Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey. That Star Wars wasn't the only one, there was also "Showgirls".
But I think they took it a bit too far.
There's this old saying that drama is easy, comedy is hard. It's true, it is. Because it essentially comes from a place of pain. You are ripping open and scab and making fun of it.
At its best, it's self-mockery. You're making fun of the human condition. That's not easy to do. First off, you are bound to offend someone or piss them off - if you haven't, it's a) not likely to be that funny and b) you aren't really doing your job, are you?
In other news? I bought another book today, I'd flirted with it at two bookstores last week, and decided to take the plunge this week. It's called Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul by Giulio Tononi, who is a leading researcher on consciousness and sleep at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It has artwork, hence the book purchase not the Kindle purchase.
Here's the description: Tononi, a leading researcher on consciousness and sleep at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, imagines Galileo on a Dantesque journey of exploration to discover the fundamental nature of consciousness. His meditation on the meanderings of Galileo, who is accompanied at times by scientists resembling Francis Crick, Alan Turing and Charles Darwin, serves as a vehicle for explaining his own theory that consciousness can be quantified. The brain, Tononi postulates, consists of billions of neurons: think of them as transistorlike elements that represent bits with a particular value. When tallied, they add up to more than the sum of their parts. That increment above and beyond—Tononi calls it “phi”—represents the degree to which any being, whether human or mule, remains conscious.
And I'm currently reading The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiuu - on the Kindle - it doesn't have pictures. This is the book about the three Israeli Teen Women who Serve in the Israelie Special Forces by someone who actually served in that unit, was born Israelie, and lives in Israel.
Not the nicest area of town - it's in the Gowanus, or the industrial area which has now become artist studios, tech companies, bars, nightclubs, and yuppie apartments. In short, it's the new Chelsea (or rather the old pre-21st Century Chelsea), even has a body of smelly water close by.
See? I knew if I just stayed in Brooklyn long enough it would eventually become the best of Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chelsea combined. All it requires is a bit of patience.
We had drinks at the Halyards, prior, where I discovered that I could have been watching True Blood and Breaking Bad each week while downing expensive cocktails.
The comedy festival was fairly good - I did laugh, hard. But for some reason and perhaps you can explain this to me? The humor sort of devolved into stupid sex and bodily function jokes. Mirmam kept trying to raise the bar, as did his compatriots, but it was hard going.
The festival was set up as a bit of an improv contest centered around a faux forensics and speech competition. People were given topics to either debate, speak on, create a song, or
do a dramatic interpretation of. They ranged from a power point discussion of an "anal canal", animal husbandry, emotional eating, toms of Maine (which the comics wisely choose over topless sunbathing and bros vs. hoes), Kate Middleton's breasts, the anniversary of the Nazi Flag, killing Canadian geese to prevent them from flying into plane engines, and the NYC soda ban. The dramatic interpretations were of Night Mother (which was good but not funny) and how Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey applies to...the movie Showgirls.
The debators:
Moderator - your topics are the merits or demerits of Topless Sunbathing, Bros vs. Hoes, and Toms of Maine.
Kitsch (debator one who has a thick English accent): I'm thinking Toms of Maine, since I have no idea what it is.
Mirmam: It's either that or bros vs. hoes.
Audience member: There's always topless sunbathing.
Kitsch: Shut-up, who asked you? Get your mind out the gutter.
Mirman: Yes. We didn't forget the topic. We selectively removed it from contention. Have to limit it somehow.
Kitsch: Exactly, he's manipulative that way. So, again what is Toms of Maine?
Mirman: organic toothpaste, deodrant, stuff like that.
Now you'd think this would become about sex. But you would be wrong. Kitsch who is defending the merits of Toms of Maine explains how it works as very good alternative to viagra and goes on and on about it.
Have to admit sex is an easy topic to make fun of. Unlike politics which they skirted around quite deftly, although it was definitely made fun of.
I did rather like the parody/satire of Hollywood's desire to turn every movie into Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey. That Star Wars wasn't the only one, there was also "Showgirls".
But I think they took it a bit too far.
There's this old saying that drama is easy, comedy is hard. It's true, it is. Because it essentially comes from a place of pain. You are ripping open and scab and making fun of it.
At its best, it's self-mockery. You're making fun of the human condition. That's not easy to do. First off, you are bound to offend someone or piss them off - if you haven't, it's a) not likely to be that funny and b) you aren't really doing your job, are you?
In other news? I bought another book today, I'd flirted with it at two bookstores last week, and decided to take the plunge this week. It's called Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul by Giulio Tononi, who is a leading researcher on consciousness and sleep at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It has artwork, hence the book purchase not the Kindle purchase.
Here's the description: Tononi, a leading researcher on consciousness and sleep at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, imagines Galileo on a Dantesque journey of exploration to discover the fundamental nature of consciousness. His meditation on the meanderings of Galileo, who is accompanied at times by scientists resembling Francis Crick, Alan Turing and Charles Darwin, serves as a vehicle for explaining his own theory that consciousness can be quantified. The brain, Tononi postulates, consists of billions of neurons: think of them as transistorlike elements that represent bits with a particular value. When tallied, they add up to more than the sum of their parts. That increment above and beyond—Tononi calls it “phi”—represents the degree to which any being, whether human or mule, remains conscious.
And I'm currently reading The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiuu - on the Kindle - it doesn't have pictures. This is the book about the three Israeli Teen Women who Serve in the Israelie Special Forces by someone who actually served in that unit, was born Israelie, and lives in Israel.