Mobile Aside: The Social Contract

Since my review of Ricky Gervais’ “Derek” pilot I’ve been taking my annual hiatus, spending the one month in every twelve, as I do, pretending to read, learn and be generally studious. A small quirk has just caught my attention, though, and led me to break silence, briefly and ashamedly…

All academic subjects have key thoughts, concepts which stretch throughout a given subject’s history. Those key thoughts always bear a key term, a banner under which all thoughts, musings and mullings-over surrounding the original thought are stored. For every key term, there’s always one or two clichéd defining phrases or tag-lines that one lazily spouts when asked to explain a particular key term. An example could be the key term ”scepticism” (the most fervent proponents of which believe that knowledge is impossible: one can know absolutely nothing, whatsoever). This key term instantaneously brings to mind two clichés for anyone who’s spent time studying it: 1. Hilary Putnam’s* idea of the ”Brain in a Vat”, and (2) René Descartes’ maxim ”I think therefore I am”.

“The Social Contract” is the key term that has caught my eye, though. I study philosophy, religious studies and politics, and ”The Social Contract” is quite a salient key term in all three. The cliché that one instantly goes to, though, varies greatly from subject to subject, and says a lot about the definer. It’s this distinction that is precisely my reason for writing.

In politics and philosophy the go-to cliché is that “The Social Contract” is a “thought experiment”, as opposed to a claim of historical accuracy. Every time one starts, “Tell me about ‘The Social Contract’.” the other will immediately lunge for “It’s a thought experiment…” and on. This is not the case in religious studies. In religious studies, the cliché of choice is that ”The Social Contract” is a “useful fiction”. “Tell me about ‘The Social Contract’.” “It’s a useful fiction…” and on. Sounds a lot less wordy, if I might be so bold, yet wherever philosophy or politics would call it a “thought experiment”, religious studies calls it a “useful fiction”: textbooks, YouTube videos, lesson-plans, the actual syllabus issued by the exam board. Perhaps the four syllables in ”experiment” are anticipated to be just too bamboozling to comprehend for the intellectual prole that is the average religious studies student. And they are all pretty average. “Goodness, they’ll probably all go off to find a history teacher so they can ask him or her when ’The Social Contract’ was signed. ‘Did Hitler sign, or was he all cheeky about it, as always? CLASSIC HITLER!’ That’s almost definitely what will happen.”

Then again, it might be the case that “experiment” isn’t the word feared as potentially problematic. It might be that, for those used to writing about whether or not a magic bearded giant sits atop a cloud all day playing puppeteer with everything in existence ever (spoiler alert: he doesn’t. You f**king idiot), the educators are afraid of causing imposition with the term “thought”.

Extrapolating from the hierarchy identified above, I can only assume that in sociology the students are shown a clip art cartoon of a scroll, flying in from left, on which someone from IT has crudely superimposed some rainbow-coloured Word Art (Arial font, obviously), spelling out “The Social Contract”, as the teacher shouts briskly (in a thick Essex accent, obviously) ”IT DI’N'T ’APPEN, WE’RE JUS’ SAYIN’ IT DID, FU’ OUR WRITIN’S.”

End of slide show, click to exit.
Jacob Kristopher Wilson xXx

*Hilary Putnam: which is the name of a MAN! I don’t want to come accross as racist, but here in the north of England we’re not so used to lads with names like that. It implies that he’s either a q**er, or else some sort of… No, it implies that he’s q**er. I mean, ”Putnam”. It just sounds intrinsically bum-ish. Us northern lads, see, we tend to get a little bit bottle-ey around those sorts of floppy-handed, basketball playing, get back in the kitchen, big society, ready money round, I can’t help you it’s an automatic lock-in…

Review: “Derek”

Above: ground-breaking comedy and heart-warming drama.

Regular readers know that I press reviews quite rarely. I’ve only ever reviewed when something has really stirred me. It’s that fact, along with my unique brand of optimism and the entry’s title that I’m sure has many of you expecting a scathing rant about Ricky Gervais’ pilot “Derek”, broadcast on Thursday night (the twelfth of April). And that expectation would serve as a shining example of my regular readers’ impeccable powers of deduction.

As always, before reviewing I read some other opinion online. The Telegraph gave it four stars and called it “impressive”, which got me to thinking “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was good. Surely The Telegraph’s Chris Harvey knows more about this show, and about sitcoms generally, than I do. He’s a professional reviewer, and perhaps that warrants respect and means that I should actually accept that he’s highly likely to be right and I wrong.” After around half a second, however (I only had to read as far as the subtitle to see the cracks) I realised that the review’s residence on the website of a national newspaper did not mean that it was worthy of even a stitch of respect. Now read these quotes:

Gervais has explained, and quite convincingly so (as above), that his character is not disabled in any sense, but rather that Derek is just a regular, slow guy. And Gervais is demonstratively unafraid of defending scripts which discuss disabled people controversially. Recall his repeated refusal to bow under pressures to apologise for using the term “mong” numerous times in numerous works? Christopher: if you’re going to have the nerve to take such healthy wages for your (poorly written*) reviews of things that you clearly know virtually nothing about, well then it’s inexcusable for you not to at least scan a couple of paragraphs about said thing on Wikipedia. Carrying out five minutes of the most entry-level, lazy high school student-standard ground work before sending something out to readers up and down the country should surely be a given, for f**k’s sake.

So, Chris Harvey’s opinion is absolutely worthless – we know that now. And so on to another review, this one by a more sexually attractive reviewer.  I start by saying that watching “Derek” facilitated what were quite simply thirty of the most peculiar minutes of my life. I should make it clear that in these largely post-Gervaisian times, when it’s very trendy to have “liked him in’t’ “Office” but I’m not a fan no more. Bit full of ‘imself, like, isn’t he Debbie?” I am an actual defender of his. I don’t think he’s done anything as good as “The Office” since, but as my “Further Reading” list (accessible from the menu beneath the logo at the top of the page) will attest, everything he’s come out with between then and now I still consider important and worth watching. In no way, then, was I predisposed to dislike “Derek”. Quite the contrary, if anything. But, and here’s the thing that’s really strange, and weird, and positively oops upside your head – I do dislike “Derek”. Very much.

The mawkishness of “The Office” (the soundtrack’s contribution to the thing; the will-they-won’t-they love story; in fact, the premise in its entirety – a documentary, a pretence which is acknowledged by the cast at various points throughout the narrative) meets the genuine nice guy the likes of which we saw at the centre of “Extras”. The only thing properly new about “Derek”, that isn’t just a large hadron collision of things we’ve seen before, is the actual jokes. And this innovation does not work well.

The most salient jokes in the show were physical (which is almost never a good sign). Derek fell into a pond, sat on his rhubarb crumble and ran around naked. If done really, really well, at the right time in the narrative, with the right mood, to the right character, accompanied by the right soundtrack; all written just right; then mediocre slapstick can sometimes be funny, if you’re lucky. But therein lies perhaps the most fundamental problem with this program: while Derek may not be disabled (as established above), he’s certainly been dealt a strikingly sh**ty hand in life. He’s a likeable fool, an underdog that we’re rooting for, and when we see him suffering misfortune or discomfort it’s simply not enjoyable – laughter does not come. And, before you defend it by branding these jokes “darkly comic”, they ain’t: we’re not lead to laugh at the horror of the whole thing – we’re not shocked that someone actually wrote this loveable character, who’s already had such rotten luck, having even worse luck, and there are several reasons why we’re not lead to laugh like this: (a) because the soundtrack (melancholic classical piano) and long pans of dim, deserted rooms at the old peoples’ home both clarify that Derek’s strife does not comprise Charlie Chaplain pratfalls, nor over-the-top tongue-in-cheek depraved “South Park” shock laughs, this is just crushing, and (b) because these unfortunate interludes aren’t overtly, saliently, hugely unfortunate: they’re not unbelievable bad luck – they’re just a little bit sh**ty, time after time. Derek just has what most of us would call a bad day, and deals with it by being quite upset for a bit and then illogically optimistic. It’s not funny.

And, for those who may be really trying to find some point to the whole endeavour, it might seem like Derek’s optimism is enough. It could be intended to be a message of hope, this show, with some Gervais laughs thrown in to boot. After all, “Derek” has sometimes been branded a “sitcom” but has also been called a “comedy drama”. Well, the show is perhaps even weaker and emptier as a drama. The program feels about as funny as one of those dramas that’s had a few comic scenes thrown in for the sake of it, but away from the humour the drama alone is very shallow and unsatisfying in itself: the message is unclear, very little happens, little narrative distance is travelled, and the jokes trample all over any moral suggested or question raised.

In defence of “Derek”, the acting is absolutely perfect. No problems whatsoever with anyone at all, at any point. But it’s inescapable: doing a s**t thing excellently will never produce something excellent. It will produce s**t.

As I’ve said, “Derek” sees the humour of “Extras” meet the harshly depressing tone of “The Office”. The problem is that that’s a really, really terrible way to take influence from these two decent shows. “The Office” was much funnier than “Extras”. What “Extras” had going for it was its production style; the stuff around the jokes. The humour of “The Office” with the shooting style of “Extras” (so “Derek” with its influences taken the other way round) – that would be worth making. “Derek”, as it is, isn’t.

Goodbye.
Jacob Kristopher Wilson xXx

*I am well aware that by calling someone a poor writer I open the door to any number of facetious quips about my own writing. One such brand of quip may center upon my grammar, which is sometimes (perhaps even often) erroneous. However, my critique of Christopher Harvey stands still, in light of the fact that I do not get paid for my writing as Christopher does, I am not writing for anything as widely read as a national newspaper, and thus my responsibility is nowhere near as large. And I quite openly write how I speak, a stylistic choice which I took early on knowing full well that it was not the ideal way to write these things but going on regardless as it was the best of the options open to me. My options in writing were limited as I have not studied for a university degree to aid me in my writing of these pieces as I expect that Chris has.

The “Further Reading” List is Here

It’s been a long time coming, but today I finally finished formatting that which has already been compiled, edited, chopped and changed more times than Madonna, in consideration of both her songs and her face.

Extensive though it is (the list, not the face) I’ve narrowed it down to just thirty-five choices, categorised by, essentially, how accessible they are: Chris Morris’ “Jam” is not for the faint hearted, nor the entirely sane.

It’s got its own page, so I implore you to go there, to www.jacobsjapes.wordpress.com/further-reading to have a look. And it goes without saying that it’s absolutely ripe for comment, so please feel free to make use of the comment box beneath the list (a) to dispute an inclusion, (b) to contest that something is not present which ought to be (maybe I don’t like it, or maybe I’m unaware of it altogether: enlighten me), or (c) to write whatever the f**k you want: it’s the internet. I don’t own you!

I hope you find it both amusing and useful.

Jacob Kristopher Wilson xXx

“Sticky Keys” EP Released Midnight Tonight

My EP “Sticky Keys” is indeed out at midnight tonight (00:01am, Saturday 31st March 2012). Here are the links mentioned in the video there:

• The “Sticky Keys” EP on Bandcamp: http://www.jacobsjapes.bandcamp.com
• A free 30 second preview of ”Sticky Keys” on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv-cwP7vDAQ

Doctor Kristoph Reviews “Sticky Keys”

Thursday the 22nd of March’s post saw the arrival of, amongst other letters, parcels and packages, my review copy of Jacob Kristopher Wilson’s upcoming EP “Sticky Keys”. As a close personal friend of his, I’m well aware of his skills as a classical singer and composer, but electronica? As soon as he told me of this new project I knew that it would be something I’d have to hear for myself before positing so much as a single comment.

Opening the brown cardboard box, I was greeted by orange and white tissue paper. Unwrapping this, I found inside, unpredictably, an audio cassette tape: Wilson’s effort at a near-joke, I assumed. And so I was left with no option but to walk out of the flat, to the car park. I loaded the cassette into my Model T Ford’s stereo system. The second that I pressed play my expectations were instantly laid to waste, not so much pushed aside as obliterated; smashed into a million pieces. I was ineffably surprised by the incredible polish Wilson’s lead track had. The female vocalist he’d sourced was particularly industry-standard, far surpassing what I’d anticipated for a digital-only download from an internet comedian who I’m sure it is generally agreed is, at best, mediocre. His vocalist sounded not unlike Madonna, back in her heyday, and after the first line was sung I found myself listening to the track through new ears.

The Radio Edit’s bass is thorough and deep, physically shaking any speaker that takes it on, while the electronic melody creates an inescapable sensation of rising euphoria: it’s clear right away that this track will fill dance floors as soon as it’s released, and that it will continue to do so in years to come.

The guest artists who chime in throughout and take over at the bridge enhance an already wondrous track, making it truly interstellar.

And so to track two, the remix, available exclusively on the EP. Unlike much of the filler we see on downloadable EPs in the present climate, this bonus adds genuine value, in the form of another popular artist who was not present in the Radio Edit. This remix fuses a new feel-good track with a classic one, and will undoubtedly get clubbers out of their seats and onto the dance-floor. I’m sure, also, that it will not fail to incite a handful of remixes from up-and-coming DJs releasing their own home-made productions online. No doubt this was a big part of Wilson’s intention.

As the last note of the second track of two, the remix, finishes, I realise that I’ve been having such fun listening that I have largely abandoned my post as reviewer and merely enjoyed Wilsons’ tracks. Just like Noel Edmond’s on weekdays, I have no questions but one: if I’m honest, I myself don’t “get” the whole “Sticky Keys” thing. Jacob has told me that it’s a computer term, to do with the beeps in the tracks, and I conclude that it’s something the youth will “get”, but still, for me, it’s a bit of a miss. Perhaps it’s not the track, but me, and either way it remains a bloody good piece of music.

I take a moment to appreciate just what Wilson has managed to do here. He’s made two tracks, both of which sound like they could have easily come from any chart-topping mainstream act of the day, but he’s done it all from scratch, sat at his own desk, in his domestic surroundings up in the North of England. The mind boggles.

I move my finger to the eject button, and before pressing it in, remember Wilson’s decision to send me a cassette tape rather than a CD. With this newfound respect for him as a musician, I muse on whether his choice of medium was actually not a joke, but a conscientious decision as if to imply that his songs are worth more than a domestically-burned compact disk or digital file, but that they could have actually stood their ground decades ago, in a time before self-publishing, where you had to prove yourself worthy before you could even get a demo made. Perhaps he means to tell me that he believes his tracks would have stood up against those vicious, immovable titans of the music industry, in a pre-Myspace world, which is, after all, the time when a childhood Wilson would have started to have dreams of becoming a pop star. And, after listening to his tracks, it’s difficult to disagree with such a sentiment.

I hit the eject button, and look down at the tape -

- This was not Wilson’s EP. I had been listening to the limited edition cassette version of Madonna’s “Give Me All Your Luvin’” EP which I’d been waiting for from Amazon. I telephoned Wilson later, and was informed that he’d forgotten to post the EP. Wilson is an imbecile: do not buy anything from him.

Review by Doctor Kristoph.

Announcing the World’s First Comedy Electronica EP “Sticky Keys” (feat. Microsoft Anna and Siri)

Comedian, philanthropist, gang-land don and now music producer: I’m talking, of course, about the original host of the UK version of Family Fortunes, Les Dennis. Since Mark Ronson took him under his wing, he’s been knocking out some pretty tasty tunes, and no mistake! “Give me that Reggae, Reggae Sauce…” No, not really – he’s not a philanthropist – have you seen what he said about Rosa Parks, of the civil rights movement? He said she was “black”. Bang out of order! No, I’m talking about ME, big fat Jacob Kristopher Wilson, with his big fat ego and his big fat jokey jokes! And his big fat ability to talk in the third person: that’s him!

Some jokes there, but yes, I done an EP. It’s called “Sticky Keys”, and it might well be the first Comedy Electronica EP the music industry has ever seen - if you can’t beat them, don’t compete! The EP comprises two tracks, both called “Sticky Keys” (one being the Radio Edit and one being an exciting “Africa Remix”). Here’s the album art –

– Very exciting, I’m sure you’ll agree. I should point out at this juncture that, despite previous offerings of a “home for fat people”, tales of several murders and accounts of “Laughter-noon Tea” with a handful of celebrities, I am actually, genuinely to release an EP, which you actually genuinely honest-to-(non-existent-)God will be able to download, genuinely. In fact, here’s a thirty second “teaser” of the Radio Edit, in which you’ll find some of the pre-song robo-foreplay, and some of the bridge (which is just before the drop*, so I’m told) to get your ears all horny –

In an exhilarating, fresh, open-minded and downright youth-tastic move, I’ve decided to release the EP through a website called Bandcamp, whose infrastructure means two things. Firstly you, yes YOU, you fundamentally floored worker-bee, you wil get to set your own price: you’ll listen to the tracks, and then choose how much you think the EP is worth (and yes, the software technically will let you pay nothing for my EP, and no, Bandcamp were not willing to satisfy my request for anyone who downloads my EP for nothing to be presented instead with an MP3 file of me shouting “you f**king Jew!” at them). The other thing the “pick-your-own-price” system means, of course, is that I will almost certainly make absolutely no profit from this EP, nor enough to even break even even. GO INTERNET! Smiley.

The EP will be available to download from 00:01am on Saturday the 31st of March, 2012. After that time you can get it for yourself and hear it. I’m sure most of you got that, but my stats tell me I’ve readers in the Bootle area, so it’s best to be clear. No, I don’t care whether you’re reading on a computer that you legitimately purchased in a retail outlet, or whether you’re reading on one that you just happened to find lying around in a stranger’s locked house one night, or even one that a businessman was just slapping the keys on in a coffee shop, before you permanently borrowed it from him. And caved his f**king head in. Also, I love The Beatles, as well, so that’s…

There’ll be more coverage before the EP is released. My sometimes writing partner Charles McKnight (who I’m sure will be disappointed to find out that his name there is not a hyperlink to his blog, but instead takes clickers to a hilarious Google Image result [go on: I'll wait]) will hopefully interview me about it, and Doctor Kristoph has been sent an advance copy already, so his review ought to be along very soon indeed.

I believe you can pre-order the EP right now (although quite why you’d choose to do so is absolutely beyond me. In case we run out of digital downloads? No. To stimulate the economy with a pound of frittered slummy, because you buy into the Tories mind-f**king theory that “all we need to do to get richer is to spend all of our money”? Not quite, sirs. Not quite). Wow: most of that paragraph was in brackets. Oh comedy, how you slaughter my writing, you fowl temptress.

Until next time (obvsiouly: bit of an arbitrary thing to say really – time is linear: it was never going to be “until last time”, was it?) good bye.

Jacob Kristopher Wilson xXx

*”drop”, the musical term, so I reckon: not like Davina McCall’s schadenfreude-fest “Million Pound Drop”.

Apologies from Workingsville

Hello. There’s been a bit of a gap since I last wrote, I see. In explanation I stress that I have been writing, very much in fact, much more than usual; just not on’t’ blog. I’ve been writing jokes about TV for an upcoming thing, and working on a printed thing for an upcoming print-out. I’ve also been working on the previously-touted “Reading List”, the compiling of which has actually proven to be a gargantuan task, gathering all of my past favourites into a large list, then categorising them down once more.

I do hope you’ve been well, and promise more content soon. I’ll be adding another new PAGE (“ooh, mother-f**ker, dats classay! You a classy b**ch, Master Wilson”) full of past, present and future projects. You’ll then be able to read that, with your eyes, into your f**king brain! What an age we live in.

In the mean time I leave you with an amuse-yeux which pleases me every day as it’s not just been set up for this photo-op, but is an actual thing in my life. It comprises a bookmark I was given by a “Christian Union” group, and my current read.

Until soon, then, goodbye.

Jacob Kristopher Wilson xXx