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>Of course the original statement plus attacks on non-Japanese Haiku are the acts of an agent provocateur looking for a fight.< Ken, this agent provocateur character, is that me? In which case, I'd like to know who my bosses are, because they owe me years of back pay. 2008/10/13 Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>: > Judy Prince wrote: >> >> Agreed, completely. >> Stand-up, Barry? Surely you jest. >> >> Judy >> >>> >>> More "hooks" available than ever before--why not use them. Which >>> reminds >>> me of the border between stand-up comedy and performance art, along which >>> I've been >>> known to walk. >>> >>> Barry Alpert >>> > > Of course the original statement plus attacks on non-Japanese Haiku are the > acts of an agent provocateur looking for a fight. Maybe they are themselves > a form of performance art. That said, Barry's comments are provocative > because of the weird line here that I gather David Antin also walks or > walked: when are you performing and when are you doing stand-up Something? > > I had the experience--for it was that--yesterday of viewing (finally) an > extremely odd documentary film called The Aristocrats. Few people will > admit to knowing the film or the joke itself. In one version or another it > probably is the dirtiest story ever told. For myself, an old friend of mine > told me ONE version of The Aristocrats back in 1962. It was tame compared > to the joke as it's evolved over the years. Nevertheless, I'm not sure how > I got home. Stand-up *and* performance art...both, I suppose. The dancer > and the dance? I can't tell a joke to save myself but yesterday I heard/saw > the joke told AS a joke and then, via other performers, as performance art. > I was particularly entranced by Sarah Silverman, an exquisitely beautiful > young lady with a potty mouth that beggars description unless you quote her, > which I will not. She was reclining on a couch or loveseat like a Goya > Maja--the posture was certainly not like Gilbert Gottfried's classic > schtick-worthy foul but riotous delivery at the Friar's Club. Silverman was > playing instead of just telling a dirty joke. She said the joke was about > her and her family. "We ARE The Aristocrats." It ended with her whispering > of an encounter with an old-time radio broadcaster, Joe Franklin, concluding > with "And then he raped me." She went about as far from the original story > as you could go--the one requirement for the story is to end with the words > "The Aristocrats!" Instead her ending was both absurd and truly grotesque. > > So you tell me: when to schtick turn into performance art or shall the twain > never meet? > > Ken > > -- > Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com > http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html > ------------------- > "I have been watching you; you were there, unconcerned perhaps, but with a > strange distraught air of someone forever expecting a great misfortune, in > sunlight, in a beautiful garden."--Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelleas et Melisande > -- David Bircumshaw Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/ The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk