sums it up pretty well.

There hasn’t been any “copying and pasting of news” this week – it’s been a busy one with a lot of deadlines. It’ll return come Monday. I also went to the launch on Baker Street last night of Trading Places, a new book by award-winning photographer and all-round good chap Steve Bloom. Also my dad. So that’s why posts have been scant: but it’s Friday, so I thought I’d cheer you all up with a few tips on how to survive the Christmas do…

The Christmas party: that perfect time to let your hair down and throw your reputation to the winds. What other time of year can you mock your boss, flirt with your co-workers and dance in your knickers, all at once?

But as legions of office drones know, that opportunity comes with a priceless hangover.

A good story was told by Adam, of High Street, Cardiff city centre. Things went wrong at his old job when fire fighters got more than they bargained for in a call-out.

Adam said: “My old work, a now-defunct bank, had a Christmas party in the office in 2003. There was a buffet, an awards ceremony for the year’s work, and karaoke machine, with added smoke machine.

“So the party was in full swing, people singing, people dancing and the smoke machine smoking. After about two hours of this, some men dressed in fireman outfits arrived at the office. Some of the female staff – including managers – assumed these were strippers.

“They started, well, gyrating around the men, trying to take off their ‘outfits’. The thing is though, they were actual firemen: the smoke machine had set the alarms off.

“Not surprisingly, that was the last Christmas party we were given in that office.”

So how does the humble worker bee prevent getting into pickles like these? Here are some ideas. Which type are you?

FOR THE NEW GUY

You have got to be extra-careful. For you have just entered a parallel world, in which your every move will be scrutinised to fit with the ‘banter’ of man-all-man employees who’ve been spending longer with each other than their wives for several decades.

So if you’ve been waiting for that perfect time to share your secret love of musicals, discuss French theatre, come out as gay or, worse, as a vegan, your first Christmas party isn’t it.

And beware, because it will seem like a good idea when you’re nine pints down and standing on the table without trousers or dignity.

Instead the best policy is cower in the corner, if possible with other trainees, and talk about ludicrously safe subjects.

Think along the lines of cars, ties (not shoes), bitter (not lager) and possibly politics, but make sure you tow the standard line: “Just how bad is that Gordon Brown?” Or you could stick to the ergonomic management keyboard:

FOR THE NEW GIRL

You’re over here. The punch is over there. In the middle is overweight Gwyn from accounts who always puts himself deliberately between you and the photocopier so you have to squeeze past.

This should be as good a hint as any not to drink anything. You’re young, fresh-faced, intelligent and unknown to you most people in the office are competing to be you, or worse, especially in Gwyn’s case.

So if they get you drunk, you’ll slowly turn into them: following the downward course until spring, when someone even younger and prettier comes in and sure enough, you want to be her.

Or, worse, you’ll canoodle in the corner with lovestruck Gwyn who, come 2010, will make sure he’s not only blocking the photocopier, but also the vending machine, water cooler and door.

But you’ve not got the same option as the New Guy. You can’t lurk in the corner with the fairer sex and a G&T, because unlike office guys, who mumble into their pints and keep eyes on ties, office girls will make sure they’re heard.

So it’s a no-go, especially if they have any gossip on Gwyn. The best bet is to flirt briefly with everything in the room – and walk away with your head held high.

FOR THE SAD HACK IN THE CORNER

You’re the only person older than the boss, so to rub in the fact you didn’t succeed even more you’ll be asked to toast him/her. If you’re sober, this will be an excellent exercise in brown-nosing. If you’re not, it’ll be an exercise in damage limitation.

You will be inclined to make a cruel joke. Do not bend to this temptation. It will probably come out wrong, meaning after 26 years of the same old story at the office do, you’ll be repeating yourself again in the new year. Someone else will get that promotion, and you’ll be stuck counting down the days on your free calendar to the next party.

You’ll also be inclined to do your famous boss-impression. Unfortunately, its fame is probably due to an in-joke among your younger colleagues, and isn’t actually funny. Plus, impressions at office dos are seldom better than that dance Ricky Gervais did in The Office. Often, they’re worse.

So don’t do it. And especially, please, don’t try and impersonate Ricky Gervais. Just no.

FOR THE BOSS

Finally, if you’re the boss and you’ve not been told about the office party, it could be a surprise do for you.

Be prepared to walk through that door after ‘urgent business’ calls you in to be greeted with party poppers and bubbly by the whole staff. By the time they’ve finished stroking your ego you won’t be able to get your head through the door.

But it more likely means you’ve not been invited.

So a word of caution: have a good think about how well-liked you are. Do you bend, bad breath and all, over the hunched shoulders of your well-meaning employees and whine you-could-probably-do-this advice in their ears?

Do you give motivational speeches standing on tables where you use star-charts and words like “self-fulfilment”? Do you keep everyone on past 5.30pm in the name of “building a community spirit”?

If any of these things apply to you, you are probably one of those Hated Bosses you’ve heard so much about. Your best bet would be to stay at home with your kids. They’re too young to realise how irritating you are yet.

Last week, I had the honour of competing in the Borden, Ladner, Gervais, LLP Client Counselling competition with my amazingly talented partner Cassandra Tarrataca.  This competition was reported to be the largest to date, and we were fortunate enough to make it to the finals!

Testing the competitors on life like situations of interviewing a potential client, we were faced with two “white-collar” crime scenarios.

I would like to personally thank the judges, all from BLG’s Toronto office, for sponsoring and making the trip down.  Also for the food and drinks at the finalists dinner afterward.

For a full recap head to the competitions page at UWO Law

I know I’ve written before about people, artists, those who should know better, selling their integrity to the highest corporate sponsor…but I just saw the new Ricky Gervais film; I had to write again.

The Invention of Lying is a feeble film. Although it is typical Gervais in theme: a bittersweet comedy that takes on the big, fundamental things about life, the really interesting themes that we should all be interested in. It’s not typically Gervais in its execution though: it’s annoying, predictable….and not that funny. Gervais pulls out all the usual Brentisms that we love him for, but it’s all to no avail. I suppose the time had to come when he’d make something that truly disappointed though; it was inevitable given his vertical trajectory over the last few years.

The thing that really bothered me about this film, however, wasn’t the fact it was a bit crap; it was that in the film’s crucial scene, Gervais stands in front of the camera for the entire time (probably about ten minutes) holding two Pizza Hut boxes with their logos up to the camera. Of course, the plot justification for this is that they were the first stone-tablet-like things he could write his ‘commandments’ on. I read an article about the film where it says that Gervais ’swears’ it wasn’t product placement. I really hope he didn’t say that…because it is. It’s crass and insulting, and when you’re supposed to be concentrating on the key scene of the film, all you can see are those logos being held up to you, so that you can remember to eat more junk. Thanks Ricky.

The real irony is that a film which is an unsophisticated and clumsy satire on religion should choose to sell its soul to a more contemporary god. I recall that Gervais once crtiticised the guys from Little Britain (a rival British comedy show to The Office) for commercialising and merchandising from their show, and I thoroughly agreed with what he said. The problem is, though, that after The Invention of Lying, Gervais has shown himself every bit as culpable…even more so. At least Little Britain (over)commercialised their own ideas - Gervais brought in a multi-national corporate junk-food company to uglify his latest project. You could also say the guys from Little Britain could have reasonably believed that they might not again get another chance to make their pot of cash - Gervais chose to wait until he was one of the most highly-regarded comedians in the world to sell himself to the corporate world.

Earlier in the year, there was another episode that left the same bitter taste in my mouth. Matthew Le Tissier (a footballer who played for Southampton FC, my home city club) was/is regarded as a hero in the city. Even though he was one of the most naturally gifted players in the game throughout his career, he always refused to consider going to the big money clubs and earning many times more money than Southampton could ever pay him. His footballing genius never benefitted another club; the fans, and the city, never forgot this. Imagine then, the disappointment of his admission, while promoting his autobiography, that he once tried (and failed) to make money by betting on a game in which he was playing…in a Southampton shirt.

I suppose there’s a valuable lesson in here somewhere. Probably that we should never meet our heroes. Maybe that we should never have heroes at all. It’s good to respect the good things that people achieve, but we should never assume a wider significance or virtue on the part of those that do things we like. We’re all human, we all screw up. We all say and do things we know we shouldn’t and we do things we regret. We’re all inconsistent at times and we all love to be loved; this can alter our perceptions of what is right.

I’m guessing Ricky Gervais won’t be too bothered by this little rant of mine, and that’s ok. But you should take my advice and don’t add to your list of regrets by going to see this film.

To those of you that haven’t heard of the Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and (Oh I’m grinning already) the delightful Karl Pilkington podcasts, you’ve been missing out.

We all know Ricky. He is the extremely clever writer, producer and actor of The Office (Where he played pathetically funny David Brent) and Extras (Playing wannabe star Andy Millman), along with being in recent movies like Ghost Town and The Invention of Lying. He is also an amazingly successful stand-up comedian. Stephen is the lesser known but equally talented (Also award winning) writer and producer of The Office and Extras, and together with Ricky has recently written a script for a new movie called Cemetery Junction.

Karl on the other hand… Well. Different story really. Karl Pilkington was an unknown radio producer that happened to be placed as the producer on a new show with Ricky and Steve. It didn’t take long for them to see gold in Karls bizarre, nonlinear and, to be honest, downright stupid ideas. (Also, that he had a head like a f@cking orange!)

And so the podcasts were born. Five seasons of absolute hilarity, along with one-off podcasts focusing on different topics (e.g. Medicine, Natural History, The Arts) all which feature the three men discussing their thoughts on any given subject. Sounds a bit boring? Well, I promise, it isn’t! 

Despite a sort off halfcocked structure, the basis of the podcasts are Ricky and Steve trying to get Karl’s opinion on things. And Karl’s view of the world is idiotic, inane, completely warped and so hilarious that I cry with laughter listening to him. 

Hard to explain in a blog, but here are a few gems to get you on the Karl Pilkington track:

“If I was [Noah], I would have gone, “Hang on a minute, I’ve just seen somethin’ that looks a bit like this, let it drown”, have a bit of a clear out, but he was messin’ about savin’ everythin’” 

“Why didn’t evolution make a giraffe good at carpentry so it could build a ladder?” 

“You know how they say people have six senses? There’s loads more than that. [The ability to feel someone looking at you], that’s been around since man and dinosaur were knockin’ about.”

“We came from the sea originally, now we’re going back in it. Don’t go in it, unless you’re in a boat.” 

“Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain? I don’t know if I’m in charge of mine.” 

“They say it all started out with a big bang. But, what I wonder is, was it a big bang or did it just seem big because there wasn’t anything else drown it out at the time?”

(On fun-sized chocolates) “I don’t know why they’re called fun-sized; I mean, if I called a midget fun-sized, they’d kick off” 

“It’s like the panda, they say that’s dying out. But what do they do? When you see them they’re just sitting in the jungle eating” 

“People who live in a glass house have to answer the door” - Karl invents his own phrase based on “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”

“You don’t get anything done by planning” 

“Any problem solved is a new problem made.” 

Ahhh, I was just cracking up reading all of them! And it’s not just Karl. Ricky and Steve are truly brilliant, funny guys with a wealth of knowledge. I have spent many an hour listening and re-listening to these podcasts. Makes me laugh every time.

They are available to download on iTunes or Audible.com

Three Wise men: Ricky, Steve and... Oh... Karl.

Gazing through the empty orange

‘The Invention of Lying’ has a premise packed with such comic potential that, as you watch it meander aimlessly along, you wonder how it could’ve gone so wrong.

Gervais stars as Mark Bellison, who inhabits an alternate universe where mankind hasn’t developed the ability to lie.  There is only truth in this universe.  There isn’t even a word for something that isn’t true.  It just is or isn’t.

The movie begins with Bellison on a first date with Anna (Jennifer Garner), who promptly informs him that although he seems nice, she finds him unattractive, not successful enough and an unsuitable genetic match for procreation.  He takes this news as a given.  He’s used to these types of comments in a world where no one tells a lie.

Bellison is a screenwriter for Lecture Films, who produce films that feature a narrator looking into camera and telling the story of a historical event.  Because there’s no lying, there’s no fiction.  I wondered why the films weren’t more like historical recreations like the films ‘Gettysburg’, ‘Amadeus’, or ‘The Patriot’ (that last one’s a joke by the way).  But then I applied logic and realised that it would require actors, and that the people in this world are unable to pretend to be anything but themselves.

Co-writer/co-director pair Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson have applied strict logic to every aspect of this world, which makes you appreciate it on an intellectual level, but the world is so dour and unappealing, both visually and emotionally, that we don’t embrace the characters or the story.

Bellison is fired from Lecture Films because he’s responsible for writing the biggest box office bomb of all time, called The Black Plague.  No matter that it doesn’t appear that these films would cost anything to make, since it’s a man sitting on a chair reading out loud, but that’s beside the point.  It’s not his fault, he claims.  The 1300’s is the worst century to have, because nothing happened.

Bellison owes $800 rent, but only has $300 in his account.  At the bank something triggers in his brain.  He asks for $800.  The bank teller assumes it must be a system error, and gives him the money.  Bellisons world has changed.  He can lie.

This is where the film should really take off.  Remember Groundhog Day, and the first scenes where Bill Murray discovers that he’s living that same day over and over again?  There is a real sense of panic and desperation in those scenes.  Everything he knows is crashing down around him.  Murray’s manic energy is hilarious and more importantly, a believable reaction to an extreme situation.  When Bellison discovers that he can lie, something that no one else in history has ever done, how does he react?  He wanders over to a bar to discuss it with the bartender and his alcoholic mate.  There’s no sense of amazement or fear of his new ability.  It’s like discovering one day that you can read peoples minds, and thinking “Oh, that’s handy. I wonder what’s on TV.”

The blame must fall on Gervais and Robinson.  Each scene flickers with potential, but never takes off.  The film plays as an Alexander Payne-esque dramedy, when it should’ve been played more for laughs.

The performances lack energy.  Gervais plays the character as cheerless and miserable, and it sucks any enjoyment from the film.  Once he discovers the ability to lie, he uses it for personal gain in the hope that money and success will make him happy, and that Anna will consider him a more suitable “genetic match”.  But the characters and the world they inhabit are so unlikable that you just don’t care.

The only difference between the films reality and ours is the ability to lie.  So why does everyone blurt things out unprovoked like they have Tourette’s?  A restaurant host says “I’m intimidated by you” when greeting Garner.  A waiter says “I took a sip from your drink” and “She’s out of your league”.  Bellisons secretary says “I’m overqualified” and “I loathe you”.  I understand that these people think these things and can’t lie, but they must have the ability to control the things they say.  They aren’t just mouthpieces for every thought that passes through their brain.  The characters don’t behave like normal human beings would (with the inability to lie), and are nearly all unpleasant.

There’s also number of strange cameos in the film that prove distracting.  It’s as if they missed the ‘Extras’ boat, and were desperate to associate themselves with Gervais’ next project.

The more I think about this film, the more disappointed I am.  I had high hopes due to the hilarious ‘Extras’ and ‘The Office’, as well as the mildly entertaining ‘Ghost Town’.  It’s definitely a missed opportunity, and it proves to be Gervais’ first failure.

If you want to see this kind of film done properly, watch ‘Groundhog Day’ again.

Footy Manager Update

Finished 8th last year, knocked out in the Champs League Quarters and won the Italian Cup. Somehow that was enough to stay in charge, I was quite lucky that someone was trying to buy the club so they kept thanking me for my patience.

The takeover didn’t go through, I was given £25million to spend, annoyingly Berlusconi wanted me to boost the clubs profile, I went through shit loads of players trying to sign, got offers/contracts accepted for Vidic/Pato/Tevez, annoyingly I need a defender most, so went for Vidic.  Big Silvio decided to go through with the Sneijder deal despite not having the transfer funds available. No money for anyone else though.

My starting line up for next year should be

Ochoa

Alves Vidic Nesta Richards (Accomplished at LB)

Cassano Sneijder Pirlo Obertan

Kaka

Torres

Backups include Vela, Bojan, Gattuso, Jankulovski, Gourcuff, Asulin, Gilardino, Oliveira, Mata, Tavano.

My squad still doesn’t look strong enough though, I should be able to challenge for top four though. That’s such a pathetic aim really.

I might sell Kaka, to blood Vela and I can get around £35million for him. I want a proper LB too, went for Adriano/Baines/Bale but now I’ve ran out of money, quite annoying. I could do with a good backup keeper too, not sure who I want though.

Just listening to a Karl Pilkington thing for Q Radio, it’s not great, too much music and not enough talking, not that surprising as he’s by himself though. I can’t wait for them to do some more stuff. I really want to see The Invention Of Lying too, Gervais is quite annoying but almost everything he does is great, although I can’t really remember Ghost Town, I don’t think I liked it much though.

Anyway, Great Track of the Day ;

Oasis – Married With Children

This week it once again came down to 2 choices: Ricky Gervais’s Invention of Lying or the new Coen Bros. A Serious Man (cause Big Fan is apparently out of theaters already, the guy doesn’t bring Mickey Rourke outta rehab and can only get two week run at the Angelika, bitch please). I had reservations about both. Invention of Lying, as my wife but it, just had too many funny people in it. A Serious Man I want to see based solely on brand recognition, that my friend Chris knew “the wife,” and a very innovative, rhymic trailer, which told me nothing about the movie except that it was very Jewish themed and starred a guy who looked a lot like the “Can you hear me now?” Verizon guy.  I can’t remember the last time a great trailer guarenteed a great movie. (I’m talkin’ to you Watchmen.)

I thought about asking my improv teacher, who was the naked guy in Ghost Town, but decided against even acknowledging that I knew that fact. It would like knowing Paris Hilton from her sextape. After my improv class, I brought the query to one of my fellow classmates.

“Oh its terrible. Yeah there’s way too many funny people with cameos in it. And none of them do anything funny.”

So the lesson here is Hollywood, never bring lots of funny people in to do background roles. Movies, like it or not, are half expectation. If Tina Fey’s gonna play a secretary with 3 lines in your comedy she’d better be fucking funny. You can’t just have Steve Martin come in and press a button on the elevator and then walk out. (Oh wait, he’s been doing those roles for years now.) You can, however, do funny people in bit roles it to great effect in dramas (see the Informant, i.e. Joel McHale, the Smothers Brothers, etc.)

The fall back meant literally dragging my wife (just “going out to dinner” was seriously considered and probably cheaper) out to the middle of nowhere (Lower East Side) to the lovely yet remote Landmark theater and for the second time in two months, we were delayed over half an hour because of technical difficulties. By the time the previews started my wife had a look a disgruntled Dad had that’s missing a playoff game for his kids play: THIS HAD BETTER BE GOOD.

And it was. First of all, you know a movie’s gonna have a Jewish theme when the first 10 minutes are in yiddish, set in 1890’s Russia and dresses Fyvush Finckel up as a Hassidic could be zombie. Actually I could have just said Fyvush Finckel and made the same point.

Second, is there anyone who doesn’t immediately smile when Richard Kind appears on screen? That man’s head must be 75% smile. I think Mad About You and Spin City were extended at least 2 and half seasons just cause the network execs got a cute fuzzy feeling from having him around.

As for the movie, A Serious Man like many Coen Brothers movies, is beautifully shot, detailed world of amazing characters. They nail the local color of the late 60’s Jewish (probably Minnesota) surburbia inhabited by physics teacher Larry Gopnick, the Micheal Corelone of reactive protagonists. He literally says, I’ve done nothing, and has it thrown back in his face as a sin by his wife (who shacks up with a Palm Springs Francis Ford Coppola in polyester), his kids, his brother, the tenure commitie (have you published anything?), his rabbis, and even a Korean student he fails who in turn tries to bribe him for a passing grade. For Larry Gopnick, just going through life trying to do the right thing is not nearly enough.  The only thing he does do is sneak a look at his naked sunbathing neighbor.

A Serious Man is a great piece of comic existential film making where even God can’t help with the answers or tie up ends. It’s worth the movie just for the son’s bar mitzvah scene.  The only thing I regret is telling the cab driver on the way home that I wanted to go to Williamsburg instead of Greenpoint, since they no idea Brooklyn exists past Bedford Ave.

Cage Fighters

This story caught my eye, not just because it’s heart-warming to hear of a drunken asshole getting humiliated, but also because the words ‘cage fighter’ jumped out at me.

What is it with cage fighters at the moment? I feel as if I hear about cage fighters a lot. Maybe I’m naive, but I had no idea that fighting in a cage has become such a popular activity.

I’ve seen it on tv a few times, and it’s impossible not to comment that after a couple of punches, cage fights end up on the mat, with a lot of crotch-sniffing and general substitution of violence for sex.

I think cage fighting would be better if they got rid of the macho dudes. It should be skinny intellectual guys! Fighters must be over six foot and under 11 stone! The loser’s the first guy to get his glasses broked and his book ripped up! I reckon I could be king of the ring.

TGI Friday’s WHAT?

I went to TGI Friday’s last night, or, as I named it after finishing one of their main courses, TGI Over. It’s the cage fighter’s cuisine of choice. Poached salmon and mint tea are not options.

I would advise caution towards any restaurant with laminated menus. You start to wonder about certain types of people who frequent such places. All the evidence suggests a lot of them need to be protected from themselves before they’ve even ordered a starter.

You ask yourself, ‘why is this menu laminated?’
Well, so you can rinse it under the tap. Rinse it of what, though? Also, you don’t get papercuts from laminated menus. A laminated menu is a limited liability menu.

I had the pork ribs with cold fries and cold onion rings. The ribs were ok, but the sauce? I’m not sure of the exact recipe, but this is close: take a full bottle of vinegar, empty half of it into your eye, then fill up the bottle with a bag of sugar and a tablespoon of bourbon. Stir in the collected fingernail dirt of a thousand tramps, leave it somewhere warm for a couple of days, then absolutely saturate your meat with it. Make sure the meat has absorbed so much of your sticky brew that even an internationally respected food critic couldn’t tell what type of animal your meat used to be.

Look, I’m not saying it didn’t taste good: it did. But as soon as it was sitting in my stomach, I couldn’t wait for it to get the hell out of my digestive system before it could do any permanent damage. I think I know how the pilot of the Enola Gay felt before the big drop. I feel like I ought to write my guts a note of apology on rice paper and send it down there with some steamed fish and vegetables.

That’s not to say I didn’t have a good time.

In a World….

I think the guy behind the new Dixon’s slogan – ‘The last place you want to go’ either had a nervous breakdown or a moment of clarity. It is absolutely true: Dixon’s IS the last place you’d want to go. Maybe he’s also worked on the new Gervais movie, the one that looks so awful you feel like you might give up on life forever if you saw it.

As ever, it’s the tagline that kills me: ‘In a world where everyone tells the truth, he just invented the lie!’

I mean, the concept makes me cringe enough as it is, but the lack of imagination in the ad copy! Someone got paid for that! Someone thought it was a job well done! How many fucking movies are going to be sold as ‘in a world where [parameter], one man just [parameter]!’?

It makes me think creativity only exists to be stifled. If your movie can’t be pitched using the above template, forget about it.

Here’s a few more I think we’ll see come out of Hollywood soon:

• In a world where people defecate from holes in their neck, he just bought a cashmere scarf!
• In a world where everyone’s hyper-sensitive to pain but also annoying, he just invented a remote-control cattle-prod!
• In a world where most people look, sound and act like Simon Cowell, one visionary high court judge is selling immunity from prosecution!
• In a world where everyone’s a little too dry, he just got damp!
• In a world where everyone has a camera, he just became a highly skilled but completely unnecessary draughtsman!

Any more for any more?

I’ve enjoyed Ricky Gervais ever since I first saw him in the UK version of The Office. His performance in his next series, Extras, was even better. Now comes The Invention of Lying, the first movie he (co)directed, and it is very entertaining!

Basically what we have here is a movie set in a world where lying never evolved. As a result, lots of things are different (like a Pepsi ad that says, “Pepsi: for when you can’t find Coke”). Enter Mark Bellison (Gervais). He’s a short little fat man with a stubby nose (as everyone keeps reminding him), and basically a loser. He writes screenplays for Lecture Films, a company that makes movie featuring a man sitting in a chair talking about history. Fiction never evolved, you see.

Mark gets fired from his job and is at a real low point in his life. Stuck having to come up with $800 to pay his rent, he tells a teller in a bank that that’s how much he has in his account. She believes him, why not, and gives him the $800 rather than the $300 actually there. Having discovered this new ability, for which he doesn’t even have a work, Mark embarks on a series of life-changing events.

Now this could’ve just been a one-dimensional situation played for easy laughs, and there’s a bit of that at first, but then he’s at his mother’s deathbed, in tears and she tells him she’s afraid of dying, of experiencing nothing for eternity (for the record, I’m not. How can one “experience” nothing, after all?). Thinking quickly, Mark tells her all about how there’s a big man in the sky who will give her a mansion to live in and a chance to be reunited with all her loved ones. She dies happy, and the hospital staff are amazed at this sudden revelation of an afterlife.

Mark has basically just invented religion.

Gervais is an outspoken atheist, and I think that’s clear in this movie, where the theory is that religion can’t exist without lying. It’s a fascinating concept and one well-explored within the film.

There’s parts of the movie that lag a little, and some concepts I would’ve liked to have seen explored a little more, but overall, this is a great film and one I recommend.

Hello traveller. Tonight, in honour of the new Ricky Gervais film ‘The Invention of Lying’ I am going to cleanse my soul by admitting to some recent instances where I have told some tall tales. And yes, that title is unfortunately a blatant lie. Had you going for a couple of seconds though, didn’t it? I’m not getting a cheeky backhander for crowbarring in the film reference by the way, but if Mr Gervais is reading, I am a big fan, and any donations to my retirement fund would be most appreciated. The same goes to Steven Spielberg, after a ‘Jurassic Park’ mention the other week; I recently worked out that I’ve spent around 3 days of my life watching the film ‘Jurassic Park’, and that’s only the first film, without adding the sequels, subsequent Mega Drive games and novels. It’s payback time Steven!

That last statement was, I’m sorry to say, completely true. However I often find myself in situations these days when people ask me questions and it’s either too much hassle or too inconvenient to actually give a truthful answer. Well, at least that’s what I tell myself. Of course ‘white-lying’ happens all the time in everyday life, but the readiness with which I’m able to come up with completely fabricated but almost entirely watertight scenarios sometimes scares me.

For example: Last Sunday I was forced into getting a taxi back from the town centre, as the bus frequency on a Sunday to my little suburb is, as the French say, “piss poor”. I walked over to the taxi office over the road from the train station, ordered my taxi and soon I was on my way. The driver was eager to make polite conversation and, seeing I had a rucksack on my back, assumed I had just arrived into town by train. “Just got in, have you?”, he asked, nodding towards the train station as we pulled away. Without thinking, breathing or skipping a beat I answered “Yeah, it’s been a long morning”, and rolled my eyes. He nodded, understanding my pain. Within a couple of minutes I had invented a 5 hour train trip from Bristol (with significant delays). I was visiting home during a reading week from university; quickly realising I may look too old to be a Fresher, I placed myself on a Masters course in Sociology. It had been difficult finding funding, but I had eventually agreed terms with a sponsor and my part time bar job gave me some “walking around money”. Now I imagine your first question would be “why?”, to which I don’t really have an answer. I had committed to the story within the first 5 seconds of entering the cab, and resolved to push on through with the subterfuge towards it’s inevitable conclusion. The cab ride would only last a maximum of 10 minutes, after which I was free to return to my old life, leaving the Bristol Sociologist locked away in a dusty corner of my brain forever more.

Of course I was aware that there was a likelihood that I would run into this particular cabbie again. Should this happen, I would have to pick up where I left off, possibly inventing a sick relative to be visiting, or set of crockery to collect. I was only limited by my own imagination, and that’s part of the fun. I think fun is the main part of it to be honest; how far the boundaries can be pushed, aware of what you can and can’t get away with, all in a perfectly harmless setting. It’s like some sort of computer game. Play it yourself: “Cabbie Convincer – how much bullshit can you get away with?”.

Of course, as with all untruths, you do tend to weave a tangled web. One possible way in which my game could be undone is on another front: the hairdresser. Now, for reasons best known to myself, I don’t often frequent the same hairdresser, and if/when I do, I seem to have a different person cutting my hair each time. In fact, I think I can safely say that I have not had my hair cut by the same person more than once in the last 3 or 4 years. Anyway, usually these trips play out in stoney silence, yours truly too flummoxed by the array of clippers and waxes to maintain conversation for very long. Usually “yeah, that looks good” or “a little more off the fringe” is as far as I go. In the few occasions when I have been pressed to chat, however, I’ve managed to invent any number of holidays, job interviews and sports accomplishments to keep (firstly and most importantly) me and (secondly) the hairdresser entertained. Frequent visitors to this blog will understand that a truthful account of my day to day life may cause the scissor-smith to take his/her own life with the tools of his/her trade (“have I told you about the time that I got a parking ticket …”). This series of, again, harmless lies has caused to to stop whenever I approach a hairdresser, thinking if I’ve made use of their services before and mentally judging what, if anything, I may have told them. Every trip to the hairdresser could be game over. It must be the same feeling mountaineers or skydivers feel. Probably.

Anyway, it’s fairly pathetic, but as I said at the start, it seems to be an almost involuntary action, like a form of tourettes. And as yet, like a skilful gentleman cat-burglar, I remain uncaught. I’ve got a trip to the opticians in a couple of weeks time; I’m thinking that he’d like to hear all about my plans for Christmas at a French Ski resort …

Ha, I’m definitely obsessed with Ricky Gervais’ comedy at the moment. I’ve watched the Office Series 1 on DVD like three times in the last week.. and then series 2 on Youtube due to lack of funds. Anyway, this is one of the best bits from Politics and it’s always the bit I try desperately to ‘re-do’ when explaining the stand-up show / I try to get second hand laughs out of. The best part is that he’s actually got some decent points about Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty and a few more…

Cemetary Junction is the new comedy from Merchant and Gervais. You know the style by now. Looking at this little promo here; I don’t think they’ll be redefining themselves anytime soon. Then again, with the amount of awards received from said style; who can blame them?

Dré

I have not laughed this hard in some time. Being a huge fan of late night television shows (all, with the exception of Jay Leno, don’t ask) I was pretty excited to catch Ricky Gervais, on Conan last night. He is the creator of The Office, as well as the director and star of the new upcoming movie The Invention Of Lying. I know his new movie seems like a repackage of Liar Liar, but in all fairness the US version of The Office. . .yea, we kinda’ stole that and repackaged it. Plus The Invention Of Lying has him in it as well as Louis C.K. Either way, he was on Conan last night and I had a good laugh.

At the same time that Ricky Gervais was on NBC, David Letterman’s program on CBS was host to the leader of our great nation, the President of the United States, Barack Obama. President Obama chatted it up with Letterman in a canned interview attempting to humanize his case for an overhaul of American health care. Letterman and Obama had none of the candid chemistry Conan and Gervais were displaying on the other network, so naturally I changed the channel back to Conan.

President Obama has stepped off Capitol Hill to address us as an equal on Letterman and actually, he wasn’t that bad. He was no Ricky Gervais but pretty decent. So as Monday late night programming came to a close, I had to ask myself who was a better guest?

Watch Gervais———————————————-Watch Obama

Obviously, for me it was Ricky Gervais. I may not be playing “Awful Jim Jam” in the near future, but I will not be laughing as hard in the near future either. But I must give Barack Obama some cred. He found himself in No Holds Barred last week for his overexposure in the media, but he wasn’t all that bad on Letterman. Not my favorite, but not the worst either.

If your one of those folks that found an opportunity to turn off your fix of Dancing With The Stars, maybe you caught Barack on Letterman and heard him out for the 115th time, or maybe you saw Ricky on Conan and began to play “Awful Jim Jam” with your mom. . . Regardless of whichever you did, let us know what you thought.

LMAO! Così divertente, Ricky al suo meglio! out of England stand up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk6Ino37LQ0&hl=en

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Will ignorance be forgiven? This is the question I posed to myself after reading an interesting post on the “New Atheism” (think Richard Dawkins and Ricky Gervais); my answer was questionable, and yet unwavering: YES.

Let me tell you a little story. I went through a horrendous marital break-up, involving a newborn child. To my knowledge, at least both my son and I were absolutely shaken to the core. Others around us shook in sympathetic vibration. Damage was done to both of us, that for months I thought would be irreplaceable with grace.  Slowly, I realized I had done some of that same damage to her. Soon, I realized that the cause for all of the damage was singular: ignorance. Ignorance about marriage, ignorance about interdependence, ignorance of reality–even the reality I had once tried to pose as a solution, before things blew up. The worst, I think, was ignorance about my own faith–how I had set it up to be a certain way, and expected God to act accordingly. That was horribly wrong, and it took several years to start emerging out of that ignorance. I spent months “reacting” against “conservative” churches, going to “liberal” ones just for that fact. I did the same with “liturgical” vs. “free”; “historic” vs. “recent”. “Catholic” vs. “Protestant”. I made a mockery of all of them, and soon I was ashamed.

But did God leave me? I don’t think so. Why? Because at my core, I did not want to be left. I knew not what I honestly believed, but I did not want to be deceived or in deception. I knew who I wanted to follow, and that was good enough. I wanted to be honest, and real, and whole, regardless of the consequences anymore–because of the self-made consequences I had experienced instead. So slowly, God in his faithfulness showed me who he was, and how he was that one I wanted to follow.

And so I come to the question of New Atheism, posed by the article linked above. Michael Spencer (no, we’re not related–except maybe by conviction) does a fine job explaining the roots of it, the personalities and struggles that understandably lead some to simply “wash off” the neo-conservative, “evangelical,” or “churched”  baptism they’ve received. Surprisingly, I think the Church (including myself) is more responsible for this misunderstanding than anything true atheists ever say; the atheists are simply the ones capitalizing on our errors.

The most formative prayer Jesus ever prayed might well be, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they are doing” (Lk. 23.34, NRSV). Why is this? Because God understands where people are, leaves it up to them for their own maturation and discovery, and rescues them from their own ignorance. If you want to be healed, or you would turn to God if you knew the truth about him, your conscience is focused. I suppose more of these New Atheists will turn to God, if or when God chooses to do away with false impressions that others have left upon them. Will you be one of the ones sorry to have judged them, if that happens? I will.

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they think about you, what they believe, or who you are.” And forgive us, for many times we are ignorant of the same. May those who have hearts yearning for you but don’t know you, know instead your peace until you give them understanding. Grace, reign over all.

Yesterday our blog got listed and rated on Blogged.com. It received a great rating, 8.3 out of 10. In the listing of comedians it placed 5 blogs behind Ricky Gervais, and ahead of Bill Maher. Two comedians we love.

Just to be in their presence even if it’s just on a web page feels humbling and great. Even if it’s a taste of what to come, because when we get our TV-show and move to Hollywood, we will be in their presence for real.

Johnny the intern calculated that Ricky Gervais, because he got a 9.6 rating, therefore is 14 percent funnier than Lunki and me. I have no idea how Johnny came up with that number and when I asked him if he wanted a calculator he just pointed to his head and said: No.