Practical Jokes

There is nothing funnier than a good practical joke. I'm talking about a really well thought out, convincing set up. As long as you are not the victim, practical jokes are usually very funny. Take this oldie-but-goodie as an example (Link to YouTube):




Now that is just a classic.

I've played a few practical jokes in my time. Like when my colleagues went out to lunch and I replaced their computer monitors with cardboard boxes on which I had drawn a "screen" and a knob. One guy returned to his desk and sat there laughing for about five minutes. The other fellow didn't bat an eyelid. He sat down to work, typed a few letters and then called me on the phone to say, "Hey, Yossi, something's wrong with my computer".

Problem with that joke was that I had to schlep the monitors back to the workstations from the meeting room where I had hidden them. But it was worth the trouble.

Then there are other types of practical jokes, like those played on poor, unsuspecting people by Candid Camera or copy-cat programs. Like the time they got a delivery man to pull up outside a house on the side of a hill. When he opened the double-doors at the back of the truck thousands of unstoppable balls of all sizes rolled out of the truck. Funny, harmless, messy.

Jeremy Beadle was one practical jokester who had a show called "Beadles About" where he would play all sorts of practical jokes on people, like destroying their house and then showing up laughing "Ha! Gotcha!". Of course, he wouldn't do that every week. Sometimes he would go lower-scale and blow up their car or have their boss fire them, just for the gag.

According to this Wikipedia article, at the peak of its popularity, Beadle's About had 15 million viewers. It got so popular that, according to the Wikipedia article, in 1993 a man was arrested for pulling a policeman's beard thinking that he was Jeremy Beadle in disguise. Yeah, right. Twenty five heavily armed and highly trained SWAT policemen come bursting into a cocaine refinery in a grotty warehouse at the back of a strip club, shattering glass windows all around the illegal Chinese workers. The chief crook drops his weapon, doubles over in laughter and pulls on the policeman's beard and goes, "Ho! Ha! Very funny! We've been pranked by Beadle!" Likely story.

Take a look at this example of "Beadle's About" from Funny-Videos.co.uk

Funny thing is, they never told the victim that it wasn't his van!

What happens if one day an elderly gentleman comes home to find the house his family has lived in for seven generations completely leveled to the ground? While writhing on the floor in the agony of a heart attack, Beadle pops his head out and goes "Surprise!" Then the victim looks up at the grinning Beadle and scratches into the microphone "I hid my life-savings in the walls of the dining room that you just burned to the ground". Better call two paramedics.

When Jeremy Beadle died on 25 January 2008 at the age of 59, nobody believed him. They still don't.

The Modern Dwarf

Imagine if your entire life you were someone else’s curiosity, a pet, a zoo animal, an object over which people “ooh” and “ahh”. I can’t imagine that it would be a pleasant experience. Think midget, circa 1600 CE.

Now imagine that your entire life you were someone else’s curiosity, as before, but this time you are paid millions to be gawked at. The more people who point their fingers, the more prestige, fame and fortune come your way. You are invited to meet the President of the United States, your wedding to a fellow little person is front-page news and your name lives on in history. Think Tom Thumb, late 19th Century.

The modern dwarf can thank people like Tom Thumb. The modern dwarf can now exploit his diminutive stature by acting in diverse roles such as Snow White or Star Wars. Alternatively, he can carry a copy of the equal opportunity act and sue the large-size pants off anyone who can even spell the word “discrimination”.

The modern dwarf has career opportunities open to him that are far more diverse and interesting than those of regular sized people. They can be teachers, computer programmers or circus performers. They can be accountants, doctors or human cannonballs. They can be actuaries, bus drivers or garden gnomes. The possibilities are endless.

The modern dwarf can be the star of professional sports that you and I cannot, such as Dwarf Tossing, which has an international professional league. All you need is a helmet, a landing mat, a dwarf and a six-foot drunk. Place a few bets, hold the little guy by his shorts (pun), swing him back and forth and then throw that dwarf in the general direction of the mat. It’s a team sport.

Make no mistake, the modern dwarf has it good. Oh, and they are also great at small talk…was that a little unfair? Perhaps a tiny bit.

(This blog is in response to a challenge to write about 'The Modern Dwarf').

News: Entertain Me!

To me, there is nothing like sitting on the couch with a nice big, hot cup of coffee and a newspaper. It's a mystery to me, but for some reason it can be very relaxing to be able to sip a steaming cuppa and read the news: usually morbid stuff like how many people died in what tragedy in which part of the world.

I remember that when I used to have a TV at home I would watch the news as a form of entertainment. Sure, I rationalized that I was "informing myself" about world events. But, get real, it was enjoyable to sit and munch on a cheese-topped cracker and listen to the newscasters report on things that only happen to other people.

It is for this reason, I also used to like listening to the news on the radio. Talk-back radio was especially fun because you got to hear regular people air their opinions on how leaders of foreign countries should shape their policies towards other foreign countries. When it comes to foreign affairs (especially someone else's), everyone is an expert.

The Internet has brought a whole new dimension to the news. If the regular news isn't entertaining enough, you can now amuse yourself with made-up news (ala The Onion) or with news of people doing stupid things (News of the Wierd).

One of my favorite books "Chronicle of the 20th Century", is a compendium of newspaper-like articles spanning the 20th Century. The articles in the book include happenings from around the world, but have a focus on Australia and its involvement in world affairs. A marvelous gift from my parents-in-law.

There are serious articles about world wars, political upheavals, tragedies and famine. Then there are nostalgic pieces covering social, cultural and sporting issues (like the fact that Kaarlo Makinen of Finland won the gold medal for wrestling in the Bantamweight division in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games). The inside front cover of the book is a map of the world as it stood in 1900. The inside back cover shows a map of the world as it stood in 1999. It's really quite interesting to see how events moved those lines around.

The great thing about this book is that you can pick it up at any point in the 20th Century and then just go with it and follow the articles through time. The articles themselves are not original newspaper articles. Each piece is written using the style and terminology of the day, with the knowledge of the time. It is absolutely fascinating. Break out the beer and sunflower seeds and I can sit for hours, and relive Israel's miraculous birth and survival or immerse myself in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Whichever way you look at it, it's funny how news, no matter how stupid, inspiring or horrible, keeps us entertained. So next time there's an earthquake, tsunami, economic crisis or upset in international one-day cricket, boil the kettle, make yourself comfortable and enjoy yourself.

Center of Attention

Why is it that some people seek to be the center of attention? There are some situations where being the focus is expected (as the bride at your wedding, for example) and there are times when one should stay out of the limelight (for instance, when you are being investigated for fraud).

As a kid, the best way to seek attention was to either win an award or throw a tantrum. Both tactics worked for me. As an adult, I have noticed that it becomes more and more difficult to be the center of attention. Winning awards is harder to do and throwing tantrums is not nearly as effective as I would have hoped, so I have discovered.

In my opinion, the more successful attention seekers in a social scene are those with a really good sense of humor. Witty people tend to attract others. Everyone likes a good laugh, especially if the person telling the joke or the story tells it well. On the other hand, it is a bit dangerous because you can lose your audience just as easily as you got them. A few bad jokes, botched punch-lines, mistimings or even a heckler or two can be devastating to your reputation. Remember, you don’t want to be a stand-up-comic. You want to be a people magnet.

Below you will find hints and tips that I compiled to assist those who would like to try to use humor to become the center of attention. Keep in mind that there are no free steak knives and no guarantees…

Firstly, you have to make sure that you have a good balance between how much you speak and how much someone else in the crowd speaks. You don’t want some guy telling a long and involved story about an accounting problem he solved, “…and then I realized that I’d put the wrong amount in the debit column! Can you believe it?!" Hilarious. You will lose your admirers in less than a second. On the other hand, you need to create the illusion of a conversation. People need to feel wanted.

When and how much to laugh is also a tricky thing. On one hand, you want to encourage people to gather around you. Laughing is a great pull-in for passers by. But laughing too much at your own jokes can make you look foolish. Especially if they can tell that you are faking it. Practice faking being genuine. It helps a lot.

Hold a drink. A glass in your hand is a great tool for helping you to limit your arm movements so you don’t look like a monkey on drugs when you tell your stories. It is also useful for when you pause for special effect. Whether to look contemplatively into your glass, to take a long slurp or a short sip is a matter of judgment. It all depends on the effect you want to create. Whatever you do, make sure the glass is only one-third full – and don’t gesticulate wildly or you will spill the contents on one of your audience.

Eye contact. This is very important. Nobody likes a person who tells jokes while looking at their shoes unless, of course, you are an actuary. On the other hand, don’t hold anyone’s gaze for too long. You will lose the rest of your audience. Make a point of looking at everyone in your audience, except for the person about whom you are telling the joke. That would be a bad idea.

Be cool. Wear clothes that make you look sophisticated yet comfortable. Half-sitting on a stool while half-leaning at the bar is a perfect pose. You seem cool and relaxed, especially with a drink in one hand. Think James Bond, but funnier.

If people start to leave, and you are down to five people, excuse yourself and walk right up to another group of people. Fake knowing someone in the new crowd, if you must. You don’t want to be left surrounded by only a small group of people and you want to be seen to know others, too. If you are in the unfortunate situation where you are left with only one person and that person leaves, definitely do not shout across the room, “Hey, did I ever tell you the one about the…” It is doubtful that the person will turn around and say, “Oh, no, you didn’t! Please, you must tell it to me now!” You will instantly destroy the reputation you worked hard to build up.

If you have a bad night, don’t despair. As they say in showbiz: “no publicity is bad publicity” Take that any way you want.

Snippets of Conversation

One of the most often used opening scenes in movies is when the camera follows a man walking along a street. The man inevitably crosses the road, enters a shop or gets into his car just as the main characters appear. The camera stops moving so that it can concentrate on the main characters, leaving the man in the opening scene to move off camera, never to be heard from again. He was merely an excuse for the camera to get from its starting position to where the main characters are located.

I wonder what the "opening scene man" is thinking as he plays his part. Is he measuring his strides? Is he trying desperately to walk the route without tripping over? Well, he certainly isn't trying to remember his lines. After all, the "opening scene man" never talks.

It could be that the "opening scene man" is not thinking anything in particular. Perhaps he is a professional "opening scene man" who has done this opening scene many times and just wants to finish it so that he has enough time to get into character for his next opening scene for another movie in another sound studio somewhere else.

But, really, the "opening scene man" is just an irrelevant snippet of the movie. He plays no important role, his presence has no effect on the plot and he is only there because the viewer needs to get perspective before the movie starts. But that is precisely why the "opening scene man" is vital to the film. Without him you won't easily be able to determine the time-period in which the movie is set, the location and so on. Without the "opening scene man", the start of the movie would be like walking into the middle of a conversation without knowing the context.

Have you ever done that? I mean, have you ever walked into the middle of a conversation but you don't have a clue what the background to the conversation is? A variation on this theme can often be found in movies, especially if one of the characters is walking through a party scene. Inevitably there will be a group of people in the background listening to someone tell the end of the joke. The audience in the film laughs raucously and the viewers are left wondering what the joke was. Sometimes it ruins the whole movie for me, especially if I spend the rest of the film wondering what could possibly have been so funny.

If I come across good ones, I collect them and write them down. Some of them are very amusing. Here are a few:

"...even though it's short, he puts it on at night"
"...so stop breathing"
"...then the doctor said, "Oh, I thought it was a fish!"
"...or your head will feel like an inflated latex watermelon"

Actually, I picked up this gem today "...It's very dangerous. I mean, all you can do is eat the peach". For hours I wondered what they could possibly have been talking about. I guess I'll never know.

Don't Google Yourself. You May Not Like What You Find.

I did a bit of egosurfing (otherwise referred to as vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling or self-googling). I looked up "Karp" and didn't find much that thrilled me.

I then Wikipedia'd myself and found a whole bunch of Karps listed - from punk rock bands to mathematicians. Not that I was expecting an article about me, but I thought that I might find someone with the same family name that did something interesting, something I could relate to.

And then I saw him.

Robert Karp. This was the type of guy I can identify with. Bob lived from 1911 to 1975, but from 1938 to 1974 he was employed by the Walt Disney Company to write the scripts for the Donald Duck newspaper comic strips. Now, there you have it, a man after my own heart - he writes, doodles and gets paid for it. What a perfect job.

So now that Donald Duck is my favorite cartoon character, I just had to find out some interesting facts about him. I discovered that not only is Donald Duck a household name, but he, too, has a household of his own. Take a look at this article, it describes the Donald Duck family tree. Here is an excerpt:

Donald's father is Quackmore Duck, his mother is Hortense McDuck and his twin sister is Della Thelma Duck.

Huey, Dewey and Louie are the children of Della.

Donald was supposedly born in 1920 in Duckburg.

Hortense McDuck is Scrooge McDuck's sister. Quackmore Duck is the son of Elivira "Grandma" Duck and her husband Humperdink Duck.

Donald Duck is a descendant from both the McDucks and the Coots. According to the cartoon, Back To Long Ago, Donald appears to be the rebirth of the 16th century sailor, Pintail Duck.

Scrooge McDuck is the richest duck in the world.

http://www.squidoo.com/donaldduck/ mentions that his full name is actually Donald Fauntleroy Duck. His parents must have been drunk at the time.

I never knew that people followed Donald Duck with such fanaticism. I mean, I know that Disney does all it can to market their products to kids (fan clubs and all that), but this sort of detail smacks of geeky Star Trek fans and their Trekkie clubs. I can think of almost nothing worse than attending a Donald Duck convention to be surrounded by a thousand ill-tempered, clumsy, speech-impaired Donald Duck look-alikes.

But Donald stood the test of time. If he were real, Donald would be 87 years old this year. I don't think I know of anyone else who could get away with not wearing pants for that long.

News: Entertain Me!

To me, there is nothing like sitting on the couch with a nice big, hot cup of coffee and a newspaper. It's a mystery to me, but for some reason it can be very relaxing to be able to sip a steaming cuppa and read the news: usually morbid stuff like how many people died in what tragedy in which part of the world.

I remember that when I used to have a TV at home I would watch the news as a form of entertainment. Sure, I rationalized that I was "informing myself" about world events. But, get real, it was enjoyable to sit and munch on a cheese-topped cracker and listen to the newscasters report on things that only happen to other people.

It is for this reason, I also used to like listening to the news on the radio. Talk-back radio was especially fun because you got to hear regular people air their opinions on how leaders of foreign countries should shape their policies towards other foreign countries. When it comes to foreign affairs (especially someone else's), everyone is an expert.

The Internet has brought a whole new dimension to the news. If the regular news isn't entertaining enough, you can now amuse yourself with made-up news (ala The Onion) or with news of people doing stupid things (News of the Wierd).

One of my favorite books "Chronical of the 20th Century", is a compendium of newspaper-like articles spanning the 20th Century. The articles in the book include happenings from around the world, but have a focus on Australia and its involvement in world affairs. A marvelous gift from my parents-in-law.

There are serious articles about world wars, political upheavals, tragedies and famine. Then there are nostalgic pieces covering social, cultural and sporting issues (like the fact that Kaarlo Makinen of Finland won the gold medal for wrestling in the Bantamweight division in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games). The inside front cover of the book is a map of the world as it stood in 1900. The inside back cover shows a map of the world as it stood in 1999. It's really quite interesting to see how events moved those lines around.

The great thing about this book is that you can pick it up at any point in the 20th Century and then just go with it and follow the articles through time. The articles themselves are not original newspaper articles. Each piece is written using the style and terminology of the day, with the knowledge of the time. It is absolutely fascinating. Break out the beer and sunflower seeds and I can sit for hours, and relive Israel's miraculous birth and survival or immerse myself in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Whichever way you look at it, it's funny how news, no matter how stupid, inspiring or horrible, keeps us entertained. So next time there's an earthquake, tsunami, economic crisis or upset in international one-day cricket, boil the kettle, make yourself comfortable and enjoy yourself.

Science: That's Entertainment!

I think that the point of scientific, theory, conjecture and experimentation is for our entertainment pleasure. I can just see all the white-coated scientists with their rotten tomatoes at the ready, aiming for my good typing hand. How dare I minimise the importance of scientific wisdom! Think of all of the good that science has brought to the world! In one line I reduced to mockery millennia of effort and thought. Entertainment, indeed!

In the hope of causing a ruckus, I am prepared to defend my viewpoint - feel free to disagree. Take a look at this website. It lists the top 20 most bizarre scientific experiments of all time (note that they are only the top 20. This implies there are more!) Some of them are truly revolting, others are interesting and the rest are amusing. But they are all entertaining. I mean, reading them is fun. Science = Entertainment.

I know you are thinking that the scientific experiments on a website called "museumofhoaxes.com" can't possibly be serious. And even if they are, they don't really deal with hard-core scientific issues. But don't dismiss my theory just yet.

You can't get more mainstream-scientific than than the quintessential scientist, Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein and his contemporaries, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, created a thought experiment. A thought experiment is a theoretical experiment, all you have to do is postulate. You don't actually have to do anything. In the scientific world, this famous thought experiment is lovingly referred to as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Paradox. In a nutshell (according to Wikipedia), the EPR Paradox "challenged long-held ideas about the relation between the observed values of physical quantities and the values that can be accounted for by a physical theory". Or, even more simply, the EPR Paradox attempts to prove that the theory of Quantum Mechanics is not complete.

When you take into account all of the arguments, the EPR Paradox seems convincing: Quantum Mechanics is found lacking. Unfortunately, real experiments have cast doubts on the soundness of the EPR Paradox.

How in the universe (pun) can this possibly be "Entertainment"?

Well, it is entertaining on a few levels. Firstly, the wonderful irony is that Einstein's theory of relativity is one of the major pillars of Quantum Mechanics and Einstein found the whole philosophy of Quantum Mechanics difficult to stomach. That, in itself, is amusing. But even more so, the debate gave rise to the following two delightful quotes:

"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

The rebuttal:

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time." -Pratchett and Gaiman's book "Good Omens".

If science can spawn magical quotes like these, then there is no doubt that the purpose of it all is for our entertainment.

(This post is in response to a challenge to write a blog about the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox. How did I do?)