You belong to the city

London. A few weeks ago.

“Would you like to go to a disco with me? Or if not, how about the movies? Maybe we could see Toy Story 4.”

Possibly the disco in mind

Both interesting options, with pros and cons, the major con being my wife and I had never met the English gentleman asking the question. He was a random bloke on the street who just came up to us.

After giving our profuse apologies, (though I was very tempted to see what old mate had in store for the “disco” option) we went on our way.

London is like that. You never know who you’re going to encounter as you wander. Like Bangkok. There was an elderly Thai couple that would busk on our street. He would play a MacGyvered string instrument and back his wife’s lead vocals. They had a prime spot out the front of a Starbucks and we would always give them some baht, which was always returned with a nod and a smile mid-song.

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Every city has characters. Our first time in Paris quite a few years ago, we were having dinner in a bistro in a residential area, and a striking gentleman (quite possibly homeless, apologies monsieur if you are not) wandered past. He was dressed in an amazing coat (no, not technicolour), accessorised with an old school cassette recorder around his neck, attached with a piece of rope. All very très très chic and reminiscent of the very non-PC fashion line in the Zoolander movie… Derelicte.

I have encountered many characters in Sydney as well. Martin Place in the city’s CBD seems to be a magnet. One bloke would yell “GARN GET FUCKED!!” at everyone, yet no one in particular. Another would quote Shakespeare in an extremely resonant, thespian style… I would contribute the odd line if he forgot and I happened to remember.

Then there’s the bloke in Munich who prefers to live in a mobile phone shop doorway, a busker who plays the pan flute and stands out not only in his herbal, hippy outfits, but is the only burgher in the city who has a smile on his face.

To misquote the old TV show Naked City, there are eight million stories in the naked city. These have been just a few of them.

©Steve Williams 2020

FFS World, It’s Zoolander, Lighten Up

Sadly, I have suspected for quite a few years that the world has entirely lost its sense of humour, and it was confirmed this week.

An apparent non-non-binary Benedict Cumberbatch

I was reading one of the furious flood of online news articles screaming in outrage about a scene in the new Zoolander 2 movie.

No, correct that, a scene in the trailer of the new Zoolander 2 movie. So people are taking umbrage at a movie that hasn’t even been released yet.

FFS world, lighten up.

Apparently some (and our emphasise some) of our LGBT friends and outraged kindred spirits supposedly acting on their behalf are frothing at the mouth that the new film is sexist and transphobic. Really? The pitchforks and flaming torches are being aimed at a ten second scene involving Benedict Cumberbatch playing an apparent androgynous-looking model being asked if he has a hot dog or a bun.

That’s it. You’re losing your mind and clambering to the moral high ground over that? Seriously?

In another article, some earnest and no doubt well-meaning type was rabbiting on that a non-binary model should have been cast to play the Cumberbatch role. I have no idea what “non-binary” means. Is it algebra? (I was probably in the sick bay feigning death when they taught that bit at school)

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It’s been a fairly shit year. The heartbreaking plight of refugees fleeing the Middle East and Africa resulting in dead children washing up on beaches, commercial planes being blown out of the sky, ISIS goons throwing people off buildings because of their sexual preference, a Sydney police accountant being shot in the back of the head by a fifteen year old as he left work, not to mention the recent events in Paris that killed 130 people whose only crime was going out on a Friday night.

We could do with a laugh. If Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Benedict Cumberbatch can provide a few in a light comedy, offending a few easily-offended in the process, then so be it.

As a kid, I was brought up on a healthy diet of comedy — English imports like Monty Python, Dave Allen, The Goon Show, Fawlty Towers, Derek and Clive, and brilliant Australian productions including The Naked Vicar Show, Paul Hogan, Blankety Blanks, The D-Generation, Doug Mulray, Andrew Denton etc, etc. Yes a lot of it was crass, immature, challenging, totally politically incorrect and simultaneously f*cking hilarious. Maybe they have all affected my moral compass Bermuda Triangle style, but I doubt it.

What happened? When did we lose our sense of humour? When was a jihad waged on satire and comedy?

Today people want to be outraged. They want to be angry and vent on Twitter and Facebook and violently hammer the keyboard creating cranky online petitions.

All of this is totally fine. You just need to make sure you’re angry and outraged over the important stuff, not a ten second bit in a movie trailer.

©Steve Williams 2015