I Jest, Do You Jest?

I jest — do you jest?

By Nathan Ley on June 14th, 2007

Here is a check-in on the local Milwaukee arts stories:

The MJS reported on the return of the city’s official municipal jester, Ann-Elizabeth Shapera, from the International Festival of Fools jester tournament in London towards the end of May. Shapera, an administrative assistant at City Hall was the first American woman ever to compete in the event. After falling short of a winning performance she stated, “Obviously, they wanted a circus act.”

No Shit? You don’t say? Who would have thought that the judges at a jester competition want to be entertained with jokes, skills, and strange happenings, much like they might be at a circus? Apparently, not Shapera. If you look up the definition of a jester on dictionary.com, the second entry under noun is as follows: 2. a professional fool or clown, esp. at a medieval court. If I’m not mistaken - and i really believe that I’m not on this one - clowns are the essence, if not one of the most representative things, associated with a circus. When I think circus, I think mother-freaking clowns. When you do a thesaraus search for jester, the word clown appears in the first row. For final confirmation, here is a picture comparison. I searched both the word jester and clown on Google images. Here are the results:

Clown:

Jester:

Holy double image Batman! Yes, as you probably guessed, it returned the same results. Glad to know that this woman is in our City Hall. Luckily though, she is just an assistant (aka a secretary meant to do bitch work and entertain — aka a jester).

As for the most part, the arts scene, at least that of which that I am interested in, is quiet at the moment. Summerfest (the largest music festival in the United States) is on the verge, and I will devote the next two weeks blogs to it, including an interview with Femi Kuti among others. I would, however, like to introduce some things to the blog while I have the chance.

Word of the Week: Taradiddle:

1.	a small lie; fib.

2.	pretentious nonsense.

Example: I can’t decide whether I like reading Nathan Ley’s blog because I cannot decide if it is humorous observation or just ridiculous taradiddle.

YouTube Video of the Week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A0p-U1LBbQ

This is somewhat of an old-school one. I think I originally saw it in 5th grade on the website www.albinoblacksheep.com, which is always fun to look at. I hope you enjoy.

Worst Thing about Facebook Ever (note that the “Worst Thing about Facebook Ever” changes weekly): All of the new applications recently added. As if we didn’t waste enough time on Facebook already, now we have absolutely no reason to ever log off. Ever. Plus, with things like the tracking application, we can’t creep and stalk our secret fantasy girls anymore. Not like I do that, but….

Lates (sic)