Culture

A Life in Comedy

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For reasons that bore me, I am one of those lucky few whose brain does not retain jokes. Neither knock-knock groaners nor shaggy-dog tales; there are not many punchlines that are still connected to the matching set-up.

Which is in itself funny, as I have written and performed radio comedy on and off for as long as I have been an adult. A quarter of a freakin’ century.

Each Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. (alert: this is tonight), the Magnificent Glass Pelican half-hour is broadcast on 88.7 FM WFNP (“The Edge”) in the Rosendale-New Paltz, New York, area. The Pelican is a live half-hour radio comedy show that my friends and I have written, produced, and acted in since 1990. Lately, it has been an improvised half-hour, produced by us and scripted live on-air. We have an unwritten rule that no rules should be written.

For those who do not live there, the radio station streams the show live here at this link. Click on it and turn down your volume, as the station usually has its settings maxed out. This is at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the broadcasts are not archived, so if you can check us out live tonight, thank you.

I no longer live in New Paltz, NY, so I have not been a live participant in a year. But the show still goes on.
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#RaifBadawi and Official Cruelty

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gave an official response this week to criticism of its sentence of flogging for writer Raif Badawi. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia responded to Amnesty International, Prince Charles, the German foreign minister, the Canadian foreign minister, the millions of petition creators and signers around the world, the tens of thousands who have marched in protest of a country’s policy of whipping as a punishment for writing. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia delivered a response to a young woman and mother of three whose husband has been sentenced to a caning for writing.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wants us to know that it is angry about the criticism, does not like it even one bit, and would like us all to mind our own business. In more diplomatic language, it released an anonymous statement which said in part: “Saudi Arabia expresses its intense surprise and dismay at what is being reported by some media about the case of citizen Raif Badawi and his sentence. Saudi Arabia at the same time emphasises that it does not accept interference in any form in its internal affairs.”

It took a visit from the German foreign minister to elicit this cold response. The only response that could have been even more cruel, a Friday flogging of the writer this morning, the same week as the official statement was released, did not take place:

The fact that I am celebrating the absence of that response this one week, the “see? we told you not to interfere” response that all abusers know to deploy on occasion, underlines the sad state of this affair. Here we see the abuser blame the victim for causing them the hassle of abusing them. Other people were flogged publicly today in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, some for the crime of having ideas; one writer just happened to not be a part of the parade this morning.
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‘Poetry of Departures’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Philip Larkin (August 9, 1922–December 2, 1985), was a librarian at the University of Hull in the north of England. He was also a major poet; almost thirty years after his death, he is consistently ranked among the top ten post-war English writers. Born in Coventry, he studied at Oxford University and became best friends with Kingsley Amis; he contributed to and helped edit Amis’ first novel, “Lucky Jim,” which launched Amis on his own legendary career in literature.

He accepted the position at Hull, far away from the London literary scene, in 1955 and never left. He rarely saw London or Oxford, even more rarely spent time abroad, never set foot in Canada or America. In 1964, a television program profiled Larkin, who by then had published two novels and three volumes of poetry and was being ranked among the best writers of his generation. Asked about his affiliation with Hull, he replied, “I never thought about Hull until I was here. Having got here, it suits me in many ways. It is a little on the edge of things, I think even its natives would say that. I rather like being on the edge of things. One doesn’t really go anywhere by design, you know, you put in for jobs and move about, you know, I’ve lived in other places.”
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