Today’s Rhapsody is the Second Chinese Rhapsody by Anlun Huang out of five. Op 18.
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I first heard of Bassem Youssef when he appeared as a guest on The Daily Show almost exactly a year ago on June 21st, 2012. It took me almost by surprise that the new Egyptian Government did not take kindly to his brand of humor and had him arrested. Afterwards his second appearance on the Daily Show on April 24th was just golden. I’d certainly like to be a bigger fan of him but regretably I’ve yet to find any clips of his show with English subtitles.
Anyway it was really cool to see Jon Stewart return the favor during his summer sabbatical and appear on Youseff’s show Al Bernameg. (My favorite bits were the conversation about Cairo traffic (apparently it’s their first line of defense), Stewart’s comment that if a regime cannot take a joke it does not have a regime (about 10:40 in) and of course Jon hijacking the show in the end.) Enjoy.
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Well I had a good time at the Fremont Fair today people watching, talking to friends listening to music and of course the Solstice parade. This, as always, was a pleasure with it’s performers, musicians and nude bicyclists. I actually got some halfway descent sketches this year. I had tried to do it last year but it was mostly a disaster. People were just moving too much. This year I focused mostly on the gesture and was actually able to get some useful material.
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Since the Ouroboros is such a prevalent motif in this comic strip, featuring heavily in Circle Band merchandise, I was pleasantly surprise to see this picture of a real (or at least brilliantly staged) version of one.
Courtesy, once again, of the wonderful I Fucking Love Science!
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Today’s quote is from my all time favorite, Terry Pratchett. It’s kind of the opposite of the American Gods quote from last week. Where that one pretty much said to embrace everything for the love of whimsey this one points out that’s not necessarily a good idea.
“It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don’t need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they’re progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they’ll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.”
Guards! Guards!
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I think that John Oliver is really getting the hang of things now. Make no mistake I didn’t think he was bad on his first week of The Daily Show. No he was very good. But he still had the feel of a substitute teacher. He has what I consider a faster pace than Jon Stewart and I don’t think the writers accounted for this at first. What made me notice this was there were several bits that seemed to be accounting for a long pause, or beat, that a lot of the subtleties of Jon Stewart’s style seem to depend on which got tripped over constantly.
They seem to have gotten the bugs out over the weekend and now I think we have something that is very much John Oliver’s own thing, which I definitely approve of.
And he is absolutely right about Sara Palin, we should stop feeding the trolls. (even if I just have to get my Victoria Jackson said something stupid fix every once in a while.)
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