AL PRODGERS having a one night stand
Here’s your chance to catch Al Prodger’s on stage along with KEDIBONE at Tanz Cafe in Bryanston when they make a live recording of their work… sounds like a good laugh – we recommend that you go if you need one.
“OF COURSE I’LL STILL RESPECT YOU IN THE MORNING!”
Al Prodgers is doing a one night stand (up) comedy show at Tanz Cafý in Bryanston on the 18th of March.
It’s a …
nutty celebration of the South African psyche with a positively, proudly local flavour.
Special guest act is the flaming hot comedy emcee, Kedibone Mulaudzi.
These guys stormed the Joburg Arts Alive Festival in ’05 and have appeared together in comedy venues from Brakpan to Soweto. They’ve even been privileged to entertain such luminaries as Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
You’re invited to join them at the recording of an original, unashamedly Jozi-style comedy CD.
Show starts at 20h30. There’ll be a full bar and excellent restaurant facilities are available.
To secure a seat, email AL by clicking here.
Language and themes will be adult, so no under 18 please.
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UPDATE
DATE: 24 Feb. 06
In the run-up to the elections and I think I’ve been happiest when a radio talk show host described the whole political process as boring. I love boring elections. I remember when they weren’t and I’ll take boring over bodies in the street and stockpiled tins of pilchards any damn day.
Last general election, I was standing in the queue for the polling booth chatting to a stranger, who said,
“Before 1994 I wasn’t allowed to vote. Now, today, this is my 3rd time.”
I was so proud! I came over all snotty eyed and patriotic, “Yep, what a rainbow nation! I also voted in ’94, ’99 and now 2004.” He smiled, “No, no! This is my 3rd time voting& today.”
(Then a perfect comedy beat and a slow wink.)
I’ve learnt a few things in our 12 years of democracy. I’ve discovered that patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but hiding out in Hillbrow is probably more effective. Certainly, it seems to have worked for the bastard who stole my car. Most importantly, I’ve decided that being fearful of the future is pointless. The realisation gets stronger every day, because I’m still eating tins of pilchards that I stockpiled before the first election in 1994.
I’ve learned we can all change for the better. Recently I did a gig in Tshwane. You may know it as Pretoria, but the city is now being renamed Tshwane, the monicker derived from the first family that settled in the area, the Tshwanepoels. Anyway, at the gig, I heard a story that cheered me up considerably. I can’t verify it, but I’m going to spread it around anyway.
A friend of a friend… (Already sounds dodgy, doesn’t it? Don’t worry; it’s not about erectile dysfunction. I’ve never had that problem and I have the calluses to prove it.) This “friend” has a daughter whose sixth birthday is coming up, so they decide to invite her school friends around for a sugar and tartrazine binge. Dad asks her who she wants to invite to the party and she reels off names like, “Dylan and Chesney and Thandi…”
That last name gets Dad’s attention and he asks,
“Is Thandi… Black?”
His daughter considers this for a while, then replies, “…I’ll ask.”
Whether we’re talking about people or cities, things that used to matter don’t mean that much anymore. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why this weekend is going to be so much better than the last. Don’t need electricity to braai anyway.
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9 February
Oh Alistair. We love you.
If you haven’t been on the receiving end of Al Prodgers bitter sweet comedy trajectories, you don’t know what you’re missing out on. He is one of Joburg’s biggest allies, weaving it’s tales, joys and trauma into his comedy and always looking at the lighter side of Joburg life.
Al is one of those rare SA comedians that has a solid foundation of wit firmly holding up the architecture of his funny words (as opposed to cheese or corn at the base of things) and we rate him alongside our three other favourite South African comedians – Joey Rasdien, John Vlismas and David Kau.
He is also a bladdy clever guy and has been running a great website for a while and more recently a fabulous blog… Check out his site here.
Now this year LAUGHING LIFE OFF is one of our resolutions – it’s such a therapeutic way to make yourself feel better – when things get heated, mad, crazy, have a good lag. We are thus delighted to give AL his very own column on Represent, where we will be linking to his blog and giving you a weekly Al Prodgers lag.
Update-
BARROOM POETRY:
Happy February!
2 February 2006
Maybe the best thing about February is that we resign ourselves to the inevitability of the year and stop all this optimism and resolution crap.
Also, thanks be to the benevolent gods of shopping mall congestion, the “Back to School” ads have stopped. They’ve been splattered all over the media since about 3 seconds after midnight on January 1. Kids hadn’t even finished wrecking their Christmas toys yet and we had to remind them that the school term was only a couple of weeks away. I know those ads are actually aimed at parents who may be comforted that they only have a limited time to spend with their little mongrels, but we could at least think of the poor kiddies’ sensibilities. Screen these vicious “Back to School” TV ads at a time when most children aren’t watching. You know, after 9 at night when they’re too busy trolling the internet for porn.
Why are the child actors in these travesties so happy? They’re misrepresenting what school is like, the Judas goat, turncoat little bastards! Either that or Mommy is mixing a bit of Prozac into the Ritalin to keep Junior, the child star, from realising how the other kids at school are going to stick large bits of gym apparatus up his butt when they recognise him from the “back to school” ad.
Since the makers of school shoes are never ever going to give up trying to convince everyone that the polio victim look is still “in”, and since school itself is the most cost effective way of brainwashing young lemmings until they tune in to CNN, it looks as though the “Back to School” ad is going to return every year. Why not help the children enjoy them a bit more? Perhaps the copy could read something like&
School, the best time of your life! Because afterwards there’s only unemployment, divorce and cancer. But buy these Fugly shoes ‘cos they’ll make every schoolday seem like an eternity.
Happy February!
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BARROOM POETRY:
SUBTITLE: The internet can make you stupid.
DATE: 25 January 2006
Received any alarmist emails recently? I mean the ones warning you of dastardly villains plotting to impregnate your girlfriend by freeze-drying their own scrota, grinding them up in high-tech parmesan graters and serving the sprinklings on your cappuccino in Sandton coffee shops.
This type of dire alert has become a standard feature of my inbox thanks to a group of South Africans now living abroad who seem desperately concerned that I might forget about crime for one second. They urge me to bury myself in a nuclear bunker so secure that I even do my own vacuuming and then in the same breath, tell me how much they miss Joburg sunshine. The first news of danger I received, was when AIDS infected needles were supposedly planted in my movie-house seats. Now, I admit there were some scenes in the Charlie’s Angels films where I was writhing around in pain thanks to a little prick, but I have to blame my genetics rather than the cleaning staff.
Then the fiends apparently came up with a new method of hijacking your car& While you’re driving. It seems just whacking you with a .38 at the stop light has become passý. Either that or the dumbass South African tactic of rolling up your window and taking cover from a bullet behind 5 mm of glass is actually working. No wonder this is the only place where ostriches survived. According to this email, our F1 inspired hijackers pounce when you think you’re safest, doing one-forty on the highway. (By the way, I’m not bragging about speeding, I’m trying to avoid becoming a bonnet ornament on a passing Toyota Tazz.) The bad guys roar up next to you and spray some sort of fluid onto your windscreen that makes it impossible to see where you’re going and can’t be shifted by your wipers. When you stop, they hijack your car and race off, presumably guided by a seeing eye Labrador tied to the front bumper.
Yes, there’s murder and mayhem where I live, but it’s just the drearily ordinary, horrible kind. Certainly not interesting enough for our phantom e-mailers who have to spice up the yarns to include elements of surprise, inventiveness and outrageousness. Sex is an essential part of the threat too; the kind of sex that only a truly repressed Calvinist mind that still has sweaty fantasies about the gardener can dream up. They warn of “blacks” using the Brixton tower as a giant, phallic catapult to distribute loaded condoms wrapped in ANC pamphlets to your preschool toddler. Having sown panic and despair, our friends on the web can join a chat room and complain about affirmative action ruining our cricket. (Whoever has mucked it up; I hope they’re easier to beat than the Australians.)
There’s nothing you can do about this kind of email moegoe& or maybe there is. I figure that anybody paranoid enough to make up twaddle like this would also be quite susceptible to it. So, I’ve just heard the following genuine, really true, factual, authentic type rumours.
FORWARD THE NEXT BIT TO EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT!
Assault in Public Park in Richmond:
Taking a Sunday walk through your London suburb? Beware! Your eardrums can be seriously damaged by the piercing Pretoria accent of a rogue dentist as he harangues luckless passers-by on the art of making a “real braai”. He’ll seem harmless enough at first. Don’t be fooled by his “Polly shorts” and old Springbok rugby jersey. He also wears them to bed so that both he and the wife have something to get them aroused. Run! Lock yourself indoors! Before he gets started on the scarcity of biltong.
Sex Attacks in G8 Capitals Increase:
Club goers and even pedestrians have recently suffered a number of attempted sexual assaults from South African tourists’ desperate find a mate and avoid returning to their own country. After a lifetime of imbibing bottled chemical sludge that they call “Castle”, their brains have been eroded to the point where they’ll sleep with anything for a foreign passport. Stay indoors! Buy a litter box for your pets. It’s too dangerous to be on the roads with your loved ones at any time, because they’ve also imported their ideas of getting snot-flying drunk and then driving. If you are remotely attracted to one of these desperadoes, take his tales of being part of the anti-apartheid struggle with a bucket of salt. If there had indeed been as many activists as claimed in a singles bar in Amsterdam recently, apartheid would never have happened and Che Guevara would have been South African president since 1965.
On second thoughts, there’s no point in forwarding any of this stuff. Scaring these people might just send them back here and lower the tone of the neighbourhood again. Just do me a favour and delete panic mail. Besides, all these stories are utter rubbish, except maybe the one about the filings in the cappuccino machine.
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18 January
Here is a taste of what’s to come from his Barroom Poetry:
BARROOM POETRY: 37
SUBTITLE: The Road To Hell
DATE: 09 January 2006
I drove to Durban twice over the holiday season, a sensation not unlike giving yourself a Brazilian wax with a weed-eater.
A bunch of us on our way to an overnight gig at the coast are spewed down the Satanic alimentary canal that is the N3 highway along with Timeshare Man and his extended family tree. The windscreen is coated in a greasy film of bug guts centimetres thick, so I tend to look in the rear view mirror a lot. Scenery at any price, Dammit! One second there’s a blip on the horizon and the next I’m getting an eyeful of some car a fraction away from our rear bumper.
From what I can see of the expression behind the steering wheel, a sexually aroused Crazy Frog ringtone creature is stalking my tailpipe. The car is, and I’m not kidding here, a Toyota Tazz. I’m astonished. Firstly because I’ve never seen one that wasn’t being driven by a lesbian in a golf shirt. Secondly, this is the fast lane. I have German engineering, airbags and an ABS braking system and this guy has… a Toyota Tazz. I feel so intimidated.
Testosterone and a GP number plate demand a duel, but the N3 is a place of desperate souls and I decide just to pull over and let this retard through. He never even glances in our direction for the long minutes it takes him to get past, little Japanese pistons screaming. A Toyota-Friggin-Tazz. Mid-nineties model sixteen hundred, biscuit tyres, no power steering and mechanical brakes. You don’t see many classic models like that nowadays… because they’re crap.
There’s a kid amongst the luggage in the back, proving once and for all that you don’t need a cool car to get laid. He’s playing with a plastic bag that they distribute free at the tollgates. The bag has a huge printed logo with the road safety slogan, “Arrive Alive!” And as Crazy Frog white-knuckles it on in his Tazz, the last view I get is of his offspring pulling the plastic bag saying “Arrive Alive!” slowly over his head.
BARROOM POETRY: 38
SUBTITLE: Without status, can we still have a symbol?
DATE: 13 January 2006
I enjoy Joburg. In fact, I love this city. It has to be one of the most exciting places on the planet. A big, loud, unruly, multicoloured sprawl as if Picasso painted a herd of zebra stampeding into a nest of macaws.
There. I finally said it. I’ve come out of the closet.
Sink holes open up and flooding rivers try to swallow bits of this town out of pure shame, but not even Mother Nature behaving like Mommy Dearest can stomach Hillbrow. Next door, there are suburbs built for the kind of upstanding citizen who considers the city centre to be a heinous squat of depravity and chooses to skulk in the protective shadow of the stock exchange building’s artificially perky silicone tits.
In the 1980’s,the Roodepoort Righteous were already trekking a couple of hundred metres down the road to breathe free, but still be close to Northgate shopping mall. Now these stout pioneers have mostly moved on to New Zealand (rapidly making it the Land of the Wrong White Crowd), but the street names are still there as a cautionary metaphor. You can follow “Hendrik Verwoerd” till you get to “Republic”, just as our forefathers did.
Driving home, it’s a secret pleasure to slip into “Jim Fouche”. He invites you to. He’s that kind of road. Then I hang a left into Without Street (MY Street). Locals, of course, recognise “Without” as being the Afrikaans name for the indigenous Cape Holly tree, don’t you? It’s actually pronounced Wit-Hout (White Wood), but for some reason, written Afrikaans mistrusts spaces between words, regarding them with the same suspicion as men who make a braai using store-bought fire lighters and using them only very sparingly. Maybe it had something to do with Calvinism or economic sanctions. Whatever the reason, “Without” is spoken Wit-Hout.
BUT not by everybody. I recently received a phone call from some telesales swine bunch asking me to supply them with a physical address. They wanted to send me my free gift, but it seems I am “without” a street? So I gave them an address. I even gave them my full name. I hope Leon Shuster likes his gift subscription to Reader’s Digest…
Viva, eleven official languages! Viva!
Punch drunk on its own contradictions, desperate to be renaissanced by a crack team of tame gay designers, Joburg, Jozi, mutant-whore-bitch abomination. Nobody even knows what to call this place, but I’ve realised I love it. I know that’s an admission to shock rational people, but I defy them. Today I notice that in the middle of Without Street, in a typical Johannesburg pothole, a pair of plovers has built a nest. They spend the day dive bombing cars to protect it. Goddamn stupid stubborn futile birds!
We should make them our official emblem.
