If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

A shirt that instantly squeezes your fat into muscles.

Here’s a great talk from Stewart Lee about the nature of stand-up comedy and how it changed so profoundly at the end of the 70s (thanks, J):

If you have the full 54 minutes, it’s all worth a watch. For the rest of you, you can skip to about 5-6 minutes in (his actual talk ends at about 34 minutes; questions follow). This is where he explains that UK stand-up comedy used to be a bunch of men in suits and bow ties standing in working mens clubs and telling the same 1000 jokes again and again, like they were a series of much-loved songs performed by skilled covers bands.

Then, following the American model of pioneers such as Lenny Bruce, the ‘alternative’ comedians came in and started writing entire shows that weren’t about one-liners, shows that could sustain a narrative thread for a couple of hours, shows that were entirely a constructed artifice (a subtler version of the kind of thing done by Al Murray).

The detail is fascinating, including how certain kinds of government benefits made it easier to spend a few years developing your act.

As a dissection of the growth and practicalities of the creative process it’s well worth a watch.

1. It must not be about what it appears to be about. The Godfather is about obligation, family, growth, proving yourself to doubters, history and many other facets of human existence. It is not about the Mafia. The Mafia is a vehicle by which the real points are transported. Michelangelo’s David isn’t a marble representation of a kid from the Bible; it’s a symbol of the defence of civil liberties. King Lear is about justice; compassion and reconciliation; appearance versus reality. It’s not about an old man who has to step down from ruling a country.

2. It must teach us something about the essence of life. See above. Lear: ‘Many a true word hath been spoken in jest’. This is really what all art is about: from stand up comedy (Lenny Bruce explaining the true function of the word ‘nigger’) to music (listen to Kooks by David Bowie. The fundamentals of parenthood are all there) and every other art form in between. If it hasn’t taught the world something, true greatness has passed it by.

3. Maximum meaning, minimum means. Anyone can explain anything in a million words. If art is going to be great it needs to rise above something within the grasp of every human being on earth. Donne said, ‘No man is an island’. Larkin said, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’. Milton said, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’. Those short sentences are so rich they say more to us than many books. Look how much personality and life Rafael brings to a single man’s face:

4. It must contain an element of originality. Just as easy as expressing a thought in many words is copying what someone else has done. You don’t have to be entirely original (after all, how many great paintings of the Virgin Mary have there been?), but you do need to bring something hitherto unseen to your art: a new perspective can be just as original as a new story or a new subject.

5. It must endure. This is why it’s hard to appraise more recent art as ‘great’: longevity is an important aspect of art’s quality. It lets us know that a fundamental truth has been expressed, one that is as relevant to a serving maid in the 1700s as it is to a newspaper editor in 2013. For every new day that we still find so much of ourselves in Othello, its greatness will continue to grow.

Your art can possess any, all or none of the above, but the greater in number and extent that it delivers, the greater it will be.

Stop these white people (especially 3&4. Thanks, J).

Romantic movie poster clichés (thanks, T).

Sugar-free Haribo reviews (thanks, J).

Biggie & Thomas (thanks, D):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6jtLAnqiiA

Lego album covers (thanks, T).

In-fucking-sane optical illusion (thanks, J):

Utterly magical: photographer inserts herself into her childhood photos (thanks, P).

Brilliant Soviet anti-drinking propaganda posters (thanks, J).

Bill Murray is very interesting (thanks, R).

How long can you listen to Michael Owen’s guided tour of Dubai without either falling asleep or committing brutal suicide? The record is 3:29. Good luck:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD-LjX_K9Cg&feature=youtu.be

Beach Boys real recording of I Get Around:

Siri answers the deep questions.

Beautiful, heartwarming, homemade sex doll (thanks, J).

Movie quote infographics (thanks, A).

Worst food names ever (thanks, J).

Lego David Bowie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63b4O_2HCYM

The new strategy seems to be: make a story about people getting together that is somewhat based on the name of Lynx/Axe’s new deodorant (see the astronaut one).

Okaaaaaaayyyyyy…

I mentioned this recently, but I’m just not sure what that’s got to do with Lynx.

The last one told me astronauts are the ultimate in hot men (thanks for the tip).

This one suggests that getting it on is better than war, so does that mean we should all buy Lynx, be more likely to get it on, then avoid war?

But that doesn’t really come out in the vignettes. Why does the tank woman want the tank driver, who she seems to recognise? Not apparently due to the Lynx effect.

Fuck knows.

I think I’ve wasted far too many brain cells trying to figure out something that is ultimately bloody pointless.

The shame is that they still had the core concept up to very recently (this 2012 ad is one of the best ever):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRB0i9-AUQs

Where’s The Lynx Effect idea gone, and why?

Around this time of year people seem to undergo the ultimately futile process of trying to improve themselves.

Take it from me: you’re fine as you are.

Especially you, you lovely little thing.

But if you still want to take on the battle of self-esteem vs yummy booze, here’s a little help created by my friend Oli Kellett and his partner, Stine:

You can click through the booklet here.

Good luck not being a useless shitestain!

Martin McAllister has, like a few others of you, dipped into the world of the app to feather his nest, stretch his legs and widen his horizons:

It’s called Your Amazing Family Circus, and Martin says, ‘It’s an interactive kids story book that takes your family’s faces, runs them through filters before adding them to the illustration, and adds their names to the story. Surprisingly there’s nothing else like it in the app store.’

That is a surprise.

I was stunned.

So much so that I went to check that this ridiculous claim was actually true. Could there really be no other face-transplant-family-story-circus apps out there?

Fuck me. He’s right.

Get in on the ground floor before the inevitable thousands of copycats pile in.

(Unsarcastically: nice one, Martin. It looks like a cracker and I applaud your gumption.)

I think if you translated it into Russian it’d sound like Putin warning gays not to come anywhere near their straight, manly, masculine, non-gay country.

How’s he going to cope with the figure skating costumes?

Have you ever noticed how a film can be brilliant the first time you see it but crap the next?

How a much-loved restaurant is off-par for no discernible reason?

How track seven on your favourite album goes from being a mediocre also-ran to a heavy rotation favourite?

I’d guess there could be many reasons for that, some of which would be down to a change in you; after all your tastes change in clear and obvious ways (from The Spice Girls to P.J. Harvey, perhaps), so why not to less obvious extents? You might be able to point to the moment you were given proper buffalo mozzarella to eat, which led to your subsequent forsaking of Dairylea, but other alterations are bound to be less obvious. Could a line from a poem or an article in a magazine begun a deep loathing of San Sebastien or a lifelong devotion to Gloria Gaynor? Difficult to tell, but it sounds plausible.

I think there’s also something external that makes us like or dislike things more or less: the moment. Take Charles Dickens: the man was a critical failure in his day, but he has since been reassessed as a literary giant. Is that because the words changed? Obviously not. It’s because the environment into which the books were released has altered, allowing once tepid opinions to become mass enthusiasm.

The 1944 winner of the Oscar for best picture was Going My Way. It beat Double Indemnity. Which has become the ‘classic’? Which have you heard of? Why did everyone go crazy for the Seabreeze in 1999 and the Apple Martini in 2002 but no more? You could cite fashion, but that doesn’t explain the undurance of the gin and tonic or Martini. Maybe there’s a particular time when people collectively accept or love certain subjective things.

Are the successful merely better, or did they appear before us at just the right moment? When that seems clear and obvious we call it capturing the Zeitgeist, but surely most of the time we have no idea when or why it happens. People can often find explanations in retrospect, but no one really knows what the Zeitgeist is or when it changes, so all we can do is make attempts to capture it (and often fail).

But that must have a massive impact on advertising. Would the Meerkats have been loved in 1976? Will they still be gracing our screens in 2036? And if not, would that be because the scripts have run out of steam or because the moment has been lost? I suspect we’ve all got favourite ads that were neither publicly loved nor awarded. Does that mean that they were bad, or just mistimed? And is the essence of that timing the essence of producing great art? Of course, no one can predict what the Zeitgeist will demand fifty years from now, but perhaps certain fundamental principles endure.

So next time your ad falls flat on its face, it could be that it’s simply ahead of or behind the times, destined to be reassessed in the decades to come.

Or it could be that it’s, y’know… shit.

I guess we can never be sure.

Stunning bird’s eye photography (thanks, V).

More good infographics than you can shake a stick at (thanks, R).

Amazing timelapse of LA (thanks, S):

Discarded drug baggies (thanks, J).

Simpsons early (good) writers chat about the show (thanks, B).

Lenny Bruce speaks at UCLA in 1966 (thanks, T):

This is typography, motherfuckers (thanks, B).

Nice little cartoon (thanks, L).

Watch the Batmobiles race (thanks, V):

Funniest tweets of 2013 (thanks, J).

Pornhub comments on stock photography (NSFW. Thanks, D).

Jerry Seinfeld Reddit (thanks, T).

Truth (thanks, P).

Have fun guessing who the statues represent at the world’s worst wax museum (thanks, J).

Fuck up your mind as you learn about time (thanks, T).