[talking to self] you can see that can't you
that's "in shot"
{genuine laugh at incompetence}
So
[wistful music begins]
I wanna
I wanna make a
I wanna make aaaaa
I wanna make something
well
let's begin at the beginning
a couple of years ago I was in Adelaide
right at the beginning of what was gonna be a tour of Australia and New Zealand
and it was a really strange experience because despite this juggernaut coming towards us
everything seemed to be going on as normal
I think we were all just in denial
It became clear to me that
my show
was no longer
a hot ticket to funny town
but was very quickly becoming a
just a series of well planned
but ill-advised
superspreader events
I couldn't do it.
If someone came to the show
caught covid
took it back
killed granny
you know ... on balance ...
it was a good show but on balance that was ..
So I phoned the organisers and I said "look"
"I'm sorry I really have to cancel the tour"
erm and they said "ok, we'll book you a ticket back the next day"
"but don't announce it"
don't don't tell anyone because we'll we'll do it properly
and I said ok
so I kept it to myself
but
but by the next afternoon
the whole festival had been cancelled
somewhat undermining
my selfless gesture
I felt
I began the show that afternoon by
using some hand sanitiser
which I remember being a bit funny at the time
but only I think because we were sort of just terrified and still very much in denial.
the point was the tour was cancelled and I came home and that ...
that was the last time I was on stage
performing in front of people
[more wistful music. It's pachelbel obvs]
and that was that. that was two years ago.
I really miss it
and
I thought it was a good show
and I've still got it. Like it's sitting there on my hard drive
in, like, you know, my slidey slides.
I've never said that before by the way
never said "slidey slides" so I don't know why I said it then.
and this is I suppose where you come in because I want to take that show
and I want to put it out there
you might think that I could just film it
and release it
Beyonce it
I've discovered it's very hard to make things on your own
I live alone now
principally because of the thing with the ducks
erm
I thought I'd do a kickstarter
[magisterial classical music. ]
physical copies.
how to explain this?
they're like NFTs that have been reverse engineered back into their original
erm
they're fungible err tokens.
[music from space odyssey you know the bit]
[the drum bit ]
DUM
dum
DUM
dum
DUMMMMMMM
[space odyssey music not sung well]
and what's in the box ? you ask
I'm not sure how I feel about people doing
physical releases of things that are principally digital
I wanted to do something that was nteresting so I wracked my brains
"what's the appropriate vector ..
"for my comedy spesh"
what I came up with was
the U.S.D
Or Universal Serial
Duck
[more milking of that space odyssey music here]
[ooooooohhh]
and then you take this guy out
and then you think "oh well it's just, it's just a"
I think this is the coolest thing you're gonna own
Each of these guys is gonna be loaded up with my moviefilm
and shipped to you
and it's gonna be in a nice case so you can display it somewhere
like a bookshelf
or put it in a drawer. you do you
you can put it into your computer
you can put it into like a USB hub
or you can even just slap it straight into the back of your television. that's what I did.
that's how versatile
you're versatile aren't you
you just have to take off its head
it's traumatic but you'll get the ..
you can always pop him back in his little ..
ready for next time you want to
I mean is there? is there gonna?
And it's gonna be DRM free
so that means that you can share it with other people.
because I believe in freedom
and I don't know how to DRM it
Analogue media is in. That is something i have noticed.
I mean for ages obviously you've overhead people going like
"I'm getting the vinyl edition"
as if that meant
well, anything.
but recently it's become more fash
hasn't it?
it's like more of a kind of fetish
it's like "obscurity"
is somehow correlated with "coolness" when it comes to these sorts of things
"All I'm saying is if you're not listening to it on cassette ...
can you really be said to be listening to it at all?""
"you know what I mean?
that's all, that's all I'm saying
In fact based on this graph
that I made
you can really see there's definitely a strong correlation between the two
so with that in mind I'm pleased to announce that my comedy special is being released
on VHS
oh yeah
limited edition
numbered copies
there's pretty much no way you're going to be able to play this which I think makes it way cooler
let me bring you over here to my
err
here's the plan. I'm going to copy my moviefilm
onto a VHS tape using
cables
That's going to be Tape 1
And then I'm going to copy Tape 1 onto Tape 2
What I could do is I could take Tape 2 out
and then copy Tape 1 onto Tape 3
Which would, which would be great because
keep quality from the master tape
but no no no
Why do that when you can
Discard Tape 1
And then you can copy Tape 2 onto Tape 3
And then when that's done you take tape 2 out
And I copy Tape 3
onto Tape 4
Slowly these tapes are going to decline in quality
there's gonna be grainyness
intermittent white noise
it's gonna decay
and it's gonna become like a photocopy
of a photocopy
of a book by Jean Baudrillard
it's gonna be like the law of thermodyamics
what happened when Michael and all the writers left The Office
and also probably "life"
In essence what I'm going to be shipping to you is the concept of decay
manifested in a crowdfunded comedy special by a mediocre prop comedian
What more could you want? I mean this .. they're going to be numbered!
You know all the way down to ..
I mean it depends how many we sell. If we sell 4 this has not been a good investment.
You know we could go up to like 200 and there'll be there'll be nothing.
Why?
I don't know. Perhaps it's because I'm bored.
Perhaps it's because I yearn for that time when ...
Also I think it's a shame that kids these days don't grow up with these guys.
This was fun. You had to go out and get a thing.
Can you imagine going out the house and getting a thing?
so that's that
I hope you're .. I hope you're going to support me
be great if you did
thanks for watching I know this was stupid but
if you're in the US
these are PAL tapes and the US is NTSC
so
you're gonna have an even harder time playing them
i mean that makes it at least
four .. five percent cooler still
[pomp and circumstance music meant to inspire you to pledge. probs what elgar intended tbh]