Hannibal is heartbroken

music you should listen to before you die according to the idiot who owns this blog, #2 Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand

They are all beautifully weird, but "Hot Freaks" just kicks ass.

A monster

they broke your bones
severed your skin
ripped the heart out from your chest

your old you

despised
crushed by cruel
judgements

until a darkness grew
within
a darkness that bred
as quick as fire,
a Targaryen child
devouring your old muscles
like oxygen

the absence of light
is but
a cocoon,
made from the pain
they rendered you,
elementary in the
metamorphosis

as the pupils dilate
and the neck grows,
and the skin turns into black leather
hands become claws
teeth, sharp daggers

savagery awakens
and the mirror no longer
shows
a reflection

perhaps a shadow

a strange resemblance
to a remote carcass

but the beast is new

their acts succeeded

they planted

a monster

in you


image taken from here

from the series "I fucking love this"

the comedian and his turtle, number two.

"You know, some days I wake up truly uninspired," I said to the turtle. "Everything I produce seems to have lost quality, to be void of feeling, decayed. Everything just blatantly looks like shit."
"There is nothing wrong with shit my dear," the turtle said whilst playing darts. "Dogs eat shit all the time and they're truly smart animals."

The turtle was right. Even the smart, from time to time, eat their own poo. That thought troubled me, not in the sense of the material poo but the ethereal kind, the poo that isn't truly a large abandoned smelly turd on a field somewhere but those things we allow to be in contact with ourselves that aren't good, the things that hurt us.

"You're right," the turtle said, now using the darts to perform voodoo on a Simon Cowell doll.
"About what?", I said.
"That thing you were just thinking, that philosophical shit you just came up with."
"But how would you know what I was thinking? You're just some turtle performing voodoo in my living room. You have no permission to access my consciousness."
"Oh but you do forget dear, I am a product of your imagination and every single thought that comes through your head, I'm right there, sitting next to it, jizzing in its mouth."

I couldn't help the incessant thoughts about this poo business. Cats are different from dogs. Compared to dogs, they possess an even higher level of animal mental retardation - I mean, they wash using their tongues - but still, they don't eat their own shit.

"You were onto something before that dear," said the turtle again, now running on the treadmill. "Humans do eat shit".
"Not literally," I said. "Ok, maybe except for that time when I was seven months of age and dipped my index finger into a nappy. Although that was in the hope of finding the chocolate mousse mother had promised me."
"Oh but I don't mean that, you see. I don't mean you are in perpetual damnation in the company of Satan ingesting your own special mountain of turds. What I mean is you, as human beings, no longer expect quality. You settle for less."

"You marry somebody that hurts you, you become friends with somebody that doesn't accept you, you try to please those who dislike you, you pollute the water you eventually drink and even the air that you breathe."

As I sat back on the chair picking my nose and eating a bogey, I meditated on what the turtle said. Maybe it was right, maybe we as a species have made ourselves content with impurity, with carelessness. Maybe its a sign that we have accepted our mortal nature, our extinction and have, in consequence, become suicidal.

"But you are wrong about this water I am drinking," I said to the turtle. "It can't be polluted since I have spent a fortune on this very expensive filtering machine."

"Oh, but I know there is nothing wrong with the water when it comes out of the filtering machine," the turtle said, "But what you missed was that while I performed my little pseudo-philosophical speech on you I took that glass of pristine water and urinated in it."



Image borrowed from here

the making of dick jokes and other funny systems, chapter one.

The genesis of everything funny seems, at times, rather complex. I have been watching comedy from a very young age and I still have doubts over what is and isn't funny. Many great comedians never know if a joke will work. They suspect it might but until they actually try it in front of an audience, how do they know? There are so many factors at stake for a joke to work, such as the way it is delivered or the type of audience you're telling it to.

Comedy can be learned in many different ways. I have assimilated a lot about process from comedy writing books and have listened to advice from some of the comedians I admire. However, I still find it quite difficult to find an effective method for writing stand-up material. I always found this particularly strange, that filmmakers, painters and writers share their secrets but comedians, somehow, don't. So with this collection of posts I will try to share what methods and inspiration I've emulated from others.

For me personally, the very first step is always the subject. It can be anything but I personally prefer it to be something I am passionate about. My starting point - before I start writing anything - is to remember the advice of the great George Carlin:

This is key to me. I have to care about my subjects. I mean, you don't have to and you can probably still come up with plenty of funny stuff but if you want to be different, your view of the world matters. Of course you can make jokes about anything. Carlin had observational routines more focused on everyday things (the little world) like the brilliant "Stuff" to his most political material he did in his later years. It really doesn't matter what you're talking about, if it drives you crazy, make it funny!

From the books on comedy I've had the chance to read, there are two that I've found particularly useful. Sally Holloway's 'The Serious Guide to Joke Writing' is a great one to have always around when you're writing. My second favourite is Oliver Double's 'Getting the Joke', as it comes full of advice and quotations from other comics.

There are several useful tools in Sally Holloway's book but I'd start with the joke webs. Many comedians have these in other formats, such as Jerry Corley from Stand-Up Comedy Clinic who produces lists of words related to the main subject. Either way, a joke web is basically a web of subjects, being that you start with your main subject and make connections to other subjects that are, even remotely, connected to the main one. A bit like this one I did on religion:

So after you find your subject, do a joke web on it. Think about as many things connected to that subject as possible and we're on our way to make some jokes.

More on the next chapter.

music you should listen to before you die according to the idiot who owns this blog, #1 Sonic Youth - Washing Machine.

words from the great C.K.

JW: Your material always seems incredibly thought-through. It’s not just button-pushing for the sake of button-pushing.

Yeah, sometimes. But I’ve said things onstage that are totally indefensible if you take them at their naked truth, and it’s all part of a thing. I remember when I did the joke the other night about the weird babies, and I said Chinese babies are the same as deformed babies — that’s just…what a horrible thing to say, and Pamela said to me, her natural stance is, “Don’t pick on people, don’t say things, you don’t have to hurt people,” but she now said, for the first time, things like the Chinese people joke are really important in your act, and they are, because I’m fucking around with a lot of big ideas, and if I just did those, it would start to…I don’t have the authority to really talk about those things, I don’t have the education or the right to seriously talk about these things. I have no fucking right to be talking about that, and when I make a joke like about a baby with a tree branch growing out of its head and a Chinese baby being the same thing, I’m just being a dick, and I’m being a dick in a new and exciting way, I’m really good at it, and I’m able to find jokes like that in places that people didn’t know that they were before, so that’s just a really good joke to me, but it’s also weird, it takes away my credibility, it makes it clear that, look, I don’t expect you to believe any of this, I’m just being a dick, I’m just enjoying myself. It’s just fun. Really, this thing about evolution I said, you’re really going to think I’m taking it seriously? I just said that Chinese babies are deformed for being Chinese — what kind of person would say that? If you’re a really Hitler-esque eugenic person or something, or someone who’s just honking a big horn and being a dick, just riding a bike with exploding shoes, just being a numb nuts…

Do your thing and now, because fear never goes away

I've always wanted to be a comedian. But where does the funny come from? Stand-up has been called 'the toughest job in the world' but that's bullshit.

The fact that it took me eight long years to get the balls to take my jokes on stage is testimony only to my past cowardice.

My first ever 'gig' was at the King Gong, the monthly gong show at the Comedy Store, in Manchester. I must have been to the toilet more times than I can count. If you thought 'pissing yourself with fear' was just a figure of speech, well, it isn't.

The number of thoughts going through my head was countless. I had my material, my cowboy hat and was ready to rock. Except I wasn't. As much as people love to romanticize it, losing your virginity often isn't such a pretty thing. I sucked, big time. I wasn't terrible but I was very, very far from where I wanted to be.

The important thing here is, it doesn't matter how shit you are going to be at first - you have to start somewhere. I have a few funny friends with such great comedy brains who I think would be great comedians but some have no appeal to go onstage. Maybe they'll turn out to be great comedy writers. Maybe they will never take that step. Who knows?

Others simply can't get past the fear, as I couldn't for eight years. The thing no one tells you is, the fear never goes away. You never really overcome it. I always go back to the prison scene from Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises for inspiration. In that scene, Bruce Wayne constantly fails to escape and can't quite understand why. Until the Blind Prisoner, ironically, makes him see:

Blind Prisoner

You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak.

Bruce Wayne
Why?

Blind Prisoner
How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible without the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death.

Bruce Wayne
I do fear death. I fear dying in here, while my city burns, and there's no one there to save it.

Blind Prisoner
Then make the climb.

Bruce Wayne
How?

Blind Prisoner
As the child did. Without the rope. Then fear will find you again.

The absence of fear isn't courage, it's stupidity. True courage comes from understanding your fears and acting despite them. If people didn't fear death, how many of us would choose not to live?

When I'm onstage, the fear is there with me.

I still remember the exact moment when I decided to do stand-up comedy. I woke up on the morning of my 27th birthday, and something was missing.

In spite of everything, I wasn't happy. I had realized something I hadn't thought about before. I was three years from being thirty. Thirteen away from forty. I had come to terms with the thought that, sooner rather than later, I was going to die - and I hadn't done any of the things I dreamed of.

Most of my favourite comedians had started quite young. Hell, Bill Hicks started doing stand-up when he was fourteen. I had some catching up to do.

I was afraid, and that fear of dying without having lived on my terms was the catalyst for everything that came after that.

I haven't even reached twelve comedy gigs yet. In fact, not counting the gong shows, I've probably managed a total of about eight. It doesn't matter though.

The fact that I've started something is the most important thing for me.

Fear isn't the obstacle, it's the fuel.

Now make the climb. Without the rope. Then fear will find you again.

The comedian and his turtle

"Why did you want to become a comedian?" the pink turtle asked, whilst he made scrambled eggs.

"I wish I had a definite answer," I said. "However, the fact that you only seem real due to my excessive consumption of narcotics makes me think you're either a simple fragment of my own imagination or a dissociation of my personality that has chosen to live in the sewers and learn martial arts from some random mutant rat."

Some days I wake up after having had intercourse with a morbidly obese woman and question my existence. Why am I here? Who is this woman? How can I dispose of her body in a manner that won't alert the authorities? As I stare into the morning skies eating some out of date cheesecake, I wonder.

From the very moment I was born I tried to be funny. Had my fair share of success at birth, as one has to admit there is nothing more amusing than seeing an individual like myself, with a face that resembles a messy pubic area, abandoning a vagina. One cannot afford such luxuries these days.

In my early years, Grandmother Zulmira was my biggest fan. With my father's help I recorded what was Ruben's first ever appearance on tape. Terrifying as it sounds, this recording's contents amount to background conversations of my mother and grandmother tidying up the kitchen after dinner, three-year-old Ruben performing swearing duties on a microphone and my dad doing his best to stop me from swallowing that same object.

At the time my dad must have thought either I was going to be some sort of performing artist or just somebody who takes great pleasure in shoving phallic objects down his throat. So far, I must admit to have failed at both. A comedian isn't always an artist. A comedian doesn't always perform. As in my case, sometimes he's not even funny and therefore does occasionally suck. But as Bev from Swindon* once said, you just got to keep trying.

"But why a comedian?" the turtle asked whilst reading War and Peace and taking a shit on my dinner table - quite an exceptional animal, even good at multitasking. "What's in being a comedian that makes it so special?"

I thought about it for a moment then a tear started running down my cheek and I wondered what the cause could be for my incontinent eye. Then I realized I was alone in my living room, naked and chopping onions to the sound of Spandau Ballet's 'Gold'. Mental note: don't consult with Dr. Hoffman during the week.

"It's the laughs," I said to the nonexistent turtle. "I love their sound, the energy. It's really a sad thing. In the end I think it's about acceptance. The comedian is a loner, he just doesn't belong anywhere. Some men conquer by force, some by intelligence, I have none of those. I can only try to be funny. Share the most embarrassing moments of my life and hope that audiences will laugh at my misery. But I will happily exchange my misery for their happiness. When I make that connection with others, when my truth becomes theirs and they laugh and are happy, even for a moment, that makes me happy".

"You're an utopian," the turtle said, smiling. "Maybe one day your dreams will come true without you having to take any drugs. Maybe you'll make that connection you long for, everybody will laugh and not because you have a beard or are remotely funny, just because I'm nice and took a picture of you sucking on my balls."


Image borrowed from here.

* A nice lady that gave me a cigarette on the 2nd of June of 2014 outside the Frog and Bucket in Manchester when I was very, very drunk.