UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
What interesting YouTube (etc.) clips/videos have you seen recently?
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A few nights ago, I watched the TV production from 1975, The Naked Civil Servant, about the life of Quentin Crisp and starring the amazing John Hurt. I remember seeing a trailer of this at my girlfriend's house shortly before it was first aired. I was very interested in seeing it, although that never happened, and these were the days when if you didn't catch something when it was on, well, you didn't see it.
I never realized just how groundbreaking the production was at the time. In an interview some years later, Hurt recounted how many within the acting profession had warned him against taking the part, saying that it might connect him with homosexuality and harm his career. How times change! Interesting also that a straight actor was chosen to play a gay character. I wonder if today some would be offended by this on the grounds that the casting had favoured heteronormativity.
Anyway, I liked it - well, it did have John Hurt in it, after all! But what a story, and what an example of guts Crisp demonstrated in being so unashamedly gay in such an unsympathetic age.
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Amazing how times change.
Curious that we did have gay performers that everyone knew were gay, but no one actually said so openly: Larry Grayson, John Inman, and Danny La Rue to name but three.
And from a young age, I never had anything against anyone being gay, yet I knew nobody that told me or anyone I knew that they were gay. Two of my friends from back then, one a close one, I'm sure were and are closet gays, or at least bisexual. They both eventually got married. I sometimes wonder how their marriages turned out.
Who knew?
I find it fascinating and I now know a lot more about the construction and health of cow feet.
https://speakerimpedance.co.uk/?act=two_parallel&page=calculator
https://youtu.be/_DxLtuK3pD4
One thing that's quite striking about these acts in retrospect is just how smutty most of them were. This is surprising in that they hailed from my parents' generation, which was pre-'permissive,' relatively conservative, and preoccupied with family values.
Morecambe and Wise, in particular, seemed to rely heavily on references to sex, sexual deviance, and sexual body parts: "Eric, since it's Christmas, will you pull my cracker?"; "Ern's lost his Nanky-Poo"; Ern: "I've just been perusing my synopsis." Eric: "Well, a man needs a hobby," and on and on. Curious how some people found the new 'alternative' humour of the Pythons, Ben Elton, Not the 9 O'clock News, etc. offensive. In terms of sexual innuendo, the new acts were much milder.
https://youtu.be/1EvyG22xXsg
I like videos on music theory and this one on the whole tone scale popped up earlier
https://youtu.be/zqDKBKIguuo
It led me to this performance of Debussy's Voiles which is just stunning
https://youtu.be/1iUbZUBhbxE
I don't drum at all and am fascinated by the skill and inventiveness of these musicians.
Domino drumming to slipknot.
This guy is unreal
I've lived in the US for the past 20 years, and I didn't even know who Jimmy Carr was until a month or so ago. Curious - the guy seems genuinely gifted at off-the-cuff repartee with the audience, and he also has quite an endearing mixture of innocence and pushing the limits in his stage persona.
One thing I did wonder, though. Is whether his act has had to be cleaned up for our more hypersensitive world of 2023. The most recent clip I've seen is 2013, and he was poking fun at gays, the disabled, women, pedophilia, national stereotypes, you name it. The only taboo he seemed to respect was that of race.
So, is he still popular, or has that brand of joking about risque subjects become unacceptable? If he had continued in the same vein today, I would imagine he would be including a whole bunch of trans jokes, but I can't see too many mainstream comedians doing that.
As for trans jokes... another Netflix special, Ricky Gervais's SuperNature. Again though, he took pains to sort of explain himself... some people took offence, some didn't. Of course some news websites blew it up, as they did with the Carr story.