Window on the World

We really enjoyed our flying visit to Cornwall the other week. Now at leat when I sit at my computer hacking away I can glance up at my Desktop and see the view...

Sorry about the horizon line - I apparently lean to the left when taking pictures.

PS: Yes, Chris, I have turned Comments back on, now that blogger have added 'word verification' to prevent automated spamming.

Hip Semantics

"Have courage, great warrior!"

I just finally got a book/CD on Lord Buckley, after waiting for months for Amazon to track one down. For you language lovers Lord Buckley’s hipsemantics has to appeal. If you don’t know the man who influenced Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and many others…I can only say try to seek him out (hard to find). I know you can Google as good as me, but try these: Richard Henzel has done him on stage, and you can see a reconstruction of one of his earlier acts when he ‘puppets’ four innocent members of the audience – not the full flight riffing, but gives you the vocal tones and attitude. Transcriptions of the pieces you can find here Try Subconscious Mind, or The Bad Rapping of the Marquis de Sade, or oh, any of it, once you know what he sounds like.............
He does Shakespeare like this:

"Hipsters, flipsters, and finger popping daddies, knock me your lobes, I come to lay Caesar out not to hip you to him”

“to swing or not to swing, that is the hanger"

Another version of hip slang, jazz riffing and bopping comes from Slim Gaillard, scat singing in his own version of the hip argot, which he called Vout Orenee. Again, I can only recommend that you track him down. Try the Ethnopoetics page here

Oh, the flat foot floogie with a floy, floy,

Flat foot floogie with a floy, floy,

Flat foot floogie with a floy, floy,

Floy doy, floy doy, floy doy.

In the UK we heard a very strange performer on the radio in the 50s-60s, called Stanley Unwin. He may not have the hip cool of the american jazz men but he mimicked the jargon of bureaucrats or technicians in an elegant gibberish language he called Unwinese. He loved James Joyce and Edward Lear. You can catch him on the second side of The Small Faces album “Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake” (ah, the 60s!) where he tells a linking story between the tracks or check him out here sound samples here

Hi ho and a jolly welcode to all you surfwide'n interwebber lopers. Here beholdy manifold things Stanley Unwinmost - all deep joy and thorkus for great laugh'n tittery. O yes.

Deep Joy

Merci

I came across the script of Alphaville the other day. Saw it in 1965, I guess, and loved this sight gag in such an apparently serious Godard film

LEMMY has arrived at his hotel and crosses the dining-room. As he is walking through a small parade full of automatic machines, he places a coin in a machine on which is written, 'Place Coin Here'. Out shoots a card on which is written, 'Thank you'. He flings it into the air defeated by its inane logic. He reaches the lift.

Run Away and Join...

I feel delighted when I see where circus got to over the last few years, and to know that I contributed in some small way to reviving this excellent artform.

The only curious thing, to me?

If you'd needed all those qualifications in my day, I wouldn't have even got started!

Great news that NoFit State won the Best Theatre Show prize at the Tarrega Festival! I hope that means they can survive another year, and perhaps do more 'mainland Europe' shows next year.