Busy as a Bee

When your new acquaintance tells you that they’re easily offended, it’s best to not to allow yourself to slip into a conversation in which you describe their work (astronomy) as glorified navel gazing. It would also be prudent to not continue the rant by calling space exploration a waste of your taxes, which should instead be going into something practical like affordable housing and getting the American currency back on top of world market exchange rates.

In my defense, it is because I have read “War of the Worlds” and am genuinely afraid that the aliens don’t like us.

Later, we went to a place called “The Hive” in which the dress code was strictly oversized black concert tees, ripped jeans, and high tops. The waggle bee dance was replaced by aggressive head banging in which the trick was to bend over far enough at the waist to swing your long hair without cleaning the beer-stained floor but still maintaining appropriately communicative angst. It was gloriously ritualistic and I was caught up by the anthropological gold I had discovered. Unfortunately, I was dragged away before finding out whether or not I could do as the Romans; good thing too, otherwise I would have probably ended up with a migraine and my own recreation of Amy Wineouse’s beehive.

I also had the pleasure of seeing Chris McCausland’s free standup routine at the Laughing Horse. He is the UK’s only blind comic and is quite comfortable joking about it, without making it a central theme of the show. He is likable, directs most of his humor at himself, and breaks the ice with a mock-serious warning about how much he hates smilers. Chris’s humor is quiet,sometimes slower than preferable, but well-woven into a routine that actually manages to keep its self-referential wit relevant.