Simple but very cool

This footage I found on YouTube of Nirvana's 1989 Bleach tour is super interesting. Though the video pretty much just shows the band on the road, doing their thing, and the moments that are captured might seem mundane, I feel like the video feels kinda special. If anything, it's a testament to the coolness of technology. I mean, video cameras capture and can transport us in an instant back to these moments that probably would have otherwise just fallen through the cracks of our fingers like fine sand.

Check it out. I think the video gets really cool around 1:34, when Krist says, "We should move in our stuff before it starts raining."

Funny how things work

Normally, I don't usually write about the dreams I have. Everyone knows dreams are crazy and everyone's dreams are crazy. So it's not usually that interesting. But last night I had a dream that was, well, yes, crazy, but also gives a lot of insight into how the mind and things work. So I'll tell.

It all started on Friday night -- in real life now -- when was I sitting in someone's living room. I was hanging out with a bunch of people, we were all drinking wine and I was a bit buzzed. As we sat there, someone recommended we put on a British sitcom. At first I moaned because I just never found British humor funny.

Anyway, this person, a girl, eventually put on the show, and, as I had suspected, I didn't find it funny. It was all, well, British. But the girl kept on raving about it. I told her I didn't get it. Then I told her that I wondered if it was me. Did I just not get it or something? Was British humor an acquired taste? I just didn't find any of it funny.

This girl said that she didn't think that British humor was an acquired taste, but she did say that if you watch British sitcoms, you really have to pay attention to find it funny. Another person in the living room chimed in and said, "Yeah, you're not going to turn on a sitcom like this"  -- referring to the one on the TV -- "and go in the kitchen and cook yourself dinner while keeping an ear on it." They both agreed you really need to pay attention.

Sensing that I was still a bit frustrated with this answer, the girl said, "Well, in all honesty, maybe it's not good to start you off with this kind of show. It's a bit sophisticated." So she quickly went to YouTube and found something that she thought was simpler, a British humor skit that was perhaps more accessible to an American.

She clicked play. The skit all about this guy who goes fishing at night. And something strange happens. This guy, he's fishing and he is out there on the water and all of a sudden some sort of fish creature, some sort of ugly, scaly, half-man-half-fish, drag-queen looking creature with seaweed on his head jumps on his boat.

The creature guy, whose wearing a pink tutu, mind you, exposes himself to this man and a ray of light  shoots forth from his genitals and hits the man in the eyes. The ray of light knocks the unconscious. When the guy wakes up, he is now in the swampy lair that this creature, this loathsome, detestable funky creature calls home. 

The guy tells the fish man that he wants to leave, that he has places to be and wants to go home but the swamp-thing stalls. The creature tells the guy he should have some Bailey's Irish Cream -- it's pretty much the only thing this creature has in his "home" -- and he has bottles and bottles of it! 

Anyway, the two talk and the creature -- who says his name is Old Gregg -- suddenly asks the guy -- "Do love me?" And the guy flatly answers no. But then the creature says, "Do you think you could ever love me?" Again, the guy says no. The creature keeps going, "Do you think you could learn to love me?" Same response. Then the creature finally says, "You do love me." The two argue and the guy finally says, "I find you slightly pathetic, so deal with that." The creature, slightly stung, says, "Maybe I will deal with it, hmm. Maybe I'll deal with it the way I dealt with Curly Jefferson!" and points to a spot in the layer directly above the guy's head. The guy looks up and, directly above him,  a few feet up, is this guy, like, glued to the ceiling, dead. The dead man's face is a bit mutilated and frozen in a horrifying grimace. 

So the guy, now scared and probably fearing for his life, says, "You know what...maybe I was being a bit hasty there when I said I didn't love you." Just as quickly as he said he didn't love him, now says, "Perhaps now, in this light, with you, in the tutu, and the...water playing off your...seaweed...maybe I... could love you. Maybe I was lying because sometimes when you do love someone you...say you don't because...you're playing hard to get, playing a game." 

Eventually, after a little more talk and a musical number that the two perform together, the creature says that he'll take the guy back above ground, back to dry land, the real world, if he agrees to "take my hand" -- which is really a flipper -- "in marriage." 

Seeing a way out of this hell, the guy agrees, and the creature puts a ring on him and the two go back up to the real world. The skit ends with the creature in a wedding dress standing on top of a moving van driven by the guy. (Don't ask.) The creature, standing up there on the roof, wind blowing in his sea weed,  lifts up his skirt. His genitals again emit a ray of light and he gives off one final, thunderous shout, "I'm Old Gregg!"

After the skit ended, I was bewildered. I didn't think it was really very funny -- all right, maybe a tiny, tiny bit. But I really thought it was strange, almost disturbing, that people would actually think such a skit was funny. "What's up with those people in Britain," I thought.

Anyway, skip ahead a little to later in the night. I get home, brush my teeth and go to bed. And I have this dream. And in my dream, I'm telling my mother about having watched this skit. I'm saying, "Ma, you should have seen this British humor skit that I watched. It was really awful." And then I start recounting the details. The guy, the freaky fish creature, his swampy lair. And then I start telling my mom that the only thing that this creature has in his lair is bottles and bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream. I tell my mom how the creature keeps on offering his "guest" more glasses of Irish Cream. 

And, all of a sudden in my dream, that seems kinda funny. 

And then I tell my mom how the fish-man suddenly asks his reluctant guest through blubbery, red lipstick-painted lips, "Could you love me?" And how the guy dryly says "No." And how they go back and forth with that. OK, I think in my dream, that's actually pretty funny. Then I tell my mom how the guy gets scared by seeing the last person who refused the fish-man's advances and how the guy then quickly changes his tune and says, "You know, I think I could love you...Maybe I was just playing hard to get."

And all this starts to seem really, really funny. As I tell my mom all these details, the skit, in fact,  seems more and more like a riot. 

So yeah.

Now skip ahead to my waking up today. I wake up and I realize that I had this dream, and I think to myself, "Holy crap, was that skit funny? I think it was. I think it actually might have been one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time." And I really, really want to watch the skit again. And so I do. 

And now I think it's funny as heck.

But first I had to recount the details in a dream and think they were funny in a dream before I could process it all and think it's funny in real life.

***

Here's the actual skit. Let me know what you think.