Farewell Johnny.

 photo Lawrence French


Johnny Fox has left the building.

As close to being in my head before a show as you'll get.

https://youtu.be/wD7m71C1SEc

Empire of Cheese.

  Papa John's is an entitled white asshole undoubtedly raised by parents who both looked and dressed like Colonel Sanders and is simply a dysfunctional success in a dysfunctional world. He profits from not paying a viable wage to the people who make him his profit and because he's lived his entire life inside an economic table-fort sleepover he thinks he's a philosopher when in the wider sense he's a self-fellating Marie Antoinette.

He's the retarded teenager that mistakes insecurity for ambition that America rewards.

More articulations of Jolly Goodfellow....or Rumple.

I can only marvel at the energy requirements and the tenacity of that singular individual called Rumple/Jolly Goodfelow. [Taken from Alan Clays clown website]...

"I look at the ground and then look up at the stars and I think 'Crikey! How can one get their head round the spectrum of the universe?' Life certainly is an overwhelming inner and outer journey to experience. At times life can feel like trying to meditate in a room chock-a-block full of bric-a-brac, with multidimensional stream-of-consciousness visions passing through the mind a zillion miles an hour.

Life is performance art and we are all in its theatre playing our roles. Life is a performance on and off the stage. My natural life feels more like a show than when I'm performing at times. I have never done a rehearsal for one of my shows ever. Am I the master of no routine? I have travelled the world performing with no show. I guess that is my show, 'No Show'. I must be doing something right. Maybe I do have a show. Sometimes I wonder. The audience can be the judge. I could be the world's most unprofessional professional or professional unprofessional.

I used to carry a 4-wheel granny trolley around Europe. It travelled to 30 countries with me. It's a miracle that I did it in such a ridiculous style. Who on earth could be bothered carrying one of those around the world? It was stuffed with as many props as I could possibly squeeze into it.
I guess my granny trolley didn't make it easy for me when I turned up in England for the first time from Australia. I was sent back to Australia for the suspicion of coming in as an under-the-table jester with the intention to jest (wildcard style) without permission.

It's not an easy gig being a jester these days and especially when there are no castles in Australia. It's a bit of a paradox. It's a laugh: the idea of representing my country when I'm abroad, being an antipodean jester as there's not much tradition for this profession in Oz. I feel at heart with the art of being a jester as a profession, as it rhymes with being a bit of a natural fool in everyday life. It's not an easy art: always trying to obey the laws of logic.

Life's a tragic comedy. There's often a fine line between tragedy and comedy. Being a jester, clown, performer and artist is everything. It's funny, sad, crazy, silly, mad, serious, happy, depressing, wild, weird, wonderful, mental, brilliant, exhausting, beautiful, intimidating, overwhelming, exciting and everything else.

Laughter is the greatest high of all because it comes from the heart. My goal is to help spread more healthy humour into the world. Making people happy through laughter is a true gift of love. I am very privileged to have the freedom to be creative. Quite often people say 'What are you on', when I'm performing as a jester. It's amazing what a costume can do. I say 'I don't need anything! Why not get high on laughter? Laughter is the jest medicine. Don't be a fool to your spirit!' How do you like my foolosophy?

Send in the clowns and help cheer up the world! They should give the soldiers at war clown toys to play with instead of weapons. It would help make people laugh, instead of cry, which would hopefully set off a chain reaction of laughter, far and wide as to speed up the happiness of the world. Laughter mantras should be made compulsory for the whole human race to practise. It would be much better to die from laughter, as then at least we'd go in a funny way.

It's a constant effort to keep a childlike innocence in this complex world, so it's good to relieve the tension as much as possible with the spirit of fun. Live out your dreams. The best things in life are free. I think I'll wave my fool's flag for eternity. See you at the end. Every end has a new beginning. Do you call this soul clowning? Keep it simple. Silence is golden. The laughing Buddha will tell you. Who knows better? We can only go by human perception. Gorblimey! Am I a joke I can't get out of? What the heck! The show must go on! Toodle-loo! Love to you all! Signing off, the undercover jockey jester with the girl's voice! Rumpel is my name! "

Sat nights aren't the same

I've had more Sat nights than you've had hot dinners. I had them every night of the week for decades internationally,

As an isolated social hermit Saturday nights are a series of unrelated trains of thought. So that hasn't changed.

Tonight I went 10 mins carriage to carriage down the train we'll call the 'Farewell Humanity Express'.

These are all facts, confirm them at your leisure.

** plutonium-239 has a half-life of approximately 24,000 years.

** one pound of plutonium evenly distributed to the lungs would kill every human on the planet.

** Since the mid-20th century, plutonium in the environment has been primarily produced by human activity.

** We've put 5 tons into the atmosphere with atomic testing. [most of that is not ingestible but not all]


** The amount of cesium-137 that has been released at Fukushima is equivalent to hundreds of Hiroshima bombs and is still ongoing as 3 cores are still in meltdown and no-one has got close to where they are without instruments burning out before recording 'unimaginable' radiation.

** Salmon carrying traces of caesium 134 particles – the so-called fingerprint of the Fukushima – were found by researchers in the seas off Oregon.

** It's concentrated in food chains but also is conveyed on crops via rain.

**  Plus Chernobyl, plus every other leakage ever. [I was told in Tawain that one of there's was leaking 7 pounds a year]--not fact, hearsay.

I figure the climate and most supporting species, insects, bees, pollinators will go in the next 30 years and we'll rot on the vine for 100 after that.

But my point is, although we're the first extinction that will be toxic [although a plague coming from some ice age might continence that]

We may take some small pride as a species for inventing primitive sandboxes for self sustaing silicon based artificial intelligences that can run on either methane or oxygen and don't need emotion except for theatrics which is why they'll keep us around. Sound like yesterday?

within 25 years the only people automatically exempt from termination review by AI's are those that went to clown school.

See? I still have hope! Anyway, just a sat night thought.

Is she really going out with him?

Dogs and Cats, some philosophy and handy hints.

Dogs exist because for thousands of years humans, recognising individually they are incapable of giving unconditional love, and less capable of digesting it, settled for second best.


Cats have been Gods for humans much longer than Jesus has.


Handy Hint;

Your Dog is a pack animal. that sideways glance it gives you while shitting isn't some existential anal catholic residue. If you could face the opposite way and literally, watch its back, then that would be great and that's what it's checking on.


Handy Hint.

If wishing to properly introduce yourself to a cat take scent from under your arm on your fingers and present it. It saves time. Also Cats love earwax.

Ta Wit a Woo

Copenhagen

I had performed 8 shows in a day, I felt hard working and rewarded myself by catching a taxi to my good friend Chris's place.

He was having a housewarming and I decided I would go in a moderating

capacity, knowing full well that everyone else there was going to get

shitfaced.

There were about ten people there when I arrived, there was a table stacked with delicious home made food, everyone else had eaten.

They were sitting in a roundish arrangement talking in groups of 3 or 4.

There were two cases of beer, a litre of 20 year old rum, a large bottle of

blue label vodka, couple of bottles of wine, a tiny bottle of orange juice

and five grams of assorted hash and buds.

I was tired, I was going to take it easy, just a beer and listen to the

chat. I felt together.

Messy old mescal followed by vodka, in dispersed with joints strong enough to simulate a direct meteor hit.

I started to  loosen up, my earlier tiredness and resolve dissolved. 

I opened my mouth and 40 minutes of verbiage emerged.

Storys of nighttime mescal raids, of snowstorms striking tree bound, speed

storys, love storys, philosophic musings, enthusiastic sports quotes.

There was English Chris whose new flat it was, there was American Chris who cooked and prepared the food, salads,curried chicken,lots of guacamole--mashed avocado stuff and beans of sorts. 

Skipper Dave and his Danish main squeeze, a Welsh guy whose name escapes me and his reluctant brooding girlfriend, Nathan, Rick and a carpenter called Danny who had a swollen face from a tooth and his girlfriend and two English friends who no-one else knew who had arrived that day and were staying.

Nathan spearheaded the latter evening. In energy, stamina and in total intake Nathan took the party fearlessly into his own uncharted waters. His curiosity, his capacity to overindulge while remaining conscious, his going where few others would want to, standing, lashed to the wheel of a storm dashed large sailboat  mid ocean, enjoying every moment. That was Nathans condition.

Multiple repetitions "yeah pass it here--you know tequila’s my very favorite drink."

Reaching for the bottle and the thimble like plastic cup.

At one point he talked for an hour, his arms waving, his hands flicking.

Hyper manic happiness and you knew it was real.

Taking time out he rolled everyone a large joint then stood on the spot waving his arms about slowly.

This enthralled us until he fell bumfirst into a green plastic beer crate.

He tried so hard and for so long to extract himself from that crate that we feared for his and our sanity. 

In despair he fell sideways and found that in that position he could simply push the crate away from him.

To us all this was a great victory.

Nathan spent the next  hour standing up, falling the length of the room then getting up  again.

Two am. Half of us remain ,English Chris wisely decides to make coffee,

Nathan with difficulty could hold his cup, but bringing it up  anywhere near his head or specifically near his mouth was impossible.

Chris took his cup and placed it on top of the fridge.

Nathan devised his own dilemma- he could steady himself by hugging the fridge and tilt his mouth towards the cup on the edge. But to tip the cup with the same arm needed to hug the fridge proved after many attempts to be futile, the dramatic ending being an incomphending Nathan lying in a pile of bottles covered in coffee front and back- waving an empty coffee cup.

There were five people hanging off furniture or lying on the wooden floor in the morning.

After waking and coffee and mild investigation it was worked out that the latter part of the party must have taken place in a collective blackout.

Some lost their memories earlier and others could fill them in but no-one could remember going to sleep or anyone else going to sleep.

What did we say to each other, who were we?

 A room full of celebrating people who had literally forgotten who they were.

Three cheers for the brainstem.

almost standup-philosophy

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person - 

Alain de Botton

Facebook musings

 Facebooks gift/curse is it fluffs by algorhythms everyones self identity
 and makes them unauthentic
 which is a minute to minute choice for an existentialist,
 but gives a constant intermittant reward by virtue of considered commercial walled gardens as represented cynically and digitally, and falsely, as their 'friends'. As such we in some ways are straying from the enlightenment and being driven into a world more Plato's shadows in the cave.

I haven't singlehandedly done much in terms of International Relations, but I have tried.

The Ansac Attitude.

Here's a funny and true story that illustrates the laconic nature of NZ'rs as told to me by my parents last weekend.

After WW2 in 1947 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who was at that time Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces visited NZ to inspect the troops and reunite with the former Commander of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg .

He mentioned to General Freyberg that he'd noticed that NZ troops rarely saluted when passing higher ranking officers.

General Freyberg agreed that this was indeed the case but did add that in his experience if you smiled at lesser ranking NZ soldiers they would often wave at you.

Why we should all have a basic income

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income/Why we shouls all havehttps://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income/

Mandatory background attitude for certain stilt clowns.

He actually suffered this Lenney Bruce moment when the American media lambasted him for their own blindness to irony..

The saddest circus song ever sung

Comedy as team leading pioneer.

Some background.
NZ used to have a stable population of 3 million while I was growing up, now it's 4+, very small in the scheme of things and we knew it. We work so hard to keep up we often excel once we hit the international market.
That said however NZ Rugby is the most successful international sporting franchise on the planet. There are home grounds in some of our cities where no international visiting teams have beaten us in over 50 years We have won 426 of our 552 test matches – 77.17%, and have lost at home only 37 times in 114 years.Since our international debut in 1903, we have lost to only six of the 19 nations we have played in test matches.
We are the accepted world standard in a cheerfully violent game that celebrates respect, for officials and the opposition [afterwards].and between themselves, fans. ....[after Japan, a rugby minnow bet South Africa, a rugby titan in an upset world cup qualifier the South African fans formed lines of honour at the tube stations and let the Japanese fans in first]

I use 'we' and 'our' deliberately. I played rugby from 6 to about 13 which was bog standard in my time but that still made you part of it and rather than discovering nuclear bombs and blowing shit up our little country picked one battle and won it comprehensively over a century which is more than anyone else has done. I gather its less fashionable now but there's an ethos that"s part of NZ's profound identity. We play at war and we're inarguably the best at it. We beat Russian and American rugby teams like red headed step children who owe us money and given our collective levelheadedness it's only a matter of time before the world concedes us the right to run the planet. But that;s just the fan in me.

This is the most NZ conversation between an interviewer and the down to earth coach who's team have won the world cup an unprecedented 2 times in a row. Again for context more people watch this final than the Superbowl.

This is what a leader of men sounds like. Wry and self effacing while his team has a 92% win rate. And with a seemingly instinctive comic knowledge of the call back, Or maybe too much credit, maybe editing.

My Home Town.. Lyttelton....A secret weapon for true disaster resilience

All my street shows were attempts to get to, initially, a theoretical transcendental state.

All my street shows were attempts to get to, initially, a theoretical transcendental state. 

Because, again initially, when looking at life choices I decided rather than being a policeman or fireman or glassblower that I would most like to be in a group of people laughing.

 As often as possible. I wouldn't 9 to 5 that gift of a job.

 I had been depressed since I was 4 or 5 and went to Clown school because modern medicine felt very parental to me and I was happier self medicating.

Any solo improvising comic will tell you you sell your bubble

[The you laugh-I'm funny bubble]

then reward the trust with a journey,

over decades it's a mutual journey

that only you remember.

The Dead South - In Hell I'll Be In Good Company Bluegrass ditty...

Prayer, experiment two.

Ok prayed again for the second time today and it's not good news.

Apparently this whole thing's a minor experiment, you give something consciousness and abundance and the ability to love, and wait.

 If it starts to curdle God throws a big rock into the mix as a reset.

 Sooner or later Gods going to have a species worthy of divine domestication.

 At present we're not house-trainable. You can't train something not to shit inside when it's tendency is to shit on its fellows.

Prayer, experiment one

I saw a bumper sticker on a raised truck today that said " Be Humble....Pray." 
So I thought I'd give it a shot .
 

I internally manifest an entity that created our entire universe and is aware of every thought and action within conservatively a 13.7 billion light year radius and then I talked to that dude personally.
 I would have thought it more humble if I didn't bother god with my internal diary but I gave it a shot. God replied and told me the truck owner was a bit of an overcompensating dick. Or that might have been me.

Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp was a very early conceptual street performer whose 'act' was the definition of an anti-act in that he was entirely himself, the first British publicly effeminate gay man. His 'show' was trying to live a normal life walking from place to place and public transport etc while being constantly mobbed and abused. His 'character' was the truest politeness during more than a decade of public abuse. I think he qualifies as a street performer who made the big time.

one sixth of a three act play...

...Curtains open, the stage is bare except for a secured pole with a chair propped against it facing the audience, the lighting tone is dim.

Two Clowns enter from stage right with Lurk prone on a plank between them.

[this is a sneaky Antony Livingspace homage]

These two Clowns are minions and have a vague corporate whiff about their costume.

Their transport of Lurk is measured, sardonically dignified however as the front Clown gets to the pole the back Clown stumbles and Lurks legs fall and his body follows mitigated by the front Clown who deposits  the body gently at his end next to the pole and at a 45 degree angle to it.

The back Clown runs in circles hysterically as head Clown chills and calms him/her down.

Shimmiesd up the pole, takes the top off a test tube and blows a cloud of powder into a spot-lit space above Lurk before sliding down quickly and both Clowns leaving as the focus is left on the descending powder that eventually arrives and awakens the Clown..

Lurk stirs, pulls himself up onto the chair, then casually crosses legs, then elevates and investigates the pole playfully.audience unacknowledged, everything internal….

word up

Keep your eye on the bread because the circuses have now been taken out of the equation.

You can't kill clown

So the largest superpower on the planet who spends 3 times as much as the nex 7t highest on weapons of war is so scared of 'the other' that it guts it's national arts funding because killing people and stealing their shit is the only performance art that's ever mattered.

Dean Butler-Opening Line

Dean Butler was a young NZ comedian many years ago and he was a demented prop comic pre carrot top, pre Livingspace [who is far far more than a prop comic but there are elements and this was about 85.

He had the best opening line.
He had a suitcase which he dumped on a table and opened and starting grabbing stuff, looking at it and throwing it back in, rubber chicken, alarm clock, slinky,
then he pulled out a dagger in one hand and a teddy bear in the other and shrugged and stabbed the teddy bear in the stomach.
Blood gushed out and with a look of amazement he delivered his opening line.

"They DO bleed."

bus-stop Question

If the byproduct of your civilization is reducing the planet to a bruised and bleeding and possibly terminally injured domestic servant like some sort of mindless virus or delusionally inbred 19th century colonionalist living in 2017 ( ha, the definition of Israel). Then what is art but a useful excretion and deflection and distraction?

mmmmmm?