Why This Blog Exists
Last week I responded to a request on Hugh Hewitt's site. He invited his readers who blog to send an email describing their blogging and book-buying habits.
I sent this:
Hugh,
I've revised my blog into a weekly, since I'm working big issues and personal perspective.
4+ hours during the weekdays, 6+ on the weekends, with @25% going into the Blog, 25% into reading and 50% into creative and development writing.
To staunch my wife's incessant chiding that "I need to get up and walk around once in a while," I've taken a day job and shoved writing to early mornings, nights and weekends.
Saw you at Borders, Denver where I buy whatever I can't grab through Amazon or B&N online.
I've written, produced and directed Video, TV, Theater, Film and Live performance pieces to great success but from here on out, I'm focused on Print and Blogosphere. (In the reviews, you'll see WinterSoldier - a huge production I produced in 1989 to refute Kerry's lies about me and my fellow Nam vets.)
I look forward to following you and your show as the Blogo walks rough-shod over the J-school intelligentsia.
No more suspenders...
M
Hugh sent back:
I hope your blog is named no more suspenders. That's brilliant. HH
I immediately jumped to Blogger and started No More Suspenders, using "Disestablishing the Established Media" as a subtitle,
I spent this past week working days in a telemarketing boiler room (a brain-deadening, between-projects job, but invaluable experience in winning people's trust over the phone in 6 seconds) At night, I went through my last decade of writings and contacts to find the right approach for NMS.
The first time I spoke the acronym I heard myself say "animus." A propitious coincidence considering my talents. So be it.
Last year, when I spoke with author Diane Ravitch - The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn - I asked he how I could best apply my talents in comedy and media production to the task of routing the PC language cops. She said, "Mockery. Assail them with unrelenting ridicule and mockery."
I was working as a stand-up comic during the 1997 Oakland Unified School District's Ebonics Delirium. While other comics were using outrageous Ebonics constructions to get laughs, I took my regular tack on the ludicris (sic, sic, sic) by championing the moron POV.
Onstage, I indignantly defended the right of Black students to have English as a second language so they wouldn't feel inferior to Latino students. This absurd conceit took my audience inside the lunacity of crippling a child's education for the notion of equality. I then proposed that Asian children should be taught Asionics by having them adopt dubbed Kung Fu Film dialogue locutions and that upper middleclass white students should be forced to learn Honkyonics (which, sounded suspiciously like Al Gore after a double espresso and a bhong hit).
My intent was to "extend reality to absurdity by logical means." This approach makes the audience hear the premise concept with both sides of their brain and laughter - either relevatory or nervous - is the usual result. "The logical extension of reality to absurdity" is the functional definition of satire. It must be based in reality, procede logically and wind up at absurdity.
The reason comedy has become so extreme lately is because reality is becoming increasingly absurd, and this shortage of raw materials has shut down the comedy mills. Out-of-work comics are showing up as political Pun-Dits and Ditzes, by ignoring the Satire manufacturing process and spewing abject absurdities they pass off as truth.
Franken, Garofalo and other Liberal comics (a resounding majority of the Comic and Comedian Communities) are re-verse engineering their routines and the result is impossible to enjoy. Amazingly, this backward process produces exactly what one might expect: audiences who enjoy sharing a common hatred through derision and scorn.
It's as though a Steel Mill began melting down cars to make boxcars full of ore to satisy the miners. Bitter, hate-filled miners who resent the wealthy who can afford new cars.
If the person listening to satirical "dissonance" is emotionally attached to the premise, they may skip over the laughter prompt and move directly to umbrage. At that point they are juicy targets for the next level of comic absurdity and either they let go of their emotional attachment, fume in silence or heckle.
In any case, the comedian wins.
The convert joins the safety of the audience in laughter (and possibly sees his or her folly in a new light), the silent fumer drinks more or, in extreme resistence to the routine, heckles the comedian. In the back of the room, the club owner smiles as the waitresses shift into double-time.
Contrary to popular perception, a heckler is a force amplifier for a comedian and, once the loudmouth is identified and engaged, the audience is likely to turn their attention to the impending "duel."
If the comedian smartly hacks the heckler to ribbons, the audience cheers. If the heckler gives the comedian a spirited exchange the audience is still entertained while the comedian looks for a coup de grace line. Stock shut-down lines are known by every comedian, imagination and graphic imagery can send the audience into hysterics. ("Do I come down to the Bus Terminal Men's Room and bother you while you're working?" "Did you come here tonight with other members of your Group Home?" and "If I want anymore crap out of you, I'll squeeze your misshapen head.")
If the heckler loses the battle of wits but continues to interrupt, the audience invariably finds voice and shouts him or her down.
The outcome is always the same. The heckler must lose and the audience must be encouraged to continue their sense of unity. Communitas. Without this, the comedian is nothing, the message is forgotten and the audience does not get the comic communion and sense of refreshment that laughter with a crowd brings.
I can get audience to do this. And, thanks to Diane, I have a strategy.
This morning , I finished Hugh Hewitt's If It's Close They Can't Cheat.
Thank you Hugh, I now have a mission - and this blog is part of my plan.
So, before you read on, I suggest strongly that you read Hugh's book. Otherwise you'll miss the underlying concept behind the comedy on this Blog.
I sent this:
Hugh,
I've revised my blog into a weekly, since I'm working big issues and personal perspective.
4+ hours during the weekdays, 6+ on the weekends, with @25% going into the Blog, 25% into reading and 50% into creative and development writing.
To staunch my wife's incessant chiding that "I need to get up and walk around once in a while," I've taken a day job and shoved writing to early mornings, nights and weekends.
Saw you at Borders, Denver where I buy whatever I can't grab through Amazon or B&N online.
I've written, produced and directed Video, TV, Theater, Film and Live performance pieces to great success but from here on out, I'm focused on Print and Blogosphere. (In the reviews, you'll see WinterSoldier - a huge production I produced in 1989 to refute Kerry's lies about me and my fellow Nam vets.)
I look forward to following you and your show as the Blogo walks rough-shod over the J-school intelligentsia.
No more suspenders...
M
Hugh sent back:
I hope your blog is named no more suspenders. That's brilliant. HH
I immediately jumped to Blogger and started No More Suspenders, using "Disestablishing the Established Media" as a subtitle,
I spent this past week working days in a telemarketing boiler room (a brain-deadening, between-projects job, but invaluable experience in winning people's trust over the phone in 6 seconds) At night, I went through my last decade of writings and contacts to find the right approach for NMS.
The first time I spoke the acronym I heard myself say "animus." A propitious coincidence considering my talents. So be it.
Last year, when I spoke with author Diane Ravitch - The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn - I asked he how I could best apply my talents in comedy and media production to the task of routing the PC language cops. She said, "Mockery. Assail them with unrelenting ridicule and mockery."
I was working as a stand-up comic during the 1997 Oakland Unified School District's Ebonics Delirium. While other comics were using outrageous Ebonics constructions to get laughs, I took my regular tack on the ludicris (sic, sic, sic) by championing the moron POV.
Onstage, I indignantly defended the right of Black students to have English as a second language so they wouldn't feel inferior to Latino students. This absurd conceit took my audience inside the lunacity of crippling a child's education for the notion of equality. I then proposed that Asian children should be taught Asionics by having them adopt dubbed Kung Fu Film dialogue locutions and that upper middleclass white students should be forced to learn Honkyonics (which, sounded suspiciously like Al Gore after a double espresso and a bhong hit).
My intent was to "extend reality to absurdity by logical means." This approach makes the audience hear the premise concept with both sides of their brain and laughter - either relevatory or nervous - is the usual result. "The logical extension of reality to absurdity" is the functional definition of satire. It must be based in reality, procede logically and wind up at absurdity.
The reason comedy has become so extreme lately is because reality is becoming increasingly absurd, and this shortage of raw materials has shut down the comedy mills. Out-of-work comics are showing up as political Pun-Dits and Ditzes, by ignoring the Satire manufacturing process and spewing abject absurdities they pass off as truth.
Franken, Garofalo and other Liberal comics (a resounding majority of the Comic and Comedian Communities) are re-verse engineering their routines and the result is impossible to enjoy. Amazingly, this backward process produces exactly what one might expect: audiences who enjoy sharing a common hatred through derision and scorn.
It's as though a Steel Mill began melting down cars to make boxcars full of ore to satisy the miners. Bitter, hate-filled miners who resent the wealthy who can afford new cars.
If the person listening to satirical "dissonance" is emotionally attached to the premise, they may skip over the laughter prompt and move directly to umbrage. At that point they are juicy targets for the next level of comic absurdity and either they let go of their emotional attachment, fume in silence or heckle.
In any case, the comedian wins.
The convert joins the safety of the audience in laughter (and possibly sees his or her folly in a new light), the silent fumer drinks more or, in extreme resistence to the routine, heckles the comedian. In the back of the room, the club owner smiles as the waitresses shift into double-time.
Contrary to popular perception, a heckler is a force amplifier for a comedian and, once the loudmouth is identified and engaged, the audience is likely to turn their attention to the impending "duel."
If the comedian smartly hacks the heckler to ribbons, the audience cheers. If the heckler gives the comedian a spirited exchange the audience is still entertained while the comedian looks for a coup de grace line. Stock shut-down lines are known by every comedian, imagination and graphic imagery can send the audience into hysterics. ("Do I come down to the Bus Terminal Men's Room and bother you while you're working?" "Did you come here tonight with other members of your Group Home?" and "If I want anymore crap out of you, I'll squeeze your misshapen head.")
If the heckler loses the battle of wits but continues to interrupt, the audience invariably finds voice and shouts him or her down.
The outcome is always the same. The heckler must lose and the audience must be encouraged to continue their sense of unity. Communitas. Without this, the comedian is nothing, the message is forgotten and the audience does not get the comic communion and sense of refreshment that laughter with a crowd brings.
I can get audience to do this. And, thanks to Diane, I have a strategy.
This morning , I finished Hugh Hewitt's If It's Close They Can't Cheat.
Thank you Hugh, I now have a mission - and this blog is part of my plan.
So, before you read on, I suggest strongly that you read Hugh's book. Otherwise you'll miss the underlying concept behind the comedy on this Blog.
posted by Martin at 7:48 AM
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