Ross Noble

Lovely to start the show with impro, ...if it was impro.
This was filmed in Adelaide and the comments mention he did similar in Newcastle so ideally this was the first and Newcastle followed or else it was 'feigned spontaneity'

Given the shows success exists entirely in the audiences heads feigned spontaneity is just one tool among many for the seasoned pro.



here's another I like



He makes humour from deconstruction of his act. I like that.

Wire, retro..

one of the most perfect pop songs...


however...my favorite...

Coffee powered car

Below is one system, another involves processing oil from coffeegrounds and using it as fuel.

I have my eye on these developments as we have much coffee here in Kona and it would be a good marketing tool for the right coffee company.

Not so surprise ending

The Greeks and the Romans outsourced the genesis of their creativity with gratitude. Powers that could by definition not be understood or fully explained resided close by and artists were merely instrumental, their disciplines aided their function as resonators of the divine.



Sometimes, by no means always but with a frequency that, by the rareness of the effect was worth whole lifetimes spent in it’s pursuit.



Everything is metaphor. I’m aware we use language to explain sensations that are chemical and electrical combinations as we float through some universal ocean of vibrating energy.



Words in their own way make sense of this for us and concepts like ‘divine’ evolved to explain certain feelings, shared by all, where a moment holds all the realisation required for itself and the subterranean fear of how lost and alone we are is momentarily relinquished.



Chaos is celebrated in moments where it is focused in celebration, sex, dance, performance, art etc. Chaos is endured for the most part by it’s quantification into the minutiae that orbits reproduction and death.



I think I need to get laid.

used to be friends, Dandy Warhols

Risk and redemption,

off we go....

 I fear I’m becoming institutionalised. The weeks pass, I have years to go but worry I’m waiting to die.

I get up early and clean the overnight rain from the ashtrays outside then return to bed. I do this to later harvest the butts that collect there. Otherwise they would be floating and useless to me. I make do with maintaining my last addiction this way. It’s intermittent and the supply waxes and wanes, a variable in an otherwise preset puddle, [too small to be a pond and an ocean is far to encompassing for my isolated soul.]

I drink coffee and work in various gardens at my own pace, killing and nurturing plants. I stare out to sea and wonder what is wrong with me. I’m often the only person left here. During the day other residents enter the wider world to participate in the flux. Am I girding my loins I wonder? Or am I now withered and loinless? Who can I help? I know that’s the key. I’ve been here nine months now and still have not devised a means to provide for myself or a role in the world.
“fake it til you make it” to me means wrapping yourself in indoctrination til it becomes your stable state.
I visited a friend last weekend, we see each other every few months and he suggested the most interesting things he reads of mine are my internal dialogues.
Everyone has them, they are unceasing. I try to grasp what could be interesting, admitting I have articulate skills, about mine?

I think in much the same way my clown profession reflected, the common themes are distraction and a wry dissection of the human condition. At best taking funny strange and somehow positioning it to reflect funny ha ha.

I let my mind wander and settle on the rest of the world changing somehow because that’s easier than examining whatever it is I have to do to ignite again.
I think if Glenn Beck somehow convinced his backend bellcurve balled fisted followers to adopt autoerotic asphyxiation and a million worthless Americans were found next morning blue in the face hanging from closet doorhandles with their gnarled fists around or in their room temperature genitals.... Then life would be different for me.


I need to find a street corner and work. I’m aiming for perhaps Italy next spring.
Someone bought a copy of my book today. I sell one a month.

I would eventually like to have had an audience that shared in my musings over twenty years that equaled the audiences performed to during that same time.
1000 people a day 6 days a week for 20 years vs 1 per month I hope the internet lasts that long.

[sigh] now I have to calculate

6 420 000 divided by 12

at the present rate my goal will be achieved in 520 000 years.
When highly intelligent millipedes and their exquisitely designed piano’s rule the earth.

It was the day before Christmas and Osama Bin Ladin was heavy with child.

It was the day before Christmas and Osama Bin Ladin was heavy with child.

Two children actually, two growth retarded fetuses had been tucked behind the subcutaneous skin of his stomach. They were brain dead naturally, rendered so before insertion but their kidneys worked fine and collectively they were plumbed to replace his own which for years had been an impediment to his living the free and frisky life he knew he deserved.

They did feel heavier some days more than others but he was assured their weight was a constant.

They were both AB blood type as was he and they were hooked in basically as extra organs with a degree of redundancy superior to that of a simple donor organ.

Plus it was fun, it allowed him a freedom he'd forgotten he'd missed. He had had them installed 3 years ago and his humor had returned.

He privately called them his two infidels.

He named them Sonny and Cher, Sonny on the left, Cher on the right. He'd sometimes look down at himself and yell, "Watch out for that tree!" and punch at where Sonny lay. He cracked himself up sometimes. He'd lean over to Cher's side and croon, "I got you babe."

Because when it came down to it, he was a funny guy, life was funny and his just kept right on twisting along.

10 years before operation pet goat they had come to him, the Americans, well, some of the Americans and given him the usual Dick Dastardly scenario with some twists all of it's own and they had offered him unlimited freedoms should he comply.

He didn't need wealth but the way they phrased it got him to thinking. He'd outdone himself with the outlandishness of his price, every new day was a celebration of the surreal dimensions of his ability to bend and shape reality to his whim. He was an artist.

So he'd done what was required, walked the walk, talked the talk, 10 years till just before the skittles fell.

He had all his ducks in a row, it was easy to set up mechanisms wherein you were an asset alive, a calamity dead but there were always new angles of treachery to preempt.

Poor old Sharon made that mistake, not dead, hardly alive, too attached to the power of his blackmail to recognise his own check mate as forgone conclusion.

Osama shook his head, displacing his internal ramblings as he ran a hand through his now luscious hairdo and minutely adjusted his bra.

The Americans had bluffed, pretending they, even they, were not either impressed or shocked by the price he charged. But they accepted, they understood his needs and his failsafes and he liked to think that as masters of deviousness themselves they could not help but be impressed at his audacity.

The fulcrum from which his defensive strategy swung was that the ego needed to be mercurially transformed, not hidden, not disguised but stripped of all but the essential and reformed.

So it was, the operations began. His height was re-rendered, shins and thighs shortened, his face was completely remodeled, massive bodywork ensued, gender changed, (he'd decided he'd be a lesbian, some things never change) the vocal operations were the most painful and left till last and then two years of conditioning, mirroring his chosen target, the voice, the expressions, the cunning, the feigned strained intellect.

He had to study the friends, the relationships, the manager but he chose carefully, shallow people were the easiest to replace. He grew to hate his doppelganger, to loathe the blithe accepting lazy entitlement.

He had had his team in place, had her murdered, quite slowly, as he watched and let her see him and then stepped into and became Rosie O'Donnell .

He had her show, her fans,her brittle friends, her lovers, her exposure and best of all her ability to be forgiven her stupidity.

And today, Christmas eve, was just another show to him. Oh he secretly despised his guests ( she had too) but he loved the country (as she had but for different reasons).

The banal garnish he swam in daily only underlined for him the vastness of the dark shifting shapes beneath.
He relished that unifying particle he had made himself.

He blinked heavily, he had to focus, it was seconds to his entrance and this morning was live to air.

His crowd were pumped and on he strode, let them adore him for the mandatory thirty seconds and then simply spoke off the top of his head for the next two minutes, it was easy. This second skin stuff was his vocation he thought.

Then cut to commercial and the first guest, a famous gay exercise guru, an improviser he'd worked with before, usually fun, he was always bringing toys, Osama liked toys.

Today it was a mini-trampoline with an embedded mechanism that bounced you without you exerting force of your own. The guru demonstrated then leapt off flushed and shrieking.

Osama hammed it up, gingerly and with mock concern allowing herself to be persuaded.

The bouncing was very mild but at the bottom of the fourth decent there was unimaginable pain, a tearing, a spectacular flush of blood and on national TV the seemingly premature spontaneous Cesarean birth of two twitching fetuses on the Rosie O'donnell show.

As he sank into unconsciousness one short mental exclamation rose then faded....
Oops.

Self promotional wank

I Suppose I shouldn't denigrate praise like that but it's my natural inclination when faced with it.On one hand I'm pleased it's earned and valid but on the other the fact that it took 20 years of my life to record the contents of a book only a select number of people are qualified to identify with, [Robert being one], compounds my wry acceptance of, via my own choices, an intense life lived in a vacuum with the laughter produced being the point, that although not lost on me at the time, the fleeting ambition I had of a larger point to it all leaves me a little causticly self examined. So I use flippancy as a defense.

Sep. 20, 2011By Robert Nelson

Perhaps the best reality stories on busking I have ever seen. Ewen's insights into the people, places and situations are the driving force behind his clownish romp around the globe. Every story takes you to a new street corner of his mind. It is simply a superb map showing a clown's journey from A to Z.



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There's just so many arbitrary pointless things to avoid considering.
To whit... I follow, for curiosities sake and for what ego gratification there potentially may be in the investigation, the links of sites that visit my blog. It is the definition of pathetic that in talking to myself I presume to be interesting to others but this conceit is all I have and I'll not let the facts my tracker, without mercy , bluntly outlined in a manner that cannot be doubted, the general indifference my life's passage engenders, distract me from persevering in externalizing that tiny fraction of my inner dialogue to give my futility flesh.

Sometimes though I feel it goes too far. Today for example, for reasons that must remain unfathomable else my brittle sanity shatter, the most links to my site came from a website dedicated to acid reflux.

I mean WTF. Is the universe taking the piss or what?

FeelGood Sunday ; Changing faces with a smile.

The Raven: Read by Christopher Walken

lets go out tonight

Feelgood sundays: Keep swinging

I noticed when I was growing up, because NZ TV was two thirds English and one third American programming [before the western world became a lobotomized cultural colony with nano attention spans and carefully maintained perpetual insecurity with deodorant and pharmaceuticals offered as relief]

...That American comedy, Brady bunch, my three sons, even non comedies like Bonanza, all existed to frame moral lessons. Hijinks would draw to a close and an important lesson would be shared.

"Yes Timmy, now you know it was wrong to remove your sisters eyeball with a spoon to sell on the black market so you could afford a Farrah Fawcett poster to masturbate to in your room now don't you?"

"Yes mum"

Comic lame interjection from cute youngest daughter, missing the point entirely followed by good natured group laughter and credits.

All the American TV had these pious moral justifications for their existence. Like comedy had to have a point.

It made me think that Americans were retarded and took themselves way too seriously.

That comedy could not be justified by itself but had to be balanced, because it was in itself immoral, with morality.

I was seven, maybe I was retarded and took myself too seriously.

Anyway, things have changed and America is ironic now and I'm grateful for that.

I'm watching a lot of spoken word stuff and gleaning the same sort of  'must have a message' vibe.

I don't know, I like ambiguity myself, gives me something to think about rather than premasticated cartoon mental fodder.

I think the message below for me is "Keep swinging"

How I feel walking into a room full of strangers..

Feelgood Sunday, NZ Flashmob Haka

The Rugby World cup is being hosted in NZ starting this week and so culturally I guess we're feeling proud and muscular.

Feelgood sunday, Dan Savage, Not that Kind of Gay.

Story Time

Feelgood Sunday; Remember, Never Forget, WE make culture, culture doesn't make us..

That can be hard to remember, given the top down pap, we're fed via media chokepoints, parents, schools, the glowing shouting anxiety generating box in our living rooms.

If you try really hard you might remember a time when each level of our collective hallucination we accept as 'culture' was it's own WTF!

Santa claus, and the tooth fairy, culture is invented fantastic dimensions taken seriously as if it's normal and there is a time in mosts development where heads figuratively take that tilted position that dogs employ when they are trying to make sense of something new.

I remember; Santa claus, tooth fairy, candy floss [a perfect metaphor, you know it's not of this world and then you taste the concentrated sugar and you're  hooked] God, the infallibility of authority at every level. The accepted inevitability of inhumanity, etc


I'll bring it back to clown because that's what I know.

We make our own culture. It's a laughter hack.

We need validation but we hide that behind our own glee and we seduce you and you enable us.

Culture is a fabric made of interwoven narratives, it is a very complex fabric, incomprehensibly complex, specialists stake out their domains and tinker.

Clowns are social engineers.

I, for example, created a narrative consisting of a 12 foot disgruntled pantomime that spitefully inhabited corners and victimized passing pedestrians. I used this to travel the world testing the limits of cruelty and humor. I learnt a lot but am not sure what to do with my knowledge. This is admittededly a 'first world problem', I'll work it out.

Here is an example of the genesis of 'culture' and it's expression made that much more digestible via clown.

Alternatively it's an example of my particular mental disfunction, which, you'll have to excuse me, I choose to call art so fuck you.

An artist called 'Madeon' dipped into pop culture and took musical samples thus

Alphabeat - Boyfriend
Alphabeat - Fascination
Bag Raiders - Shooting Stars
Black Eyed Peas - Gotta Feeling
Britney Spears - ...Baby One More Time
Capsule - Can I Have A Word
Chromeo - Momma's Boy
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
Daft Punk - Aerodynamic
Daft Punk - Around The World
Deadmau5 - Raise Your Weapon (Madeon Remix)
Deadmau5 - Right This Second
Ellie Goulding - Starry Eyed
ELO - Mr. Blue Sky
Girls Aloud - Biology
Gorillaz - Dare
Gossip - Heavy Cross (Fred Falke Remix)
Gwen Stefani - What You Waitin For (Jacques Lu Cont Mix)
Housse de Racket - Oh Yeah
Justice - DVNO
Justice - Phantom Part II
Katy Perry - One Of The Boys
Ke$ha - Take It Off
Kylie Minogue - Wow
Lady Gaga - Alejandro
Linkin Park - Crawling
Madonna - Hung Up
Martin Solveig ft. Dragonette - Boys and Girls
Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
Nero - Me and You
One Republic - All The Right Moves (Danger Remix)
One-T - Magic Key
Ratatat - Shempi
Solange - I Decided (Freemasons Remix)
Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You
The Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star
The Killers - Losing Touch
The Who - Baba O'Riley (SebastiAn Remix)
Yelle - Que Veux Tu (Madeon Remix)


...and made a pop song using all these elements


Here is the video





and here it is being performed live, 





Catchy, clever, however lacking any ongoing emotional appeal apart from admiration and nostalgia, [if you happen to have a contemporary pop musical frame of reference]


Now we arrive at what to me is a great example of the not insignificant power of clown.


Character and narrative form a bridge that allow us to celebrate ourselves.
 Dancers - Nathan Barnatt, Jenny Fine





Watching this guy, Nathan Barnatt, just makes me happy.


Here's another just to keep that mood going.



Now apropos perhaps I'll leave you with this. Don't know this writer, have had no direct dealings with them but below was something I read today that flavored and help form, such that it's formed at all. This blog entry.

People have both independent agency and free will, the exercise of which results in (among other things) culture. Which has neither free will nor independent agency. One corollary of which is: We make culture. It does not and cannot make us without our participation. The nature and extent of which is determined by us and is therefore our responsibility. Not culture's. Other people may very well, through the exercise of their independent agency and free will, try to deprive us of ours by using culture as one of their weapons. However, while they can and do sometimes succeed -- which, btw, means they're the enemy -- if culture was the only weapon they had, they just wouldn't be that much of a threat absent our collaboration. It's not like culture runs on ethanol. It only has one power source, and we're it. Oh. Hmm....Plus also, just as a reminder: Given the false-dichotomy aspect of things, we're it. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm totally down with cursing the darkness. It's a fabulous thing. That doesn't mean it's the same thing as lighting a candle, though. But whether you want the former to have more cultural currency than the latter or the other way around, it's totally within your power to exercise your free will and independent agency to exert an influence on the direction in which you'd prefer to see the cultural current flowing. Just do one more and the other less. Nothing is easy. But neither is everything impossible. That's just the way it be's.

So if you're distressed, please undistress yourself. All right? I'm absolutely positive that we can continue to totally fail to effectively communicate with one another other calmly just as well as we could if we were both highly agitated! Why, it's so crazy, it just might work!

Grinding the crack, Jeb Corliss

Melanoma the Clown

NZ Internet 'Skynet' law comes into effect

By Nicola Grigg

Downloaders beware - from today you can face serious fines for online piracy.

The Government's Copyright Amendment Act comes into force today and anyone caught downloading copyrighted content illegally could face fines of up to $15,000 and have their internet cut off.

Internet New Zealand chief executive Vikram Kumar says the law means the person who pays the bill for the account needs to be very aware of who's using the internet and what they're using it for.

"The account holder needs to know what's going on even if they themselves don't do anything online, and second, everyday internet users really have to understand that peer-to-peer file sharing is now very risky and not worth doing."

Mr Kumar says homes, businesses and schools are all liable for the penalties.

--------------------------------

It's sad that it's just not the US where corporations have taken over the gov't and legal system.


This law was forced through under emergency legislation after the Christchurch earthquake. It was bought and paid for by the RIAA.

It was then rushed through under urgency by the current National government. Urgency is a convention supposed to be restricted to matters of national emergency with the Christchurch Earthquake legislation. The CURRENT government sneaked it through deceptively so it would not be subject to proper debate, public scrutiny and consultation.

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"John Key is a weak willed smarmy twat who would suck any corporate dick presented to him."


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SOLUTION AND PROTIP
  This law only covers torrenting. Word on the tubes is there are other methods. Also, if the user was using a proxy that put their download location out of NZ, then the copyright holder would not be protected by this law.

"as of this very moment they actually have no way of policing this law, they never set up proper ways to monitor it because the ISP'S essentially forgot about it(This is what I have been told from an insider in Telecom.) Its being pushed in the media as scare tactics currently but that is all. They will have proper ways to monitor it in a months time roughly.

Second, the law Is only for torrents.. rapidshare,mediafire,hotfile etc etc are all fine to use.. warez-bb(cough, cough)

There is plenty of work a rounds, just make sure your stupid siblings know and use them.

One other thing, The isp's are only monitoring what they are told to monitor, basically new movies and music releases.

We are a sample nation, good for testing new laws like this because of our varied ethnic diversity, location and standing with larger nations(everyone's bitch)."