Sorry, this is just a screen shot, you can’t click it … well you can but it won’t take you anywhere – explained below…
Story by Emmjay
So, some time ago I chanced to watch a video on TED featuring Esther Perel. Esther Perel is a major force in couples counselling. I gather this comes from doing it for thirty years. Couples counselling that is, not from doing “IT”.
She has a lot of short clips, podcasts and YouTube videos – as well as a clutch of books to her name. And she is a wonderful story teller – as so many TED speakers are.
Now Pig’s Arms patrons who have spent any time in the company of a psychologist or three will know that helping folks to sort out some serious life problems is both a great challenge and a godsend when it’s done well. And a distilled nightmare when it isn’t done well.
Take it from me, Esther is black belt seventh dan in couples counselling. She cuts through and you will find her truly amazing. She has a beautiful French accent and she could be reading the racing results and I’d still be enraptured.
But this story isn’t about Esther (go and check her out yourself). It’s about how YouTube track your viewing history, your search history and probably watch you reading Playboy – for the stories, naturally. And then they suggest some other stuff quite like that but different. Which is half the fun.
So the other day, amongst a bunch of suggested videos relating to my abiding interest in music clips, comedy and various TED talks, up pops something that I think must be a new hybrid entertainment – kind of a cross between the polished TED talks and stand top comedy. Not just any comedy, but comedy of the type that tends to stray dangerously close to jokes that could be regarded as blue at best or in poor taste at worst. At least I imagine that it doesn’t taste great, despite being somewhat compelling in a soft pawn kind of way.
Now, I’m not one to be about advertising soft pawn (yep I spelled it that way to get around blocks for patrons who have to go through censorial firewalls). But speakers on the Mystery Box Show from that hotbed of steaminess, Portland Oregon range from not very funny stand up comedians hell bent on telling you about their salacious pastimes … to raconteurs of gentle heartfelt stories illustrating the frailties of tragic human relations, not skirting matters of the bedroom.
YouTube has an interesting feature – encrypted URLs – so I can’t just copy and paste a URL for you to have a poke around in the Mystery Box Show, but if you go to YouTube and copy
A Teen Fantasy Come True: James Cox @ The Mystery Box Show
into the YouTube search box, you will find a chap retelling his encounter with his very own version of Mrs Robinson from “the Graduate”. Here’s to you, indeed, Mrs Robinson !
OK, it’s a tastefully told shagging dog story, but it has a happy ending.
Off you go now, and don’t blame me if you drift off topic and fall into an uncomfortable monologue about people who like to play clarinet.
A Teen Fantasy Come True: James Cox @ The Mystery Box Show.
Most of the time I am overwhelmed by the massive global turd fest and the powerful drive to right wing governments all over the fucking world.
FM and I have stopped watching the news on TV especially – which is what Germans would have done in the 1930s – if TV had been invented then. But I imagine with no knowledge of the topic that the presses were already polluted by the shit purveyed by our very own export fascist Merdeoch.
Fortunately some dude with a suspiciously kiwi accent has assembled a montage of Ken Loach and Stuart Lee putting to the sword the exceptionally difficult “fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t” issue of Brexit.
There is a brief reference from the narrator about some of Ken Loach’s work – that bears further exploration.
When I was kid in primary school and later (as it so often turns out) in high school and university, I became an avid reader of John Steinbeck’s short stories.
My favourite, I think was Cannery Row set in Monterey and written around Steinbeck’s best friend, the marine biologist John Ricketts. The story is so beautifully written that I swear the pages are redolent of the fish passing through the cannery.
I was blissfully unaware that Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature, joining another of my favourite writers – Hemingway
I visited Monterey many years ago in search of my hero, but it was a rushed trip and I was heading for home, down the fabled Ventura Highway from San Francisco to Los Angeles and then flying back to Sydney. As the documentary says, Steinbeck is now a celebrated son of Salinas County but it was not always so. The good burghers of Salinas had a history of burning his books for the crime of describing the famers as exploiting their workers – the Mexican fruit pickers and Oakies fleeing the dustbowl of the south eastern states.
It was not uncommon for Republicans to describe Steinbeck as a communist and while he no doubt had leftist sympathies, I doubt that he was a card carrying comrade.
But Steinbeck is big tourist business nowadays and all is apparently forgiven.
I hope you have the time and inclination to watch the documentary – and enjoy it as much as I did.
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