It's not just the constant bragging about all them birds what he pumped (Sachsgate is turned into a story about that one time he had group sessions with all of a burlesque dance troupe), it's the inability to structure even the most amusing anecdote without assurances that it is well funny. For every odd zinger - and ol' Russ can slip these in with the agility of David Gower flipping the ball to the boundary past the slips - there's a mangled repetition of some story that got him a laugh in the men's room. Brand doesn't so much polish a turd, he sprinkles diamonds into elephant shit and hopes someone will mistake it for a necklace.
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| Apparently picking up shit. I know how that feels. |
Recounting the MTV awards (or the VMAs - I have no patience to go back and check), he almost tells a brilliant joke, that combines Foucault's critique of the Victorian cult of chastity and the marketing of the Jonas Brothers as virgins. Had he pulled it off, I reckon that could have been my favourite joke of all time: it mocks the Disney empire and has a message from my favourite post-modern thinker. Yet he frames it, deconstructs it, stamps the joy from the humour until it reads as if he is just showing off his wide range of references (which I am impressed by).
That's the feeling I get from Booky Wook 2: disappointment at a missed opportunity. Fair enough: he dedicated it to Katy Perry, and he probably feels the same about his marriage to her.
However, the real reason I keep reading and writing is not to fish out the magic moments but to engage in an evaluation of the subtext of Brand's anecdotes, and to dive into the sea of his subconscious and to discover the secret subterranean passage that leads to the loch of my own performed identity.
It is time to talk about sexism.
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