Once again having an unproductive period where I wake in the morning yelling at Vaclav Havel – or someone else. If only I could be a blind optimist and just go about my day as though it were (actually) my day. No. Again. Thank goodness there are so many like me (failure) to make the rest of you (winner) feel as though life is really kind of neat…
It took a few years after moving to Europe to realize (my) fate. The thing about such a change (in life) is that it takes awhile to get a hold of it. The thought: “I’m no longer living in my country” doesn’t really mean anything until you wake up with tears in your eyes and desperation filling your lungs. Then, suddenly, life really is a complete waste of time – unless you’re either one of the HAVES or you can go about it all as though you’ve never woken up to the fact that you can actually see (with something other than eyes).
In order to calm myself down from the anxiety and the stress and desire – that is/should be life – I turned to (a) drug. Yes. Indeed. Even “optimism” in its most minuscule form just might reveal something worthwhile once the human experiment story has been told. Yes. The loneliness of (real) change is only a hop-skip-and-jump away from pulling the/a trigger. I suppose the secret to survival is to keep your optimism under control and to keep getting up (in the morning). And then there are all the other waste-of-time compulsions that drive us.
Anywho.
One fo the things I missed during my first few years of expatriation was standup comedy. I’m not referring to krapp comedy like the shit from Bob Hope or Bill Cosby. Fuck them and fuck all superficiality in life! A lot of people might not have liked the 1980s (perhaps including me) but one thing did come out of that waste-of-time-period that history might show as the beginning of America’s über-gluttonous behavior. Thinking comics. I’m referring to comics that don’t just make you laugh but also… Well, you (should) get the picture. The origin of thinking comics probably has to be credited to Lenny Bruce. Then there’s George Carlin . But my favorite is Bill Hicks. Talk about comedy.
Thinking comics are one of the reasons that I don’t like Jon Stewart and his Daily Show. But that’s another post.
Living in a place absent of humour isn’t easy. To compensate for not being funny, Germany is an amazingly comfortable welfare state. I guess, at least, it’s a good thing that the Brits aren’t all that far away. Germans have slowly started to catch on to the stand-up comedy format but they will always be bogged down by so-called cabaret (Kabarett). Traditional European cabaret contains comedy – and a lot of pretentious, over-educated but very talented folk “perform” their cabaret skits (or whatever). I guess, what I’m getting at (and will obviously fail to get at) is that cabaret is… different. I prefer well written comedy handed over by someone who can “deliver” it – I guess. With that in mind, there are some talented folk in the German cabaret scene but you have to like that sort of thing or be born into it. No. Seriously. I’ve honestly tried to follow some German acts but I’ve given up. There have been simply too many things during my expat experience where the Germans have asked for too much. (And the comedy stuff is the least of the worst of it.)
Yeah. Lots of posts there, eh…
What’s really funny, though, is that last summer a German stand-up comedian named Mario Barth (German link only!) filled a stadium with 70,000 Germans. I have no idea what was actually funny with this guy but the fact that he is credited with some kind of world record (for filling a stadium with 70k people) is hilarious.
All is not lost. I do realize that it is my fault that I don’t think Germans are funny. (Or?) There are some cabaret-comedians, like Hagen Rether, (this guy has an English wiki page and hasn’t filled a stadium with 70k people!) that do catch my ear every once-a-once. Below is a clip of Hr. Rether w/English subtitles. I hope you can follow the text/translation. Although this clip is political, there is comedic potential here and this guy really shows the cabaret format (perhaps at its best). Also, I know this sounds really pretentious of me (if not obnoxious) but just look at the audience in the clip. The clip is current but the audience looks like a bunch of cheaply dressed bureaucrats with jackets and ties from the 70s. So much for contemporary German TV, eh! I suppose there is something to the adage that an audience makes the performer. Yes. Indeed. Perhaps with a different audience Hr. Rether could finally open up and… Well, who am I to judge.
Rant on.
-tgs-
