#35: More Lost, Bus Shots, Collectives, Twins and On Being Cool
Throw these into the conversation.
1. s t a y l o s t (REVISITED)
Ah… Times Square, the brightly lit, dark hole at the heart of New York. Iconic, yet terrifying. I can’t help myself from going back for more of its repellent / compelling vibe. Wandering home slightly buzzed after a gig, Times Square fizzes all around me a riot of contradictions — crowded yet somehow empty, thrilling yet banal, repellant / compelling, glamour and despair.
Maybe you can relate. If so, come see my stand-up cabaret s t a y l o s t at Pangea on Jan 17. It’s also a riot of jangled up extremes. Newly revised with a bunch of fresh gags alongside classic bits all polished and remixed for 2025. The perfect astringent to sharpen your nerves for the coming apocalypse.
It’s part of Pangea’s new INCUBATOR Festival. Check out all the other brilliant acts on the bill: Penny Arcade! Dean David Bottrell! Emma Sofia! Jamie Brickhouse!
See you there.
2. The Grind
Allegations are swirling that the images in photographer Steve Madden’s new book The Grind are essentially plagiarised from London street photographer Nick Turpin, whose series, On the Night Bus, traverses similar creative ground. Madden denies the claims and some see a more abstract painterly approach in his work. That said, I can see Turpin’s point.
But if Madden copied Turpin, can we say that Turpin copied Saul Leiter, one of the most iconic street photographers of the past century?
I’m not qualified to weigh in on the controversy, however, whether it’s in photography or stand-up, the only way to defeat a copycat is to simply make better work. Madden has undeniably brought his own spin to the game. Turpin’s challenge now is to take it to the next level and show the world who’s the true Daddy of ‘through the wet bus window’ photography. I’m excited to see what he comes up with.
3. Destruction, Unkindness and Murder
Last week I went to a modified yahrzeit, the traditional Jewish ceremony that commemorates the death of a loved one. Just seven of us and we each took turns sharing our experience with grief. Sounds maudlin but actually it was mostly sweet with many funny tangents. At some point we got on the topic of collective names for animals: a ‘colony of ants’, a ‘pride’ of lions, a ‘plague’ of locusts, etc. Soon we were googling and guffawing at the kooky terms used to denote groups of animals. Here are a few of my favourites:
a shrewdness of apes
a sloth or sleuth of bears
an obstinacy of buffalo
a glaring of cats
a murder of crows
a cowardice of dogs
a troubling of goldfish
a shadow of jaguars
a parliament of owls
a pandemonium of parrots
a rhumba of rattlesnakes
an unkindness of ravens
a murmuration of starlings
a pledge of wasps
a destruction of wild cats
But where did these hilarious terms come from? The Audubon Society has the answer:
‘In 1486 Dame Juliana Berners, a noble-born lady turned nun, published her thoughts on hunting in The Book of Saint Albans. The book was about the hobbies of gentlemen of the time: hunting, falconry, and heraldry. Berner’s tome includes an appendix with 165 collective nouns for animals commonly encountered while hunting. Interestingly, this is also one of the earliest known works written by a woman in the English language.
This book sparked a tradition of unique collective nouns that has persisted into the modern age. Clearly, some of Berners’ terms were created as jokes, and not commonly used in everyday speech. However, as the book gained popularity, readers enjoyed these strange phrases so much that they began using and expanding on the list, inventing names for groups of all sorts of animals. Many of the collective nouns we still have around today come from the original book or shortly thereafter.’
Worth bringing up next time you’re at a grief party.
4. Twins Town
If you’re like me, October 2024 was a blur of hope and panic in the tense lead up to the US elections. Scouring the media for every morsel of campaign news was terrible for my mental health and kept me blinkered from all sorts or more entertaining content, including the fabulous 2024 World Twins Festival.
The annual celebration takes place in Igbo-Ora, South Western Nigeria, which is known for its unusually high incidence of multiple births. While the global average birth rate for twins is around 12 per 1,000 births, in Igbo-Ora, it’s closer to 50 per 1,000. With fanfare, pageantry, talent shows and even a royal visit, hundreds of people gather each year in the self-proclaimed “twins capital of the world” to celebrate.
But what accounts for the unusually high incidence of twins in Igbo-Ora? Explanations differ. From Al Jazeera: ‘Many residents put it down to diet, especially okra leaf or ilasa soup with yam and cassava flour. Fertility experts are sceptical, saying there is no proven link between diet and a high twin rate.
Scientists are looking into genetic factors, and how the twins’ special cultural status - Yoruba culture reveres twins - might make them more likely to find partners and have children. Whatever the reason, everyone in the town agrees the abundance of twins is a blessing – even more so this year as Nigeria grapples with its worst economic crisis in a generation.’
5. The Cool Kids
I read somewhere that Republicans are making smoking cool again. As the occasional social smoker for years, nothing will make me quit faster than knowing that smoking has become ‘conservative coded.’
However you feel about the classic ‘cheeky fag’ - and to be up front, I’m ok with smoking and with its reasonable regulation - I simply can’t believe that the American Right will ever be cool, whether they smoke or not. Not to imply that I’m cool myself - despite my best efforts, I aged out of cool long ago - but everyone knows that the party of Reagan, Bush and Trump isn’t cool. Are prayer circles cool? Is book banning cool? Are gun fanatics cool? Please.
I also think that the hectoring far left is deeply uncool and apparently so does most of America. Politics in general, isn’t cool. Meanwhile, I’m happy to give our new Republican corporate overlords their due - they certainly know how to make money, build miraculous technology, and use the media effectively but all their efforts to be cool fail because it comes to them so totally unnaturally. It always looks forced. It’s why their stand-up comedy is uniformly terrible. It’s never effortless, has no style, no elan and never, ever laughs at itself. You can’t be cool and always take yourself seriously.
Just look at our current Masters of the Universe. Mark Zuckerberg’s latest bro styling reads Hillsong circa 2017. Bezos’ pumped physique reads ‘try-hard dad’. And Musk’s petulant inability to take critique on the social media he ‘rescued’ from censorship, only shows how thin-skinned he is. It’s hard not to look at each of them and see their essential teenage incel selves desperately trying to impress some imagined in crowd.
But aside from how silly they each look, their unabashed pursuit of profit over everything else is their most glaring uncool flex. Profit is great but best when accrued as a byproduct of some less tacky pursuit. David Byrne is cool because he’s a great artist and he’s rich because his art resonates with millions. But despite what the Right will tell you, cool doesn’t always equal profit. Iconic performance art star Penny Arcade is cool because she’s stayed true to her coruscating creative voice, and never sold out for illusory commercial success. (‘Selling out’ - remember that concept?) For many of the coolest, cool is its own reward.
Of course, cool, on some level is subjective and essentially indescribable. You know it when you see it and you know it when you don’t, like in the image above. While it’s obviously AI generated, something about the image simply reads true. Would that be the case if you replaced Zukerberg, Musk and Bezos with Law Roach, Sandra Bernhard, Zadie Smith, or Steven Yuen? At best it would be ironic but mostly it would just seem nonsensical. That’s because Roach, Bernhard, Smith and Yuen are cool. Zuck, Musk and Bezos aren’t, they’re rich. It’s not the same.
The Right may destroy America, but despite their best efforts, they’ll never be cool.
Speaking of cool… a quick note: This Awards Season be sure to follow Chantal Feduchin-Pate on Instagram for the sharpest, funniest and most insightful, red carpet commentary. You’ll thank me.
Small Print:
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Final word from Gloria Jones.
Keep kicking ass. x/ David.
parting shot
Having read that, I think I'm finally quitting smoking. Cheers =) I also love a Parliament of owls
forget about image, you are too old for that. smoke if you want too, just not near ME!