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A sick society?


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On 5/28/2018 at 11:57 PM, Robert Harper said:

Joe and Paul--I enjoyed your accounts of being around Sahl over a 50 year period. I think you have an understanding of what it takes to be a performer, unlike a fly-by commentator, who found it important to post a pompous

Good to see irony very much alive.

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("no stand-up young or old") inaccurate ("is going to perform someone else's work")

Please name the stand-ups who've performed the work of other stand-ups.

If you can, I'll gladly stand corrected.

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and a bit foolish ("except Denis Leary").

You're apparently not hip to the fact that Dennis Leary nicked a couple of bits from the late Bill Hicks.

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However, what most offended I think, was that the comment itself was so unnecessary.

Aside from wondering from where such authority to pontificate emanated, I also wondered why it was important enough to place it literally minutes  after  my comment. Why the big hurry to say nothing? In an earlier thread, a reference to the Bay of Pigs generated 4 pages of juvenalia presented like a school child and diverting the discussion.

You brought up the subject, Robert. And you put quotation marks around words that were not mine, a bit under-handed, eh?

DiEugenio chimed in until he took the worst of it and retreated.

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As you both know I'm sure, there is a long tradition of experimentation in all forms of culture. Narratives survived because people memorized them and passed them on, adding and subtracting along the way. For over 20 years, I worked with at risk kids at the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp in Hollywood (Tiffany Haddish was then just starting to work on material about being in a foster home) and during one season, guided 5 teens to 'perform someone else's work' when they performed a Shakespeare sonnet on stage.

That's not the same as stand-ups doing the work of other stand-ups.

 

Edited by Cliff Varnell
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On 5/28/2018 at 11:57 PM, Robert Harper said:

 In an earlier thread, a reference to the Bay of Pigs generated 4 pages of juvenalia presented like a school child and diverting the discussion.

The topic of discussion was "The Unspeakable."

I analyzed Robert Lovett's potential role in the subject you brought up, the Bay of Pigs.

Few better examples of "the Unspeakable" American than Robert Lovett, whose big idea in the Department of War in WW2 was the massive bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan.

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On 5/28/2018 at 11:57 PM, Robert Harper said:

Nobody wants to "copy" the schtick or "gimmicks"of a stand-up, but re-interpreting clever worded material is another venture all together.

Robert, I stand corrected.

You may be on to something good.

Pryor, Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Mort Sahl...and Bill Hicks!

Edited by Cliff Varnell
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On 5/28/2018 at 11:57 PM, Robert Harper said:

 I think a young women performing printed material of Richard Pryor might be instructive to audience and performer; I think the same of having a young man deliver some of George Carlin's lines .

Or a prim elderly white woman reading Redd Foxx's blue material.

...Never let a grudge stand in the way of recognizing a sound idea...just say'n...

Edited by Cliff Varnell
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On 6/6/2018 at 11:29 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

Robert, ever use a Gysin/Burroughs cut-up?

Cliff- No I hadn't; thanks for the link. I  like that sort of thing.

Also glad to hear you open to the idea of interpreting transcripts, comic routines, poetry etc. by other than the originators.

Culturally, we accept the use of alternatives  with other versions of songs, for instance, but resist encountering the thoughts of someone who doesn't fit a pre-conceived image as speaker. I shared with a few Forum members privately my interest in William F. Buckley's Firing Line show. I had ordered many--hundreds I think - and had others not available, copied by a colleague from his papers at Yale. I had secured his permission to do so, as well as to present non-profit readings in public without the  given gender,race or ideology of the speaker. Unfortunately, I can't produce a good lunch, and I didn't have the funds to produce a decent series,  since  my best offer of space, was at an inappropriate locale. Although all this activity was 35 years ago, but I've never lost my belief that one can learn from intermingling the speaker and the words spoken. 

My interest was in exploring ways to receive information or concepts.We'd see Jesse Jackson on the show, or Norman Mailer or Buckley himself , and usually feel we'd hear what we expected to hear. You'd have to listen a bit more without the visual cue. They were also a superb collection of  historical and cultural thought for half a century. Reading therm enabled one to follow the  thought process of the speaker. I was surprised, for instance when I read a couple of the shows with Ronald Reagan. I was so used to thinking of him as a smoothie delivering others' words, that I hadn't noticed how he spoke in paragraphs, they fit an overall concept, and one saw the development of each thought. Anyone - well mostly anyone - can deliver a few phrases or repeat a mantra, ad nauseum. Some even get the people to think that they thought through each mantra. Actually developing an idea, as you deliver it, can be liberating for doer and watcher. One doesn't have to agree or disagree to be enriched or informed by encountering not only a "thought" but a way that gets there.

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