Circus Minimus

For a while there, way before emo, I was working against mimes. Particularly street mimes. 

Anytime I found someone behind an upturned hat, walking into a breeze, trying to escape from a glass box, or accidentally sewing their lip to their elbow, I’d heckle them until they revealed their true nature and either turned violent or wept invisible tears over the invisible slice of cake they’d just dropped. 

I really felt I was getting somewhere, too. I was seeing less of them about and when Princess Diana started her anti-mime campaign in the mid-90s, I thought it was in the bag. Then someone pointed out to me that I had probably misheard the radio news, and that she had thrown her lot in with an anti-mine organisation. 

“OK, fine,” I thought. She could go after the land mines, I’d go after Marcel and his ilk. I’d see her at the Nobel ceremony and ignore her salty tears of regret when I kissed my cheque. But, to be honest, it kind of took the fight out of me and I lost interest. These days I am quite busy organising the war on pandas. Modern times, modern exigencies.

Recently, however, the old enmity came rushing back when I was thrust into the heartland of the scourge. 

I was at a lunch and found myself sitting next to a young contact juggler, along with his girlfriend,  a clown/mime/knife thrower; his best mate, a carney of some sort, and his best mate’s girlfriend, a circus animal wrangler. Now, it’s been a long time since I fought in The Clown Wars (it was a more civilised age) but those allegiances die hard and I was ready to give them a bit of what-for. 

But the more I listened, the more I relaxed. Turns out we don’t have to do anything to stem the tide of mimes, clowns, carneys and other evil from emerging from under the big-top. They’re their own worst enemy. The camels hate them, the knife thrower is really reliable at hitting the balloon she practises with (the balloon that represents the assistant’s head) and they’re all in financial trouble. But here’s the self-inflicted danger that really tickled me.

Remember David Bowie in Labyrinth? Remember how he moved those crystal balls (about the size of a softball) hypnotically around on his hands? Well, that’s contact juggling. I was talking to the contact juggler and admiring his balls when he said, 

“These are really dangerous, did you know?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, my teacher once came back to his car, where he’d left his balls, to see it just catching alight and all full of smoke.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah. I left them out on my desk once and walked back in to see the paper they were sitting on turning brown and starting to curl.” 

It twigged. The crystal juggling balls are an incredibly effective magnifying glass. Put them down, let the sun come up, and poof - things burst into flames underneath them.

I dropped some sage advice on how to stop things spontaneously igniting around his balls.

“Yep, it’s as my Grandfather used to say; It‘s important to know where your ballsack is, in this crazy, mixed-up world.”

Fuck Art, Let's Dan... Whoops!

I went to see Monet before he left town and I gotta say, I just think the guy needed some glasses. All his stuff was really blurry. I felt sorry for him.

Anyway, on the way out I noticed these two. Or is it three?

In a good humoured way and without radical ambiguity, the banal and impersonal bust is bestowed with a nice bit of temporal trickery.

The impression is they have reacted to an unlikely event: The sudden animation and destruction of one of their own.

Did he make a break for it? Did the sculptor make a slip, for which the other two will seek their stoney revenge?

The inanimate is vivified in a conceptual 'frozen moment'. The viewed become the viewers and ... ahhh, all the rest of the art guff that can be so easily tacked onto a good wheeze. (I was really going to go to town with a couple more paragraphs of bollocks, masquerading as windy art criticism - just for giggles - but that would be unfair to the piece.) I liked it and it brought a smile to my face.

But they missed a golden opportunity with the name of the piece. For some unknown reason, it was not called "Bust-ed".

Perhaps the artist had too much class. I dunno.

"I, Am Your Father."

Evil. Black and White

I was at home putting Lara Croft in danger (by pointlessly swan-diving into completely dry watering holes) when Smurfy rang me and told me there was going to be some Panda gear on the news.

Now, I’d already been let down by the black and white bastards once this week, when one of the channels promised me some of their work and it ended up being ten seconds of “… are finally presented to Taiwan” and that was about it.

What had happened, I gather, is that there had been a lengthy delay delivering the two pandas and the Taiwanese were just about to get all up in China’s face about it. An international crisis was averted when the boof-heads were finally handed over. I would like to stress that I had no part in this particular deal, but being the world reviled expert on monochromatic mammals that I am, I was duty bound to watch the next instalment in the insidious rise of the bear.

Tonight’s offering from the panda camp was a parade of immature, immobile bludgers, all carried out on stage to the delight of the crowd. These were the ones that had been saved or conceived or built or trapped or dug up or whatever… (details, pah) since the big earthquakes in China.

If you look at the posture and the expression on a panda’s face when it is being carried out on stage by a woman of slightly less than half its weight, you will be struck by the dopey gormlessness. The flaccid hanging of the forelimbs over the woman’s arm, the drooping tummy and boneless back legs dangling in front of her as she fights to carry the sack of wet fur into the limelight to be admired. Admired for what? Being fatally relaxed?

What you would also be struck by, as we cut to exciting footage of pandas ‘escaping’ the quakes (being carried by long-suffering tiny woman again), is that being dragged to safety looks exactly the same as being dragged into the spotlight. Even with buildings and geological features tumbling down around it, the posture and expression is exactly the same one it has when people are baying for its autograph.

Nothing can be that oblivious. They must be so deeply engrossed in thought that earthquakes or rock concerts make no difference to them.

The question needs to be asked.

What are they planning?

Your Move

I reckon you’d need to be a self-flagellating nutbag to want to rise in the ranks of the sort of organisation that has woven a profound dislike of you and your kind into its fabric.

I’m not talking about Obama and the US Government. The organisation he has sought to rise in doesn’t have at its core proscriptive statements on gender, race or creed. The Founding Fathers were quite eloquent on the point that it wasn’t about that (even though a few of them were slave owners).  Obama can work there without having to pointlessly claw away at the very basis of the organisation on a daily basis. It wasn’t built to hate him. In his organisation, you get there and stay there by being popular - and he’s clearly that. His particular club is all about that.

No, if you are a woman or a gay and want to rise up in the ranks of a big church I reckon you’ve got to love wearing a hair-shirt. 

Even if you are unable to face the realities of an omnipotent being that supposedly loves you, hears your every thought, is interested in meddling in day-to-day human affairs, but is also willing to let gratuitous human suffering happen across the planet, at least you should recognise the realities of the organisation you have decided to devote so much time to.

It does not like you. It's worked so hard to keep you out.

That organisation is predicated around the idea that it has the sole line to the only true sky fairy, and in the main, this creator of planets tends to feel fairly threatened by the likes of you. (Even though He made you, the only reason I can see that He would be so anti-you, would be that He doesn’t want to get girl's germs or dress too snappily.) According to His infallible books, you are not liked or welcome - and this is not a democratic process.

So when Jon Stewart announced that his guest for last night’s show was going to be Bishop Gene Robinson, America’s first openly gay bishop, I turned the vacuum cleaner back on and kept dancing to “I want to break free.” (Did anyone else find Roger Taylor disturbingly attractive as a school girl in that clip? No? Only me? Ok, let’s move on.) But the vacuum was off when Gene was interviewed, and he knows how to bring the funny.

Jon Stewart was asking him about how the inauguration had gone. The Bishop said, “Blah blah history, blah honour to be there, blah, hope blah,” and then they got onto how many people had attended. 

While they were talking about the enormous crowds, Stewart quipped that it would’ve been doubly difficult in the throng for Robinson, because he was only allowed to move diagonally.

Laughter in the audience rises (slowly, as people catch on) and dies down.

Bishop Gene Robinson comes back with, “Jon, you’ve gotta remember, there’s also a queen on the board.” 

Oz As

American cultural colonialism continues almost unchecked in all English speaking countries. I know of no Pom or Aussie, over the age of 30, who doesn’t understand most US vernacular. People under the age of 30 just seem to sound American.

 

But happily, some local differences do survive. One of them cropped up the other day and it really made me smile. Partly because it was a compliment; mainly because it was a very Australian style of compliment. I really can’t see it ever being a normal way to conduct flattery in down-town L.A.

 

At a dinner party recently (that went till four in the morning) I related to one of my hosts the story of how I bought my ute. He’s the kind of guy who’d appreciate this sort of thing. He has a ute too. It also allowed me to relate the story of a character (the car salesman) and chuck around a grossly exaggerated accent.

 

It goes a little something like this.

 

After some argy-bargy between me and the salesman that included the sorry state of my trade-in, I played my trump card. I was able to date how long the ute had been in the yard without him being able to shift it. I mixed that in with a touch of,

 

 “… during these worsening economic times, no one is buying big-ticket items.” 

He came back in his thick Balkan accent,

 

“Ahh mate! You are taking the moneys from my kid’s mouth!” Excellent.

 

He then followed up with the grimmest of grim Balkan faces, gripped his chin with his left hand, growled for a little while, and then jammed out his right hand and said,

 

“Alright, it is done!”

 

He then lightened, removed his ‘dealing’ face and said, “So, do you want a beer?”

 

Being the stick in the mud I am, I said,

 

“Mate, it’s ten in the morning!” I was waiting for him to offer a scotch.

 

I drove away, having traded a car that was close to exploding and getting the ute for just on half the advertised price. Everyone’s happy, except his children who have no money to eat.

 

As I mentioned, the dinner where I related the story ran very late and I ended up crashing on a spare bed, snuggled underneath their whippet. The next day the host drove me back to where Emergency Contact and I were supposed to be bunking.

 

As we pulled in behind my ute, host says,

 

“Ah, so this is it?”

 

“Yup, that’s the one.”

 

He gets out and circles it once, looks inside the cabin, looks at me and says,

 

“And you got it for five?”

 

“Yup.”

 

He then pays a truly Aussie compliment on my second-hand-car dealing acumen.

 

“Mate, it’s stolen.”

Movie Reviews And Considered Thoughts On Cinema

Recently, while I was in a helpless state, Emergency Contact super-glued me to the couch and pinned my eyeballs open. She then, in revenge for some foul deed I must have committed, ordered Mama Mia through the cable movie thingy.

I should show my hand and admit that I was not a fan of Abba the first time round; but holy fuckin’ tone deaf geriatrics, Batman! What a disaster of a film that is.

It’s a nasty little immoral plot, focusing on a charmless, self-obsessed brat who feels that everyone is there for the simple task of pleasing her. It smelled a bit like opera.

All the leading women, who should know better, employ an acting style I shall now coin as ‘high times require high volume’. Honestly, I haven’t seen so many old hags yelling at each other since last year’s over 80s quidditch grand final.

The island it is filmed on should be one of the stars of the show, but somehow the cinematography failed there as well. You see more alluring shots of the Med in a five minute segment on Getaway.

You can’t relax and let it wash over you either. At any moment, one of the aging stars could break a hip, an arm, or into song. That is extremely nerve wracking with Pierce Brosnan deciding to add his tonsils to the line-up. 

What. Was. He. Thinking? 

I thought his people were supposed to be naturally musical. I can’t look at him the same way ever again. I have seen the karaoke/Gong Show/Red Faces moment, where all dignity is carefully bundled up and chucked out the nearest window. He’s farted at the dinner table and it will add to the gaping void in my life. 

I give it two technicoloured-Bjorns, out of ten. 

Some of you will have been aware of another gaping void and been able to put a name to it. Others will have simply been feeling that certain something, akin to an itch in a phantom limb. What’s been keeping you up at night, or adding to the Sunday afternoon depression, has been the absence of a third Underworld film in your lives. 

No, really.

Well thankfully, thoughtful film producers have sought to fill that aching chasm. But they have missed a marketing opportunity too, I think. 

It should be called, Underworld - I’m Lycan It!

And no, I won't be seeing or reviewing it. I just needed to get that off my chest.

Further Pandantics

I was talking to David Attenborough the other day and, recognising as he does the importance of my work in the field, he was asking how my campaign against pandas was going.

I admitted that I was fighting an uphill battle. Ewster, one of my senior panda field researchers, had sent me an update. Even I had to concede that there was some top-notch comedy gear coming from the black and white boof-heads.

I give you this years almost certain winner of ‘Best News Article’ (unless ‘Kyle Sandilands Caught in Orang-utan Love Triangle’ happens to get written between now and December 31).

Panda Bites Third Tourist In 2 Years At China Zoo (Article Link)

There is so much good material in the article that I actually blacked out for a little while, having been overwhelmed by a complex set of emotions, starting with what the Germans call wozumteufelsollichanfangen (loosely translated to “where the hell do I start!?”) right up to the bitter disappointment that comes with the knowledge that your career as a world reviled naturalist might have reached its natural apotheosis and now follows the inevitable slide into mediocrity.

I won’t over-sell the article too much more, other than to say that once you have read the line, “Gu Gu first made news in 2007 when he bit a drunken tourist who jumped into his pen and tried to hug him. The tourist retaliated by biting the panda in the back.” You know it’s pretty much all downhill from there.

Perhaps it is with simple verse that I can best express my thoughts on this complex, baffling and slightly inbred animal.

No one can

Maul a man

The way

A panda can

P.S. David Attenborough runs the bowling club the next train station up the line.