Good night, sweet wince

 Maybe you were saddened by the news of the recent death of Ozzy Osborne.  I wasn't gladdened by the news, but it was my sister playing "Paranoid" at ear-splitting levels when we were kids -- and that was mainly because Black Sabbath was what her friends were into at the time.  

Without their actually embracing devil worship of course.  

I think.

Anyway, I'm genuinely entering a period of mourning today, because I learned that Tom Lehrer has died.  He's figured in this blog more than once.

I have pretty much every song he ever recorded - even the three songs he wrote and sang for the children's programme Electric Company - and so many of them have been floating through my head with their witty and acerbic (sometimes a tad disturbing) lyrics:  "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", "The Masochism Tango", among so many others, even though, relatively speaking, his output was quite small.

I have a soft spot for this one, which one might describe as a deep cut: 

And here's the man himself, performing in Copenhagen nearly sixty years ago:  

I would say we need his brand of satire all the more - and maybe we do - but sadly, quite a few of his songs are still pretty pertinent.

As Lehrer himself once said:  "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while." 

He was joking.

I think.

Tone-deaf hockey

Social media may be a double-edged sword, but it has introduced me to some wonderful things.  Among them is Louisiana-born Josh Johnson, a 35-year-old comedian, who looks younger and sounds older.   

I was initiated into Johnson's prolific, articulate, and compassionate comedy a couple of months ago, with a story he told in Little Rock Arkansas on March 28th of this year.  This was in the middle of the "Signals" scandal - y'know, when an Atlantic Monthly journalist got included by accident in a supposedly top secret security group-chat in Washington.

Johnson writes and performs for The Daily Show, so his main topic in his ever-changing stand-up act is often on the news of the moment, which has a limited shelf-life. However, he almost always includes a personal anecdote of more universal appeal.  Here, he tells the story of a time when he got inadvertently included in a private group chat, and decided not to disabuse the others.  (I've set up this video to begin when the story begins.  It lasts about eleven minutes, and is worth every second.) Johnson has sold out shows everywhere on his latest tour, which includes pretty well every U.S. city, the UK and Europe, and a handful of Canadian locations. The following gem comes from a Calgary show from about a month ago, in which he details his initial reactions to hockey -- which pretty well mirror my own. (The Resident Fan Boy knows I did try...)

Spirit of '76 (1976, that is)

Following on yesterday's frog theme, I found myself remembering and re-examining "The Frog Song", a fairly hefty hit for Québecois singer Robert Charlebois during the summer of 1976.

It's a song which has had some popularity for anglophone Canadians taking part in French immersion courses in the province of Quebec over the years, probably due to the chorus in English, with the cheeky reference to the ancient English insult to francophones.

It's a song that gets a bit lost in translation, and not just because of the joual:

Ton beurre est dur pis tes toasts sont brûlées. 

Ton lait est sûr, ton jaune d’œuf est crevé. 

T’as pus d’eau chaude pour te faire un café instantané. 

You’re a frog, I’m a frog, kiss me! 

And I’ll turn into a prince suddenly! 

Donne-moi des peanuts, j’m’en va te chanter "Alouette" sans fausse note.

(Your butter is hard; your toast is burnt/ Your milk is sour; your egg yolk is broken/ You don't have hot water to make instant coffee . . . . Give me some peanuts; I'll sing you "Alouette" flawlessly)

Yeah.

The following verses are about grabbing your bag, getting on the bus to get to work, and your boss (doubtless some rich Anglo) is spending the winter on the Ivory Coast, while you work too hard, and your family is unappealing, and you are uncomplaining and polite...

See, another song popular with immersion students in the 80s and 90s (mainly the adolescent and post-adolescent males) was "Bye Bye, Mon Cowboy" by Mitsou, because, like "The Frog Song", it also had some English words, and, unlike "The Frog Song", the message was unmistakeable - and the French was really easy to decipher.

"The Frog Song" (composed by Jean Chevrier, about whom I've been able to find out nothing, apart from some random blog saying he is/was a writer in Montreal) came out in the midst of widespread frustration and anger with Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, who was swept out of power the autumn of 1976 by René Lévesque and his separatist/sovereigntist Parti Québécois.  (Bourassa got back in less than ten years later, and stayed in power for almost another ten years, ultimately defeated by cancer.)

The adolescent immersion students who danced and hopped and kissed happily to the song were, for the most part, blissfully unaware of the satire and rage between the lines and the notes.

Braced

 These Sundays, I'm almost too scared to watch John Oliver...

(Warsan Shire was born in Nairobi in 1988 to Somali parents, grew up in London, and now, I think, lives in Los Angeles, so she must be having quite a nightmarish year.  I believe she wrote the full poem "What They Did Yesterday Afternoon" in 2015.)

Zoned out

In a timely follow-up to my post about AI, this showed up, courtesy of Janel Comeau, who is based in Halifax, and writes for satirical news site The Beaverton, among other things.

Google and Meta search both report that Cape Breton Island has its own time zone 12 minutes ahead of mainland Nova Scotia time because they are both drawing that information from a Beaverton article I wrote in 2024

[image or embed]

— Janel Comeau 🍁 (@verybadllama.bsky.social) 9 June 2025 at 17:50

A more detailed article about what happened, the fall-out, and some good advice on dealing with AI-generated answers - I think ignoring them would be a good start, but what would I know? -  from As It Happens on the CBC Radio web site is pretty good. 

I quit Twitter in favour of BlueSky several weeks ago, but seldom check in. It doesn't seem to have quite a big enough following - at least not yet - to not be a bit of an echo chamber. (But, I repeat, what would I know?)

Comedy as Möbius strip - for dinosaurs

In a year filled with disappointments and delays - not mention the more horrifying life-threatening stuff, reported daily - I got two generous dollops of wish-fulfillment this summer.  Both involve Phoebe Waller-Bridge

First, I notice, quite by accident (ain't that always the way?), that the "Hollywood Suite" set of channels are on free preview, as the specialty channels are, from time to time.  I was startled to see that an episode of the second season of Staged was playing.  I've seen bits and pieces of both seasons on the internet, and have been longing to see it for months.

Briefly, Staged stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen (there yer go) as themselves, Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg as their wives/partners (which they are), Simon Evans, the actor/director/writer (which he does), and Lucy Evans as Simon Evans' sister (which she is).  Except no one is playing their real selves, y'see, and some actors are playing fictional characters, and some really famous people are playing -- themselves.

In the first season, Tennant and Sheen, find themselves being hurtled into lockdown and their upcoming theatrical production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author is put on ice (probably for the best).  Their director (Evans, who did write and direct both seasons of Staged, no matter what you're told during the episodes) suggests rehearsing anyway, via Zoom.  We never actually see any rehearsing, but we do see a quite a bit of whining, back-stabbing, and sulking.  It makes for entertaining viewing, believe it or not, and captures the isolation and disjointedness of lockdown.  However, watching bits and pieces on YouTube doesn't prepare you for the truly remarkable mobius-strip quality of the transition from the first season to the second season.

The second season hauls us from the parallel universe of the first season, into an even stranger world where Sheen and Tennant are themselves playing another version of themselves, promoting the first season, and being blocked from starring in the American version of the same.  There is no American version, just as Whoopi Goldberg is not, in fact, an agent named Mary with a reputation for attacking people who cross her with Golden Globe statuettes. (And I hope and trust that Michael Palin isn't anywhere as malicious in real life. Ouch.)

Despite these clues, many Staged fans can be forgiven, I suppose, for having some difficulty separating fact from fiction, especially these days.

Anyway, Phoebe Waller-Bridge does appear during the second season, in what is arguably the funniest episode, but I won't spoil anything in case you get a chance to watch it.  (It involves her bladder. And Pavlov's dogs.)

Counter-clockwise: David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Simon Evans, Cate Blanchett

I've been becoming a bit of a Phoebe Waller-Bridge fan anyway, so this episode clinched it, even though I had yet to see Fleabag, yet another two-season ground-breaking British comedy which I had also seen in bits and pieces on YouTube. Barely had I finished watching Staged, when Fleabag suddenly became available -- at the last remaining video-rental store in Victoria (because I'm a dinosaur, dammit).

Seeing Staged in context was a mind-bending delight; seeing Fleabag as an organic whole (is that tautology?) blew me out of the water.  Watching clips gives you an idea of the sly and wicked humour.  Watching the show in context blind-sides you with the underlying heartbreak underlying all of Fleabag's seemingly inexplicable shenanigans. 

We're never actually told the main character's name, although it was the Resident Fan Boy who pointed out that "Fleabag" could be a play on "Phoebe".  (It turns out that "Fleabag" is, indeed, Waller-Bridge's family nickname, although she's been forced to point out, frequently, that the characters do not resemble her own family.)  Three other characters are also never addressed by name:  Andrew Scott's notorious "Hot Priest" (who doesn't appear until the second series), Fleabag's father (Jim Paterson), and  "Godmother".  

As much as the arcs of both seasons entranced me, enchanted me, and sometimes devastated me, it is Olivia Colman as "Godmother", who actually had me wincing.  I've known women like "Godmother".  We probably all have.

Shudder. (I've never actually been slapped. Not literally. Really wanted to, though.)

Anyway, these two series are going on my Christmas wish list.  Because I collect DVDs.  Because I'm a dinosaur.  (And because streaming services and platforms giveth and taketh away.)

So if you've lost your mind or you hate your children....

So thank goodness Randy Rainbow is at it again, because this has been a particularly bad year for news --- so far.

Younger daughter really loved this. Except for the swearing.

Helden

Recent incidents in Canada - such as the one I was describing yesterday, for example - have made me perhaps a little perverse about Remembrance Day.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm a family researcher, so I'm more than aware of war's impact on families, with no rosy, gauzy perceptions of it.

War kills people. It tears families apart. It wounds psyches. It cripples bodies.

So, I headed off on Remembrance Day afternoon, with the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter in tow, to see JoJo Rabbit. It was on my want-to-see list, and all I knew about it was that it's about a small boy living somewhere in Nazi Germany, who has an invisible friend - Adolf Hitler.

Not the real Adolf Hitler, obviously. This trailer actually gives you a fairly good idea of the movie -- except it gets darker, of course.

Young JoJo is ten, so eligible for the junior division of the Hitler Youth, the Deutsches Jungvolk. Unable to remember a Germany without Hitler, JoJo's room is plastered with posters, the common sight of bodies strung up in the town square elicits a small boy's "yuck", and he thinks the summer of 1944 will be the best one ever.

As he charges off with his mates to "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" (the Beatles' original recording, which I have on CD and digitally), I understood just how surreal and frantic this film was going to be. I'm usually fatally put off by anachronisms, however in the current political climate - and climate crisis - this seems perfectly appropriate to a satiric nightmare, which is hilarious and terrifying by turns. It is, after all, a strange and diabolical time, seen entirely from the viewpoint of a ten-year-old boy, who has no idea of what his protective mother is really up to.

As events wheel into early 1945, things get bleak pretty fast.

Younger daughter was a bit traumatized by how JoJo Rabbit comes by his nickname, but delighted by the closing song - David Bowie's German rendition of "Heroes". (Yes, that works too.)

The impressive cast includes Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Rebel Wilson, and Stephen Merchant, playing the role he was born to play. The two young leads are marvellous.

And the dream-pal Hitler? Played by the Maori/Jewish screenwriter Taika Waititi, as a middle finger flipped in the direction of those crazy Nazis - who, undoubtedly won't take the hint.

No, Perkins

With the television schedule full of D-Day ceremonies, and endless re-showings of The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan,I find myself looking for a little light relief.

I'm not sure this is it.

One of the earliest performances of the Beyond the Fringe skit "Aftermyth of War" took place at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1960. As you can imagine, there were far more World War Two veterans about in 1960, and, sixteen years after D-Day, these vets were still pretty young, vigorous, and easily annoyed by what appeared to be a disparagement of all their sacrifice and suffering.

The creators and performers - Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, the late Peter Cook, and the late Dudley Moore - maintained that the sketch was not meant as satire about the war itself, but of the way the war was portrayed in movies and other media.

This is the latter half of "Aftermyth", which contains all my favourite bits. Watch until the end to see the reaction of the audience, a few of whom are not applauding very enthusiastically. The dark humour of Beyond the Fringe was, after all, a bit ahead of its time.

Because sometimes, women just get fed up

There's a lot about the perils of social media being discussed these days, but there are a lot of pleasures too.

No, no, I don't mean those. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Because I "like" BBC Comedy on Facebook, I get plenty of clips from a spoof news show entitled The Mash Report, one of the many shows BBCCanada is withholding from us in order to show end-to-end episodes of Top Gear.

Here's a brief sample, but be warned, this particular clip is rife with f-bombs.

As far as I can tell, the show itself isn't particularly that profane, but I happen to like this bit, so you know what you can do.

Welcome to the glass house

Elder daughter, who is on her way back to Hades, is a fan of Tim Minchin, who has released this bitingly funny - and I do mean "ouch" - video, as a harbinger of a new album and the new year.

The album looks promising. The year?

Let's be careful and kind out there.


By now, we thought that there would be jetpacks and flying cars,
Robots to do the cleaning-up for us,
And help with the shopping.

We'd all be famous for a bit,
That's what Andy Warhol said,
Thought we'd all get our coloured heads,
Well the truth would rock him.

He would be surprised to wake up and find that we have weaponized humiliation:

In the future, everyone
Everyone will have fifteen minutes
Fifteen minutes of shame
Fifteen minutes when they are unforgivable.

Pick up your pitchforks and your torch;
We'll go hunt the monster down,
But keep an eye out for uneven ground;
We'll turn on you if you stumble.

Don't need perspective or a heart;
Leave humility at home.
Welcome to the glass house; hope you brought your stones!
Are you ready to rumble?

I'm scared to write anything that might upset my tribe.
Never mind, 'cause in the future, everyone will have fifteen minutes
Fifteen minutes of shame,
Fifteen minutes when they are unforgivable
Irredeemable
Inexcusable
Scum
Fit only to be strung up in the village square.
I will see you there!

I am scared to say anything that may be taken the wrong way.
But, *$#% it, baby!
In the future, everyone
Everyone will have fifteen minutes,
Fifteen minutes of shame,
Fifteen minutes when they are unforgivable,
Irredeemable,
Inexcusable...