Jonathan Lyons

Gurning

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Lets look at the art of gurning.

A champion facepuller meets the Queen of England.Yes, that is the Queen of England in the picture.  

Why is the Queen being confronted with this?  The man on the left is the very best at this sort of thing.  He won the Egremont Crab Fair gurning competition, and that makes him world champion.   The Egremont Crab Fair was founded in 1287, and the video below says the gurning began in 1267, so it took a full twenty years before these worthy men were recognized for their contributions to society.

The horse collar is used during the contest.  Competitors put their heads through the collar when performing for the judges.  Here’s a better shot of the same guy without the Queen.

Here is Mr. Mattinson explaining the history of this peculiar sport.

Lee Evans

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Lee Evans is a very funny British comedian, who has a strong physical component to his act.  You may have seen him acting opposite Nathan Lane in Gore Verbinski’s slapstick feature film “Mousehunt”.

The best work I’ve seen from him is in “Funny Bones”, one of my favorite films, which I plan to review here some time.  But for now, enjoy a clip from Funny Bones featuring Lee Evans:

OW, My Balls!

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Animator Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill) has directed a couple of awesome live action films. After Office Space, he made Idiocracy, which had a very limited release, but is something of a cult film.

Basically, it’s a dystopian look at the future of the United States, when everyone is dumbed down to the extreme. In the clip below, a man is watching a gigantic television set that is mostly advertisements. The show is called “Ow, My Balls!” and is just one man who is continuously struck in the groin by various means.

I previously did a post on loser comedy, and this is an extreme example of that. It’s a character who just gets the worst of it. He’s a punching bag. Judge is obviously making a statement about bad comedy. A character like that earns no sympathy or respect.

Ask yourself, what could the poor man do to make people like him?