My friend Alan has a blog

that I’ve just been checking out. It’s kinda funny on several levels. Each post is a strange or disturbing comedic observation, most of them rather terse. You might compare to Steven Wright but I’m sure any serious student of late 20th Century comedy could explain why that presumption is incorrect.

What amuses me is that each entry is several days apart, and when one reads through the various entries it almost begs the question of how it took Alan so long to make yet another pithy observation.

Alan, of course, is much funnier than his blog. Even though he may make the same kind of comments, the flat tone of the blog is completely different than his intense delivery. And the minimalist tone of the blog isn’t as funny as his detailed storytelling.

Somehow I should also mention that he has a talking vagina animation on his website.

’88 Dodge Aries is a fake TV ad for what was my first car. I can’t remember what year it was, but I bought it used. It had a really really awful smell in it, like an animal had died in it, but it took 3 months for the dealership perfume to wear off and for me to notice the smell. It needed a new radiator, but I had no idea; I just knew that even with the heat off, in the dead of winter, I couldn’t wear a jacket while I drove on the highway or I’d be just too hot.

I put a lot of miles on it, and then eventually it died – I think right around the time we traded it in for something else.

TV commercial (“World Gone Pretty”) for Levi’s that is a very clever, funny, make-you-laff/make-you-think comment on evolving male stereotypes and the associated consumption, with Levi’s being the honest, back-to-basics, simple (or “uncomplicated” as the ad offers) remedy. Nice. Business Week’s take is here

. Via Musings of A Social Architect

.

For some reason I’m intrigued by the Oddly Enough news from Reuters. In my RSS reader I get an endless stream of ridiculous story titles, evoking an old era of news where tabloid and mainstream were maybe closer together?

Today the following stories appeared in a row – there was something lovely and sick about the resultant rhythm

• Man Barred from Making Slavery Tax Claims
• Man Catches Fire During Surgery
• Woman to Give Birth in Art Gallery
• Indians ‘Marry’ Sacred Trees to Ward Off Evil Eye

Idea for a cover band – Mr. Buggle would play the music of The Buggles in the style of Mr. Bungle.

Inspired by, I guess, Beatallica

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Okay, if you think funny names are funny and not disrespectful, you might be as amused as I was by this.

Dirk A. Flentrop, a Dutch organ builder who influenced a generation of American counterparts in making pipe organs that play and sound like the classical Baroque instruments of Bach’s time, died at his home in Santpoort, the Netherlands, on Nov. 30, his company, Flentrop Orgelbouw, announced. He was 93.

Mr. Flentrop headed the company, which is based in Zaandam, from 1940 to 1976. He took over from his father, Hendrik Flentrop, an organist who founded the company in 1903.

Inspired by what his father had learned in restoring 17th- and 18th-century European instruments, Mr. Flentrop, who also played the organ, built hundreds of new instruments in the Netherlands and elsewhere using historical construction techniques – mechanical connections between keys and pipes, bright and clear tones, elegant wooden cases to focus sound.

His influence spread to the United States in 1958, thanks to his friend E. Power Biggs, the concert organist, whom Mr. Flentrop had guided on a tour of European Baroque organs in 1954.

Most American pipe organs in the mid-20th century were being made with remote-control electropneumatic playing action and pipes that often imitated the sounds of the orchestra – unresponsive and heavy sounding, to Mr. Biggs’s ears. He ordered an organ from Mr. Flentrop and in 1958 got permission to install it in Adolphus Busch Hall at Harvard University.

The Flentrop organ in Busch Hall, still frequently heard in concerts, became, in the words of the organ historian Jonathan Ambrosino, “the beacon of a new age.”

Mr. Biggs’s recordings on it, and his fervent advocacy of designing pipe organs along classical lines, brought scores of orders for Mr. Flentrop over the next 20 years from American churches and universities. Among the places where he installed notable instruments are St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, the conservatory at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and the Duke University chapel in Durham, N.C.

His instruments helped inspire such American builders as Charles B. Fisk, John Brombaugh and Fritz Noack and their followers to return to traditional methods.

The Flentrop company, now directed by Cees van Oostenbrugge, observed its 100th anniversary this year.

Mr. Flentrop is survived by his wife, Cynthia Flentrop-Turner; a daughter, Agaath Leeuwerik-Flentrop; and three grandchildren.

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FreshMeat #2 from Steve Portigal

               (__)                     
               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

If you know someone that should read this, send it to ’em
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There really are eight million stories in the naked city
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I just completed a six-week class in improv – not
stand-up comedy, but a series of collaborative,
improvisational games or sketches. The TV show “Whose
Line Is It Anyway?” is a good example of improv.

Part of the process of doing improv is to free yourself
from the evil, rule-based domination of our left-brains
and allow play to take place. This approach has been
applied to all sorts of creativity work, from Drawing On
The Right Side of the Brain to every brainstorming
facilitator out there. So, I won’t go into that…I’m
fascinated by the stories that we have inside us.

Improv is something that anyone can do – it’s not just
for extroverts or people who are “naturally funny.”
The games and sketches produce humor almost as a by-
product. Most of the activities are based on
some trigger given at the last moment (hence the
improvisation) such as an emotion, a headline, a
physical position, a relationship, an environment.

And, incredibly, when given this little bit of info, we
can generate very rich recognizable stories, conveyed
through bits of dialogue, tone of voice, characters, and
so on. We are all in possession of these cliches, or
scenarios, or memes – call them what you want, but they
are incredibly detailed and we’ve all got them inside
us. If anything, improv helps bring them closer
to the surface so they can come out that much more easily.

A rich couple having an argument, a lion tamer who has
lost a job (and an arm), a game show, a televangelist,
a pair of puppies, a politician orating – all these
quickly produce richly detailed stories that are easily
recognized, and added to by the other performers.

Probably while reading that above paragraph you generated
your own visual and/or spoken details, so maybe you don’t
think the improv is such a big deal. Okay – but what
about the fact that you were able to generate so much
detail from a simple phrase?

It’d be interesting to try improv in cultures where
there is not the same amount of media exposure. Bugs
Bunny and Sesame Street seeded countless memes for their
viewers.

Anyway, this really supports the whole notion of how
products participate in stories – imagine the props
for an improv activity – a mobile phone, a rolling pin, or
a Tickle-Me-Elmo. We, consumers, have very specific
stories that those (or any) products will be used to
tell. The companies that make “stuff” need to understand
the stories that are out there already and take care to
make certain their new products (services,
advertisements, and so on) play the roles they are
expecting them to.