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DEPRESSED MAN DIAGNOSED AS “BRITISH”

George Farthing, an expatriate British man living in America, was recently diagnosed as clinically depressed, tanked up on anti-depressants and scheduled for controversial Electro Shock (convulsive) Therapy when doctors realised he wasn’t depressed at all – only British. Continue reading “Depressed, or just British?”

dealing with fear, part 1

“A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me; I’m afraid of widths” –  stand-up comedian Stephen Wright

Perhaps the single most commonly admired attribute of stand-up comedians is their  demonstration of courage and management of fear – preparedness to stand alone in front of an unknown, potentially hostile, and sometimes huge audience – risking failure: not amusing them, not being liked, being heckled or boo-ed off. This is a visceral and quite fundamental fear, which feels like it’s about one’s very survival. Not for nothing is a bad comedy experience on stage termed ‘dying on your *ss’. Continue reading “learning from comedians: dealing with fear”

“I once had a leather jacket that got ruined in the rain. Why does moisture ruin leather? Aren’t cows outside a lot of the time? When it’s raining, do cows go up to the farmhouse, calling out ‘Let us in! We’re all wearing leather! Open the door! We’re going to ruin the whole outfit here!'”– Jerry Seinfeld

 

One of the chief reasons we appreciate comedians – and one of the major reasons that they can exert influence on us, is that they continually make us think about things in ways we have never thought about them before: everyday things, trivial things, important things, life-and-death things, all kinds of things. Continue reading “Learning from comedians: creative comedy thinking”

Zen Teabags Holistic inc is proud to launch a whole new range of aromatherapy products – for your canine companion.

Woof-Woof-Yum-Yum is the exciting new range of essential oils, specially formulated to please the dog in your life. Remember  though – these are to please the dog, not you! Continue reading “Canine aromatherapy products from Zen Teabags Holistic inc”

“Once in a lifetime comes a book that will totally transform your life, help you find your true direction, and reveal to you the very mysteries of existence itself… This is not that book. However, it is the funnietst, most brilliant tongue-in-cheek guide to New Age jargon yet published”

– Om Yoga magazine

Here are some practical things you can do in order to be better at living in the present: Continue reading “Living in the present #5: concluding”

Sabotaging the present:

We’re often prone to squandering the present moment. Do you ever find yourself doing one thing (washing the dishes, Pilates practice, making love), but thinking ahead to the next or later activity (wondering what to cook for dinner, next week’s Pilates practice making love with someone else), perhaps wanting it to stop, or wanting a process to end, being impatient to get on to something else yet carrying on with the present thing? Continue reading “Living in the present #4”

“I laughed my head off. This is a wonderful look into the “New Age” movement. Tongue-in-Cheek, but cutting through to truths. This is a wonderful time to raise endorphins with a good guffaw.”

– The Editor, The Messenger

The problem with living in the past

 

 

Of course, there’s a very valid place for reviewing the past in order to learn lessons and process issues, but most of us a disproportionate amount of our time dwelling on the past in a way that:

 

• causes suffering in the present
• doesn’t move us forward
• can actually obstruct our progress

 

When you find yourself incessantly mulling over the past, it’s tempting to wish things hadn’t happened as they had, or that you had done something differently, or married a different person, or become a best-selling novelist, millionaire or supermodel rather than a booking clerk. But these conjectures are totally fruitless. It would clearly be more valuable to ponder constructively on matters which you can do something about, or at least learn something from. Continue reading “Living in the present #2”

Most of us could be a lot happier and get our lives to work a great deal better if we were just able to live in the present moment more than we currently do. It’s very common to have a somewhat dysfunctional or negative approach to the passing of time, and many popular sayings and modes of expression reflect this. There are really only two kinds of problem here: Continue reading “Living in the present: #1”

People we describe as having a ‘sense of humour’ are basically people who can look at things differently from normal. Comedians are people who have trained their minds to do this routinely – not to just follow the normal interpretations and associations but to go somewhere different from the usual. And every DIY comedian can get into this habit.

            Comedy-minded people constantly have part of their mind on the alert for something happening, or something said by themselves or someone else, that they can do an unusual ‘take’ on, and so create a humorous observation or start a funny train of thought. Looking at things differently is the other side of the coin of recognition. Together, they form the key to almost all comedy.

            This difference of perspective can apply at all levels from one-off individual observations to overall approaches to comedy. And the shift of perspective can range from slightly unusual to totally weird or surreal. Groucho Marx was a comedian who used this device all the time. He said, for instance, “Outside of a dog, a man’s best friend is a book. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read anyway.” He’s looking at the concept of ‘outside of a dog’ differently from the conventional. In this case he’s taking literally something which his audience would be used to interpreting as a metaphor – a highly effective version of perspective shift which is used by many comedians.

 

Great comedian Omid Djalili recently said this, in answer to the question:

Q. What brings you back to stand-up after three and a half years away?

It was the love of it, surely -and the opportunity to evolve as a human being. I really believe that if you tak comedy seriously, in a holistic way, soyou work on yourself; it’s the one art form where you can transform actuallhy as a human being, and I felt I needed to do that.”

– reported in Latest magazine

 

No Going Back: a humorous diary about moving away from the bright city lights of Brighton, England

Episode 1: Driving over lemmings Continue reading “No Going Back: a humorous diary about moving home #1”

In this series of blogs, I take a look at the basic mechanics that are used to create comedy – the fundamental ‘building blocks’ of humour. For the purpose of understanding how comedy works, they’re presented here as separate items, but in practice they nearly always merge together and overlap; virtually every piece of humour that you can think of has more than one of them going on at the same time. Continue reading “How to be funny: building blocks of comedy: # 1”