Take My 5G, Please

Have you ever seen something that just seemed to contradict its own existence? I mean there are so many different aspects that it seems impossible that anyone could have created it. I’m thinking of something like this:

I took this photo almost a year ago, but I recently noticed that the graffiti is still there. And it’s still puzzling me.

First of all, it's got a 1950’s sense of humour. That's not something you usually see in graffiti. Henny Youngman must be <checks Wikipedia> rolling in his grave. Maybe graffiti was like that in the 1950's, but even then, I doubt you had graffiti written from the perspective of a married man.

On top of that, this is an anachronistic joke with a reference to modern technology in it. Even if it were in a less-strange context, that's weird. It's the joke Benny Hill would do if he'd made it to the twenty-first century. Is Andy Capp still going? Maybe it does jokes like this.

And now it's at least a year old, and neither the owner of the wall, nor other graffiti artists have covered it up in all that time. And did I mention that this is the parking lot for a sushi place? Lots of people have been staring at this, confused, for months. Probably feeling like they should blame a generation, but they have no idea which one.

Was it done by an abnormally young-at-heart Boomer, or an abnormally sexist Millennial? I'm wracking my brain to figure it out. At least, using whatever part of my brain is not currently trying to pun Banksy with an old comedian's name. Whatever Sherlock instincts I have left say that it was done by a Baby Boomer. Yes, it mentions Wi-fi, but it has that joke-referring-to-something-I've-heard-of-but-don't-understand style that launched a thousand late-night routines. So I feel safe blaming them. I'll just add it to the list.

Tough (Nursery) Room

I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I had a blog right from birth. Sure, the entries up to age fifteen would be brief because that’s when I learned to touch-type. But I had plenty of things to vent about. And I guess I owe it to my younger self to go back and belatedly complain.

Like, the jokes we tell kids. As a child, you often get exposed to jokes, particularly in riddle form, through books or other activities that are supposed to be fun. I think it’s about time that I speak up for kids and say, those jokes are crap. Well they were in the seventies anyway, maybe they’re better now.

Like, there was one joke: What do you get when you cross an owl with a goat? A hootenanny. I guess that’s funny, but the problem is that appreciating the joke requires knowing what a hootenanny is, or at the very least, knowing that it is a thing, and not just a random collection of sounds. Of course, as a four-year-old, my experience with free-form folk happenings was rather limited, so I had no idea what that word meant. So not only did I not find it funny, I misunderstood the whole idea of riddles for a while, assuming them to be some kind of bizarre random code rather than a form of humour.

Indeed, I just saw “What is a hootenanny?” Among a list of trivia questions, so it’s hardly a fair joke topic for a child.

But the ultimate bad joke for kids is, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Potentially, it’s a funny joke, but it relies on two things from its audience:

• They’ve heard a large number of jokes in the riddle format.
• They have a good appreciation of irony.

The problem is, children are the one group of people who don’t have either of these things, so it falls flat. The teller has to explain the joke, and as everyone knows, if you have to explain a joke it won’t be funny. But in this case it’s worse, because the kids won’t even understand it after you explain it.

It’s actually pretty surprising that the joke is still around: by the time you have the necessary mental faculties to understand it, it’s so old that you can’t appreciate it. Just think, probably no one in the western world has laughed at that joke in the last fifty years, and yet somehow, it’s still with us.

But this whole walk through bad-joke memories was triggered by something I saw in a store recently. It was a toddler’s sweater that had a picture of crossed hockey sticks on it, with the words, “Ice Ice Baby.” That struck me as tremendously unfair to the child. To them, it’s just a reference to ice as a skating surface, and they have no way of knowing that they’re walking around with the title of a song on their chest — a song they may come to consider rather embarrassing, depending on their own musical direction.

Of course, the makers of the shirt are counting on appealing to the parents, many of whom today are of an age where they will recognize the joke and find the shirt funny. But that would be like if someone my age had been forced to wear a shirt with a humourous reference to a Pat Boone song. Thanks mom and dad, you’re using me as a pawn in pop-cultural struggles for your own amusement. I’ll make my own musical choices, thank you, right after I figure out this ‘irony’ thing.

The Fat Of The Land

Lots of people are looking at President Trump's cleanish bill of health after his first on-the-job physical. That surprised everyone by saying that he is in quite good health for a septuagenarian, and not, as assumed, like a sedentary fast-food devotee.

But putting aside his doctor's opinions, the numbers have raised doubts. It says that Trump is 6'3" and 240 pounds, which would count him as medically acceptable, though suspiciously close to the obese classification. That's led doubters to a lot of comparisons with athletes of similar size. For instance, Albert Pujols is the same height and a pound more, but more athletic looking than the President.

But that can be easily explained. After all, muscle is denser than fat, so an athlete is going to look slimmer than a non-exerciser of the same weight. A bigger oddity is his height. Although the physical pegged him at 6'3", he has apparently previously been listed as 6'2". Also, in photos, he looks to be of similar height to Barack Obama (6'1") and noticeably shorter than Jeb Bush (6'3".)

So lots of people have been making fun of the President's weight. It's far from the first time, though such jokes have been few and far between, since there's been so many other things to make fun of. Once again, I'm not really sure why I'm writing a blog post on this; it will probably be obsolete before I finish.

Ridiculing Trump's body has led to a question about the morality of humour. A long time ago, I noted that there are basically three reasons why you might make jokes at another's expense:

• playful teasing, such as what goes on between friends
• ridicule of someone you don't like
• you can't think of any other topic for a joke. And also, you're an asshole.

Most people would agree that the first category is acceptable. And all but the amoral would agree that the last is not (Keep in mind, we're only talking about the morality of humour, not the legality, so put the free speech placards away.) The second category is a bit more questionable. But I've always been okay with it.

Overall, a good way to decide whether a joke fits in an acceptable or unacceptable category is to ask whether you'd be comfortable saying it to the person who is the butt of the joke. If it's the first one, you wouldn't mind, because that person is in on the joke. The second should be okay too, as they'll be offended but you figure that they deserve it. And the third is unacceptable, since you'd be offending an innocent person, and you're really only making the joke because you assumed you'd never have to face the consequences.

So that's moral backing of my humour, which I've always tried to stick to in outlets such as my blog. I'm sure I haven't been completely faithful to it, but it's what I've tried to do.

In recent years, however, I've noticed that there's a flaw in the reasoning. I noticed it not with Trump, but with another not-so-sympathetic character in American politics, Newt Gingrich. I strongly disagree with his political priorities, as well as some of the things he's done in his personal life, so he would fit squarely into the second category.

He's also a bit overweight. And his round face tends to remind you of that fact. So I find that a lot of liberal comics use that weight and his general attractiveness as a convenient put-down. That made me feel uneasy. Sure, he may be an opportunistic bully who doesn't deserve to have his feelings respected. But insults are a bludgeon that hit everyone similar, most of whom have not done any of the things the original target did.

So I've added a caveat to that second kind of ridicule: you can make fun of these people, but only if you're going after the thing that made you want to attack them in the first place. If they are truly worthy of your scorn, you won't have trouble finding something.

How The Hell'd We Wind Up Like This?

It was kind of lost during Christmas, but there was a story about Avril Lavigne feuding with Mark Zuckerberg. How did that happen? Well, Zuckerberg released a video showing off "Jarvis," Facebook's AI assistant. In the video, Zuckerberg asks Jarvis to play a good Nickelback song, to which it replies that no such thing exists. Lavigne came to Nickelback's defense; keep in mind that she used to be married to Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger. Wait, they have divorced, right (checks) yep.

I never thought I'd say this, but enough with the Nickelback bashing already. I've never been a fan of theirs either, and I'm usually the first person to demonize someone for dumbed-down rock music. And yes, I've taken shots at Nickelback too. But this has gotten to the point where people are piling-on just for the sake of it. Like monologue jokes about France, people are joining in on the ridicule without even knowing what they're joking about.

Sure, their songs all sound the same. And "Figured You Out" had the most juvenile lyrics this side of the Bloodhound Gang. But be honest, "How You Remind Me" was a great song, and "Someday" and "Photograph" approached actual pathos. So, a few good songs, some crap lyrics, and a bunch of songs that sound the same: I just described half the rock bands that have ever existed. Much like Coldplay, people seem to be beating up on a band for being ordinary, even though they're in a medium that has always had its share of hateable artists.

But let's not be naive. The Nickelback hatred isn't about the band, but about the fans. Nickelback are the stereotypical favourite of the Bro Nation. That kid who stole your lunch money right up until he dropped out in high school? Probably listens to Nickelback now. The fratboy you hated in University? Big Nickelback fan. Half the people who voted for Trump? You're sure they listen to Nickelback.

Kroeger and friends are a nice visible target for a widely-hated subculture. And they're easy to be seen as the "other." Like Creed before them, there's a weird phenomena where they sell millions of albums and concert tickets, but you never seem to know anyone who admits to being a fan. So they're easy to attack without worrying about consequences. I'd say Lavigne went overboard in calling this an example of bullying; really it's just a way of making lazy jokes that sound hard-hitting, but don't require taking a stand on anything. Really, it's just unimaginative and repetitive. Sort of like a certain rock band.

Lies, Damned Lies, And Satire

Jimmy Fallon is taking a lot of flack for his interview with Donald Trump, in which he ruffled Trump's hair, asked him a bunch of softball questions, and generally made him look like a regular human being.  That might not seem fair, given that he hosts a talk show, and a fairly light-hearted one at that.  But at the same time, in our Post-Stewart world, the lines between satire and news reporting have been blurred, and we're used to the idea that humourists often say the things that reporters are afraid to.

But there's a bigger issue here, and that is that politicians and voters have blurred the lines between entertaining and campaigning.  As this American election keeps proving, most people vote based on feelings rather than anything logical.  An oft-used test is that people are looking for the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with.  When you look at it that way, you realize that even a relaxed talk show appearance is image construction. It's more important to the candidate as any hard-hitting interview with a journalist, because it has more of an impact on what the public cares about.  So really, even entertainers like Fallon have to consider the political impact of politicians on the show, since the candidates are considering the impact of the show on their campaign.

Another campaign media development got people talking, though this was in the more traditional news media.  It was a New York Times report on the now-infamous press conference in which Donald Trump relented on the Birther issue, but then tried to pin it all on Hilary Clinton and take credit for putting an end to the controversy.  As you hopefully know, Clinton has never had anything to do with the Birther concept, so that was a brazen lie, even by Trump's standards.

What was interesting in the Times' coverage was that they just came right out and said, in their coverage on the front page, that it was a lie. That's unusual, because the way journalism has operated recently is that the media reports what both sides say, without any implication as to who is right, except perhaps on the op-ed page or some other in-depth reporting deep within the paper. It was only a small thing, but it represented quite a philosophical shift, so this could be a big turning point for the paper, if not all of journalism.

And now let's put together those two topics of talk shows handling the election and the discarding of journalism's misguided attempt at neutrality. Often is seems as though late night hosts are having the same struggles as journalists: they're trying to be even-handed, joking about both sides equally.  For one thing, that's proving difficult.  For all her imperfections, Hilary Clinton isn't a goldmine of comedy, as David Letterman's interminable pantsuit jokes proved.

But the other problem is the same one journalists face, that it's hard to hit both sides when one is a whole lot crazier than the other. It's interesting to see how they handle it. The venerable Daily Show hasn't always handled it well.  Of course, they've gone after Trump far more often, but they tend to stick to the idea that this is just a weird election.  Compare that to their alumni Samantha Bee and John Oliver, who take an approach that's more like, "I can't believe this is happening, am I the last sane person in America?"

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I was really turned-off of The Nightly Show in its final months as they struggled to find a position on the election.  Their writers and cast were firmly in the Bernie Sanders camp, and it often seemed like they were working harder against Clinton than against Trump. And speaking of Daily Alumni, Stephen Colbert seems a bit undecided about how to approach this election.  At times he seems to be able to put together the clever critiques that made him famous, and you can really feel how he's feeling more comfortable with the material than he is trying to do light chatting with the band leader.  But at other times, Colbert tries to walk the line and appeal to everyone. He tries desperately to channel Jay Leno, but it just isn't him, nor is it what we need right now.

The big pleasant surprise has been Seth Meyers.  For one thing, it's surprising because he's at NBC, which is also the home of the aforementioned Fallon, and fellow Trump pawns, Saturday Night Live.
It's also surprising because I had thought he was a bit of a lightweight contender in this golden age of televised political satire. But he's often the most effective voice when it comes to calling Trump on his antics. That's in terms of both humour and in drawing out precisely what is wrong with that day's controversies.  It makes me sorry about the post last year when I accused him of nerd-self-hatred.

Politically Incorrect Humour

I remember hearing a joke as a child that went something like this: A politician says to his colleague, oh no, I just locked my keys in my car. And the other politician says, that's terrible, it's about to rain, how are you going to get the top up?

Of course, that is just one of the many jokes that depend on nothing but the idea of the characters being stupid. Usually such jokes are about some disliked but non-threatening ethnic group. Or blondes. Or yo mama.

And that's why it's a pretty weak joke. Usually if you're going to tell a joke about an occupation, it will be about the unique characteristics of people in that occupation. Such as lawyers being unscrupulous. So a joke about generic politicians should be about, say, lying or seeking publicity.

If you're going to make a joke about politicians being stupid, most people would specify which politicians you consider to be stupid. And if you’re going to ridicule an opposing politician or party, you’ll likely make it a whole lot more specific, since you have a clear idea of just why you don’t like them. And that’s why we don’t see too many of those generic jokes, despite the general unpopularity of politicians, and humanity’s deep stockpile of jokes about stupid people.

Until this year. We’ve got the most vicious election of our lives in the US, so anyone watching - even if they don’t normally get involved in politics - is aware of the anger being thrown. And the media is always happy to remind us of the public’s anger at each candidate. Thus, some people who don’t normally go for political satire are trying to join in using indiscriminate ridicule of both sides.

I’d strongly recommend against this. See, the thing that may not be obvious from the outside is that pretty much everyone involved is really sure who the obvious choice is. I know I don’t have much in common with Trump supporters, but I’m sure that one thing we can agree on is that when two sides are so far apart, it becomes obvious who you want to win. Yes, you may have misgivings about your own candidate, but they are dwarfed by your dislike of your opponent.

Don’t get me wrong, I have never had anything against people who don’t get involved in politics. I do ask that you observe the old rule that if you don’t vote, you aren’t allowed to complain about the government; but that’s it. Okay, there is one exception: people who use their political agnosticism to look superior, like look at me, I’m above all childishness. Or look at me, my standards are too high for our disappointing politicians to measure up to. In both cases, it’s obviously a cover for your unwillingness to commit.

I’m just saying that for your own sake, you might want to lay off the jokes. Both sides are kind of perplexed that there could be anyone out there that doesn’t have a strong opinion. So if you’re trying to “join in” by ridiculing everyone, you’ll actually be standing out even stranger. And if you think you can pull the above trick of pretending to be superior, keep in mind that the Democrats have already gone to war with the Bernie Sanders supporters that refuse to compromise, so this is really not the time for that act.

So feel free to make jokes on other topics. Feel free to stay on the political sidelines. But don’t try general political jokes. This year, you’ll generate less anger if you just make fun of random nationalities.

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

You probably saw that story this week about the plane that skidded off the runway while attempting a landing at LaGuardia airport in New York. Wow, it's scary to think how close that was to a massive tragedy. Just think, if that plane had landed properly, those passengers would have had to go through LaGuardia.

Alright, I have to confess: I’ve never been to LaGuardia. But I know of its reputation thanks to endless jokes, mostly from late-night monologues. I mentioned something like this a while back, especially about French jokes that everyone gets but many probably don’t know why. In this case, the joke came about because of the concentration of media New York. So now people all over America know the reputation of this airport that most of them have never been to.

Usually a joke - however silly - has its roots in real life. So what is the point of making a joke that is based on qualities you know nothing about? Is it still a joke if it’s based on things you know only from hearing other jokes? I mean, would it be funny if I made a joke about how people from Abilestan always have bad hairstyles? What if the only thing you know about Abilestan is that the people there have bad hairstyles, and the only way you know this is that I’ve just told you?

It’s sort of like when a sitcom character becomes the butt of jokes. Usually humour at the expense of a fictional character is funny because those characters remind us of people we know. But sometimes the character is its own joke; I think Kramer from Seinfeld would be an example. Of course, there’s a joke to be made here about matching New York’s other airports with Seinfeld characters, but I’ll have to wait for monologues to teach me more about their personalities.

Interview With The Empire

A few years back, David Letterman was the target of the threats from Islamic extremists over a joke he made. I figured that for a comedian, if you have to die before your time, that's the best way to go: murdered by the target of one of your jokes. That's something you'd always have over everyone else. George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor: none of them can claim that. Also, you'd have a kind of existential revenge over your killer: no one will ever be able to remember either of you without remembering the joke at his expense.

That is, assuming it’s a good joke. Unfortunately, in Letterman’s case, it was a laboured attempt to revive a previous gag into a running joke. It made little sense out of context, and wasn’t that funny in context. I would hope the incident was a wake-up call to all comics: put everything into each joke, because it could be your last.

Which brings me to The Interview. Obviously I haven’t seen it, but it doesn’t look like something you’d want to go down in history as the movie that started World War III. I’m not sure what you would want an act-of-war movie to be like; probably something that makes a profound statement. Even if it has to be within the genre of stoner/gross-out comedies, you’d want to go down in history for insulting the enemy leader with an American Pie-style unprecedented moment of raunch.

But now it appears that none of this matters. If they don’t release The Interview, we can just imagine it to be whatever kind of movie we want it to be. As for the question of whether it was a good move to drop the release, I find that most news stories, and all internet discussion, has missed a rather important point: Sony made the decision to cancel the release after several major American theatre chains said they wouldn’t show the film. I’m not saying that absolves Sony of the choice, but it does illustrate that this is not the decision of one isolated corporation. Several companies - when faced with the same situation - made the same choice.

Proponents of the choice to pull the movie have generally made the shockingly mature argument that we can’t just look at it from our current comfortable position, but rather we should put ourselves in the position of the alternate world where the film was shown, and the threatened attacks happened. It’s hard to look at that devastation and justify the decision to release a silly movie.

I can understand the reasoning and, as I say, admire the non-knee-jerk sophistication of that position. But what really worries me about the cancellation is that it sets a shockingly low bar for cancelling major events based on threats. The fact is, it’s pretty much an everyday event for people on the Internet to make idle threats they couldn’t possibly follow through on. They’ve let everyone know that all it takes for a major corporation to change their plans at great expense is some hacking skills and the shamelessness to threaten lives. I think we’re going to see that happen more often in the future. If it does, we’ll have to reassess the equation of how much risk we’re willing to live with.

Things the Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #16

Which eighties musician is having the greatest success in 2014?  Weird Al Yankovic.

Not Another World Cup Post

I've been disappointed by the reaction to Germany's win at the World Cup.  In particular, it's the number of references to the World Wars.  No, I'm not offended by humourously touching on an emotional subject - I like dark humour as much as the next person.  It's just gotten tiresome.

There's only so many ways you can make veiled references to a major war.  It's gotten predictable.  And aren't there plenty of things to make fun of them for?  This is the country that dedicates a month to beer.

The same thing happens with France.  They have only a limited number of joke subjects that are rerun again and again.  They're rude, they like Jerry Lewis, and they surrender quickly in war.  That last one is especially galling, since comics can tell a France-surrendering joke and the audience will laugh, even though no one involved knows why France is associated with surrender.

(Bonus points if you noticed the "galling" pun above.)


There has been humour about Germans being humourless and over-organized, and they've actually seemed refreshing.  Also, Angela Merkel has been the but of some jokes, and really, her awkward-sternness can be pretty funny.  So there is hope for German ridicule.  I'll help out: sausage, Kraftwerk, the Porsche Panamera, reallylongcompoundwords, trying to pronounce "Goethe".

Overshadowing

Trivia question: aside for being British authors, what did Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) have in common? Answer later.

First: a big entertainment news story this weekend was the death of Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney. Although many tributes have been paid him by people in the business, he had the unfortunate distinction of outliving many who would have been fans.  So he is perhaps not as appreciated by people today as he could be.  For me the only thing I can think of that I know him from - other than cameo appearances and voice work - would be his role in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And the less said about that performance, the better.

Since celebrity deaths seems to be the theme of this post, you may have guessed that is the answer to the above question. Huxley and Lewis both died on the same day. Unfortunately for them, that day was November 22, 1963, which you may recognize as the day of a much more famous death, that of JFK. Because of that, hardly anyone even noticed, never mind celebrated their lives.

And that was kind of unfortunate yesterday. I'm sure Rooney touched many more lives in the world, but for me, I had more of a connection with comedian John Pinette. His death was reported about an hour earlier, and so it was missed by many.  So why not have a salad in his memory.

Last Impressions

There’s a lot of people who are classics for impersonation, even after the originals have left the scene. You still hear people do Nixon impressions, particularly the, “I am not a crook line.” What’s weird is that some generations know people only through their impressions. Take Humphrey Bogart, for instance. I’ve seen some of his movies, yet I probably know his voice primarily from actors and comedians imitating him.

But the leader in the living-on-through-impersonation category would have to be Ed Sullivan. I’m too young to have seen his show; of course, I’ve seen clips such as the famous Beatles performance. But mostly I know his “really big shoe” voice and mannerisms through years of comedians hamming it up.

But, when I hear people imitate Bill Cosby, I wonder, can I really trust impersonations of Ed Sullivan? If they're as far off as Cosby routines, we've been lied to.

Dry Humour, Or Bathroom Humour

Occasionally you see clever graffiti on the hand-driers in public washrooms.  For instance, in one of the men's rooms in the University of Waterloo Math building, someone had modified the drier instructions so that it read, "For a message from Bill Davis, press button." Davis was already long gone when I got to UW, so the message must have been pretty solidly scratched in. Or the custodians really hated Bill Davis.

But I think this display at the University of Guelph may have taken the hand-drier satire crown:

Playing FTSE

You may have heard the old joke of the guy who named his dog, "Sex."  It was printed by Ann Landers years ago, and has now been around the Internet a few times too.  There are different versions, with excuses for light double-entendres: "Sex keeps me up at night," "I only had Sex before I got married," etc.

I was reminded of this joke recently, when I found out that the Moscow stock exchange is the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, which is abbreviated, "Micex" and pronounced "mice-X," or if you prefer, "my sex."  So now there's an excuse for a whole new generation of jokes: My sex is improving, lots of people are interested in my sex, my sex brings in a lot of money.

Things I Should Like But Don't

I often fit neatly into stereotypes of subcultures, most notably geek and hipster, as I've referred to before.  Yet, there are times I don't even fit into the stereotypical expectations of a person like me.  In this new semi-regular feature, I'll explore people, places, and things that a person like me should like, but I don't.  I don't usually hate these things, I just don't like them.

I Should Like:

Will Ferrell

Why should I like him?

He takes a more understated approach to comedy than the goofy, mean-spirited clowning that's become the norm.

Why don't I like him?

I'm not entirely sure.  For one thing, people who never drop their persona have always creeped me out (Jack Black and Bill Murray could make the list too.)  But I think a big part of it is that he has somehow set himself up with such a reputation for being funny that he doesn't really have to do anything any more.  Just going through the motions of appearances is enough to make audiences laugh hysterically.  Good for him, but I just don't enjoy watching it.