Month: December 2012

Best of British: Part 8

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I’ve now posted quite a few Best of British posts and, although I’m sure I’ll do one or two more at some point in the future, I’ve pretty much covered most of the British comedy shows that I love. For this entry I thought I’d mention two relatively recent shows produced by the comedy duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Peep Show

The dubiously named “Peep Show” was my first exposure to Mitchell & Webb. The show’s central characters are two friends, Mark and Jeremy. Mark is repressed, uptight and slightly obsessive, whereas Jeremy is his antithesis: directionless, hedonistic and more than a little thick.

The humour is often crass and tasteless, but has some really wonderful moments. The camera will often switch to the view of one of the characters and, when this happens, the audience gets the privilege of hearing that person’s inner monologue. Upon trying to talk his way out of a tricky situation you hear Jeremy think “That’s it, just say whatever you need to say….they’re just words…you can think about what they mean later”. We are also treated to a wonderful presentation of “bloke wisdom” when, while talking to a girl, we hear Mark think: “My God, she’s beautiful….I bet nobody’s ever told her…I should tell her!…wait, no…if I tell her and she realizes it, she’ll dump me for sure”…

That Mitchell and Webb Look

Following the success of “Peep Show”, Mitchell and Webb produced a comedy sketch show. I think it’s hard to do sketch shows well and it’s extremely hard to keep the comedy standard consistent between different sketches.

It’s quite rare that I ever want to watch an episode of a sketch show more than once, but I’ve found “That Mitchell and Webb Look” to have good replay value, having some particularly great sketches such as the Nasty Vicar, The Homeopathic Emergency Room and, of course, what’s comedy without some Nazis?

The King and I

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The following is the parable of the King and the Maiden by Soren Kierkegaard:

Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden who lived in a poor village in his kingdom. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist – no one dared resist him. But would she love him?

She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know for sure? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf between them. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal.

The king, convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, resolved to descend to her. Clothed as a beggar, he approached her cottage with a worn cloak fluttering loose about him. This was not just a disguise – the king took on a totally new identity – He had renounced his throne to declare his love and to win hers.

servant-king

Learning from the Artist’s art

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tuscany

“[Y]ou can learn a great deal about an artist from the works he creates. Surely you see that God is more creative than we can possibly imagine, and romatic to the core. Lovers and honeymooners choose places like Hawaii, the Bahamas, or Tuscany as a backdrop for their love. But whose idea was Hawaii, the Bahamas or Tuscany?” – John Eldridge, Epic, Page 46

Happy Hanukkah!

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Sunset last night marked the beginning in the Jewish liturgical year of “Hanukkah “, also known as the “Festival of Lights”.

Hanukkah is an eight-day feast which commemorates the re-dedication of the Jerusalem Temple after the Maccabean Revolt in the Second Century BC.  A description of this revolt is found recorded in 1st Maccabees, a book  found in the Deuterocanon and therefore absent from Protestant Bibles. It is interesting to note, however, that we know for a fact that this festival was celebrated by Jesus:

“And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch.” – John 10:22-23

Today on Facebook I’ve been re-publishing my previous Hanukkah posts (such as this and this), but my favourite definitely has to be the a cappella version of “Dynamite” by the ever-creative Maccabeats:

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