About Me

I ramble about a number of things - but travel experiences, movies and music feature prominently. See my label cloud for a better idea. All comnments and opinions on this blog are my own, and do not in any way reflect the opinions/position of my employer (past/current/future).

05 August 2011

Not much of a summer

One of the things I was really looking forward to in this trip to Germany, was the summer weather, especially with the cold SA winter. The first two days were perfect summer weather, not too hot, a slight breeze over the Rhine, sunshine, all the good things needed to enjoy the long days of summer. I was told by many that this was an anomaly this year, and the weather has been rather crappy ... And for the rest of the trip it has been - humid, intermittent rain and a lot of cloud cover. It has felt more like Cape Town winter than an European summer :(

31 July 2011

Blacks Only

Hosted by one of South Africa's greatest stand-up comedians, David Kau, Blacks Only is a series featuring mostly black comedians, which is equally reflected in the audience. In fact David Kau started the show with a census of the audience - which was one of the largest audiences I have seen outside a music festival (there were 12 audience blocks, of about 360 seats in each block).

The show featured a variety of comics, Ugandan born David Kibuka (now from Fourways), American Will-E Robo, the token white guy Chris Forest and a number of "unknown" comics, getting their turn in the limelight. Mostly, the show was in English, although two comics were more versed in a combination of Tswana, Sotho, Zulu and Xhosa - and the general response from the audience clearly showed that they were very very funny!

The comics pulled no punches, offending people of all races, tribal groups, nationalities, not to mention politicians and celebrities. In fact some of the comic attacks even brought collective gasps from the audience (two highlights: calling Hector Petersen as the boy who couldn't duck fast enough, and giving Jacob Zuma something he had not experienced before, as part of Nelson Mandela day, by taking him to a Matric dance) - a show of how far they pushed.

Including the interval, the show was over 3 hours, and even after starting late, it was one of the best stand up comedy shows I have been to. Definitely a show to go to, the next time around!