some dudes like to talk a big game about how comedy suffers when people are afraid to offend but man, Mitch Hedberg was a white dude working in the era of peak offensive edgelord and his shit holds the fuck up so while most comedians will never come up with anything as timeless as “if carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up” they could at least make an effort
Every McDonald’s commercial ends the same way, right? “Prices and participation may vary.” I wanna open a McDonald’s and not participate in anything. I wanna be a stubborn McDonald’s owner. I’ll say “Cheeseburgers? Nope. We got spaghetti! And blankets! We are not affiliated with that clown.”
Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read.
I would like to have a product that was available for three easy payments and one fuckin’ complicated payment. We can’t tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is gonna be a bitch! The mailman will get shot to death, the envelope will not seal, and the stamp will be in the wrong denomination! Good luck, fucker! That last payment must be made in wampum!
Hey, if you wanna talk to me after the show, I’ll be… fuckin’ surprised.
This shirt is “dry-clean only”… Which means it’s dirty.
One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said “Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.” Every picture is of you when you were younger. “Here’s a picture of me when I’m older.” “You son-of-a-bitch! How’d you pull that off? Lemme see that camera… What’s it look like? ”
An escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. You would never see an “Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order” sign, just “Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
I play golf. I’m not good at golf, I never got good. I never got a hole-in-one. But I did hit a guy. And that’s way more satisfying. You’re supposed to yell “Fore!” but I was too busying mumbling “There ain’t no way that’s gonna hit him.”
When you’re in Hollywood and you’re a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things besides comedy. They say “All right you’re a stand up comedian, can you act? Can you write? Write us a script.” They want me to do things that’s related to comedy, but it’s not comedy. That’s not fair. It’s as though if I was a cook, and I worked my ass off to become a good cook, and they said “All right you’re a cook… can you farm?”
– “Rice is great when you’re you’re hungry and you want 10,000 of something”
– “Tennis is depressing because no matter how good you get, you will never be as good as a wall”
– “I order the club sandwich all the time, but I’m not even a member, man. I don’t know how I get away with it”
If I understand correctly, these are ceramic bowls floating in a pool of water, possibly in a cave because it’s echo-y, and the clinking sound is them bumping into one another. Like wind chimes, but … water chimes?
yo, i saw this in person over the summer! it’s an art installation!
the piece is called clinamen v.2, created by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot and included as a part of the Soundtracks exhibit in the moma – i saw it in san fran, and this photo is from a showing in new york:
the exhibit is a large shallow pool filled with white ceramic bowls in varying sizes. the bowls are pushed around the pool by a gentle current, and the sound created as they hit each other is somewhere between a wind chime and a haunted bell.
i sat there for a solid ten minutes just watching the bowls move around while listening to the sounds they made. it was absolutely hypnotic…
Soundtracks runs in the san fran moma until january 1st 2018, and i absolutely recommend going if you can. many of the exhibits play with sound in 3D spaces, and there are some truly wild contraptions on display.
“The director of the first film, Andrew Adamson, was very focused on preserving real emotion, on seeing things for the first time, and having, like, a real sense of wonder.“
“So he didn’t actually show me the set of Narnia where the lamppost is until we shot it. I was blindfolded and guided into my place, and he told me to just walk around, that the camera would follow me.”
“And so I turned around and I saw it for the first time. It was in a studio but it was ri-dic-ul-ous-ly real. I couldn’t get my head around it. And so what you see is my real reaction to everything. It was incredible.”
On top of that, she had been close friends with the fella playing Tumnus and had not yet seen him in full costume. They were kept apart a few days before their meeting was shot so when she meets him and lights up? She’s seeing her friend for the first time in days and he’s also in costume.
See, this is where enforced method acting is okay and sweet and adorable.
I have been having some thoughts about the original mythological
Loki and the thought that has been on my mind most is this:
Loki is
1. Surprisingly great with kids
2. Is addicted to parenthood
Let me explain.
As to the first bit, well, yeah, it’s surprising. Or it should
be at first glance. Because, seriously, this is fucking Loki. Standing
in close proximity to him for longer than a minute is bound to result in theft,
arson, a splash of bloodshed for color, and at least one confused party waking
up in bed with the fucker. He’s a chaotic, manic, and generally hazardous force
to be reckoned with.
To us. That is, adults.
Mortals, gods, giants, trolls, dwarves, et cetera–but only
those who are mature.* *Read: there is Something to be Gained from conning,
seducing, or otherwise messing with us. Whether it’s to save his own skin, or
to get some sweet petty vengeance, or to steal a bauble, or to satisfy some
carnal itch, or to just fuck up somebody’s day for the Hel of it, Loki only
ever targets those he can take something worthwhile from.
And what is there to take from kids?
Plenty of folks on his extremely extensive Enemies List have
children, of course. No one in the Norse mythos was especially mindful of
dropping their seed. So. Children.
Children–easy to fool, easy to make a hostage, easy to charm
and siphon their parents’ secrets and treasures from–should be great big
bullseyes to the God of Mischief and Trickery and Assorted Other Unscrupulous
Things. Yet there isn’t a single Edda or snippet of lore in which Loki makes cruel
use of them. Not once.
But what’s the big deal? Most of the rude and/or villainous
characters in Norse mythology don’t bother with harassing kids either. Except
in the case of stories like Loka
Táttur.
Loka Táttur is a tale about how a farmer loses a bet with a
vicious troll who swears to kill the farmer’s little boy. The farmer calls upon
three gods in turn. Odin, Hoenir, and Loki. Odin and Hoenir both disguise the
boy and hide him away, but the troll is too clever and each time manages to
sniff out the boy’s hiding place. Ultimately it is Loki who hides the kid–pulling
an Idunn-in-a-Nutshell gag and hiding him as a speck on the eye of a flounder
in the water–and then, rather than stepping back as Odin and Hoenir did from
their work, he sits in his boat and lets the troll see him.
The troll, being suspicious, asks what Loki’s business is. Only
fishing, obviously. The troll demands to join him. Lo and behold, they bring up
a wealth of flounders, including the one where the boy’s hidden. Loki manages
to change the boy back to his true shape and hide the kid behind his back
without the troll noticing. As Loki brings the boat back to shore, and to the
farmer’s boathouse with the latter’s doors open, Loki tells the boy to run
through the boathouse. He goes, the troll gives chase, and the troll becomes
wedged in the entryway.
At which point Loki proceeds to chop off the troll’s legs and
stick an iron stake in the bastard’s skull. Then he walks the kid back home. The
grand payoff for Loki after all this?
The boy is safe. The troll is dead. The End.
Huh.
Now, much as Loki may have been the catalyst for a lot of
corpses pre-Ragnarok–see his business with Thor getting his hammer back and
leading more than one giant into a death trap–Loki is actually very rarely, if
ever, one to get his hands dirty by killing a victim himself. Even Baldr was
done in by an arrow he aimed with blind Hod’s fingers. So why did Loki
personally orchestrate this plan in such a grisly way? For what gain?
What, other than the satisfaction of personally slaughtering the
would-be child-killing prick troll?
In a less bloody narrative, we see his hand in getting Thialfi
and Roskva, a pair of mortal siblings, taken into Thor’s service. While the
exact ages of the two aren’t mentioned, they are young enough to still be in
the care of their parents. When Thor and Loki are travelling it’s their father
who invites them under their roof. Thor’s goats are slaughtered for the evening
meal and–in some tellings–it is Loki who entices the son, Thialfi, into
breaking a leg bone to taste the marrow. When morning comes and Thor resurrects
his goats, one has a broken leg.
Thor’s visibly pissed—never ever
a good thing–and so the family offers to make some compensation.
Loki, coughing through his hand: ThialfibroketheboneheshouldpledgeservicetoThor
Thialfi: Uh–
Loki, clearing his throat:Alsotakethesistertwoforonedeal
Rosvka: But I didn’t do anything—
Loki, en sotto voce: Kids, consider your options. Teensy
mortal lifetime of toil on Midgard, harvesting dirt and snow on one hand.
Potentially immortal lifetime, I don’t know, scrubbing giant blood off Mjolnir in
Thor’s hall on Asgard on the other. Verdict?
Both: Sold.
Loki: Excellent! Really, Thor, you’re a master dealmaker,
a born barterer, I’m in awe.
Thor: Wh—
Loki: AND WE’RE BACK TREKKING LETS GO
Cue laugh track.
Point being, Loki has been shown to purposefully go
out of his way to help kids because…because. Yet how does this translate to the
idea of him being good with kids?
I ask this purely hypothetically and am trying not to
laugh as I do, because really. Really.
How in the hell is a kid not going to be entertained by the Norse god of
revelry and recreation?
Oh yeah, that bit’s often left off the résumé.
Loki, God of
Mischief, is also God of Recreation. Play, in other words. Because playtime is
a thing that is Chaotic rather than a product of Order, and so Loki is
naturally all over it. There are some who even credit him with having added
that trait to the first humans, Ask and Embla, while Odin, Vili, and Vé were
carving them and breathing character into their souls.
On top of that, he’s also the god of flyting—poetic shit-talking.
So we have a shapeshifting, storytelling,
magic-wielding, game-spinning, trickster god who can also teach young ears
every bad word they could ever hope to learn, and he’s expected not to be a hit with kids? This is all
without even mentioning the fact that Loki is a bit of a hyperactive attention
hog all on his own. What better audience for him than a gaggle of credulous
little onlookers who are too young to sneer at his antics rather than take
delight in them? Children are wee balls of mischief themselves, muddled in with
imagination and wonder and an eagerness to be wowed or made to laugh themselves
into weeping.
All of which brings me to point number two:
Loki is a kidaholic.
Like, even though a lot of his and/or her sleeping
around the Realms can be chalked up
to an insane libido, there’s also just the sheer number of kids they’ve
produced to factor in. Maybe more than even Odin or Thor could boast. At least
half being born from Loki herself. Not because Loki was helpless against the
workings of nature—it’s impossible to believe that Loki wasn’t smart enough or powerful enough to get around producing
new Lokisons and Lokisdottirs with every other bedmate—but because Loki wants more kids. There will never be
enough kids.
The guy’s got a case of severe paternal/maternal
hoarding going on. I mean
Loki: I need another one.
Odin: You really don’t.
Loki: You’re right. I need two other ones.
Odin: I am positive that you do not.
Loki: Three. Triplets. Need them. Right now.
Odin: Loki.
Loki: Four? Four. Definitely four.
Odin: Loki, please.
Loki: Yeah, let’s go with four. I can give or get. I’ll
flip a coin.
Odin: Loki, as Allfather, I am expressly forbidding
you to impregnate or be impregnated for at least a century.
Loki: Fine.
Odin: …
Loki: …I’ll settle for three.
Odin: What did I just
say?
Loki: Three’s a good number, isn’t it? All good
things come in threes. You and your brothers—
Odin, fighting an aneurysm: You and your brothers—
Loki: So you agree!
Odin: I did not—
Loki: Three it is!
Odin: Loki—
Loki: Be back when I feel like it
Odin: Loki—
Loki: Give my love to Sleipnir
Odin: LOKI—
Loki, pantsless, vaulting over the wall, cartwheeling
towards Jötunheimr’s Ironwood forest: Bye
It’s in that Ironwood that he meets Angrboda and
fathers a giant wolf, a giant snake, and the literal corpse-faced queen-goddess
of the dead by her. Being that Loki’s scope of attractiveness/aesthetic acceptability
is elastic enough to let all sorts of species between his legs, I find it hard
to believe that his kids’ unique looks would repulse or even faze him. They’re
his children. Therefore they’re great.
And we all know how that happy family
ended up. Ditto his second family with Sigyn and his two little twin boys.
Enter Ragnarok, warfare, general Bad
Times, and so on.
Anyway.
Comical as it is to envision a Loki who cringes at
the notion of parenthood and/or fears his more monstrous children, I just don’t
believe it lines up with what we know of the Loki of myth.
Myth Loki is a god who would spend hours entertaining
a child, simply entertained that the child is entertained.
Myth Loki is also a god who would hunt down and methodically dismember whichever idiot
thought it would be okay to make a child cry within said god’s earshot.
Huh! This didn’t occur in my mind cus many fairytales and myth don’t have a concept of parenthood but I love this suggestion, Loki being a kidaholic, very, very much! I’m totally on it.
one of my favorite things is how badgers and coyotes will hunt cooperatively. as in not just like happening to go after the same thing at the same time but actually combining efforts to bring down prey; coyotes are faster and can chase down prey species, while badgers are adept at digging them out of their burrows
These glorious insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words.
A member of Parliament to Disraeli: “Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease”. “That depends, Sir,“ said Disraeli, “whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
“He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr
“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” -Clarence Darrow
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas
“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends..” – Oscar Wilde
“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend…. if you have one.” (George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill) “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second …. if there is one.“ (Winston Churchill, in response.)
“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.” – Stephen Bishop
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright
“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb
“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson
“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” – Paul Keating
“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” – Charles, Count Talleyrand
“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” -Mark Twain
“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” Groucho Marx
These glorious insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words.
A member of Parliament to Disraeli: “Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease”. “That depends, Sir,“ said Disraeli, “whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
“He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr
“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” -Clarence Darrow
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas
“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends..” – Oscar Wilde
“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend…. if you have one.” (George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill) “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second …. if there is one.“ (Winston Churchill, in response.)
“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.” – Stephen Bishop
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright
“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb
“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson
“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” – Paul Keating
“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” – Charles, Count Talleyrand
“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” -Mark Twain
“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” Groucho Marx
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