Tag: comedy

What Now Then Plan Man

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Life is full of lessons. Every day if we choose to look we would see them and one way or another learn something. This year for many has been a learning experience like no other, not more or less than other things but certainly unique. There is nobody who could have predicted what has happened and nobody who couldn’t have learnt at least something from it. The last twenty-four hours has thrown another spanner in my face, or even in the works, let’s call it both.

Strangely enough very little has actually changed. I am supposed to go out to Greece to do a little renovation work on someones boat mid-September. I was going to do a little sailing with a friend for the first week and then work for three. The three was the limit because I had tickets for a comedy show on the 15th October from an already postponed Jonathan Pie performance from April. Unfortunately in the last twenty-four hours all has changed. For family reasons my friend has cancelled the sailing and because of this virus the show has been postponed yet again, this time to May next year. Third time lucky? Perhaps it would be wise not to plan.

That’s it though really isn’t it. Some lessons sneak up on us but some we’re fully aware of as we step into and experience them. Without a doubt I’m fully aware of the futility of planning. I say futility because my track record of never sticking to my plans makes them pointless. One reason I never stick to them is not because I don’t do anything but is down to my acting on a whim as things happen. It makes me wonder if the planning is to create a safety net in my mind as well as allow me to escape and fantasise when life is not so interesting. Currently life is interesting in certain respects but with it being unfulfilling in others I can’t deny I don’t let my mind run sometimes.

This year has made planning anything a complete waste of time. Strangely enough I actually really enjoyed lockdown because I knew I had no options, I was trapped in one place and you can’t make plans when nothing can happen. Traditionally having no options would be a problem but perversely being aware of and being lucky enough to have many creates a different type of pressure and stress altogether. This disappeared and while lockdown brought up different problems, at least the one of options was a weight off my back. “Poor you” I hear you saying and you would be right as there are people trapped and miserable all around the world but stress and weight on you back is still stress and weight on your back.

Anyway, despite little really changing my plans have gone up in smoke once more and something else will happen. Interestingly something else always happens and we just make the most of it as it does. Think of this year and all the new things people have done for example. That’s the beauty of a flexible approach to life but somehow even when that is clearly the way we still manage waste so much time and energy living in little fantasies of what could happen or be happening. It really is so difficult living in the present moment. And to just give an example, I have barely even been present while writing this, the whole time has been spent fantasising about spending the winter diving and sailing in the Canary Islands. The first step to overcoming a problem is to acknowledge the existence of the problem. I have a problem.

A TV Series’ Ungracefully Ageing

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It must be reasonably obvious to anyone who has ever watched television over an extended period that television shows have a point in which they reach their peak, are struggling to not just take it further but even maintain what they have and are staring down the steep slope of oblivion and cancellation. We all have examples of these. My favourite that never became one is Father Ted and it’s such a great example because as I said it never happened. Dermot Morgan, who played the titular character, sadly died of a heart attack before they filmed a fourth series and as a result Father Ted was immortalised, it never grew old and tired. The same could be said of Fawlty Towers which with only two series never got to the point in which it had refined and perfected the jokes and never had to push them too far in the process.

For there must be something in the idea; that once you’ve found the perfect recipe within a comedy you will kill your creation by not realising it’s limits. Just off the top of my head now I can think of Black Books, The Mighty Boosh, Spaced, to name but a few which were and still are incredible television series which knew when their time was up and didn’t destroy their long term reputation in the process. Without doing some research and actually speaking to those involved, we’ll probably never know who pushes a series too far and who stops it at the right time. If I was to make a guess I imagine the networks will want to rinse it dry and the writers, if they’re not driven primarily or solely by money, will want to protect the artistic integrity of their creation.

I’ve started watching the third series of The Young Offenders which is about two good hearted teenage neds in Cork Ireland, running around causing trouble, stealing bikes, getting their girlfriends pregnant and just being idiots. It’s quite a ridiculous program and in time honoured fashion is getting more ridiculous as the show has developed. There was something raw and utterly hilarious in the first series and while I’m still enjoying the third, it is possible they may struggle in the fourth if there is one. You can only up the ante so far until it becomes too much. I always suspected Father Ted perfected everything by the third series and that the fourth may have struggled, The Young Offenders may just do similar, not that they have either perfected everything or can even dream of being at the level of Father Ted but the point stands. And time will tell.

Anyway here’s an Irish cartoon which I’ve never watched but which Dermot Morgan does the voice of I assume a duck, as it flies south for winter, with loads of exciting stuff happening in between.

F Is For Family

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I have found a new series to watch. I don’t watch many things these days but I’m fond of cartoons. The usual ones like Family Guy or Rick and Morty of course, I’m a fan of Bob’s Burgers and the new series by Loren Bouchard; Central Park, which is a musical of all things. I stumbled upon F is for Family a few days ago and I like it. It is based upon the childhood of comedian Bill Burr. I don’t actually know much about him and I suspect he’s someone far more famous in America than here. I simply recognise his name from the odd Joe Rogan podcast that I’ve seen but not listened to. Maybe I will now though. I think I may even find some his comedy and watch it. I hope he’s good otherwise it’ll just spoil the cartoon, it’s whether the risk of not improving it is worth it.

He grew up in an Irish American family in the 1970s when people were a bit tougher and life seemed also a little harder while still immortalised. What’s good is how he creates the characters not how they would have been generally but it seems how he saw them. His big brother is angry and little sister a devil, his mother loving and father scary. There’s a childlike understanding of who each character is.

The seventies is a cool period for cartoons because it’s so easy to be creative, especially in a comedic sense. It is a nostalgic, but tough period in modern history. The strange thing is it is not mine because 1970s America would surely have been very different to the British 70s. They both seem to involve a lot of hardship and strife. No jobs, no fuel. High food prices. But people starting to rebel a little, live life. This could just be the version portrayed in television and the vast majority just got on with a life which was uneventful. F is for Family seemingly is set in a period of Bill Burrs childhood which was relatively intense enough to need to write a series on. It revolves around the father losing his job but with elements of it being honourable, and the subsequent liberation of the mother as she has to go out to work. Yet it is also expresses the uneventful moments in subtle ways, like all of this was just normal. It is very smartly put together.

Time For The Leathers

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Something exciting has happened today. Well not really but we bought a scooter for the pizza takeaway. In reality after the initial excitement of starting up and being the only takeaway here open, we have quietened done a bit. Apparently though this seems to be a common thread for all the takeaways in the village. The rumour is everyone heard we were doing well and decided to open again too but now we’re all just fighting over the scraps and surviving. Even the local caravan site has started selling pizzas, interestingly enough with similar prices to ours but a fraction cheaper. They do though put hardly any filling on and charge quite a lot for extras which we don’t bother charging for at all. It’s interesting this business thing, I can see why people allow it to take over their whole life. It doesn’t mine and I only intend on doing it until the end of the summer once these mythical tourists disappear but still it’s an interesting little experiment. I’m all about the experiences. I’ve dropped the anti-capitalist and become an entrepreneurial money maker, or at least attempting to become a money maker. I’m still not sure I’m taking it quite seriously enough to go full madman and that’s why it’s all a bit of fun. I want to make it a collective but my non-anarchic friends are refusing to countenance such a thing. Can’t quite make it a collective of one and I suspect they would have even more to say if I actually tried.

Anyway the important thing and the reason I started this piece was that we have bought a scooter. My friend who does the deliveries is not keen on it unfortunately and is refusing to drive around the village on it, he’s a car man. That means it’ll be down to me to put our logo on it and become that comedy idiot looking silly on a scooter. I can’t wait. I find scooters ridiculous, probably just as my mate does, but I’m always fine with looking silly. Secretly I’ve always wanted a motorbike and have resisted this far as I suspect I would probably have killed myself but I’m older now and arguably slightly more mature. If I resist my more ridiculous instincts I should be fine but certainly I see this as the first step on the road to buying a motorbike. A cool one mind, not some racer, something that looks a bit beat up and simple. My ego is picturing the intellectuals motorbike whatever the hell that is. I’m also happy to start at the bottom though, and by the time I’m ready for my midlife crisis I should just be good enough to drive an actual real life motorbike. In the meantime I can’t wait to make that ridiculous noise scooters make. Ah village life.

Computer Says No

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For those who remember the comedy sketch show Little Britain, what I am about to share with you will be familiar and for those who haven’t but have had to deal with a smiling and unhelpful person sitting behind a computer, this will also sound familiar. Little Britain was an outrages show depicting us Brits at our worst. They are thinking of bringing it back, it ended about ten years ago, but the people behind it have admitted that in todays cultural climate they would never have been able to make the same jokes were it realised for the first time now. The fake disability claimant; the working class female chav; the only gay in the village; and I’m sure there are more but I can’t remember. There was one sketch though with a female travel agent whose catchphrase when she couldn’t find the desired holiday or provide any help but wouldn’t go out of her way or try to think out of the box, and doing all this with a painfully fake friendliness and smile was “Computer says no”. It became quite a well known catchphrase for a bit as everyone had seemingly experienced this type of person. Tonight was my turn.

I went to pay for the kickboxing class and the woman behind the computer told me it was full. I explained that I had just driven half an hour and that there was always space, I knew the coach wouldn’t have a problem with it and the idea that the class could be full seemed utterly ludicrous. She went back to her computer and then proceeded to tell me there was nothing she could do because the class was full. I was interacting with a brick wall, and an annoyingly smily one with a friendly tone of voice to go with it. She told me to wait to the side while she dealt with the other people clearly in the hope I would just go away. Thank fully in a moment which proved how stupid the whole situation was; the coach walked past, I explained the situation, he said “no problem I’ll just move some things around, there’s always space”. Of course there’s always space, and of course something can always be done. All of a sudden the computer said yes.

In these moments it seems to be unclear whether the person involved either can’t or won’t think out of the box. Both are incredibly frustrating but one is an attitude and the other a capability. If someone is unable to think, realise, or see that there is always a solution then fair enough, they’re either victims of their own limitations or of societies conditioned shackles. If they won’t help you out, when they always can if they wanted to, then they are simply part of the problem for those not trying to be unnecessarily difficult on a daily basis. We can all be dicks but it always just seems like far more effort than just being kind and helpful to each other. Sometimes, perhaps it shouldn’t matter what the computer says, maybe just use those cognitive abilities in a new and profound way. It may just be a little easier the next time and who knows one day that smile and tone could even turn out to be genuine.