A funny thing may have happened…

There are several theories of about why something makes us laugh. Freud said that humour either expresses hostility or lust or in other ways releases repressed inhibitions. Later Zillmann and Bryant posited three types of humour: tendentious (victim-centred), innocuous (word play and the like) - and that based on misattribution (where characters say and do things against social norms or expectations). Another distinction I have heard is that all humour subverts our expectations or pushes moral boundaries. Personally I think there are two types of humour – the kind I find funny and the unfunny sort like Kathy Lette’s writing and episodes of the TV sit-com Good Times.

 

Would you want this emblazoned on your chest?

I had managed to effectively block the cringe-making mugging 'JJ' from memory until I saw a Korean guy wearing a ‘Dyn-o-mite’ T-shirt the other day – that brought it crashing back (shudder). And of course escaping the shamelessly self promoting Lette is a bit like trying to avoid backpackers spruiking for charities and phone plans in Eddy Avenue…

 The shy and retiring Ms Lette posing in front of one of her favourite paintings

Just what tickles individual funny bones and why is a bit of a mystery. I almost ROFL-ed watching Ricky Gervais’s stand up show Politics on the ABC last week. We have the DVD so I've seen it at least 3 times already but it continues to crack me up. Gervais’s comedy often consists of pointing out irrationality and hypocrisy but he is also accused of being crass and cruel. Witness the controversy over his Golden Globes hostings and the mixed reactions to An Idiot Abroad and Life's Too Short both of which I loved.

Gervais lists Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David amongst his influences/idols so perhaps I should like their work too but, try as I might, I can't endure Seinfeld and most clips I've seen of Larry David leave me cold.  I am at odds with most of the world in this. I wondered if it could be cultural, Ricky and Karl (Pilkington) and Warwick (Davies) all have a diffident, understated quality to their delivery whereas Jerry, Kramer, Elaine et al deliver their material with a subtlety that makes King Kong atop the Empire State Building seem like an early Leonard Cohen concert.

But if I have a cultural preference for underplaying how is it that I also love the 'Ooo, er… missus' humour of Frankie Howerd, Are You Being Served? and the Carry On films? Of course they are a major part of my cultural heritage too.

Can what makes us laugh change over time? Could I go from finding All In The Family and On The Buses excruciating to appreciating their exquisite irony and masterful commedia del'arte techniques? It has worked the other way around. I hated Men Behaving Badly in my early feminist days because I thought it celebrated chauvinism. I later discovered it was very funny indeed and have become a lifelong Martin Clunes fan. My feminist scruples also made me initially recoil from Ab Fab, then I came to relish the OTT characterisations of Patsy & Edina, the insanity of Bubble and the resigned martyrdom of Saffy. Watching the 'specials' made 20 years on though I find the situations stale, the jokes forced and the characters too grotesque to enjoy any more.

'Titter ye not' urged Frankie but I always did.

Does appreciating the context of or intention behind humour make it more likely that we will 'get it'? E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and generally erudite writer pointedly said:

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

Acquiring new life experiences might lead us to appreciate different types of humour. Perhaps if I lived in New York I would learn to like Seinfeld. Perhaps if I had a lobotomy I would find the 3 Stooges amusing. (Note: try watching the 3 Stooges without the whacky sound effects track – their true ghastliness becomes apparent).

Here, in keeping with my theory, but at the risk of disemboweling frogs, is a random* sample of the two types of comedy: funny and not funny…

FUNNY	Why	NOT FUNNY	Why
Blackadder	It started off pretty satisfying and quickly became one of the best scripted and performed comedies ever! Funnier than a Funster from Funville with an overactive funnybone.	The Footy Show (and Hey, Hey, It's Saturday reunion show)	Guess this is an example of Zillman & Bryant's victim-centred humour - the main victims being the viewer's intellect and human dignity in general.
The Plank	Stellar cast headed by my adored Eric Sykes who wrote and directed it. Superlative silent humour – a classic!	Mind Your Language	Appalling hackneyed racist rubbish proving Barry Evans unable to sustain a sit-com without Richard Gordon's rich comic settings.
Monty Python	Creative, absurd revolutionary comedy combining 6 brilliant minds.	All Charlie Chaplin films (well the ones I've seen)	Charlie Chaplin is quaint and whimsical but to me he is simply NOT funny and at his worst he is nauseatingly mawkish.
Judith Lucy	Always thought she was pretty funny but now that I've seen her live, read her memoirs and watched her Spiritual Journey  she is a goddess to me.	Wes Anderson's films	I know he is considered cool but The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited all left me feeling irritated, detached and as if I had just witnessed unsettling acts of onanism.
Bob Hope	Master of timing, lily livered-liness, lust accompanied by performance anxiety and fair-weather friendliness (even that is more than Crosby deserved). Major inspiration for Woody Allen.	Bless This House	I baulk at the very idea of the Sid James's persona being let loose outside of his natural habitat the Carry Ons. He cannot play a suburban husband/dad. He is and must remain a sleazy comic archetype.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels	Michael Caine and Steve Martin go together like rock melon and blue vein cheese. Both combinations I find surprisingly delicious!	The Love Guru	Embarrassing, self-indulgent tripe. Mike Myers is capable of so much better but like Trey Parker & Matt Stone, he just cannot let his inner sniggering adolescent go.
Denise Scott	Always enjoyed her on The Big Gig but discovered her true self-deprecating genius on Spicks & Specks. A national treasure!	Hey, Dad	Made me distinctly uneasy even before recent revelations. Contrived, heavy handed and completely unnecessary.
Marx Brothers	Despite Zeppo and despite the musical interludes, what a body of work!!! Comic geniuses.	Umbilical Bros	Skilled? Yes. Funny? I don't think so. These guys are mime artists. Enough said.
This Is Alan Partridge	Steve Coogan channelling toothy Leslie Crowther and making us (well me) wince and guffaw in equal parts. Less said about Tropic Thunder however the better.	Jerry Lewis	Why have the French deified this man? He is a grotesque buffoon with the comic finesse of Godzilla. Playing himself (a stingy, arrogant bastard) in King of Comedy is his best work – what does that say?
Pete 'n' Dud	Right through from Beyond the Fringe to Behind the Fridge – a perfect partnership, hilariously funny. Micaleff's and Curry's reprise of some of their sketches showed how strong the material is.	Dud sans Pete	I really love his music (even the musical jokes) and I know he had to flee Peter Cook's bullying and was ill not drunk when he stumbled on stage; however his US movies are just not funny.
Good Jim Carrey	When his touch is light as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Man In the Moon, and The Truman Show he is funny and moving.	Bad Jim Carrey	Save me from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Ace Ventura - Pet Detective and The Mask! Maybe Jim needs to take his anti ADD meds before choosing or shooting a script.

*I reiterate that this is by no means an exhaustive list. I have ommitted the brilliant John Clarke and failed to analyse the complex (scantily clad) body of work produced by Mr Benny Hill. I am keen to hear what makes others chortle or wince.

The Umbilical Brothers - is 'funny mime artist' an oxymoron?

So as I was saying, a funny thing may have happened to me the other day when I entered a competition to find the wittiest pun by a Sydney blogger – I was really keen so I entered ten times. I thought that would give me an edge but I didn't win with any of my entries. That's right, no pun in ten did! Boom, tish!

Just found out that Denise Scott and Judith Lucy are doing a show TOGETHER in Melbourne - hope it comes to Sydney!

Strike Up The Band Once More!

 Edwardian & Victorian Bandstands should be re-animated.

As a little girl growing up in Ilford, Essex  my favourite outing was to Valentine's Park (originally known as 'Central' or 'Cranbrook' Park). It had a duck pond, huge 'monkey puzzle' trees, squirrels you could feed with peanuts in the shell, a boating lake and a big bandstand with cast iron railings covered in flaky green paint surrounded by a gravel path. I loved the crunch of the gravel underfoot and running up and down the bandstand steps. Inside the bandstand were stacked rows of folded iron chairs. On  trips to the park with my mother or grandmother, my sister in her pram, we never saw another soul in the bandstand area and we never saw those chairs unfolded and in use. It was the 1960s and no performance had taken place in the Valentine's Park bandstand for decades. 

The Bandstand in Valentine's Park, Ilford soon after its construction

The Valentine's Park lands were part of a 17thC estate gradually bequeathed to the public between 1899 and 1912. The bandstand, built in 1906, was one of a slew of attractions including sunken gardens, a clock tower, tea rooms and cricket grounds, added to entice the public through the park gates.

Me in the bandstand with the folded chairs 1958 (?)

The heyday of the British bandstand was in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Colonialists would have seen domed and pillared pavilions dotting Indian and Islamic landscapes and judged the style just right for open public spaces back home. Parks and pleasure grounds proliferated as sites for clean, healthy outdoor enjoyment and the addition of a bandstand provided scope for economical and rousing entertainment.  The military in Victorian/Edwardian society was a strong breeding ground for brass band musicians and by the early 20thC most British towns had their own band and bandstand. 

In the same period, New South Wales was eager to match the sort of elegant open air vistas and promenades that featured in the parks of the 'Mother Country'. Sydney's Hyde Park had not one, but two, bandstands in quite quick succession. The first and more modest of the two was erected in 1888, then removed to suburban Camperdown in 1910, to be replaced by a grander bandstand and amphitheatre which lasted in situ until 1951.

 A concert in Hyde Park, Sydney  c.1890s

 

The original Hyde Park Bandstand that now stands in Camperdown Park (above)

The more elaborate 1919 Hyde Park Bandstand destined for demolition in the 50s

Recycling was quite the thing with bandstands apparently  as the elaborate 'rotunda' built at Farm Cove for the arrival of Lord Hopetoun in 1895 appeared in Ashfield park in 1903 where it lasted until the 1940s.

Same rotunda at different locations: Farm Cove (above), Ashfield Park (below), sadly no trace of it exists today.

 

Some other Sydney monuments shifted about a bit include the Shakespeare memorial statue opposite the State Library, the  statues of Victoria and Albert in the Macquarie Street/Queen's Square precinct and 'The Abbey' in Bridge Street Glebe which was once on Broadway. But I digress...

While researching the fate of the bandstand I remembered from my childhood and discovering bandstands still standing in Sydney's inner west I happened upon the site for an inspired project.  Bandstand Marathon aims to breathe new life into UK  bandstands with an annual performance blitz at multiple venues featuring multiple musical genres.  My own  Valentine's Park bandstand will be participating this year on September 9th. 

An event like this would be a wonderful addition to the Sydney Festival or to Open Sydney - I am keen to sow the seeds with heritage and music organisations. While bandstands in the Botanic Gardens, Glebe's Jubilee Park and in Wynyard Square have now vanished, here are several neglected bandstands still standing that could find a new lease on life through such a venture.  Do you know of others?

 Belmore Park Bandstand

Moore Park Bandstand

Observatory Hill Bandstand

Campsie Bandstand

Imagine no religion, its easy if you try...

In 1966 John Lennon outraged the US bible belt  with this statement:

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." 

Condemnatory demonstrations and public burnings of Beatles' records by American Christian fundamentalists ensued. John was obliged to apologise:

"I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I am not saying we are greater or better. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong. I wasn't saying whatever they are saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it, really. I apologize, if that will make them happy. I still don't know quite what I've done."

All he had done was to express his opinion that the words and values of inspiring religious prophets had been distorted by their later interpreters.  His remarks did not cause a kerfuffle in the UK but in the good ole 'land of the free' he outraged thousands. Even the nutter that murdered him 14 years later cited anger at John's comments about Christianity as one of his motives. 

Certain middle Americans, apparently discomfited by Danny Boyle's tribute to the NHS in the Olympics opening ceremony, must've been even more ticked off about the inclusion of John Lennon's anthem to pacifism, redistribution of wealth and atheism, 'Imagine', in the closing ceremony. 'Imagine' was performed by the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir and Liverpool Signing Choir in concert with a remastered video of Lennon's own 1970 performance of the song and accompanied by the assembly of a three dimensional portrait of Lennon in the midst of the arena.

The US of A isn't above incorporating 'Imagine' into their own public spectacles. On December 31, 2011, at Times Square in New York City, the rap artist Cee Lo Green sang 'Imagine' just prior to the ringing in of the new year. He replaced the line "and no religion, too" with the words "and all religion is true". Wonder what Yoko and Lennon's legions of fans thought about that?

Maybe the Brits had their cake and ate it too by featuring Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Mr Bean, Morris dancers, the Spice Girls, the Grenadier Guards, George Michael, nuns with Union Jack knickers, a clutch of Supermodels, Winston Churchill and John Winston Lennon all on the same bill but the slogan was that this Olympics was 'for everyone'. I found the eclecticism enchanting.  And in an age where so much that is violent and oppressive is being done or excused in the name of religion it was refreshing to have secularism and silliness centre stage at the London Olympics.

Sydney: What Lies Beneath

The Paris sewers are rightly celebrated. One of my favourite posts in a friend's blog is about the Paris sewers and I very much enjoyed watching Griff Rhys Jones's illicit tour of their labyrinthine networks in his Greatest Cities of the World series. But I refuse to be cowed by cultural cringe and have delved into Sydney's own subterranean waterways to see what I could come up with (so to speak).

My first glimpse of anything related to Sydney's historic drains was through a perspex case housing the beautifully preserved remnants of a water cistern unearthed during the expansion of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the 1990s. It dates from the 1790s and was used as water storage for a bakery on the site. 

 Excavations for the extensions to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music reveal the cistern (right).

My second encounter was wandering through the newly reclaimed and restored Paddington Reservoir. Built in 1878, its limited elevation meant that only the top 5 feet of water from the reservoir could be provided to buildings in excess of one storey, thus it was quickly supplemented by a further pumping station in Crown Street and then decommissioned altogether when the Centennial Park Reservoir came into service in 1899. The structure spent several decades housing a service station and a council works depot until it was transformed to the beautiful airy garden it is today.

But I precede myself. Sydney's first 'sewer' was never intended as such because it was also the cherished drinking water supply which attracted British settlement to Sydney Cove over Botany Bay. I refer of course to the Tank Stream. This  fresh waterway flowed from a swamp near modern day Park Street on the edge of Hyde Park through today's CBD into what is now Circular Quay. To capture water from the stream's variable supply, tanks were built in the position shown on the map below, giving the stream its name. However, after a brief period of purity under Arthur Phillip's vigilant governance, not fencing, nor guards nor fines saved the Tank Stream from pollution. It went from life source to disease fermenter in less than two decades. It was inevitable really as no independent water supply for washing, industry and sewage existed. Pollution and alternating droughts and floods finally ended the Tank Stream's useful life in the 1810s. I quote from the informative Sydney Architecture site:

The Tank Stream served as a dubious source of water for the settlement for a few more years (after Macquarie's time) and was abandoned in 1826. For the next four years residents depended on wells or on water carted from the Lachlan Swamps (Centennial Park) at heavy expense. When the Tank Stream had begun to fail, wells were dug with good results in various places in and near the town...

... In 1860 the Tank Stream was covered from Hunter Street to Bridge Street, forming a four metre by three metre sewer. At Bridge Street this work connected on to an open stone drain which ran along the original course of the Tank Stream through private property to connect up near the present site of Crane Place with the elliptical stone sewer constructed by the City Commissioners and the City Council in 1857.

Map showing the course of the Tank Stream superimposed over modern Sydney.

By the mid 19thC the Tank Stream had been progressively covered over until all traces disappeared. It is now a storm water channel controlled by Sydney Water who, in conjunction with the Historic Houses Trust, permit occasional tours (none scheduled currently, I've checked). There are calls for portions of the Tank Strem to be made visible again and its existence has been drawn attention to by a number of commemorative art projects. Most splendid is Stephen Walker's sculpture, Tank Stream Fountain at Herald Square, Circular Quay.

 

 

The plaque reads:

1788 A stream flows into Sydney Cove. The European Settlement of Australia begins along its sandstone banks. Soon drought strikes and storage tanks are carved from the stone. Hence the name, Tank Stream. The Seasons Pass. 1981. The Tank Stream Fountain recalls mankind' s past dependence on this flowing stream and our links with life around the region.

The most prosaic tribute was undoubtedly the now defunct Tank Stream Arcade on the corner of King and Pitt Streets (pictured below in the 1980s). The hoarding covers a stairway which led down to a quaint little section of the MLC Centre where you could sit and eat your healthy Sanitarium* sandwich beside a gaudily tiled cascade purportedly evoking the Tank Stream - searches have not yielded a photo unfortunately.  

I am not sure if the bar in the old MLC Centre was called the Tank Stream Bar  but there is one now, it's in Tank Stream Way  (only recently so named) between Abercrombie and Bridge Lanes near Wynyard.

To me, more resonant than any of these is the series of installations in five separate sites in city pavements made in 1999 by artist Lynne Roberts-Goodwin. Featuring two interconnecting lines and hauntingly lit from beneath (when the Council remembers to change the bulb), this is what the artist says about her work:

The Tankstream Artwork, in five separate locations from Pitt Street Mall to Alfred Street, marks the existence of the historic Tank Stream bubbling below the city streets. The subterranean movement of a fine stream of fresh spring water is conveyed through the rippling blue light and accompanying text.

Captain Watkin Tench, Captain of the Marines of the First Settlers at Port Jackson, wrote in his diary about the selection of Sydney Cove as the site for the first settlement. He recorded the presence of water at this site, his vision of grandeur of the settlement, the geographical description of the Sydney valley and the rise and flow of the stream.

Tankstream celebrates the memory of the original stream which started in the marshes where the Pitt Street Mall is now situated, its importance in the founding of the city, finally flowing into the harbour at Circular Quay.

Martin Place site of Roberts-Goodwin's Tankstream Artwork. Other locations are Alfred Street, Curtin Place, Angel Place, Bridge Street and the spot where Pitt Street Mall and Sydney Arcade meet (I add this up as 6 locations but the artist herself says 5).

In 1828 the enterprising mineral surveyor and civil engineer to the colony, John Busby recommended that water from the Lachlan Swamps (later to become the site of Centennial Park) be delivered to a reservoir at Hyde Park via a tunnel or 'bore'. The project was still unapproved when tunnelling began in  1827 but was soon recognised as indispensable and afforded Busby a nice pay rise.  Built by convict labour, mostly through solid sandstone, and varying from 0.9m by 0.9m to 3.5m in height, Busby's Bore was  supplying Sydney with about 1.5 million litres of drinkable water per day by 1830. It's route was from the Lachlan Swamps (Centennial Park) to Hyde Park and its existence is marked today by a commemorative fountain in the latter park. It is however, in the wrong place, the actual outlet of Busby's Bore was near the corner of Park and Elizabeth Streets whereas the fountain (pictured) is on the corner of Elizabeth Street and St James Road!

At this point in my research I felt I had waded through enough sewers for a nice chunky post so I will hold on to other delights for future musings. Before I conclude though I must share perhaps my most appealing finding. I have quoted the Sydney Architecture site saying that Sydney's first comprehensive sewerage system was built in 1857 and indeed this is true, but as Anna Wong's compelling Colonial Sanitation, Urban Planning and Social Reform in Sydney, New South Wales 1788-1857 is at pains to point out, there were earlier proposals but their design and material costs made construction prohibitive.

By 1857 Sydney appears to have had both sufficient affluence and effluence to proceed with drainage and sewerage schemes apace. While the city got safe fresh drinking water, outflow and pollution problems for the Harbour, the Cooks River and Bondi were just beginning. Presiding over the engineering work was Sydney's Lord Mayor George Thornton. He it was who commissioned Thornton's Obelisk (pictured) the Sydney equivalent of the London Embankment's Cleopatra's Needle. While recalling lofty antiquity,  the brass capped sandstone obelisk was in fact the first major sewer vent constructed in Sydney or greater NSW. Designed to ventilate the Bennelong sewerage system, historians give conflicting reports on whether it achieved its purpose. Though one contemporary account certainly suggests it ushered air in even if it did not disperse noxious gases as intended: "The Obelisk causes a splendid draft in Pitt-street sewer - the foreman reports it is difficult to keep a candle alight when working in same" (unsourced quote on Sydney Council's media site). 

Characteristically Sydneysider's greeted this pretentious monument to their Mayor  with derision and nicknamed it 'Thornton's Perfume Bottle'.  Remaining thematically consistent to the last, Thornton died of dysentery!

Cleopatra's Needle/Hyde Park Obelisk/Thornton's Perfume Bottle whatever you call it, this structure on Elizabeth Street is an 1857 sewer vent.

NOTES

* The Quaker health food company, Sanitarium, sold sandwiches, soy milk shakes and other wholesome foodstuffs from a kind of geodesic structure on King Street  a mere pebble toss from the Tank Stream Arcade.

Researching for this blog I chanced upon the delightful  This Isn't Sydney - Spike's walkies blog with swearing & pictures  he covers a lot of the same content and I pinched the wording of Lynne Roberts-Goodwin's  statement about her installation from him (thanks, mate) all other coincidences are coincidental or because of what's out there.