I realise this is my second consecutive blog entry about toilets, but I today I want to examine public restroom social ettiquette. Now, I'm a man, so I can't speak for how things work in ladies' restrooms, but in men's restrooms, there exists an explicit code of conduct, which operates under the principle that everyone is a horny homosexual trying to catch a glimpse of your todger, and therefore all forms of social interaction are to be kept to an absolute minimum. Any man would agree that the atmosphere is intensely homophobic. There are even strict guidelines for how many times you are allowed to shake after relieving yourself. I once offended a red faced, watery-eyed guy in Heebie Jeebies' toilets apparently for shaking myself either too vigorously or for too long, I'm not sure (I was wearing grey chinos; neglecting a thorough shake could have been disastrous). He looked at me and said, "Are you fucking playing with yourself!?". The guy was genuinely upset that I'd broken the "if you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it" tenet. Naturally, I accused him of being a willy watcher, and assured him that, if it was alright with him, I was only shaking it.
There are other rules; no eye contact, no talking, never use a urinal next to one currently in use, even if it's the only one available, don't linger, just get in, do your business, and hurry out before you make somebody feel uncomfortable... So, you can see just just how oppressive and humiliating the whole ordeal of using the men's toilets has become.
Unless you're sadistic. It can be fun for you.
But it hasn't always been like this. Many ancient civilizations used communal toilets and rightfully saw them as nothing to be ashamed about. They sometimes housed up to thirty people in one room, with no cubicles or partitions. It was very much a chilled-out, social atmosphere, where you could chat about current events and even meet new people. No homophobic suspicion, no masculinity hangups. In fact, the Romans enjoyed this platonic atmosphere so much, that by 315 AD there were 144 public conveniences in Rome. It was the golden age of crapping.
Children would even frolic merrily in the septic tanks.
Now, I'm not saying we should start bashing down any cubicle walls, but there is surely something we can learn from our ancestors, here. Personally, I'm not uncomfortable with my body; I was a nude model for art classes a couple of years ago, so being naked is just something that doesn't phase me. I don't think anyone should be ashamed of their body. Besides, one's cock is supposed to be a symbol of one's masculinity, so what does it say about one if one is too much of a bashful and meek pussy to acknowledge anyone's presence because one's got it out? I doubt I'm going to change anyone's mind with this blog entry; it's too controversial. I suppose I'm just too ahead of my time. Also, I have one follower, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't been online for at least two years...
I was sitting on the toilet today, pondering my existence, when I had a stroke (relax, wait for the rest of the sentence) of genius. Now, independent philosophy is usually pretty banal, since you're asking yourself stuff that bearded men in togas already answered millennia ago. But sometimes, very rarely, you come to your own conclusion, and if it's at all original, you feel like a fucking wizard. So, here's the conclusion I came to, as succinctly as possible:
God is merely the commissioner; we are the artists.
Think about it. Come on, that has to be the best mid-dump epiphany since Hank Schrader realized who Heisenberg was. If I die, I want that put into a book of quotes, with my name on it. If you're reading this and I'm dead, make it happen or I'll haunt the shit out of you. I've seen Ghost, I know how to annoy people through the ether.
Comedy- like all art, really- is a lot less subjective than people like to think. Saying "it's subjective, though" all the time is just a cheap loophole that people with bad taste use to justify their love of shitty things. Obviously, we can choose to like whatever we want, but some things are intrinsically bad, and I don't care what you say. For example, if I draw a crude picture of an animal onto a piece of toilet paper, is that art? Does it deserve any more contempt than the Sistine Chapel? Of course it does, because it's not as good as the Sistine Chapel. There was significantly less vision, talent and work behind its creation.
Now you might not particularly like the Sistine Chapel (I wouldn't necessarily blame you, either; hundreds of ugly, muscular, naked babies clambering over one another isn't for everyone), but we can all agree that it is, objectively, a masterpiece and a standing testament of human accomplishment. Same with the Beatles; even if they aren't your cup of tea, we can all concur that they were, objectively, great song writers who changed the fate of music for the better. So it is a myth that there is no such thing as discernible quality in art, and comedy is no exception to this truth. The way to determine a crap joke is when you "get" the joke, as in, you can tell exactly what the writer was trying to do, and yet it doesn't make you so much as titter. If you've ever laughed at any of these things, then I'm sorry, but you're a bit of a mong in my opinion, and you should, maybe, consider other options before you make a pig's breakfast of the human gene pool. Speaking of pigs...
1. Spider-pig
I could write an entire article about the sad, drawn out death of The Simpsons that still continues to this day. In fact, I will. Some other time, though. Now, I'll admit, the first time I saw this gag in the trailer for the Simpsons movie, I did smile. But that's just it, jokes like this only work that one time, yet the trailers force it down your throat twenty, thirty, fifty times until you're sick-to-death of it before you even get into the cinema. And when the joke does finally surface in the film, it's heralded by a chorus of knowing laughter from the audience that makes you cringe so hard, you are in danger of folding in on yourself and dying. I felt like I was at some family party and an annoying relative was about to perform a familiar party-piece that everyone knew he was going to do sooner or later, except for some reason everyone was still excited to see it on the big screen. I remember looking around in the darkness, thinking "Really?", and- I shit you not, over the laughter, a man not far from me, easily at least thirty years of age, very loudly said "HOMER'S DEAD SILLY!". It sobered me up to where I was and I felt embarrassed to be a part of the audience.
2. Alan Davies' "silly" buzzer noises on QI.
If you're not familiar with it I'll fill you in. QI is basically a laid-back game show and the panel consists of four participants: three rotating and one regular, Alan Davies, who has the seat to Stephen Fry's immediate right. Participants each have their own buzzer which they press when they think they have an answer for one of Stephen Fry's questions, and every week, the buzzers are assigned different sounds. The first three participants almost always have ordinary buzzers, but Alan Davies always has a "silly" buzzer. Just watch this YouTube clip and see how boring and contrived the joke gets after just two or three times.
3. Beavis' "Cornholio" routine.
After consuming large amounts of sugar and/or caffeine, Beavis from "Beavis and Butthead" sometimes undergoes a "hilarious" personality change. He pulls his shirt collar over his head, raises his forearms in a 90-degree angle next to his chest, and shouts "I am the Great Cornholio!" in a faux-Spanish accent.
Honest to god, I can not watch more than 20 seconds of that clip. I just can't. And yet everyone lauds this shit as "hilarious".
4. The Despicable Me Minions.
In the movie 'Despicable Me', "Minions" are small, yellow, cylindrical creatures that have one or two eyes and exactly the right type of lowbrow, slapstick routines to make me want to fly to the Netherlands for a gentle dose of euthanasia, just so I no longer have to see their unfunny, viral shit plastered everywhere on cardboard cutouts and posters and bus stops and adverts and toys...
Come on, people, you've got to be either a child or a legitimate retard to find that funny. It's just cartoony voices and the same banal, piece of shit joke, over and over again:
1. Minion A is doing something goofy.
2. Minion B doesn't approve.
3. Minion A continues doing goofy thing.
4. Minion B hits minion A.
5. Either minion A or Minion B do the goofy thing one last time.
5. The "Thunder buddy song" from Ted
Really, fart gags should have their own category but I'm going to pick on this example because this scene single-handedly ruined the movie for me (not that the rest of it was anything to write home about) and yet everybody seems to think it was the funniest scene in the movie. Just watch:
See? Mila Kunis agrees with me.
6. The part in every family movie ever when, immediately after surviving something dangerous, the "comic relief" character says "Let's do that again!"
Pretty self-explanatory, this one.
7. Miranda
This show has won countless comedy awards over the last couple of years, but I honestly believe that it is the worst UK television programme since Naked Jungle. According to George Entwistle, Director-General of the BBC,"Miranda's been a tremendous hit, and we believe we can build an even bigger following for her multi-award-winning show." That statement is such a back-handed insult to everyone in the UK. Before I show you a clip, know that this is a programme written and performed for grown adults.
I don't even know why I wrote this article, I thought it'd be therapeutic to get these things off my chest, but talking about them has just left me feeling ornery and disgruntled. I'm going to have a bath and listen to some Enya or something. Bye bye.
So, Bam Margera's playing at the O2 Academy tonight in Liverpool. Honestly, I was never really into Bam Margera. He was probably my least favourite member of Jackass. Remember the sad losers who joined the show in the later seasons? They were the ones who were always doing the most humiliating and degrading things, apparently in the hopes of being initiated as an official member of the team. They were the best thing about Jackass. The real-life subtext of their hazing was what made the show hilarious.
"So... if I let the pig fuck me, I'll get as much pussy as Johnny Knoxville? OK! Ha, we're so crazy, aren't we guys?"
Bam Margera on the other hand, just wasn't funny, and his spin off, Viva La Bam, was just too obviously contrived. The comedy didn't work, because his parents were obviously in on it. You could almost see them smugly thinking about their big, fat, MTV paychecks while they were pretending to be angry because their naughty, late-twenties, ADHD man-child was jumping on his bed or playing music too loudly. He was probably supposed to be some sort of liberating role-model for, like, thirteen-year-olds, but I could never shake the fact that he was clearly too old to be acting like one. Don Vito was the saving Grace of that show, until he went to jail for molesting those young girls.
"Gaddamafackadangawheredahellbamat!?"
Moreover, his music is apparently nothing to write home about. I haven't listened to it, and I'm not going to. But if you're interested, Tickets are £16.78 (rip off, if you ask me) and he's playing at the O2 Academy Which is at 11-33 Hotham Street, in Liverpool City Centre. The doors open at 7:00pm.
So I have delved into the murky depths of the Internet and rediscovered my old blog from over four years ago. Teen-me didn't make many submissions, just a short post about coming home from a trip to Mexico and how I would like to return to the Caribbean with my at-the-time girlfriend, Alice- and an incredibly nerdy post about "The Thing" from the Fantastic Four.
A lot has changed in four years. Where do I even start? Well, I'm setting up my own business (more on that later), I've since had another, very happy, long-term relationship altogether, bookended with a good couple of years of being single, and only very recently, I've started dating someone new. I developed an interest in classical poetry, and have wrote a lot of my own work (some of which I'll happily share on this blog), I've mastered the art of male fashion (you can expect plenty of sartorial tips, advice and opinions). I was a street mime for a while. Oh, and a nude model for an art class. I've been in shape, out of shape, I've had long hair, short hair, beards- even a "Van Dyke" goatee at some point. I've had lots of adventures, and just as many mis-adventures, but I think, in the end, I'm just generally wiser and more experienced than I was before.
And so I raise my goblet (just a mug of tea, really) to many more lessons, except that from now on, I will chronicle them as they happen. I hope you enjoy this blog, and that there is something you can take away from it.
I am 23 years old, and I enjoy fashion, pop culture and literature. I love life, but it is hilariously inane; seven billion talking monkeys riding an organic spaceship through the universe, passing the time with movies like "Flubber". Connect us all together with the Internet and it gets funnier still. I hope this blog can be a humble ode to that. Enjoy.
