#but like i just came out of outsourced hell and wow....... being treated like a real human being at work is rly getting me.....

[radioleary-blog]

Long Names and Outsourcing Superheroes

It’s not easy writing political comedy.

One factor is the impermanence of a political joke. Even a great political joke has an expiration date, and political narratives change fast these days. Your average political joke has a shorter shelf-life than a pint of half & half that you left in the car. “Honey...when did I write this joke about Trump getting golden showers from Russian prostitutes? Is it still any good or should I throw it away?”

“How does it smell?” she replies from the living room.

“Whew! Pretty funky...I think it’s turned. Dammit! That was a good one.”

“So write a new one,” she says dully, without looking away from whatever TV program has unattractive British servants enduring wretched lives of 19th century drudgery. Which accounts for about half of all PBS programs. Or should I say “programmes.” They’re so depressing. They ought to call it “Downer Abbey.” Or “Upstairs, Downstairs, Blank Stares.” Seriously, man, how much does the BBC pine for the days when the lower classes knew their place? Is that really an era to romanticize, even if they do call it The Romantic era? And who the hell could enjoy watching shows about the help being treated badly? As for me, if I watch even ten minutes of a show with berated butlers and yelled-at scullery maids, I start to get angry. Every time I see some mutton-chopped, inbred Lord of the Manor lining up his staff to lecture and threaten them for poorly-polished silver, or for becoming ‘too familiar’, or for having any normal human desires whatsoever, I have the normal human desire to make him ‘too familiar’ with my fist in his mutton-chop face. Just once, I’d like to see one of the servants he’s giving a good “dressing-down” to turn around and give this privileged twit a good old working-class “beating-down.” I’d like to see the First Footman, or the Second Footman, or some Footman put that foot right up his aristocratic ass.

I was trying to think up some funny-sounding British aristocratic names as examples of noble pomposity, but it turns out they have this new thing called “the google,” so I just looked up some real names instead. These are just a few of the actual descendants of William the Conqueror, who, being British, conquered everything but brushing and flossing:

Flora Paulyna Hetty Barbara Abney-Hastings. That sounds like somebody who never had to fill out their name on a lot of forms. Good luck fitting that on a job application. But of course, nobody with a name that long and dreadfully upper-class ever had to look for work. The longer your name, the easier your life. Hey, I just realized that. I might actually be onto something. Who do you think works harder - a person named Prince Stuart Johann Knud Bernhard Felix Maria René Joseph de Bourbon-Parma (real name), or a guy named Stu Parma? If you’re having trouble figuring that one out, the title Prince is a big clue. The only Prince who ever broke a sweat died last year in Minnesota, and judging by his opioid addiction, it was probably a cold sweat. Stu Parma sounds like an ex-Checker Cab driver from Queens, whereas Prince longname there sounds like an exchequer for the Queen. Big difference between those jobs, and probably all because of the length of their names. Great, just what men need, one more length to feel inadequate about. The only people who work harder than guys named Stu and Kip and Sam are guys with even shorter names like Bo and Al and Ed.

Same thing probably holds true for women, I bet Vikki works a longer shift for less pay than Victoria does. And I bet Kat does things for money that Katerina never would. I’m not thinking sex-worker, necessarily, but if she did it would be all her idea. No, I was picturing Kat doing something more along the lines of a cage-match fighter, or rodeo girl, or tattoo artist. She could set up her own new-school tattoo shop and call it “KATTOOS.” And she’s more likely to be a fun person to party with, too. Kat is a bad-ass who keeps it real, and Katerina will not go down on you even on your anniversary. The longer the name, the less fun and the more stuck up you are. Here’s another real name, and I bet she isn’t bringing any beer or weed to your party: Countess Antonia Charlotte Jeanette Marie af Holstein-Ledreborg. Wow, really? Can we just call you c*ntess for short?

And with the titles and peerage to boot, these names really start to get re-goddam-diculous. Check this guy out, this is a real title: His Royal Highness the Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, Royal Knight Companion of the most noble order of the Garter, Royal Knight Companion of the most ancient and most noble order of the Thistle, Knight Grand Cross of the most honourable order of the Bath, member of the order of Merit, Knight of the order of Australia, companion of the Queen’s service order, member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Councillors, Aide de Camp to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. WTF? That’s not a title, that’s the whole book! And the sequel! Keep in mind this is just a really fancy way of saying this guy is banging the Queen. This title is so long that when you start saying it you have 13 colonies in the Americas, and when you’re done saying it Cornwallis is surrendering at Yorktown.

But that’s the trouble with those british TV servants, they never fought back against the system like we did here in the colonies. That’s why their rigid class-structure hierarchy remained in place for so long, and they’re still sentimental for it in these godawful butler dramas. They never really had a lot of rebels in England, not for very long anyway, they either came here and started killing Indians, or they got arrested and shipped off to Australia to get eaten by sharks. Even today, British culture doesn’t celebrate the rebel like we do in America. The British never had a ‘Cool Hand Luke,’ more like ‘Keep Calm and Carry On Luke.’ The Brad Pitt ‘Fight Club’ character Tyler Durden sounds like it could be a proper English name, but if there was a ‘Fight Club’ in England, the first rule of Fight Club would be No Fighting.

And hey, did you ever hear Brad Pitt try to do a british accent? Yikes. He has all the range of a veal calf. He sounded worse than Bob Dylan trying to speak Chinese. But strangely, British actors have no problem at all doing American accents. Why is that? In fact, they have taken over a lot of our favorite tv and movie characters. On ‘The Walking Dead’, Rick Grimes, Maggie, Morgan, the Governor, and Jesus are all British. There are so many Brits on the show they should rename it ‘The Ambulatory Deceased’.

And the list includes some of our most beloved Superheroes. Henry Cavill, Christian Bale, Andrew Garfield are English, that’s Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. And even the new Spider-Man, Tom Holland is British. Both Jeremy Irons and Michael Caine were Alfred, which begs the question ‘What’s it all about, Alfred?’ (Ah, you’re too young to get that reference). Two actors have played Professor Xavier and they are both English, so are both actors who played Magneto. Fellow X-Men The Beast, Nightcrawler and Jean Grey, and Avengers Quicksilver and The Vision are British. So are the actors who played Doctor Strange, Daredevil, Commissioner Gordon, The Thing, Mister Fantastic, Odin, Ozymandias as well as super-villains Dr. Octopus, Sinestro, Killer Croc, Col. Stryker, Juggernaut, Toad, Azazel, The Lizard, and Loki. All English. Add to that Ryan Reynold’s Green Lantern is Canadian, while Eric Bana’s Hulk, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Hugh Jackman’s The Wolverine are Australian. An Australian Hulk? I understand they let Mel Gibson audition to play Hulk. But the Hulk is a rampaging rage monster who smashes everything in sight, and they felt Mel Gibson was just too angry for the role. Plus the Hulk isn’t anti-Semitic. I’m beginning to wonder if we have any American superheroes left, except for the Captain with America right in his name. If Donald Trump is going to bring back jobs to America, can he please start with our superheroes?

But I digress. I don’t remember what my point was, but I’m pretty sure I had one. Oh yeah, British servant shows. Why do women love these Victorian period pieces so much? They’re usually intelligent and independent women, too, yet these butler-laden bodice rippers get them steamier than an Icelandic orgy.

No, wait, I remember my point now: it’s not easy writing political comedy. Reason two, you get distracted. As I just demonstrated with the last ten paragraphs. I was saying the life of a political joke is short, and getting shorter. There was a time before the 24-hour news cycle when a political scandal stuck around for a long time. Watergate hung around for years and years, like an Irish houseguest. Comics in the 1970’s could take months to work out Watergate bits, and if they were solid, you could tell those jokes for half a decade. Fashions and music trends would change before your Watergate jokes got old. The first time you tell your Watergate joke on stage, you’re wearing bell-bottom jeans and a tie-dye T-shirt, and years later you’re telling it on stage wearing a white Disco suit. And it’s the same old joke about E. Howard Hunt, or H.R. Haldeman, or R.L. Stine, or George R.R. Martin, or whoever the hell was involved in the break-in. And actually, it kind of was a Game of Thrones, except instead of a dragon Queen who could walk through fire, you had G. Gordon Liddy who liked to hold a torch to his hand to show how tough he was. If you don’t know who he is, that’s okay, just picture Negan, but high on cocaine and patriotism.

People had better things to do in the 1970’s than obsess on scandals, and the only way to follow it was in newspapers and on the evening news. Which, if you were not home while the evening news was on, tough luck, there was no recording it. And 1970’s people were definitely out, and doing much cooler things than watching the evening news. Like driving around in a Pontiac Firebird and smoking a joint, or going to a Pink Floyd concert and smoking a joint, or throwing a key-party orgy and smoking a joint, or just smoking a joint and smoking a joint. You could do a lot of fun things in the 1970’s, as long as you had a joint. Those were the rules. Even if you got pulled over by the police, you better have a joint on you, the cops will ask you, “Licence..registration...proof of joint…”

So political scandals unfolded at a leisurely pace. Which is not to say people were not involved in politics, maybe it was the draft, or maybe it was the joint, but they were very involved. They were the only generation that ended an unpopular war through protest, and threw a corrupt President out of office. I think it was the weed, because after that, the police stopped making sure you had a joint.

But things are different in the Trump era. If you can call a presidency that only lasts until he quits this summer an “era”. More like the Trump “error”. Trump has a new scandal every day, every fourteen hours to be precise, so by the time you write a good joke, it’s over. It’s old news, and on to the next scandal. Tiny hands, Meryl Streep, grab ‘em by the pussy, Betsy DeVos, Michael Flynn, and now wiretap, the scandals are coming too fast. - That’s what she said! The jokes are obsolete by the time the pen leaves the paper, because by the time you read this, the whole wiretap scandal will be over and he’ll be on to the next inexcusable act. And that will only be like, two days from now.

I realize now that when I write about politics, I’m like one of those monks who make paintings out of different colored grains of sand. It takes them forever to do it, and the minute they’re done, they erase it. And they move on to the next one.

And I’ve never had more fun.