| Thursday, December 09, 2004 |
 | I feel increasing sympathy with John Adams. The first president of the USA was George Washington, the third Thomas Jefferson. What sort of a chance did John Adams have? Possibly more chance if there had not three presidents later been another, better-known John Adams as President - John Quincy Adams. He wasn't just a president, he was also a pathologist, and he fought crime. The kids love that kind of shit.
Obscure presidents are great - it's the way they seem to act as a fallow period between proper, epochal presidents. Like Taft. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Bug on the windshield.
I've been compiling a trivia quiz. Does it show? Does it show in the hate hate hate hate hate hate?
Meanwhile, Stewart Lee last night, whose special bonus show by popular demand was, as he observed lugubriously while peering over the empty front row, possibly a little overoptimistic. A lot of his act was explaining why various jokes didn't work, in a kind of masterclass (improvisation is difficult. It's much easier to write it all down beforehand and than go 'um' a lot), but he also handled why Mel Gibson is an insane bigot (well, how, really), why farting is always going to be funnier than the Graham Norton show (like a pink jackboot stamping on a human face forever), how we know William Wallace was gay (which is great. It's great that Scotland, which has always been a very progressive nation, should have a gay national hero. I wish English national heroes like Alfred the Great or Robin Hood were gay. But they weren't. Only William Wallace was), why Jimmy Hill is evil, why Gary Lineker is evil, why Ben Elton is worse than Osama bin Laden (Osama bin Laden lives according to a consistent ethical code). Pretty comprehensive and socially inclusive. Of course, it, like so much culture these days it took place in the shadow of terror:
On 911 - the ninth of November, we invented those dates, take back the language - I was in Grenada in Spain, in a bar, watching the news on TV. I asked the barman, in Spanish, using what little Spanish I had, where it was happening - donde esta?. He replied Nuevo Yorica.
And I thought, Oh, thank god, it's in Colombia or something, it doesn't really matter.
I realised, listening to what was in effect a disquisition on modern stand-up, why I like Stewart Lee. He rarely goes for the big laughs - he aims to create regular, consistent amusement. He doesn't go for thematic recurrence but formal recurrence. And we are in worldview quite similiar, which given that his is the efflorescence of a comic persona and mine is my personality does not bode well.
At one point he demanded, to demonstrate his love of the Hulk, that the audience ask him any question about the Hulk. I asked the name of the young man Bruce Banner rescued from the gamma bomb test site. He answered, confidently, Rick Jones. Then went on to detail that Rick subsequently became Bucky, Captain America's sidekick, and then hosted the reincarnated Captain Mar-Vell.
"The Kree warrior," I offered out of instinct.
"Yes. The Kree Warrior. And then he married Margo, and she died of cancer. But I think that's enough. We've proved our credentials."
I think he was a bit scared. I know I was.
1 Comments:
Always had a soft spot for 11th prez James K Polk.
'Fifty four forty or fight!'
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