For those of who are advent blog readers you may have read my earlier blog post about British parody MC band The Midnight Beast. If you didn’t read it, what the heck man?

Today I bring you a comedian from Australia in Comedic Invasion pt. 2: Tim Minchin. Tim Minchin is technically a comesician (a comedian musician hybrid) whose intellectual style and catchy songs have propelled him to be one of the better comedians in England. Minchin, although classified as a comedian, likes to think of himself as a songwriter whose songs just happen to be funny.

So true.

Tim Minchin’s songs are extremely well written. His songs are interesting and revolve around serious intellectual topics. But Minchin has a way of presenting them in a humorous enjoyable attitude that no matter how offensive the joke is it’s always received with laughs. He spices up jokes with great usage of alliteration, insinuations, and random abstract images. Maybe it’s just his Australian humor, because I have seen nothing similar to it in America. If I had to compare him to another artist it would be Ben Folds, if Ben Fold looked slightly emo and sang about 5 poofs and 2 pianos.

To give an example of his comedic use of serious topics, Minchin has a song entitled “Peace Anthem For Palestine,” which is about his solution for the Palestine – Israel conflict. The song is a peace anthem for the two nations and it goes like this:

“You don’t eat pigs, and we don’t eat pigs, it seem like it’s been that way forever.

So if you don’t eat pigs and we don’t eat pigs, why not, not eat pigs together?”

Other songs are about rock n’ roll nerds, being environmentally friendly, and a ten few cock and a few hundred virgins, etc.

Besides his jokes, his appearance is also quite memorable. He always wears a black suit, black skinny, jeans, black eyeliner, bare feet and wears his long orange matted hair as if he was just struck by lightening. According to Minchin his appearance allows him to be ridiculous and unrealistic, thus somewhat removing him from reality allowing him to make outrageous statements onstage without annoying most people.

His comedic musician career has spawned three CDs, three DVDs, numerous live shows, and millions of hits on youtube. If you want to check him out, listen to the song below. My personal favorite song, which is a love song about his blow-up sex doll, is posted below.

- Karel Ebergen, Intern

Pathos, Sunday 8 -10pm