Blog: Geek Show-Off

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On Tuesday evening, after a busy busy day of TYPING, I set off into town to The Star Of Kings in Kings Cross (formerly The Crossed Kings, which was far too confusing a name) where I was due to do a spot at Geek Show-Off. This is the spin-off from Science Show-Off and Museums Show-Off, which in themselves are related to Bright Club in that it's an evening where (usually) non-comedians do brief stand-up sets about a subject they're interested in.

This was originally meant to be a science or museum night, but I saw Mr S Cross, host, mentioning on Facebook that he was thinking of changing it to a geek night if he could get enough speakers, and asking Mr A Sarll if he could maybe do something about comics. Alex couldn't do it, so I thought "Hang on! I've got that THING that's been in my BRANE for months, maybe I could do that?" I volunteered, was accepted, and thus the booking got booked.

When I got to the pub I found Mr S Hewitt at the bar. This has happened EVERY time I've met him recently (maybe he's just ALWAYS at the bar?) so, conscious of how often this has led to him being forced to buy me BEER I politely declined his offer and went downstairs to check in with the organisers. As ALWAYS happens when I do ANYTHING to do with the world of comedy I had arrived about an HOUR before anybody else, so said "I'm here!" and then came back upstairs for a pint with The Hewitts. We decided to SENSIBLY have some tea, so I had a Kimchi Quesadilla which was a) very very nice b) basically a cheese toastie.

Soon it was showtime, and I spent the next couple of hours enjoying enthusiastic people enthusing about (variously) corsets, personality tests, dung beetles, Kanye West, and many other topics. I was on LAST, so my turn didn't come around until just before 10pm, when I strode MANFULLY and slightly nervously towards the stage to deliver my talk, entitled "Marvel vs. DC - which is better?"

My idea was to compare the two companies in terms of political attitudes - the basic idea is that most of DC's main superheroes come from incredibly privileged backgrounds of unearned powers (Batman is a billionaire, Wonder Woman is a Princess, Superman got powers simply by arriving etc etc etc) whereas Marvel's are mostly Working Class Intellectuals (Spider-man, Captain America, even Doctor Doom). YES I KNOW there are flaws in this argument (tho NOT MANY) but I was surprised, once I got going, by how strongly I felt about it, especially when talking about efforts made by each company towards diversity in recent times. I did try to mostly do it for LARFS, but in Informal Breakout Groups (the pub) afterwards, I found I could expand it a) seriously b) in other directions. Maybe this will be my PhD after retirement??

It was a lovely evening, and GRATE to be able to exert myself in a completely different way to normal. The only trouble is, now I've got the slides done, I want to do it AGANE!
posted 17/7/2014 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

x-men - nazi persecution of jews jla - toffs club black panther - 'nuff said
posted 17/7/2014 by sanjiv

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