BARRY HUMPHRIES and Me After watching The Man Inside Dame Edna1 last night, a documentary about Australian comedian, satirist and actor Barry Humphries---which originally went to air in Australia more than four years ago---I could not resist writing a short think-piece. I often call such a piece of writing a prose-poem. In this case it is about this international icon who has been part of my life since moving to Australia in the early 1970s
.
“Entertaining people gave me a great feeling of release;” Humphries said, “making people laugh was a very good way of befriending them.”2 I also found this to be the case in my teaching career in Australia, a career which ended after three decades in the classroom in 2003.
Biographer Anne Pender described Barry Humphries in 2010 as not only the most significant theatrical figure of our time, but the most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin.3 -Ron Price with thanks to 1 ABC1, 11:30-12:30 a.m., 1 & 2 April 2012, 2 Wikipedia, and 3 "Absurd moments: in the frocks of the dame,” by Steve Meacham, Brisbane Times, 15 September 2010.
I’ll have to read your award-winning
autobiography, More Please (1992),
when time permits, Barry, published
the year I got going with my poetry
with my eye on an early retirement.
You moved to London from Australia in
1959, the year I joined the Baha’i Faith.
I never heard of you until in ’71 I moved
Downunder. You nearly died in 1962, the
year I started my travelling and pioneering
for the Canadian Baha’i Community.1 When
I arrived in Australia in ’71-2 you teamed-up
with Phillip Adams and writer-director Bruce
Beresford to create a film version of the Barry
McKenzie cartoons. I could go on-&-on drawing
parallels between my life and yours, Barry, but.....
I am not in your league. I may have become, though,
like you, addicted to applause, due to all those years
in classrooms where I was a big-hit, where I had that
entertaining role, a role which saved my skin and my
psyche, as tutor and teacher which took off at the same
time as yours, Barry, in the ‘70s. What a role it has been
and now I do it in the world of writing, but I’ll never be
famous or rich like you, Barry….Perhaps, though, I have
some of your insouciance. I like to think so, Barry, yes sir.
1 Humphries fell off a cliff breaking many bones.
Ron Price
2 April 2012
HUMOUR: Make ‘Em Laugh Another of the six part, six one hour, epic showcasing of the funniest men, women and moments in American entertainment Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America-was on TV last night.(1) Make ‘Em Laugh is a must-see if you have any sense of historical knowledge of American comedy or are looking to educate yourself in this field. If you know all these acts, or even some of them, or even none of them, you’ll have an education, a blast, reliving some classic skits and film footage. This is a fantastic primer on some of the all-time greatest comedic moments in the world of film, television, Vaudeville, radio and everything else.-Ron Price with thanks to (1) ABC2, 11:35 pm to 12:30 p.m. 22 & 23/9/11.
As spring was making its entry
in the Antipodes & I was making
my entry into television-land at
midnight after a busy day of work
at reading and research, editing &
publishing, writing and scholarship:
a bit of history came my way giving
me a summary of comedy in the US
since I left Canada in 1971. I missed
much of it: Archie Bunker because I
had no TV, Bill Cosby and Roseanne
since I was working 60 to 70 hours a
week and Reality TV since I found it
distasteful. I enjoyed Seinfeld: 89-98
thanks to my son Daniel but not until
I retired from the world of jobs and had
time to sit back and laugh which is one of
the main purposes of TV or, as that critic
of American society Gore Vidal once put it:
we all have laughing gas pumped into our
lounge-rooms every night and go to sleep
in front of the TV as the world experiences
a tempest which is deranging its equilibrium,
uprooting its institutions and harrowing-up
the souls of its inhabitants with catastrophic,
unpredictable, and ultimately glorious results.(1)
(1) Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come, Baha’i Pub. Trust, New Delhi, 1976, p.1.
Ron Price
24 September 2011
Smile Please :) Smile Please :)
A: Did you hear that a baby was fed on elephant's milk and gained twenty pounds in a week.
B: That's impossible. Whose baby?
A: An elephant's.
A Scotsman who was driving home one night, ran into a car driven by an Englishman. The Scotsman got out of the car to apologize and offered the Englishman a drink from a bottle of whisky.
The Englishman was glad to have a drink."Go on," said the Scot, "have another drink."
The Englishman drank gratefully. "But don't you want one, too?" he asked the Scotsman. "Perhaps," replied the Scotsman, "after the police have gone."
"Am I the first man you have ever loved?" he said.
"Of course," she answered "Why do men always ask the same question?".
When I was young I didn't like going to weddings.
My grandmother would tell me, "You're next"However, she stopped doing that after I started saying the same thing to her at funerals
A man is talking to God.
The man: "God, how long is a million years?"
God: "To me, it's about a minute."
The man: "God, how much is a million dollars?"
God: "To me it's a penny."
The man: "God, may I have a penny?"
God: "Wait a minute."
Two factory workers are talking.
The woman says, "I can make the boss give me the day off."The man replies,
"And how would you do that?"
The woman says, "Just wait and see." She then hangs upside-down from the ceiling.
The boss comes in and says, "What are you doing?"
The woman replies, "I'm a light bulb."
The boss then says, "You've been working so much that you've gone crazy. I think you need to take the day off."
The man starts to follow her and the boss says, "Where are you going?"
The man says, "I'm going home, too. I can't work in the dark."
Regards,
Full On Fun :)
Hippy’s banned from Antarctica
EXPERTS have called for hippies to be turned away from Antarctica to stop them ruining it.
Hundreds of potentially catastrophic organisms are being transported to the continent in the bongos and dreadlocks of vegan scientists.
And new research shows that hippies are the perfect carriers for alien species by being warm, moist and spattered with nutritious food patches and flecks of their own dung.
Ecologist Dr Nathan Muir said: "The biodiversity of Antarctica must be kept to a minimum which I know is the opposite of what we usually say but shut up.
"The leopard seals tell us they'd much rather we send over Bear Grylls-type explorers, rather than someone teeming with bugs who will then try and convince them to share their fish equally."
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Doesn't need a festival.
Antarctic border patrols will deploy strict anti-hippy measures, including trick questions involving the mispronunciation of elvish. Meanwhile the airport at Tierra De Fuego will play Ozric Tentacles albums in a bid to catch anybody nodding along with their eyes shut.
Dr Muir said there was now international agreement that any new Antarctic shelters that are shaped like teepees should be bulldozed immediately without checking to see if anyone is inside.
He added: "We are in danger of the whole continent turning into a Levellers gig, but with slightly less wind."
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