Mike Salsbury’s Blog

While searching for some other video on YouTube, I stumbled upon comedian Tim Minchin. Minchin is Australian born, but living in England.

Early in his career, he wanted to be a serious recording artist (i.e., not a comedian). Later, he wrote some comedy songs and found them well-received, so he began doing more of them. Today, he’s known in several countries as a very clever, insightful, and (above all) funny guy. Tim is also a good singer and a talented piano player.

After hearing some of Tim’s YouTube performances, I located his web site and ordered his two albums on CD from England (that’s how much I liked what I heard). I’ve listened to them many times since receiving them.

Tim’s comedy usually has at least a couple of levels to it. On the surface there’s an obvious joke you can laugh at, but underneath it there’s usually a very insightful observation about how people live, think, interact, etc.

Since discovering him a few weeks back, I’ve added Tim to my short list of “favorite comedians”. Hopefully, after looking at some of the videos linked later in this article, you’ll agree with me that his comedy is fresh, interesting, and above all, funny.

His 2005 album “Dark Side” includes several of his best comedy songs, including (links below go to YouTube videos where you can hear each song performed):

• Inflatable You: A love song about a man’s passion for his inflatable girlfriend.
• Mitsubishi Colt: A beat poem about an encounter between Tim and a rich stock broker in a bar who thinks Tim is better off not being as rich
• Angry (feet): A poem Tim writes at the request of his therapist about his anger issues
• Nothing Can Stop Us Now: This is almost a serious song Tim wrote to his wife. I really enjoy listening to it, even when I’m not in the mood to laugh.
• Not Perfect: This is another “almost serious” song that I really enjoy listening to, about feeling insignificant in the world but accepting that neither he nor the world is perfect

Tim’s 2006 album “So Rock” features a number of great stand-up bits as well as musical numbers. In “London, Advertising, and Hippos” he talks about how he worries that he’s been with his wife since the age of 17 and if he ever had to enter the dating scene again it might be difficult. He worries that he and his wife might have “drifted” from the sexual norm “bit by bit” such that if he started to get intimate with another woman and “I get out the Mickey Mouse ears, and the jelly beans, a length of bungee rope, and the Hungry, Hungry Hippos” when she says “What are you doing? I thought we we just gonna make love.” This is when he finds that those implements don’t fit in with her picture of love-making.

Also in “So Rock” we find Tim’s warning to parents about how they should keep their children from becoming obese, his song about the dangers of being too open-minded, and another “semi-serious” song called “You Grew On Me“. This last song upset me when I first heard it because it reminded me of my late mother’s death from melanoma.

I’m looking forward to Tim doing a comedy tour in the USA and landing somewhere near me so I can go see him.

In the meantime, here are some other Tim Minchin bits on YouTube that I enjoy:

• “If I Didn’t Have You (Someone Else Would Do)”
• “If You Really Loved Me“
• “Tony the Fish” (about evolution and religion)
• Tim actually singing a serious song: “Hallelujah“
• Tim’s mime performance “So F*cking Rock” that is the inspiration behind the album name “So Rock”
• A song about envy and livestock
• A situation any straight man can identify with: “Lust (Outstanding Woman)“
• “Taboo” (a song about the language of prejudice)
• A sample of his stand-up comedy

There are lots more out there. The ones linked here are some of my personal favorites.

admin humor Tim Minchin

Earlier this week, an online service suggested to me that I listen to the music of British recording artist Lily Allen. Allen’s music is described as “cheeky” and at first blush it sounds like any top 40 pop artist. In fact, it’s easy to dismiss her music during the first few bars of a song because it sounds like it’s going to be typical vacuous bubble-gum music of the sort most of us outgrow in our 20s. If you stick with it, however, there’s quite an intelligence and sense of humor to it.

Her first album, “Alright, Still” features 13 tracks (links below go to YouTube videos of the songs):

1. In “Smile” we’re told that after a breakup, she was “so lost back then, but with a little help from my friends, I found the light in the tunnel at the end”. Now, the boyfriend’s trying to get her back, but she doesn’t want him. When she sees him cry, it makes her smile.
   
2. “Knock ‘Em Out” is about meeting “nasty” people in nightclubs who hit on you. Unfortunately, she says, you “can’t knock ‘em out, can’t walk away, try desperately to think of the polite thing to say”. It includes all kinds of excuses a woman might use to get rid of a potential suitor, such as being pregnant, engaged, etc.
   
3. “Ldn” (London) has a kind of calypso sound in places. It’s a story about riding around on a bicycle because “a filth took away my license” while still trying to enjoy the “priceless” sights while wondering what lurked below the surface. The sights include “a fellow looking dapper and he’s sittin’ on the slapper then I see it’s a pimp and his crack whore” and “a little old lady who was walking down the road, she was struggling with bags from Tesco… when a kid came along to offer a hand but before she had time to accept it, hits her over the head, doesn’t care if she’s dead, because he’s got all her jewelry and wallet”.
   
4. In “Everything’s Just Wonderful” the singer laments that people are “going mental”, that she can’t get a mortgage to buy a flat, and that life is just some “sick” and “insincere game”.
   
5. “Not Big” takes a stab at an ex-boyfriend’s manhood and says that “I’m gonna tell the world you’re rubbish in bed now, and that you’re small in the game”.
   
6. “Friday Night” is a slice of “pub and club” life in London, and tactics of fear and intimidation by other club-goers.
   
7. “Shame for You” tells a sleazy guy that “you must be jokin’ me if you think you’ll be pokin’ me.”
   
8. “Littlest Things” talks about the early days of a relationship that’s now over.
   
9. “Take What You Take” strikes back at older people who offer unsolicited and unwanted advice.
   
10. “Friend of Mine” gets back at a “friend” who has been “chattin’ shite” behind her back.
    
11. “Alfie” talks about a little brother who spends all his time “smoking weed” and playing computer games.
    
12. In “Nan You’re a Window Shopper” Lily chastises an older person who lives an uninteresting life and rarely gets involved with the world around her.

It’s an enjoyable album. The melodies are catchy, Lily’s voice is easy to listen to, and her accent helps deliver the humor inherent in all the songs. You’ll notice that there are “explicit” and “edited” versions of Lily’s albums. That’s because she’s not at all afraid of using crude language to help make her point or express herself.

If it sounds like something you might enjoy, check out the links above to hear the songs in their entirety on YouTube. After you’ve previewed them, you can pick up the album on the Zune Marketplace, Amazon.com, iTunes, or your favorite music store.

admin music Alright Still, Lily Allen

When I first started blogging, I used a content management system called Mambo (a variant of which is called Joomla) to run my sites.  That system worked pretty well at first, but had a real problem with comment spam and wasn’t compatible with a lot of useful blogging clients I wanted to run.

Last August, I moved my blog content from Mambo over to Movable Type.  That worked a lot better than Mambo did, at least for my needs, but had issues as well.  While blogging clients “sort of” worked with Movable Type, I got a lot of errors when submitting posts.  I was also frustrated with how long it took to “publish” the site and how many times publishing was necessary to make even minor changes.

This past week, I began investigating WordPress, a free application that is widely used for blogging.  WordPress seemed to work much better with blogging clients than Movable Type.  WordPress is also “dynamic” and doesn’t require me to constantly “publish” the site to make changes.  So far, it seems a much better fit than Movable Type.

This is not to say that I don’t have issues with WordPress.  If you look through the older articles on this site, you’ll probably notice a very glaring issue that I’ve not put too much effort into correcting.  Specifically, the articles I imported from Movable Type (in many cases, but not all) have strange line breaks.  I’ve fixed some of the worst examines manually, but others I’ve left alone, figuring I may eventually delete the oldest content on the site anyway.

In any case, I’m hoping this move will allow me to do a much better job of regularly posting articles to the blog.  Time will tell, of course.

admin Life