We drove to The Stand tonight as the Glasgow SPT Subway closes early on the Sabbath*. We couldn't find any free spaces on Woodlands Road, so thanks to the nightmare temporary traffic light situation along St George's Road, it took half an hour to drive the circuit back to Napiershall Street. At least it was dry during the short walk to the venue.
Although we arrived later than I'd hoped, we were still given seats near the front, despite the room being fairly full. Just lucky, I suppose. We could have just as easily been located at the back. I don't know how they organise the seating allocation.
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| Neither does he. |
Mark opened the show standing in the middle of the audience, unmiked and unrehearsed. He described how much he loved the old Stand venue with its claustrophobic, low ceiling and conspiratorial atmosphere. "This room isn't that", he said dismissively. "But never mind. We carry on." He then pointed out the positives, such as the larger room holding more seats, which meant he'd sold more tickets.
He was his own support act, so he rambled on, as he does, being funny about hosting the Meat Preparation Awards and how people comment to him that they couldn't do his job. That they would get too stressed, yet he finds standing on a stage talking to strangers really comfortable. It's when he meets them in real life that he finds it stressful. He also pointed out that we could talk and heckle if we wanted. He didn't mind. That's what a Glasgow crowd is famous for. He left us with a hook for the second half, telling us he'd explain who Phoebe was and how things went at this Corporate gig.
His second half was consumed by his concerns about AI. He's not happy with the company Photobox. They'd let him down at Christmas. His order of a yearbook containing photos of his kids had been delivered to the wrong address, seven miles away, a fact he discovered from his ex-wife, who was not amused at seeing images of her children being shared on social media in an attempt to locate the owner. Phoebe is the customer service manager at Photobox. It was her that Mark complained to about the disastrous outcome of his order. It was only after many communications back and forth on the live chat that he realised she wasn't real. He'd been duped into thinking she was a real person.
How far will this take us? Are humans walking blindly into obsolescence? What kind of world will we be living in under our AI overlords?
He then pointed out all the things that AI won't be able to do better than a human, such as holding in a sneeze on the subway until you can no longer do so, then loudly saying the word "sneeze" as it comes out, ironically drawing more attention to the thing you were trying to avoid. These flaws will never be programmable. They'll set us apart from the machine. We need to embrace these idiosyncrasies if we are to remember what it is like to be human. That's where the funny lies.
I enjoyed his sets. He's a funny man in many ways. Mark's delivery style may appear neurotic and bumbling, but he makes his brief hesitations and changes in pitch a strength, throwing out the funny lines casually but deliberately. Some of it is improvised (he had to check whether Engelbert Humperdinck was actually dead - he isn't), but he does a good job of hiding it. He initially struggled to feel at home in the space, thrown off by the gig being in a room he hadn't played before, but by the end, he was firing on all cylinders, landing his jokes well enough to give him time to sip his wine during the laughs, instead of in silence.
On the way home, fueled by his hilarity, I wondered if the car's sat nav would ever incorporate AI. Would it be able to detect if I hadn't followed its instructions and remind me in time to change to the lane it wanted me to be in? Would it learn that I needed earlier warnings based on traffic and weather conditions? Could it tell if my windows were steaming up and automatically clear them? Would I be directed to a car wash when the windscreen was too dirty? "You have reached your destination."
My wife didn't find this conversation amusing or interesting. She shut it down faster than I could say Ctrl+Alt+Del. But she did enjoy the comedian. How long will it be before Men and Women are leaving their partners for AI substitutes, followed by AI divorces when they realise how needy we are?
Food for thought.
Postage: £0.00
Booking Fee: £1.60
Voucher/Credit: £0.00
VAT: £7.77
Total: £46.60 directly from The Stand.
* Grammarly wanted me to change "The Sabbath" to "Saturdays" - does that make Grammarly Jewish?
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