I Don't Know

It seems like a lie. There’s some truth to it, yet on the other hand I do know.

This weekend I have indulged myself in the typical culture of English comedy. I watched two days worth of QI episodes. The same people seem to come back as guests all the time. Out of curiosity I googled and youtubed David Mitchell, because I thought he was clever and funny at the same time. I found out his professional life exists out of being in quiz show panels for half of the time and that he wasn’t exactly the only one filling half of his working time with playing games. Several of these comedians kept popping up as quiz hosts or panel members. I think it’s quite curious one can make a living out of playing games. However, the contents of loads of these shows justify their existence and some of these comedians are really quite sharp and clever and obviously witty and some are not.

No, I’m not going to be funny right now. Watching youtube the whole weekend (including the nights) makes me feel sort of tired and uninspired to work which makes me cranky. I feel like a fool for trying to make and put out something sensible while I can also go sit in a panel and have fun. The last world cup for football comes to mind as well. While these clowns were focusing on kicking around a ball I was trying to makes sense of the mess that is my job. Once again I felt like a fool for being in office instead of having some fun.

I do believe in the good of entertainment, that includes world cup football and English comedy quizzes. It helps you take your mind off of things. It helps you relax (or tense up) and have some mindless fun in the safety of your own living room or around friends in a bar. It wasn’t my intention to state the obvious, I just wanted to point out that I didn’t mean to shoot down anyone, and I wanted to point out I was feeling silly for being at work.

To my own embarrassment I enjoyed both immensely. I spent quite a few hot days inside hiding from the sun and watching football match analysis or some English quiz. I spent loads of time listening to people having opinions and being passionate about it. It both, football and quizzing, seems to come down to the same thing. Us against us and whining about all the things that is wrong with this world. Interesting.

Now I am here, typing out another blog and I’m still talking about the world cup and English (quiz) comedy. That was not what I intended to write yesterday. Yesterday I was still raving over David Mitchell’s cleverness and wittiness. I still believe he deserves that, me raving about him in public; he says the things I say, only in public while I’m talking to walls or write blogs which are not read. Though honestly, my blog doesn’t come across as clever as he does. I hope he won’t google himself anymore after I posted this, or at least that he won’t come here to see why I written his name down. I don’t think I’m a match to him. And also my writing skills are really not that great especially this morning. That’s what you get for watching his rants till deep in the night.

The one reason I brought up his name was to recommend him to others who might be reading this. I also planned to add a QI video, but since I’m at work there’s no way I’m going on youtube to find something interesting and funny. So this is going to be another colourless blog.

My heart is obviously full of this English entertainment culture thing; I’m blogging about it and in my cigarette break I was talking about it to a colleague. It really is a different culture. In Holland we don’t really have anything like this. There are a few quizzes which are filled up with famous Dutch people being funny, but these formats we actually copied/bought from England. All the rest of the Dutch quizzes are for regular people being very serious in playing and winning, not in being funny. Neither do our comedians, the few we have, spend a lot of their time quizzing; they’re actually on stage. I do miss that.

I have a few English friends of which two I try to visit on a regular basis. My English girlfriend asks me on every visit “Do you want to go there so you can watch filming and maybe meet the cast?” or “Have you ever seen this, cause it’s so funny?”. I never have and I’m never interested in going there. Stupid really, because she’s right, it is fun and I appreciate a lot of these actors and comedians a lot. Another friend introduced me to Jimmy Carr; I always thought he was weird. I don’t know why. He made me sit through some audition kind of program Mister Carr once did to find new comedians. He also introduced me to Little Britain and made me sit through a day of watching that series. I’m wondering how Peepshow slipped through, though my girlfriend did try to make me watch the Bubble, but for some reason we never did. I think I told her I thought the concept was stupid. Turns out, the concept is usually not what it is about in English comedy. I watched one episode of the Bubble and it was hilarious. Though me not knowing who all these people are makes it sometimes incomprehensible to me. I just said that friend tried to make me watch the Bubble; I’m not sure it was that quiz. I’ll ask her.

Tonight I’ll watch some more quizzes and I’ll post a QI vid.

Other things to do:
Check Twitter for various comedians: Stephen Fry is on there I know and David Mitchell. Could be fun, though I hate Twitter.