Three things have caught my eye since the last post. First up, I watched some of "Cool as Ice" the 1991 film flop starring Vanilla Ice. That persona and those clothes almost defy description. I had not remembered that "Word to your mother" originated with this guy. Thanks to Wiki, I now also know that Robert Van Winkle is doing the reality TV rounds. It is quite sad that the prime of his life will be tarnished by the memory of his sudden rise to fame, and subsequent free fall. According to Wiki, in the early 90s his peeps put out a biography of him full of lies to make him seem more credible. Talk about adding fuel to the fire of public opinion. I think I will now drop the white hip hop thang - my efforts at humour pale in comparison to Van Winkle. Although, seen another way, perhaps his story has more pathos than humour.

Number two eye catcher was a review of Darkmans, a book by Nicola Barker. The ghost of John Scogin, a 15th Century jester in the court of King Edward IV, inhabits characters in the book. From what I can gather, his is a nasty, yet intellectual kind of humour. Barker said that he changed the history of comedy. It is hard to imagine that in a world without mass communication there could be a prevailing type of humour. But perhaps what we know of humour back then is confined to the court.

In a world of print publishing, TV, and internet, the fashion of humour seems to change at the blink of an eye (although it will always be true that Adam Sandler will never be funny) which brings me to my third point. A 16 year old boy, Corey Worthington, from Melbourne, Australia has earned notoriety by hosting a party that got out of control while his parents were on holiday. His star is ascendant now that he has showed himself to be quite the lovable idiot, but with a selfish "me generation" twist. I am predicting a move back to this lovable idiot kind of humour (think Wayne's World with lots of text, big sunglasses and family dysfunction). This trend should last at least a couple of weeks.