Digressing already.

So, it’s a well-known fact that I’ve got a bit of an issue with the overuse of the word “sorry” here in my adopted home country*.  The problem being that people use it as the default word following any sort of unexpected human interaction whatsoever, even when it doesn’t call for apology.  If you had access to London’s CCTV archives there would be thousands of pictures of my dumbstruck face after someone had inexplicably said “sorry” to me.  There’s all the times that people attract your attention before barging past you in a crowded environment, where the word’s used less as an apology and more of a warning.  Then there’s downright odd stuff like when you’re in a lift and the lift stops at an interceding floor in your journey: people have apologised to me for getting into my lift?!

My hypothesis was that “sorry” would get used to such an extent that it would be devalued as a term of apology.  In the same way that swearing on telly has become such a mainstream act that nobody seems to bat an eyelid if you say “damn”, “hell”, “bloody”, “bollocks”, etc. and if you want to make any real shock impact have to resort to -- I believe the vernacular is -- “F-Bombs” and “C-Bombs”, so too it seems that with the constant torrent of “sorry” going on, now you’ve got to use modifiers to impress upon someone when you’re actually sorry about something.

Previously on this very site, as you my beloved readership will doubtless recall, I pined for the days before society adopted the word “deeply”.  You’ve got to admit, it’s a good one -- it certainly brings the “sorry” back from the brink of flippancy.  Deeply sorry.  Personally it makes me think of a certain tune by shiny-domed brethren Right Said Fred.  Every time.

But what’s sparked off this particular post -- and I meant it as a rant, with all the connotation of a furious idiot standing on a cliff’s edge waving his arms around and screaming into the darkness, fully convinced that though everyone’s out there it’s more than likely nobody’s listening -- was this morning’s story from The Age (in the Technology section, no less!) about the Most Important Story in Britain at the moment, “cat bin lady”, and the news that:

Woman caught dumping cat in bin ‘profoundly sorry’

Doubtless you’ll know about this story -- it’s attracted the attention of nearly every news source in this country and clearly there’s little enough going on in Australia that they’ve caught on too.  Now, ultimately I don’t care in the slightest bit about this “story” (such as it is -- as The Onion have no doubt already demonstrated, a good 80% of headlines could be summed up with “Person does dumb thing”), however there’s a new card on the table here -- does a “profoundly” outrank a “deeply”?  And where next?  And what does this mean for international relations, where adjectives may hold a different sense of gravitas or meaning?  Are we going to end up in international diplomacy conversations as outlined in Dr Strangelove (3min 27sec in, in case it tries to play the whole thing)?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjN9yK4lhxU

I know I go on about this at tedious length, but it concerns me -- this cheapening of language by inappropriate overuse.  The natural progression, as I see it, is that society will arrive at a point where in order to demonstrate a genuine sense of apology, it’ll involve a John Cleese-style construction, which whilst amusing from a distance, will need to be fully-formed and inclusive such that any and all parties involve feel that every aspect of their grief and outrage has been addressed comprehensively by the apologetic party.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7mIy97_rlo

What’s my beef with that?  It’s yet another vector for social linguistic change into using far too many words to illustrate a simple idea**.  Along with “inclusive language”, it’ll render the English Language utterly inadequate for the transfer of ideas: modern communications technology allows us to send information around the world faster than ever before, and yet still that’s not enough -- as a society we’ve adopted widespread use of acronyms and contractions (viz. “text speak”) in order to convey the message even faster!  Armed with such tools, we use more words to say even less than ever before!

And if you don’t believe that, consider that if -- as we all know, and therefore must be scientifically true -- a picture is worth a thousand words, then one second of video footage is worth 24,000 words.  And so instead of saying anything worthwhile, we’re hellbent on communicating shit like this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsn0051qaZs

AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!?  WHY?!

In summary, people should apologise less when they don’t mean it.

Turns out it was a “sorry” rant, after all.

There is a happy ending though -- in the process of sorting through old posts to see whether I’d already visited and exhausted this topic, I stumbled on a rather excellent story about the time I dreamt about Australian Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja.  So there truly is something for everyone in this post.

Bye for now, kids!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3MlNY0ifY4

An overwhelmingly happy-making aspect of living in this city is the access I get to performances by bands, comedians, musicians, authors, and other inspirational creators who make it their hub and their home.  And for me, one of the foremost among these is -- I say without hyperbole -- Daniel Kitson.  To call him a comedian seems a bit limiting, although comedy is the attitude for which he’s most known.  I guess I’d broadly categorise what Kitson does into 3 areas:

1) Comedy, standup & short stories

2) Comic shows exploring an idea

3) Theatre/story shows

Whilst I don’t really believe in the fatalistic concept of “luck”, I would still regard myself as being very lucky to have had opportunity to go along twice recently to see Kitson’s story show, “66a Church Road -- A Lament, Made of Memories and Kept in Suitcases”.

The premise of this show is that it’s one man’s narrative of the relationship he has with his home over the course of 6 or so years, described with the passion, emotion and detail with which one might use when describing a relationship with a lover or family member.  It is a tightly scripted show, where Kitson mainly sits centre stage in a wooden chair amid scattered and heaped suitcases, letting the detail unfold as if it is the first time he’s ever told the story.  Over the course of the hour and a half he moves from his first meeting with the flat, to recounting various triumphant moments that took place inside, through his decision making process to buy the flat, then the growing of his resolve to do so, before moving on toward the end of the relationship and closure of that chapter of his life -- the narrative sprinkled and dotted with recorded sections of anecdote or observation on some occurrence involving the flat.

As usual, I just don’t know where to start -- the central theme of the performance is that Kitson regards time living in a place as a relationship with that place, and repeatedly talks about the growing familiarity with the walls, stairs, pathways through the space, the foibles and features of the place, the ongoing wrangles with irritation (such as the non-working doorbuzzer and its impact on his life), his delight in the type of window the place has…  It’s a clear delineation between the idea of “house” and “home”, and the idea of home is clearly of massive importance to him.  Having lived in places I regarded as either of those over time, I could clearly remember the feeling of sadness of moving out of somewhere that meant “home”, versus a place which was little more than a bed and a place to store my stuff.

I don’t know about Kitson’s writing process, but it seems to me that given the amount of craftsmanship and care he takes in selecting exactly which word to use (and the assembly is masterful) that it’s possibly a Douglas Adams style journey of perfectionism, taking ages to finesse the piece to say exactly what he wants to say, exactly how he wants to say it, and being ofttimes taunted by the constraints of a language that doesn’t have quite enough subtle variations on the word “snow” (for instance).  He switches between ideas and modes that are familiar, then grand.  Self-aggrandising, then self-deprecating.  Masterful, then vulnerable.  Intellectual & conscientious, then puerile and facile.  At the risk of cliché -- Kitson’s words and ideas are a richly textured canvas,  and when he says “wang” or “dickbag” it seems certain that an amount of appraisal has taken place as to whether that’s the best spot for it.

One of the ideas I found memorable from the show -- possibly because it was also one of the first -- was the idea of Daniel Kitson having spent the last 8 months since leaving his last flat living on his friend John’s loungeroom floor.  He’d reached a point where he felt that his presence was becoming tiresome for John now, and he vowed to take the very next place that was available, no matter how shabby or ill-suited to his needs that it was.  I love the fact that John refused this, saying that Daniel’s presence had become a bit tiresome after a week or so, and bordering on rude after a month.  John however now felt that it was imperative that Daniel find the perfect flat that he was looking for, otherwise John’s 8 months of sacrifice would have been in vain.  Now imagine that, but told *well*.

This is one in a long line of Kitson shows that I’ve been lucky enough to go to (Stories For The Wobbly Hearted, It’s The Fireworks Talking, Weltanschauung, The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church, The Ballad of Roger and Grace, Stories For The Starlit Sky, We Are Gathered Here), however it’s the only time I’ve had opportunity to see the same show twice: a practice I’m quite into, in order to see how much changes between nights and why.  Being a tightly scripted piece -- vastly different to the errant ramblings of Ross Noble, Eddie Izzard and Billy Connolly which I’ve done multiple nights of -- there was still a little crossover and variance, and each performance was still organic enough to be considered a unique thing in its own right.  As the second show I went to was the final of the run there was also a moment afterwards when The Big D thanked all the people he needed to thank, and said that each show was different, and mentioned how the previous afternoon he’d had an unexpected guest on stage -- one of the key figures in the show is his former landlord; a difficult man, who caused Kitson all manner of grief and conflict regarding the house situation and not a figure with whom the audience shared much sympathy.  So predictably, following the Saturday matinee show, a large balding figure strode down the steps towards the stage and embraced Kitson, saying “I’m the Landlord!”, and grinned benignly at the audience -- who were clapping uncertainly, unable to figure out whether this grinning meaty intruder had any sense of awareness about his own place in the story which he’d just watched.

Anyway, the event which inspired me to start writing this really was the Monday night following 66a Church Road, on which was a charity fundraising comedy gig for homeless charity Cardboard Citizens, and the night was to be compered by Daniel Kitson.  Following the expertly crafted wordsmithery, Kitson in freestyle mode is a very different animal.  Many friends of mine say they’re not fans of his standup stuff, but I look at it as an exercise in contrast -- both to his story shows, and to the rehearsed & honed comic sets of other comedians.  He unashamedly riffs off anything happening, maintaining an air of being absolutely in control, flicking from the mundane, to the obscene, to the absurd, and terrorising the front row by ruthlessly taking the piss out of one punter, then having quite a sweet chat with the next one.  Disinterestedly beginning the “What’s your name / what do you do?” thing which is de-rigeur, he lambasts one profession, confesses his inability to say anything funny about child social workers due to his respect for the function they perform, and upon learning that the next victim was a student he suddenly kicks the microphone stand over and screams in a mock-tantrum to an unseen event organiser side of stage, “I only asked for 2 things when I agreed to do this gig -- a massive ring of red lights hanging just above my head, and NO F***ING STUDENTS IN THE FRONT ROW!”.  Later, after individually disseminating a number of free earplugs he’d stolen from back stage, he started talking about how much he liked bacon and addressed the student from earlier -- trying to find some common ground in the awesomeness of bacon.  The student stated that he was a vegan, and without breaking gaze Kitson throws the mic stand over again, then defiantly walks off in mock-protest against the breaking of yet another performance clause.

There’s probably no point in going on endlessly, so that’ll do for now.

If you want to see or hear more of Kitson’s work, you’re kinda shit out of luck -- he’s notoriously antagonistic to the idea of recordings, so there’s precious little footage about other than the odd YouTube video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7itrqtMs1qY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6GEmgjO0o

And a couple of audio recordings which he started distributing as a podcast about 4 years ago, but never got around to doing any more of.

Objective opinion?  Absolutely.

One of my learned contemporaries is a chap by the name of Pete.  He lives in New York and goes by the moniker “Spiro” occasionally, or professionally/academically since being awarded his Ph.D. he’s become “Doctor Love”.  Here’s a picture:

Over the years Spiro’s professed a certain antipathy towards the dramatic arts (with the exception of his world-acclaimed performance in HMS Pinafore at Linden Park Primary School).

Early in July when I went into London’s glittering West End to watch the much-publicised play, La Bête, expecting the role of Elomire to be played by Tony Award winning actor David Hyde Pierce, along with fellow castmembers The Amazing Joanna Lumley and a storming performance by Mark Rylance.  So imagine my surprise to find that Hyde Pierce was nowhere to be seen, and our friend The Doctor has sneakily re-established himself a stage career…

Or am I imagining things?

(photos craftily nicked from the DHP fansite linked above… hope that’s OK?)

An example of this was the other day when I was tapping away on Facebook chat to a friend and they said “[X] has happened, and now I’m really pissed off!”, to which my Pavlovian response was “Well it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on!”.  I did some research among my contemporaries, and it turns out that I started using that particular snappy comeback in the early 1990s (and have been doing so ever since)*.  It’s just the thing that I say in response to the “pissed off” construction.  Admittedly, I won’t use it more than once in a conversation – as that would be tedious – however it’s too complex to keep track of who I’ve said it around, and how long ago, so really it’s hard to tell if it’s been outed as a stock retort or whether it still seems witty & interesting.

The beauty of that particular stock riposte is that it leaves the other person somewhere to go, and everyone feels all the more hilarious for it.  Most people say “Depends what you’re into”, although The Wise One Known As Ryan adds, “Or pissed in”.

As usual, this broad sweeping opinion piece was sparked off by something that happened in my local vicinity, and yesterday that thing was: Cow-orker #1 (lets call them “Angus”) was speaking to Cow-orker #2 (say, “Helmut”) about something.  Discussion finished.  Helmut turns to leave and offers “goodbye” type phrase.  Angus responds similarly.  Helmut appends goodbye transaction with stock line – “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do”.   Angus wittily replies “That doesn’t leave much!”.  And then there’s a half second of awkward non-comprehension as each tries to work out what the compound of those two statements means, before Helmut elects to treat it as throwaway and leaves the room.

My theory is that the problem here is the number of negatives being tossed about, and because they’re stock responses people just say them without really thinking through what they mean.  My guess is that Angus meant to imply that Helmut is a well-renowned loose cannon & maniac and will try anything.  However Helmut’s sentence construction has left ambiguity as to which set of activities Angus is referring to when he suggests the list to be meagre, and likewise Angus hasn’t specified which set of activities he’s claiming is small.  If the exchange went -

Helmut: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
Angus: But you’re only into golf, strangling animals, and masturbating?!

THEN it’d be clear.  Wordy, but hilarious and unambiguous.

Another example which crops up from time to time is when one person exclaims “Oh God!” (typically in surprise or shock, f’rinstance if they nearly tip their beer over): it’s not uncommon for the local wit to rebound with “Yes, my son?” – the obvious implication being a sort of divine one-upmanship.  Fair enough, I guess (if that’s what you’re into).  Conversely, some people will also offer an offhand “Yes Dad?” if someone in the area shouts out “JESUS!”.  The trouble seems to come about when either one of those two becomes a stock retort, and is used interchangeably given any sort of theological stimulus.  Sometimes the broad grin is accompanied by a look of concern on the respondent’s face as if to say “Oh, that doesn’t make sense… I hope they don’t pick me up on it?”, but more often than not there’ll be no mistake registered, and ultimately I’ll walk away with a sense of unease as I try to work out whether I’m an unrequited pedant, or whether there was a wider Trinitarian connotation to your reply.

Which I guess is the entire basis of my complaint in the first instance.

(a satisfactory instant comeback with high-risibility value for any time someone shouts out a name in exclamation, as stolen from the script of Blackadder Series 3, is: “Couldn’t make it I’m afraid, we’ll have to start without him/her/it/them”.  Try it.  Pure gold.)

In summary: Avoid compound negatives and family lineage in your snappy comebacks and we’ll all (i.e. Me) be happier for it.

(Incidentally, the image of the labrador on the front page has nothing to do with any of this – I was just struggling to come up with a context-relevant photo, and when I searched Google Images for “double negative” that labrador turned up in the results, for some reason.  Hey ho.  That’s the magic of Teh Interwebs for you…)

* It later turned out that I’d picked it up from my mate Gavin at Cross Road Bowl, who was bewildered to have had any formative influence on anyone.

Where in the hell can you get a halfway decent coffee in Camden Town? It sure isn’t with any of the… errmm… “larger and more conspicuously branded chain shops” in the neighbourhood, that’s for sure. There *used* to be a nice place that sold Segafredo, staffed by 2 perky and strangely perpetually immaculately white-dressed blondes next door to the Jazz Cafe, but that’s no longer.

Sure, you can perambulate up to Chalk Farm Road and poke your snout into any of the quirky organic knotholes up there, but if you’re on the pre-work morning station run it’s all very dire (the low-point being Cafe L’Amentine).

However the game has now changed with the arrival of The Camden Coffee House. A quality coffee shop that doesn’t leave you feeling or looking like a prat for having gone through the process of buying a cup.

We are talking top shelf brews, friendly staff, and an assortment of fresh breakfasty sugar/fat bundles (croissants, muffins & the like) that sing their sweet siren’s song from behind the glass.

AND: they know how to make a Cortado. Be still my beating adenosine receptors.

I’d best go back again tomorrow. For research purposes.

Check out my review of Camden Coffee House – I am mrfrisky – on Qype

However, it turns out it’s a little more challenging than that to get British people to do karaoke.

One of these individuals isn't wearing a comedy wig.

Not that it was ever something which we did in massive amounts back in Adelaide, but the few times I’ve done it I remembered it being quite some fun: various bashes at various Scout halls around the place… vague recollection of singing Chef’s “Chocolate Salty Balls” with Alex See somewhere….  the session in Sydney where 2 of Amy’s friends sang “Girl From Ipanema” in the voices of Burns & Smithers… and the karaoke 1st of my girlfriend-at-the-time during which my Dad insisted I join him in a duet of “Hey Jude”, and learned that it was indeed the longest song in the universe.  Good times.

It would be unfair to denounce Chris's guitar playing performance as "flaccid", but it didn't matter - everyone had their eyes on the mysterious redhead.

Fast forward to a Thursday night in North London, and I’d convinced an eager crowd of 14 to join me in the private karaoke booth surroundings at Lucky Voice.  It was an entirely different mentality to the process to what I’d experienced before, and though people explained it as being “closer to the original Japanese tradition” I thought that it was more plainly obvious that it was a strategic move to enable you to not embarrass yourself in front of a large crowd, and to be able to get a karaoke night off the ground without having to have too many people agree to go with you (they have rooms for 4 people, and various other numbers).  We went for the 15 person room purely because that was the biggest one they had.

Dave & I adding another dimension to karaoke - that of the awesome dance break

There seemed litte question as to who would go first: being the instigator & chief torturer, I got off to a flying start with the able aid of Brett, and we nailed a fairly serviceable rendition of “Boom! Shake the Room!” (authentically channelling DJ Jazzy Jeff and indeed the Fresh Prince).

One of the benefits of being the guest of honour is that one can request a song from any of the other attendees, however the downside is that if you’ve got a room full of not-quite-drunk-enough-yet people then you also end up singing the first 10 or so songs in a row.  Maybe this isn’t a scientifically documented phenomenon, but that’s what happened.

While Paul & James sing "It's a Kind Of Magic", Jason breaks into his world famous MAGIC TRICKS ROUTINE. The hilarity never ceases.

Within about a half hour of arriving I was pretty much unable to speak.  But we all soldiered on regardless.

The room was a fairly comfy & intimate space, where bench seat space dictated pretty much that the singer(s) (and whatever accompaniment they could muster) stood at the front.  There were a couple of light-operating buttons (Boogie mode, anyone?), a drinks button (which would fetch a drinks lady, if she noticed), and a box with various props, wigs, hats, and whatnot.

It seemed that once everyone had gotten beyond the initial nerves of the ludicrous embarrassment of having to sing in front of a group of people, it actually went pretty damn well!  Some of the musical highlights were, for me, Dan & Hannah’s interpretation of Chas N’ Dave’s “Snooker Loopy”, Belinda’s “Material Girl” (briefly pushing the nerves button again when we all realised that she can actually sing), Chris & Dave’s “Living On A Prayer” (during which I’m told that my tamborine skills were nothing short of bewildering), and Paul & my storming emulation of the Ray Parker Jr classic, “Ghostbusters”.  I’m afraid that one was my idea, and it led me to wonder whether life had turned a corner – the playout to Ghostbusters taking about a week, and giving me flashbacks to the Hey Jude experience again.

Raw musical talent. Well... raw talent. Well... raw. Something.

Overall, another excellent birthday celebration.  I wouldn’t go rushing back to the venue again in favour of not checking out some competitors – the mike setup gave no sort of foldback so it was less “singing” and more “shouting into a microphone”, and the staff were a little casual at times.

That aside, top night.  I know some great people.  Huge thumbs up to The Puzzler & Pamela, HC, Neonwombat, Brett, Mooley & Rob, Jamner, B-Phe, Lord Science, Dave, Belinda & Tom, and the last minute addition of Battlekitty.  Hurrah!

(the Flickr gallery of Tom & Lizzie’s Facebook photos that I ripped off can be found under the following link: Jason’s Karaoke World Peace Summit & Butchering Skills Workshop)

Catrin bestowed on me the utterly practical gift of a set of Reservoir Ducks: a gaggle of plastic ducks sporting ties and dark glasses (and only a natty black hat short of being The Blues Brothers).  The neat part was when you put them in water they lit up from an internal LED, and as they sat there they’d cycle through a load of colours.  So that was nice.

I don’t remember whether Brian had recently bought himself a new camera, or whether they were just amusing little things, but there were various photos taken of the little luminous canards, and we whiled away the evening talking about this and that, and seeing whether it was possible to get a plastic duck into a wine glass (it was).

None of us really thought much more of it until earlier this year when Brian was contacted by an elderly person in the United States of America.  They’d stumbled across Brian’s photo in his Flickr gallery – obviously having taken quite a shine to it – and contacted him to ask his permission to turn it into a painting!  And so that’s exactly what happened.  And here it is:

Cool, huh?

Thanks M. Shoaf, who.wherever you are.  Looking at this makes me smile, every time.

Of course, as is now plainly obvious, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to finish the post.

There you go – self-referential supporting evidence.

Now – HTC Desire, or iPhone 4?