Archive for the ‘Humour’ Category
by Amy on Jan 30th, 2013
Anton Kannemeyer’s work, alongside that of several other artists, will be featured in an exhibit he has curated for Johannesburg’s Stevenson gallery.
The exhibit, titled “The Loom of the Land”, is on until March 1 and features works by other notable artists such as Brett Murray, Peter Clarke, David Goldblatt, Deborah Poynton, Zanele Muholi and Johan Louw.
According to Percy Mabandu of City Press, the exhibit’s aim is to address landscapes of political turmoil and denial – each artist chooses a region or place and says something pertinent to current South African discourse about the area.
The comically infamous Anton Kannemeyer of Bitterkomix is extending his reach to curate.
He has put together an exhibition at Joburg’s Stevenson gallery exploring the landscape in contemporary South African art. It is titled Loom of the Land. Included in the spread of selected works are artists such as Brett Murray, Peter Clarke, David Goldblatt, Deborah Poynton, Zanele Muholi and Johan Louw.
There’s a catch though. Kannemeyer is not approaching his chosen theme in the regular polemical way
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by Amy on Jan 8th, 2013
Getaway magazine recently published the fourth book in their Funny Signs series. Best of Getaway Funny Signs encapsulates the cream of the hilarious signs their readers have sent in over the years.
On the Getaway blog, Tyson Jopson writes about Best of Getaway Funny Signs, and also selects his top 16 images from the book:
What makes a classic funny sign picture? According to our ed, it’s an exotic blend of innovative English grammar, plain and simple innocence and a dash of classic irony. It’s a wild cocktail that has brought countless laughs to our readers on their travels and readers have been sending us their favourite roadside howlers ever since the first issue of Getaway in 1989.
A preview of the giggle-provoking book is also available on Jacana Media’s website:
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by Amy on Jan 4th, 2013
SLiPNet’s Kate Ellis-Cole attended the launch of Zapiro’s most recent annual, But Will It Stand Up in Court?, held at The Book Lounge late last year.
Ellis-Cole described “the sweaty, enthusiastic and diverse group” that packed into the book store to hear Zapiro speak. The satirist spoke about his friendship with artist Brett Murray, whose painting “The Spear” is featured on the cover of But Will It Stand Up in Court?. Zapiro explained that it was actually Murray who came up with the title for the book and spoke about the media furore that “The Spear” caused. He also went into detail about some of the stories behind other cartoons in the book:
Jonathan Shapiro takes his spot in the upstairs section of Cape Town’s Book Lounge, but he is backed up right against the wall by the sweaty, enthusiastic and diverse group gathered there. Guests of every age, status, occupation and description spill out of the packed room and onto the sidewalk outside: they sit perched on chairs, bookcases, counters, banisters; they stand, hot and expectant, on every available inch of floor; they’re huddled around the man himself, and around copies of his latest annual, But Will It Stand Up In Court?
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by Amy on Dec 31st, 2012
South Africans have been celebrating Stephen Francis and Rico’s brilliant cartoon strip Madam & Eve for twenty years – and now The Guardian newspaper in the UK is joining in.
Correspondent Alex Duval Smith has written an appreciation of the comic that has kept us chortling for two decades, which is accompanied by a “best of” slideshow featuring some of the cartoonists’ favourites.
Click and enjoy!
As South Africa was disentangling itself from apartheid 20 years ago, a white housewife confessed: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. For years I’ve been paying my maid Eve only 10 rand for a full day’s work.” A voice behind the confessional grille replied: “I see. Is she available Tuesdays?”
The scene is from Madam & Eve, a celebrated newspaper cartoon that since 1992 has accompanied South Africans through four national elections, a football World Cup, the HIV pandemic and bread-and-butter issues such as crime, race relations, corruption and “bling”. If there was a way to measure the impact of laughter on the country’s peaceful transition, Madam & Eve would bust the clap-o-meter.
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by Amy on Dec 14th, 2012
Women24 have published an excerpt from 50 Flippen Brilliant South Africans by Alexander Parker and Tim Richman.
In this extract Parker and Richman explain why they have chosen to include JM Coetzee as one of their “flippen brilliant South Africans”. They start out by saying that people who have never read any of his work may think that “he’s dreary, boring and dead serious” but go on to say that the reason Coetzee is included in the list (and the reason why he’s won a Nobel) is “because he writes bloody well.”
If you’ve never read a book by John Maxwell Coetzee, South Africa’s most recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, chances are you think he’s dreary, boring and dead serious.
And in the unlikely event that you ever bumped into him at a social event, you’d no doubt think the same. After all, the man is famous for writing bleak Kafkaesque allegories and being impossibly antisocial at dinner parties.
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by Amy on Dec 6th, 2012
The Mail & Guardian has collected ten of Zapiro’s most viewed cartoons of this year, including his controversial response to “The Spear” being discussed at the Social Cohesion Summit.
The following slideshow includes comments from Zapiro on his thinking behind the cartoons. He calls his depiction of Jacob Zuma as a penis “not his proudest moment”, saying that it lacks the usual nuance of his style.
Zapiro’s Annual, But Will It Stand Up in Court?, contains his 2012 cartoons and has just been released by Jacana Media.
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by Amy on Nov 26th, 2012
Most road signs are straightforward. They tell you basics such as what to do, which direction to go in and where you are.
Then occasionally (and usually unintentionally) one will come across funny signs, or severely grammatically incorrect signage, which tends to provide humour.
What makes a classic funny sign picture? Well, an exotic blend of innovative English grammar, plain and simple innocence and a dash of classic irony. Do the creators of these signs do it on purpose? Well, sometimes they probably do.
Join Getaway as they look back over twenty-odd years of publishing to bring you this fourth journey into public oddity, Best of Getaway Funny Signs collection. Share in the spirit of the readers of Getaway as they journey through these hilarious, and often bewildering, signs which include some never-seen-before corkers.
This book is dedicated to all Getaway readers across the globe.
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by Amy on Nov 20th, 2012
New from Jacana, Ystervarkrivier: A Slice of Life by Andy Capostagno with illustrations by Dr Jack:
This delightful collection of humorous stories is set in the mythical village of Ystervarkrivier (Ace-Turf-Arc-Riff-Ear) – a forgotten outpost of the Drakeniqua Municipality, somewhere in South Africa. The village has a church, a bottle store and a golf course, but not necessarily in that order.
The central motif is the nine-hole golf course built by a displaced Yorkshireman, Harry Corkaby. The stories detail Harry’s attempts to understand South Africa in the post-apartheid years and to make money for his retirement by encouraging people to play on his folly. The action is contemporary, reflecting current events such as Tiger’s divorce, Seve’s death and Louis Oosthuizen’s Open Championship, but the setting is timeless, a pastoral South Africa with little racial tension.
The rural setting allows incursions by such oddities as a one-eyed ostrich, a troop of violent baboons, Nguni cattle being fattened up for lobola and the eponymous porcupine (“Ystervark” means Porcupine in Afrikaans).
Meet the richest man in the area, Inkosi Dlamini, as well as the poorest, Thabiso ‘Joseph’ Tshabalala, Harry’s employee, and the rest of the entertaining cast – Ambrose Papenfus (bookworm and proprietor of the bottle store), Jannie Venter (the local sheep farmer; as strong as an ox and almost half as nice smelling), Frikkie Venter (teenage son of Jannie; rather more in love with golf than with his girlfriend, Marietje de Bruyn), Beulah de Bruyn (sturdily built, middle-aged cattle farmer who keeps her daughter chaste), S’bu Dlamini (foppish heir to the separate fortunes of his divorced parents, Inkosi Dlamini and Edna Gqobo-Dlamini, Mayor of the Drakeniqua Municipality) and Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar Pietersen (soldiers of fortune, down on their luck and, most Saturday nights, down on their knees).
This is farming country with a very small and spread out population, but the community comes together to pray and play golf.
About the author
Andy Capostagno was born in Bath, England and that was just his first mistake. He joined BBC Radio Bristol in 1986 and this year he is celebrating 26 years in the broadcasting industry. But nobody else is. Andy moved to South Africa in 1992 to escape the evils of Thatcherism. He is best known for his television commentary work on rugby and cricket for Supersport, but spends most of his time on his farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands attempting to avoid manual labour.
About the illustrator
Dr Jack is South Africa’s premier illustrator lending his learned line to publications as widely removed as Farmer’s Weekly and the Mail & Guardian. He is a noted twitcher, producing two seminal and lavishly illustrated books on South African birds. A third volume is currently in the pipeline. He lives in Plaston on the edge of the Kruger Park where he ruminates in his studio and collects vehicles that don’t work.
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by Amy on Nov 16th, 2012
Join Jacana and the Book Lounge for the launch of But Will It Stand Up in Court? by Zapiro.
The event will be held on Tuesday 27 November at 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM.
See you there!
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by Amy on Nov 15th, 2012
50 Flippen Brilliant South Africans is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling 50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa, and is once again an irreverent and entertaining popular history of modern South Africa – but with a more positive spin this time around.
What does it take to be a flippen brilliant South African? Simple: sheer brilliance and a good story. So, whether naughty or noble, crazy or controversial, here are 50 of the most talented, successful, inspirational, intriguing, fascinating Saffers to have walked the planet…
Of course, there are the great statesmen (Mandela, Luthuli, Smuts), the landmark achievers (Charlize Theron, Chris Barnard) and the incredible talents (Miriam Makeba, Irma Stern), but the lesser-knowns will also make a case: such as Ntshingwayo Khoza, the conqueror at Isandlwana; Ampie Roux, the atom-bomb creator; Ryan Sandes, the world’s best trail runner…As will the honorary inclusions (Churchill, Rodriguez, Gandhi) and the previously scorned (Mbeki, Shaka). But how exactly does Winnie Madikizela-Mandela qualify? From space adventurers (Mark Shuttleworth) and fighter pilots (Sailor Malan) to entrepreneurs (Elon Musk) and environmentalists (Ian Player), this is a raucous celebration of the country we call home, and the perfect partner to 50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa – proving that you just can’t have the bad without the good…
About the Contributors
Alexander Parker is a freelance journalist and writer, and a history buff. He is car editor of Business Day and author of 25 Cars To Drive Before You Die as well as the best-selling 50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa.
Tim Richman is a writer, editor and publisher. He is the co-author of the best-selling Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Kak? series, as well as a number of other titles.
Zapiro is widely regarded as South Africa’s foremost political cartoonist. His popular cartoons appear regularly in various publications and his annual collections invariably top the best-seller lists.
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Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
