I think if Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl had been gentiles Simps wouldn't have quibbled with me noting that lots of humor gets old and isn't funny anymore. Only Lenny Bruce wasn't very funny much, at all. Mort Sahl was about as funny for as long as the newspapers he held under his arm were fresh.
W. C. Fields trying to sleep on the porch, that's something I've been able to watch at least a dozen times, thinking it was still funny. But I doubt I could watch it 100 times and it would stay fresh. Simps is a specialist in repeating things 100 times, and that's after whoever originally said it wore it out.
Update: Stupy thinks that Bach's B Minor Mass is the intellectual, spiritual and artistic equivalent of a gag in a Hollywood movie. I'm not making that up.
"W. C. Fields trying to sleep on the porch, that's something I've been able to watch at least a dozen times, thinking it was still funny.But I doubt I could watch it 100 times and it would stay fresh. But I doubt I could watch it 100 times and it would stay fresh."
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, I doubt you could listen to Bach's B-Minor Mass and it would stay fresh either.
Probably would, actually. There's a great deal more content in one than the other.
Delete"Stupy thinks that Bach's B Minor Mass is the intellectual, spiritual and artistic equivalent of a gag in a Hollywood movie. I'm not making that up. }
ReplyDeleteUh, actually, you are making that up. What I was suggesting -- obviously, although as always the point sailed several miles over your empty noggin -- was that just about anything, no matter how delightful, can get stale from repeated exposure to it. For example, I have no doubt that if you were forced to listen to Bach's B Minor Mass 100 times in succession that you would soon be begging for a bullet to the brain, and rightly so.
I once knew a woman who was clearly and tragically mentally ill, one of the features of her mental illness was the odd quirk of being able to pretend that if one word of some lie she told was true that meant the lie was true. Another was that if she could add one word to something someone said, often to demonstrate that her delusion wasn't true, that she could negate the effect of that demonstration. You have that same habit of thought (as does Alan Dershowitz, now that I think of it).
DeleteI didn't say that I'd need to watch W.C. Fields's "sleeping on the porch" routine "100 times IN SUCCESSION" for it to lose its comedic impact. I don't doubt that I could do what Gunther Schuller did, listen to hundreds of performances of, for example, Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies on disc, listening to some of them many times to conduct his study of the habits, good and bad of conductors, and, as he said, not find such works tedious. That's the difference between music that stands the test of time and an ephemeral movie gag, it's why they call it "the test of time". Of course, for an individual, they have to have an attention span and the discipline to listen even the 12th time, which you lack.
I seem to recall you making some absurd comment about the greatness of Satie's stupid repetition piece. Vexations, but, alas, it was one of those things I took down from one of my alternate blogs when I decided that an engagement with you left me feeling cheap and sullied. It was when I said that having taken out a collection of Satie's music to use for sight-reading had pretty much used up any patience I had with his trivial music and you were outraged.
I can say that I still maintain some affection for the second of his Chapitres tournés en tous sens, Le porteur de grosses pierres, but only if I ignore his stupid commentary. That stuff only got worse as he became a celebrity and it exacerbated all of his worst tendencies. It's quite as beautiful as it is trivial, but I don't think I could ever have worked up a performance because its triviality would quickly outpace the beauty. That's something that's never happened with a piece by Bach. I must have taught some of his Inventions a thousand times over the years and I could still play them feeling there was potential in them I hadn't found yet.
I must have taught some of his Inventions a thousand times over the years and I could still play them feeling there was potential in them I hadn't found yet.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, Sparky. And someday, a homicidal paramecium named Raoul will pilot the space shuttle.
Well, I just did compare you to a seriously mentally ill woman I once knew, you don't have to prove my point immediately after I posted it.
DeleteI know your musical skills are limited, to say the least, but I don't think playing the Inventions is exactly like piloting the space shuttle. Though to someone like you without the intelligence God a paramecium, perhaps it seems that way.
Make that "the intelligence God gave a paramecium."
Delete"You have that same habit of thought (as does Alan Dershowitz, now that I think of it)."
ReplyDeleteAnd you're getting as predictable as Maureen Dowd, who no matter what politician she's writing about always works in a forced reference to the pop culture phenom of the day. One of the main reasons I'm glad THE SOPRANOS is no longer in primetime.
Now you're just piling on with the proof.
DeleteI watched some of The Sopranos, once. But I'd seen the SRC production, Omerta, La Loi du Silence and it seemed silly and tame by comparison.
If I didn't know psychiatry was a fraud I might suggest you follow Tony Soprano's example and get shrunk, though if they shrank your mind anymore it would be totally inert.
I wonder if The Dersh would appreciate being called a "pop culture phenom of the day". Which is rather hilarious coming from you, the Simp, as your entire . . . um . . . "work life" has consisted in pretending that the "pop culture phenom of the day" had some enduring importance. I'll bet if I looked over your scat at Eschaton I'd find all kinds of reference to crap pop culture of the receding past comprised a lot of it.
Says the cretin who doesn't understand that "Ronnie Spector's vocal." a thing, not a sentence. Kinda like "Donovan's Brain." Which I'm sure flummoxed you equally, for obvious reasons.
ReplyDelete"Says the cretin who doesn't understand that "Ronnie Spector's vocal." a thing, not a sentence."
DeleteLook, Ma. No predicate! Still!
"I watched some of The Sopranos, once. But I'd seen the SRC production, Omerta, La Loi du Silence and it seemed silly and tame by comparison."
ReplyDeleteProving only that you wouldn't last a week in New Jersey.
1st. We've been through this before, Simps, TV isn't real.
Delete2nd. Why in the world would you think I'd want to spend a week in New Jersey? I spent the time it took to drive through NJ on the pike from New York to Philadelphia twice, when I was five and when I was six and the smell and nausea of the experience never led me to try it as an adult. And that was before I found out you were there. That fact does nothing to dissuade me that I'm missing not that much.
I live in Queens, Sparky.
ReplyDeleteYou told me you were from NJ.
DeleteBy the way, I also have no interest in going to Queens to see The Simp. In fact, there are remarkably few times I regret missing something that happens in your overrated metropolis, Stupy. I'd love to go to Montreal or Regina or White Horse . . .
I was in Liverpool, Oxford, London and Paris last week. I'm not surprised you set your sights so low, Sparky.
ReplyDeleteYour old, putrid body was in those places, I saw from your blog posting your old, foetid mind was in Eschatonia, Duncanland.
DeleteYou bragged about going to see some dumb play you'd already seen in New York, as I recall. You tried to impress me with that. You failed to impress me. You certainly didn't make me feel jealous.
BTW, Queens is the most ethnically diverse area in the fucking world. And you wouldn't last a week there either.
ReplyDeleteYou've made that claim before, Stupy, and it's not true. Here is a listing of the top three diverse cities in the United States:
Delete1 Jersey City, NJ 71.51 41 1 385 113 257
2 Houston, TX 71.49 116 27 117 106 53
3 New York, NY 71.41 69 6 245 89
And to prove what a provincial you are, the "most ethnically diverse area in the fucking world" doesn't happen to be in the United States, it's considered to be Amsterdam, with London, Paris and then LOS ANGELES (SUCK ON THAT OH "MAN OF THE WORLD" FROM QUEENS!) before NYC makes the list.
"You wouldn't last a week there either". You sound like Donald Trump. I'm sure if it can sustain a marshmallow like you I'd have the ability to last a week there. For one thing, I'm not stupid.
Uh, Sparky -- I said "area," not "city." Queens isn't a city.
ReplyDeleteBTW, 200 languages spoken in Queens. Your stats are bullshit.
Also: "For one thing, I'm not stupid."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!
The stats aren't "my stats" I looked up the questions. I mentioned where you keep your head, on the other side from your joke. No doubt your saying that tickles something.
Delete200 languages, and you fail to tell the truth in all of them.
By the way, I suspect they didn't teach you anything about basic set theory in algebra classes at your special school. Queens is a subset of NYC, it can't have more elements than the elements of the set it is a subset of. The position of NYC in that ranking is the highest rank that any subset of NYC can achieve.
DeleteIt's hilarious to that Los Angeles got a higher ranking than NYC. What would Woody say?
Queens is a subset of NYC? Try telling that to somebody from Bayside and you’ll get your ass kicked pretty quick, schmucko.
ReplyDeleteSo you're claiming they don't understand 9th grade set theory there, either? What was it, with you idiots, they figure since they couldn't teach you 5th grade math they wouldn't try to get you up to speed by high school?
DeleteIf I had a student who couldn't understand that Queens is a subset of NYC I'd send the to be evaluated to see if they would benefit from some kind of diagnosis. I don't think I ever tutored even a stupid kid who was that stupid.
I'd ask how you did on the Regents but you said you didn't grow up in New York. I'm guessing your achievement tests were such that your guidance counselor advised you to go into something where stupidity would be an asset, like pop music criticism or theater arts.
And yet another joke has sailed over your hollow noggin into the stratosphere and thence to the cold and most distant reaches of the galaxy.
ReplyDeleteSomeday I'll tell someone I once encountered someone who was severely mentally disabled who, whenever it was pointed out that he'd said something stupid and obviously incorrect he would habitually claim it was a joke, though said "joke" was not funny and was stupid and wrong. Only you mental disability is obvious and two fold, stupidity and dishonesty. As I said, you and trump, two assholes with more than just residence in Queens in common.
Delete