Friday 27th April 2007
I was walking through Christ Church today and saw a tourist taking a photograph. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs to Hall. He had obviously just walked past the ideal spot to take the photo from but, rather than take a step back to said ideal spot, he was instead awkwardly arching his back, like an autistic limbo dancer undergoing a slow-motion spasm, to get the angle juuuuuuust right.
It made me think: do mimes need a tripod?
I mean, those guys can hold pretty still. If you were one of those ones so fond of covering themselves and their clothes top to toe in metallic paint and pretending to be a statue you could surely hold a camera steady for twenty seconds whilst it took a night-time shot of college. I had thought that mime was a useless and slightly creepy art form, like folk music, but it appears that I may have been sadly mistaken.
This is doubly interesting because Christ Church have a bit of a peculiar attitude when it comes to photography. The whole of college is copyrighted, and you need permission to profit from images or video taken there, and, as such, bowler-hatted ‘Custodians’ are entrusted with guarding against potential copyright infringement by chucking out suspected undercover professional photographers. So, how do you tell a professional photographer from a well-off Japanese tourist festooned with more digital SLRs than limbs? The policy is quite simple: a pro would have a tripod.
Apart from being a bit ridiculous (what kind of idiot uses a tripod in the daytime anyway?), I now wonder if there’s a way round it. Could I bring a mime? Indeed, there is a whole plethora of potential camera-stabilising apparatus which isn’t a tripod just waiting to be used to play the system. Perhaps three mimes in some kind of pyramidal arrangement. Perhaps an army of mimes to overwhelm the Custodians by pretending to be robots trapped in invisible boxes. I’m sure there are other possibilities not involving mimes, but I can’t think of any.
My other discovery today was a mildly original variant on the collection of hackneyed observations you can make when a group is sufficiently specific that it only contains one member, and thus, by definition, that member the best and worst, tallest and shortest et cetera of the group of one.
Going to KEEN, one often ends up as the only bloke in a gaggle of girls. In the pub after an hour or two at the ice rink, I managed to sit down in just such a gaggle in one of those dominant male poses, legs open, casually sipping on my cider. “You’re trying to assert your position as alpha male, aren’t you?” I was asked.
“Ah,” I began my hackneyed observation, “But, being the only male in this group, I am by definition both the best and the worst.
“I am alpha and omega.”
Jesus. What kind of an idiot would say that?
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Tom says (14:23 28/04/2007) ¶
A shaggy dog story at the end, there; but one that has an actually amusing pun at the end. I'm confused; what kind of humour is that? Wikipedia lets me down at this point. Am I supposed to laugh or not?
Are you really not allowed to sell photos of Christ Church? What about if you're a member?
Statto says (14:43 28/04/2007) ¶
Wikipedia might allow you a giggle if you suggest that it's some kind of meta-joke drawing attention to the conventions of humour in post-modern kind of way?
As for selling photos, I'm not sure. I've normally been let off on the illegal tripod use front with a lop-sided grin and a flash of the Bod card, but I've not tried flogging images and drawing the college authorities' attention to the fact yet. Perhaps e-mailing them and asking first might be the better solution than experimentation on that front.
Patel says (18:33 28/04/2007) ¶
Cider? What happened to "a pint of water from the tap please"?
What kind of idiot would say what - "I am alpha and omega", or "you're trying to exert your position as dominant male aren't you?"
I seem to recall from all those David Attenborough programmes that it usually takes a bit more than sitting down drinking cider to establish alpha male status...clearly Oxford society is even more refined than I thought.
Statto says (00:35 29/04/2007) ¶
Did I not mention? I also killed two other males and have irresistible plumage.
Clym says (01:13 29/04/2007) ¶
Speaking of well-off Japanese tourists and their SLRs, there was one using an enormous tripod right outside the cathedral earlier on today. The custodian at the bottom of hall stairs seemed completely oblivious... I seriously considered being a b*stard and pointing it out, just for that warm feeling of schadenfreude!
Someone says (14:14 29/04/2007) ¶
i object to the term "gaggle"
Paw says (02:04 02/05/2007) ¶
"Jesus. What kind of an idiot would say that?"
One with a God complex.