092: You avin a laff?!
This week, it's all comedy.
1.
Some Notes About My Dad That I Have Made In My Notebooks — hilarious words from Tom Cox
From the Community
I missed a bus because I was having a good laugh reading this piece by . I include some of my favourite extracts here, but I wholeheartedly encourage you to read the post (but not while you're waiting on a bus.) 👇
My dad loved Italy, as it was a rare place where everyone was as loud as him and loved pepper sausage as much as he did. On a later journey there, without me, he joined in, uninvited, with a reconstruction of the Battle of Goito in Lombardy; an incident that still, well over a decade later, prompts my mum to shake her head in exasperation. “It was so embarrassing,” she remembers. “I kept losing him. The worst bit was when he joined in with one side – I’m not sure which – and shouted, ‘KILL THE BASTARDS!’ then started rolling around in the street, clutching his chest, pretending to have been shot.”
My dad has a black toenail, after stubbing his toe. Directly after stubbing his toe, he received a mass email from Boris Johnson, which he replied to with the sentence “FUCK OFF BORIS” and nothing else. My mum - while definitely anything but a fan of Boris Johnson - told him it hadn’t been a very nice thing to do, after which my dad tramped back upstairs and sent a follow up email saying “SORRY ABOUT THAT, BORIS. I OVERREACTED BECAUSE I’D STUBBED MY TOE.”
My parents are in Devon, staying at my house. I’m at their house, in Nottinghamshire. My mum calls to ask me how everything is. I tell her it’s fine. She’s in the car, which is being driven by my dad. “LET ME TALK TO HIM. I’VE GOT SOMETHING URGENT TO SAY,” says my dad, in the background. “Hi,” I say. “I JUST SAW A MAN SELLING CAULIFLOWER IN A FIELD,” says my dad.
Last week my parents attended a talk by the Gardeners’ World presenter, Monty Don. Afterwards, my dad was seeing my mum out of a tight parking space and lost concentration, which meant my mum came very close to running over Don, who happened to be walking past at the time. My dad immediately ran over to him to apologise. “SHE LOVES YOU,” he told the celebrity gardener. “SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY HEARTBROKEN IF SHE’D KILLED YOU.”
Since reading this piece, I've started noting down things people say and do that make me laugh. I find myself feeling more optimistic and grateful for my blessings. In the mornings, I get up with much less fuss. (The usual routine is me ramming my digits on to the snooze button on my phone, crying 'why?!')
2.
On Creativity and ‘Management’— from John Cleese
From the Internet
An excellent talk on creativity, from one of the most legendary comics of our time. The talk is very funny and offers great insight into the ineffable and elusive nature of creativity. There were two very poignant pieces for me:
Creativity isn't a talent - it's a space of being.
We can arrange our environment, approach and attitude to coax creativity: space, time and confidence. In other words, creativity is as much inspired as it is discipline.
Besides his humour, curiosity and creativity... I admire John Cleese's tenacity in the area of romance. He was married four times, and lost £20 million in the divorce with his third wife. When I hear him talk about it in interviews, I feel the sting of that financial cost. No, he doesn't skip past the outrage and resentment... yet the experience doesn't own him. He continues to lead his life with curiosity, and remains illogically 'open' to creative endeavours and a fourth adventure in marriage.
Incredible, no? I don't think this post has raised my own sense of positivity to John Cleese's level. But, truly... this nonsensical optimism is a virtue that I have come to value only recently. It's time to grow up out of my clever, un-creative cynicism.
3.
The Mighty Boosh — a radio series by Julian Barrat and Noel Fielding
From the Library
I must have listened to these 6 episodes a hundred times since I first discovered them in 2005. I was 13 years old and a pro with Limewire*. A friend of mine who I thought was the coolest girl in the world (she was) told me about the Mighty Boosh. If she was talking about it, I was buying into it - but I didn't expect THIS.
The download took 4.5 hours and came with probably 52 trojan viruses. At 12:30am, I finally got them loaded on to my MP3 player. I laid on my bed (it was a duvet on the floor because I preferred to use my bunk bed as storage for pirated CDs and DVDs). I listened to all six episodes in one go and I thought it was the best thing I had ever heard in my entire life. I didn't understand how anyone could come up with such utter nonsense and be so entertaining and funny.
I'd remember and listen to the series every few months or so. I particularly like to put them on when I'm on a long drive with someone I don't know very well, to demonstrate how cool I am.
*Apparently, it's now an AI image and audio generator... but back in the day it was a BitTorrent peer-to-peer files sharing tool for pirated media.
🗞 EXTRA EXTRA 🗞
I hope you're having a good laugh with a nice, healthy dose of optimism.
I loved the piece by Tom Cox, too. It made me wish I had written down stories about my Dad before they were forgotten. But living vicariously through his Dad was so much fun!
The moon... :)