Give A Cheer If You’re Here: Intellectual Cowardice, Actual Cowardice, And Me

Every Thursday I go to the comic shop and tell myself I’m not going to have a pint with the week’s purchases, and that I’m especially not going to chase that pint with a cheap double vodka and red bull at the cheap double vodka and red bull pub that’s three minutes from the comic shop. Most Thursdays I fail myself.

At the cheap double vodka and red bull pub, they have an Open Mic Night. I never understood the full horror of that until tonight.

Open Mic Nights are built on a foundation of intellectual cowardice. Somebody has an acoustic guitar and knows some acoustic guitar songs – dull, jumped-up folk music by the likes of Keane, Coldplay, Radiohead etc. Boring old nothing that was interesting once but now… isn’t. Once upon a time, boys with fire and boredom in their veins scrawled three chords on a photocopied sheet of paper. “THIS IS A CHORD. THIS IS ANOTHER. THIS IS A THIRD. NOW FORM A BAND.” The equivalent in the student world is: this is a song that shows you have deep feelings. This is another. You really don’t need a third. Now perform at an Open Mic Night and try to pull a girl who’s as pathetic and soul-dead as you are.

At least there’s hope for the New Soulless Non-Rebels – maybe, in my wildest and most secret dreams, they’ll become a Jimmy Webb or a Gordon Lightfoot or a King Missile, or something, anything that’s even interesting for one second, and maybe – and there’s something like a billion-to-one chance of this happening – they’ll look in a mirror and realise that they are nothing. And their ability to play crap acoustic guitar versions of ‘Baby Got Back’ by Sir Mix-A-Lot is nothing. And that all their dreams and strivings are as dust, and their Open Mic Night that they’ve hung all their indie-chick-shagging dreams on is less than the smallest atom of a leper’s pus-filled anal sore.

Coldplay: you are meaningless.

Yes, I have more ideas than I do ability and I’m bitter and jealous and twisted and I’d play a million Coldplay songs in order to talk to one of those cute Open-Mic girls with the adoring eyes. Yes, I am scum. Do you blame me for wanting to detonate some cultural nuclear bomb in the midst of the Open Mic Night? Do you blame me for wanting to call a terrifying musical Year Zero and create music anew from the ground up as a frightening Zen Sound that opens us to the mysteries at the heart of creation? Do you blame me for trying to get someone to play Ebeneezer Goode on an acoustic guitar, or a track from Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds, or a system of atonal notes that build into a representation of the infinite fourth-dimensional clockwork of the universe itself? DO YOU? YOU FOOLS! They said Frankenstein was evil…

Anyway, I hate Open Mic Nights but I’m fascinated by them and they keep the bar open. But I’ve never been disgusted by them before tonight.

Tonight, for the first time, we had a stand-up comedian at the Open Mic Night.

I’ll never forget the way he started his set, in the way that some people will never forget Khe San. “Uhh, uhhh, uhhh, I’m nervous, uhh, I’m nervous, I’m really nervous (do you see I’m doing a parody of nervousness a clever satire on the very concept of being nervous oh you don’t see WELL I’LL CONTINUE FOR FIVE MINUTES) uuuh uhhh uuuhhh I’m nervous ETC ETC ETC”

Then he said “Hey, if you’re here, give a cheer.” in an ‘ironic’ voice.

Two people cheered. He’d brought them with him.

Then he started on 9/11, doing the HILARIOUS JOKE that those ’stupid frigging Americans’ had got the date wrong! HAR HAR!! “Yeah uh it’s like the ninth November, DUUH.”

Then he said that at least when WE had a terrorist attack we made it a nice simple date like 7/7. Reader, I married him.

No, wait, I mean I marred him, with my fists. No, I didn’t even do that, I ran away to a place in the bar where I couldn’t hear his drivel. All I heard were keywords: “blah blah terrorism blah blah Americans blah blah stupid Americans blah blah Vietnam blah blah blah America blah blah Vietnam again but this time in a silly voice blah blah blah 9/11 again blah blah well thank you it’s been interesting in that I haven’t got any laughs for my hideous xenophobic ranting. Goodbye!”

I suppose I could have got up on stage after him and critiqued him live immediately after the fact. But I’d had too much to drink and I didn’t have the guts. Hence the actual cowardice in the title. Instead I crawled home, thinking about what I would have said if I’d had the courage, thinking about all the satirical barbs I would have punctured his ego with, thinking about writing this rambling blog post instead of doing something meaningful or interesting or sincere.

And thinking about 9/11, and my reaction to it six years after the fact, and why I felt sick and tired when I heard that stupid prick in his wacky student hat making stupid, tired, lazy, senseless jokes that weren’t even his to start with.

It’s been six years, and yes, ha ha, Americans. Ha ha. Americans lost their husbands and wives and children. Ha ha. Ha ha, ha ha… and the whole USA needs to deal with that somehow, has to process this knowledge that they’ve been protected from for so long – the knowledge that all of this can be torn away in an instant. Everything you’ve worked for, everything and everyone you love can die and be lost in a single second, and there’s nothing you can do. And you’ve been protected from this for so long by your own propaganda, and now Death stares you in the face once a year and says it’s not terrorists and it’s not global warming and it’s not the economy, stupid. It’s just me. It’s always been me. And I’m waiting at the end of the race for you and for everyone you care for and you’d better find a way of dealing with that because I’m never leaving your side.

And maybe a little animated internet signature with a crying eagle and ‘Never Forget’ will actually help you to forget, and maybe that’s as good a way of dealing with that as any. And yes, it’s corny and stupid and useless and their leaders are killing ten times as many and how dare they and how dare we support them and and and.

Hey kids – it’s better to be on a high horse than a horse high! Don’t do drugs.

I don’t know. This post is essentially a fairly mawkish gut reaction against someone who offended me by his very existence, and the very existence of his ugly student hat, and an exploration of why he offended me and what it is at the core of my belief system that made him so offensive. And I suppose it’s that people have the right to grief, and the right to process that grief in their own way, without some student tosser trying to be funny and failing miserably.

And frankly, you need a few more years on you before you can get away with jokes about other people’s pain.

And in the meantime – if you’re here, give a cheer. Because you’re here.