Tetherd Cow Ahead

The blogosphere is a funny place, defined as it is by ephemeral digital bits that flit around the planet at speeds that were once inconceivable, and turn up on luminous screens as words and pictures of pretty much every imaginable sort. At this point in time there are probably somewhere in the vicinity of 200 million blogs on the web,⁽ⁱ⁾ and although the boom years of blogging have probably passed, the number is still growing.

Of course, of these 200 million offerings, barely a hand full are worth attending to, as we all know. And even of these, most settle into the well-worn, usually pedestrian, reiterations of the kind of media that we’ve had for centuries: magazines, news reports, gossip, diaries and opinionated grumblings.

In my opinion, the real potential of blogging has been overlooked by all but a very special few. Joey Polanski, or ‘Sir’ Joey as he is known around these parts, is one of those special few. Or, I should say, was one of those special few, for as many of you already know, a couple of days back, Joey brought down the curtain on his blog The Joey Polanski Show. I watched the lights go out in the JPS theatre with the greatest of sadness, because over the years, the flitting digital bits that have made their way to my screen from JPS Central have formed themselves into something quite remarkable: a friend.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ When I started blogging, I would never have thought something like that possible. Now Joey’s retirement is certainly not the same as if he suddenly disappeared and I never knew what happened – indeed, I even had warning that the Show was going to fold. But it does leave me with the feeling that an actual real friend has left town and that when I wander past his place all I’ll see from now on is windows with drawn shades and cobwebs forming under the eaves.

I think I do understand Joey’s reasons for closing up the show though. Sometimes a thing just runs its course, and the time becomes right to leave it be. I can’t imagine that happening at The Cow just yet, but I know I couldn’t absolutely rule out the possibility. Whatever the reasons, Sir Joey says that even though the theatre has gone dark, the old hoofer isn’t averse to a special appearance now and then and I hope that’s so.

I said before that Joey was one of a special few that, in my opinion, understood the real potential of blogging. The way I see it, anybody can write a diary, but it takes skill, and humour and prescience to understand the idea that a blog works best as a two-way street. This, indeed, is one of the reasons I think that the traditional media is having so much trouble with their presence on the net – they don’t understand the fundamental appeal of being an active part of the thing you’re reading.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ That was one of the very first things that attracted me to The JPS – even when I first started visiting YEARS ago, there was a constant amusing, sometimes hilarious, banter going on. It was like wandering into a party in full swing, and being handed a beer at the door.

The best thing was that Joey started coming to my parties too, and brought some of his infectious irreverent humour with him, and I know you’ll all agree that his shtick in the comments of some posts has often been more entertaining than the posts themselves. On more than one occasion I’ve even had to step back into the shadows and let Polanski and Atlas steal the stage entirely, and indeed, those two guys are responsible for big chunks of Cow Lore. It is without doubt a situation of the sum being greater than the parts.

Joey’s Shelf will remain permanently installed at The Cow. It’s in the basement (which I confess, is prone to flooding) but I do make sure that Sister Veronica dusts Joey’s trophies every now and then, and removes any of the crap that Atlas has dumped there. I urge you to visit The Shelf from time to time as a sort of homage to Joey. You never know what you’ll find.

Joey, thanks for all the good times over at the JPS. Thanks for the laughs and the pomes. And thanks, above all, for getting it.

So, as this sad era comes to a close, only one thing remains to be said:

Sir Joey Polanski: The Cow Salutes You!

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Footnotes:

1. It’s actually hard to get an exact figure. This number is based on a best-guess estimation from Technorati and Google. It’s probably an underestimate if all foreign-language blogging is accounted for. [↩]
2. And a strange and wonderful kind of friend; the person who I know in my head as ‘Joey Polanski’ is a fiction concocted by a real person. I’m sure there’s a lot of that real person in Joey Polanski’s character, but I am always aware that ‘Joey’ does not exist in any corporeal way. And yet, I still conceive of him as a friend. What a remarkable a magic trick that is! [↩]
3. The Guardian gets it – there is an increasing involvement of readers in the Guardian site. The comments on many articles rage into enormously entertaining debates, and there are Guardian photography and writing competitions – active communities that feel like they are part of The Guardian world. Contrast that with Rupert Murdoch’s cloistered communities, dotted with doddering old fogeys who are wondering why the Letters pages are so empty all of a sudden. [↩]

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Even though I’m very fond of the ‘yarn’ type joke, I think my favourite kind of prepared humour is the one-liner. There is consummate comedy skill in creating a joke that is as funny as possible in the fewest number of words. Many of the best one-liners are crafted in the ubiquitous someone-walks-into-a-bar format, and I’m sure you know a few. My favourite of these is:

A woman walks into a bar and asks for a double entrendre and the bartender gives her one.

The briefest one I know is:

A baby seal walks into a club…

One-liners are not limited to the ‘bar’ joke though. Another one of my favourites you’ve all heard (and I like to think you laughed at it, even if Yuliya didn’t):

A man walks up to a Buddhist hot dog seller and says ‘Make me one with everything’.

So, faithful Acowlytes – your favourite? Remember – one line (my purist aesthetic decrees this should be one sentence, although I know there are those who disagree with this strict ruling).

You may remember that a little ways back I told you about a film called Shriek of the Mutilated, which, aside from having one of the best movie titles ever, is a work of cinema so terrible that it’s a must see. My friend Sean points out that io9 has a short clip up at the moment which allows you to get a taste of the full awfulness of this creation.

As well as some truly frightful yeti action, the snippet features some awesome ‘girl-in-lingerie-terror’ acting. Truly, girls, you need to watch this. Among other things you will learn that if you are trapped in a bathroom by an insane over-sized teddybear-with-fangs, you should flap ineffectually at the window with your hands and pull your hair across your face a lot.

Apparently SOTM is now available on DVD. This is something that the world has needed for many decades.

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*You have to see the film.

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Hey! Remember how I told you about the Thrilling Space Adventure competition over at Bearskin Rug? I actually won a blue ribbon! I am totally chuffed – my very first attempt at a cartoony-like comic and someone who is a genius at such things thought it was worthy of a prize. And I didn’t even have to send him a bribe or anything!

Here’s my winning entry. It’s a truly Thrilling Space Adventure.

What’s even better I won a prize – a signed copy of The Superest book. And, along with Kevin’s signature, it has hand-drawn pictures of Mojo.

I am so happy.

Go to Bearskin Rug now and buy stuff.

Kevin over at Bearskin Rug has invited all & sundry to draw their own Thrilling Space Adventure – and quite impetuously I think – has given away the secrets of his trade to show you how to do it! If you click on the panel above you will see the full extent one of my own personal attempts at being a humorous illustrator/cartoonist type person. I’m nowhere near as clever as Kevin, but I made myself laugh and that’s all that counts. Surely.

I… er… uh… eyes burning… so… many… things… wrong…

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Snapped in the window of a camping supplies shop just up the road.

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So, as we recover from the longest-running Cow Competition ever, only one question remains: who gets the trophy?

Well, as we’ve explored at length in previous Cow discussions, what makes a person laugh is a highly individual thing and so I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on my decisions (yes, decisions – with 200+ entries, there has to be at least one runner up…), but I think you will all agree that this was one of the all-time best laugh-fests we’ve had on the Cow.

Numerous entries had me cracking up on first reading, and many of them are still funny on multiple visits. Joey’s very early entry ‘Okay. We stampede in two minutes. Twenty bucks says Billy’s ass outruns his head again’ set the tone for the hi-jinks to follow, but most importantly gave us ‘Billy’, who went on to be quite a Cow Headliner. Cissy Strutt chimed in with the hilarious ‘Tits!’ to be followed by Atlas’ classic ‘This ain’t what I had in mind when I told you to bring a Trojan’ (after a slightly surreal detour into existentialism from Joey).

And from there it never faltered. I won’t elaborate further – you can revisit them at your leisure for years to come. Or, if you’re really keen, download the pdf of the whole competition in situ, as kindly provided by Atlas Cerise.

Anycow, let’s cut to the chase. In my view, the competition peaked early, and no-one quite reached the rarified heights of entry #50 by Joey Polanski, which I declare to be the overall winner:

I can’t explain quite why this makes me laugh every time I see it, but to me it encapsulates the perfect comment on this photograph: the assertion from the speaking cow is condescendingly self-evident, but its implacable acceptance of the guys in the cow costume plays out the kind of humour that I really like. It does have a certain bee-joke-esque quality as Joey says, but it is very ‘cow’ in its own right. So, Joey, the question now must be – how the heck do I get you your SGM coffee mug?

Now, I’m going to award two runners-up, and I think you may find them just as puzzling as the main winner – but they both made me laugh a lot, and that, of course, is the only criteria for any Cow competition!

Honorable Mention number one goes to Cissy Strutt for:

This needs some explaining too. This is an excellent variation of an old situational gag that I invented quite some years ago, with which Cissy is quite familiar. The schtick goes like this: a bunch of people I know are standing around at a party or somesuch and a newcomer arrives on the scene. As they enter, someone proclaims loudly ‘…and that’s what happened to the cheese sandwich!!’, whereupon everyone else (clued-in by previous arrangement) bursts into laughter. The newcomer is then frustrated to find that no-one wants to tell them the (obviously hilarious) Cheese Sandwich joke. It’s a form of ‘meta’ humour that really tickles my funnybone. You can see how a cow performance elevates it into humour worthy of a prize!

So, Cissy, another SGM mug on its way to you for Christmas.

The second Honorable Mention goes to Queen Willy, for yet another in-joke, but one that was played as a marvellous slam-dunk to create a perfect end for the competition:

It does, of course, refer to this post, and elevates the scenario to a strange situation where two men in a cow suit become the bovine analog of the Archangel Gabriel presenting a mooing Virgin with strange news in the form of text speak. It doesn’t become any weirder than that!!⁽ⁱ⁾ A collectible SGM coffee mug for The Queen too!

Even though I found the above three the funniest of the funny, don’t think I didn’t laugh at mostly everything. It remains only to thank you all for providing such hilarity on The Cow, and contributing to an escapade that I suspect will go into Cow Lore. With 230 comments, How Now Brown Cow? ranks as the highest commented Tetherd Cow Ahead post of all time. Of course we want to do MUCH better than that come January 1, 2010, n’est ce pas?

Oh, and be sure to check out Queen Willy’s Cow Wall for the last laugh!
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Footnotes:

1. But, it has to be said, makes for an interesting commentary on the ‘actual’ event… [↩]

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On a website for a film called Paranormal Activity, shouldn’t the only choice for trailer size be ‘Medium’?

Just because it involves xkcd and robots.

(Click pic for full strip)