escher treasure pleasure
or at LEAST escher leisure, no pressure
friends, romans, non-romans,
thank you for choosing to lend me your eyes1!
please enjoy these today-bits!
1) roman numeral i:
i bet that whenever MC Escher came up with a real good drawing,
he high-fived himself,
gave himself a standing ovation,
and then carried himself out on his own shoulders.
2) roman numeral ii:
why is "dogs playing poker" so famous
but not my favorite MC Escher work,
"hungry hungry hippos playing hungry hungry hippos"?
3) roman numeral iii:
"i contain multitudes, and multitudes contain me"
-- MC Escher which could stand for2 Multitudes Contain Escher3
4) roman numeral iv:4
CUTE JOKE ALERT!5
have you tried being angry?
it's all the rage!
CUTE JOKE OVER! ANGRY ABOUT IT? THEN YOU'RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO ITS HANDS. HANDS LIKE THOSE MC ESCHER HANDS DRAWING THEMSELVES. ANGRILY.
5) roman numeral v:6
*one of my favorite heckles i ever received*
i was on a show with small children in the audience.
i started to tell them about a Different time that i was heckled by a small child.
i said "one time, i got heckled..."
and in that moment, a child yelled out:
"what's a heckle?"
AND THOSE ARE THE TODAY-BITS!
BONUS: HERE ARE SOME FUTURE BITS (upcoming shows, online and in person):
1) Saturday, May 29: 5pm, live Faucet podcast stream (on FB or Twitch)
2) Saturday, May 29: 7:30pm at the Fat Black Pussycat (live)
3) Saturday, May 29: 8:30pm at the Tribeca Comedy Lounge (live)
4) Sunday, May 30: 5:45pm at the Village Underground (live)
5) Wednesday, June 2: 2pm, live Liz & Myq stream (on FB or Twitch)
AND SLIGHTLY LATER IN TIME AND SPACE, SOME HEADLINING SETS:
6) Saturday, July 3, 7:30pm at Union Hall in Brooklyn7
7) July 16 at the Gaslight Theater in St. Louis, MO
8) July 22-24 at The Comedy Club of Kansas City
9) July 28-31 at Acme in Minneapolis
10) more coming soon!
and those are those! that’s all for now. thanks again for being here and receiving all of this. you are very nice and i appreciate you.
FINAL BONUS:
here is a photo of me at an MC Escher exhibit in NYC a few years ago, which i have captioned “i’m having a ball and a ball is having me”!
your visual ears!
my friend, the wonderful comedian (and more) zach sherwin, responded to this with the astute point that it could also stand for “Multitude-Container Escher”
i went the roman numeral route because all the MC talk reminded me of this joke that i wanted to share as well: the most redundant name for a rapper in ancient rome would be "MC 1100."
sometimes when i post cute jokes online, i offer a “cute joke alert.” usually i don’t do that here, because i think the folks reading this (you!) are always prepared for any level of joke cuteness. but i included this one, because the cute joke postscript is where the escher treasure was buried.
not EXPLICITLY escher-related, but cute and fun and recent enough that i wanted to include it, and also meta and self-referential so, close enough?
before the pandemic, i was working on a show called “imPERFECT,” planning to bring it to edinburgh as i did with my last hour before recording it. then, pandemic! this show is the first hour scheduled where i will reincarnate that hour to start touring it again. also other nice friends will be on the show. if you’re in the NYC area, this will be a nice long set and a good show to see! (many good shows happen in NYC, but not as many long sets.) thanks for reading this long set of a footnote and a message! you’re the best.
I'm a fan of M. C. Escher, who didn't consider himself an artist, but rather a mathematician. My favorite works of his involve interlocking tessellations.