There’s something about Mary. And there’s something about this mug.
The iconic poster for Raybon’s live show ‘Clear and Present Manger’, has transubstantiated into this sturdy handled chalice, offering sanctuary to all beverages hot and cold. Whether your calling is coffee, tea, or holy water for a quick baptism, this mug will withstand all the healing elixirs you pour into it. Mazel tov!
Are there coded messages inside this painting? Is the baby a miracle, an imposter, or a victim of human trafficking? Is Mary so hammered from Xmas drinks she doesn’t notice who’s on her lap?
The perfect Christmas™ present, this Finite Edition® mugs has been moulded from genuine stone chippings and manger-scrapings quarried in Royal Bethlehem,* then lovingly hand-baked by a higher power.**
Verily, this is not so much a coffee mug as a healing talisman*** in the spirit of Christmas.****
This mug paints exactly 1000 words, two of which are: Merry Christmas.

* Untrue
** A factory in New Plymouth, technically north.
*** Utter fiction.
**** Baseless fantasy.

To purchase for your loved ones, shop here.

You ready to take the highway to the Manger Zone?
Come see my new show at Downstage next month. It promises to crucify Xmas and skewer Santa. Vacant-eyed reindeer will be cluster-mulched into a delicious steamer of rednosed dim-sum.
For me, Xmas is an annual dream come true: the perfect public holiday. It’s all childbirth, and no paternity.
Verily, it shall be a night for living mangerously.

Presented by Classic Hits, and sponsored by Hummingbird and Betty’s, the show runs 6 nights only, from Tuesday Dec 6 to Sunday Dec 11. All tickets are under $30. On the Preview Night (Dec 6) all tickets are $20.

Bookings at Downstage. Group discounts available.

You’ve seen the mugs. You’ve possibly even bought the mugs. Quite possibly, you’ve even received them, by courier, in glorious ceramic 3D.
But you’ve been wondering: how does Raybon do that?
Wonder no more. Here’s an exclusive, behind-the-scenes peek at Raybon’s artistic process. This recently smuggled video clip — filmed secretly, deep inside his celebrity hideaway kiln — takes you through the often painful steps of an intimate process which he describes as: Political Pottery.
Not only are Raybon’s ideas thought-provoking, in this case, they’re downright coffee-holding.

The mugs are available for a limited time from the Shop on this site, or on Trade Me.

Background to a scandal

Opening Night of the Rugby World Cup: Auckland trains stranded thousands of fans, causing many to miss the Opening Ceremony, and even the match.
Some weeks prior, Adidas attracted disapproval for pricing the All Blacks jersey more expensively in NZ than overseas.
And, during World War 2, the lives of some six million Jews were wiped out in an extraordinary genocide perpetrated by Germany. Trains were involved.

Five days after the Rugby World Cup opening, and 66 years after the Holocaust, I tweeted this:

Wednesday 14/9/11 11.47pm:

“Maybe Adidas should run Auckland public transport. Nice German company. They should know how to load thousands onto trains.”

Three days later, the Herald on Sunday rang, shrill with anger. I asked her to email me questions, but she refused: “I’ve got you on the phone!” She’d located people who’d been offended. What did I have to say? Didn’t I have a responsibility? I asked the reporter to get these complainants to contact me, so I could respond. (Twitter is an open forum of back and forth, but when offended parties don’t use Twitter — for example, when a reporter uses GPS, CSI and DNA to geo-locate the most offendable people on any given topic, to tell them of a tweet that plainly wasn’t meant for them; and then with emotional, loaded questions, demands a response on the spot — well, for that, try Facebook, or this site.)

Next day, Sunday September 18, the Herald on Sunday’s headline read:
Kiwi Comedian’s Holocaust Joke Falls Flat

(Being the Herald on Sunday, the headline really should have been: Nobody Famous This Weekend Caught Having Inappropriate Sex.)

In brief, one of the people offended said what I’d done was to “trivialise” the harsh realities of the Holocaust. Another said, “There really isn’t anything funny about the Holocaust.” (Valid opinions, all.)

Since the article, however, I’ve attracted much, much stronger criticism. This is what I want to address here. I’ve been accused of anti-Semitism. In fact, if you read the article at the Herald online, a picture of evil fashion designer John Galliano appears adjacent, from an article months before. Visually, the effect is ‘Holocaust joke’, and next-door, John Galliano, and in the middle, me. I wind up being painted anti-Semitic by association, innuendo, or worse, by defamatory web layout.

My tweet was anti-Adidas, anti-Nazi, and obviously, anti-bad trains. It was also really rude to Germans. But it was not anti-Semitic. If anything, it was anti-anti-Semitic. Referring to something isn’t always a recommendation. An allusion doesn’t have to be an alleluia.

Anyone who calls my tweet anti-Semitic is doing real, foaming anti-Semites a disservice. Crazy Mel Gibson is anti-Semitic. The barking mad leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who pledges to wipe Israel off the map) is anti-Semitic. Neo-Nazis are anti-Semitic.

It’s not like I released an album with the Hamas Symphony Orchestra.
It’s not like I designed a new Spring Collection with John Galliano.
It’s not like I sent al-Qaeda flowers of condolence to mark the tragic loss of Osama bin Laden.
It’s not like I went into Anne Frank’s house with members of the SS and shouted in my best German: she’s in the bookcase!

My tweet wasn’t anti-Semitic. It was insensitive (in other words, I brought up, obliquely, the subject of a tragedy, but without wearing black, playing an anthem, or making a two-part documentary.) But as Steve Martin said, comedy ain’t pretty.

Somewhere in the world, right now, there’s a disaster, a genocide, a tragedy. And quite soon, somebody will make a joke about it. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re cheerleading for it. A mention isn’t a manifesto.

I don’t deserve my name linked anyplace near anti-Semitism by malicious, salacious media shorthand. My career in comedy (if you can call it either) has stood up against racism, in favour of the underdog. My jokes demonstrate, I like to think, the folly of racism. Judge me by my words, not my words as pecked over by hand-picked offendees who create so much graphic detail of any tragedy, of course it’s gonna ruin the joke.

(Fun fact: the two founding brothers of Adidas, Rudi and Adi Dassler, were members of the Nazi Party. Appropriately, Adi was born Adolf. And Rudi was Rudolf, making him Rudolf the Red-Nosed Nazi. It doesn’t appear there are plans for Adidas to rebrand as Adolfdas.)

THE H-BOMB

My tweet didn’t use the word Holocaust. Obviously, the H-word has headline grunt, which appeals to the Herald on Sunday, but this word does not appear in my tweet. This is deliberate. Holocaust, quite frankly, is a difficult word to use in a joke. Tends to drag the audience down. (I advise young comedians against it.)

The choice of euphemism is vital. I’m not a shock jock. It’s the difference, between ‘f***ing’ and ‘intercourse’. The fact is the same, but one version has bubble-wrap. Notice, in my tweet, no expressions like systemic murder, Zyklon-B, or Dachau. I didn’t even use the word people. Or humans. Or Jews. I said, deliberately, ‘thousands.’ To use a number is distancing, and when you want someone to laugh at a joke, you need to create emotional distance. (But not so much that it isn’t a joke.) My words were ‘thousands’, and ‘trains’ — enough to get the idea across, but hopefully, not so much to form a detailed mental picture of genocide, til suddenly we’re watching Schindler’s List and reaching for a tissue.

Bottom line: I was insulting Germans, not Jews. I hope we’ve cleared that up.

Finally, to all the people who’ve expressed their support, I have seriously been grateful for every single message. Thank you so much.

DEFENDING FREE SPEECH: Comedian Raybon Kan is selling political poetry.

Natasha Martin/The Timaru Herald "At a time where everything seems to be touchscreen, I like using a medium that stands up to hot beverages," Comedian Raybon Kan says.

“I don’t want anyone to think I’m cashing in on the Rugby World Cup. Those words, as such, do not appear on the mugs.”

Kan says the mugs are a statement about free speech. “At a time where everything seems to be touchscreen, I like using a medium that stands up to hot beverages.

“If you plan to abstain from coffee, the mugs have a revolutionary new multi-function which also works with cold drinks.

“And if you buy both mugs, and don’t eat a thing for six weeks, there are also amazing weight-loss benefits.”

The mugs go on sale from today, either from raybonkan.com or Trade Me.

Raybon Kan on BBC Radio’s Up All Night show

My segment begins at 3.45. Had fun doing the interview. Think I was fair trying to explain the point of view of the sign’s supporters, ie the opposite view to mine.

My interview on BBC Radio

Stumbled across this. (Wasn’t searching for lion-tiger intercourse.) A faithful, patient dog is breastfeeding the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger. (Both actual parents, felines, have absconded.) Wrong on so many levels. First, lions and tigers? As the Bible says, “That ain’t right.” Noah’s Ark isn’t some swingers’ key party. I saw The Lion King, and this kind of thing didn’t go on.
Secondly, if you do get all jungle slut with some totally wasted tiger, or vice versa, lion up. Both of you. Hang around. Pay the maintenance. Look after your weird mutated babies. Don’t expect some third species to step in and do what you oughta. Feed them some zebra nuggets.
Third, at some point, these cubs are gonna get a little bit bigger, and eat ‘mommy’. In a word: ungrateful children.

For the original news article, go to: http://bit.ly/jYPky5

On the bright side, Kyle Chapman denies being a racist.
The message has gotten through — even to a white supremacist — that racism is a bad look.
In years past, he wouldn’t have bothered denying racism. Why would he? Other races spoiling this neat and tidy landscape: that’s his core value. And he’s hardly the only one. In years past, before racism went out of fashion, racism was a handy shortcut — an easy way to know, at a glance, who to dislike. Much like “red sky at night, shepherd’s delight”, racism gave you a useful rule of thumb. Something like: “slanty eyes, surrounded by flies.”
Racism was common sense. Indeed, racism was probably a badge of glamour, a sign of worldliness, a hint that one had travelled.
On Close Up, interviewed by Mark Sainsbury, Kyle Chapman spoke the code of the closeted racist.
“Immigration is out of control.”
“We’re New Zealand nationalists.”
He was looking to “recruit like-minded people.”
His objection wasn’t to Chineseness — (speak the code!) — but Communism, which was destroying his freedom of speech. It didn’t occur to him that the Chinese who flee China maybe aren’t the biggest fans of Communism themselves. But that might have required thought.
I doubt Kyle Chapman and his 42 Facebook friends are ever going to come to one of my shows. I have a certain audience: liberal people for whom thinking is an enjoyable pastime, not the devil’s pitchfork, stinging the brain. So why even address his opinions? I doubt I can talk someone into liking country music if it’s not their cup of tea.
And I am really, really, really not Kyle Chapman’s cup of oolong.
How do I, whose parents and siblings were born in China, whose dad can surgically extract a fish bone with chopsticks, a person who loves yum cha, whose first language was Cantonese — how do I influence a person who simply can’t stand the sight of me, or my kin (or even Bruce Lee) because our faces pollute his pastoral wonderland?
To try change his mind is an exercise in futility. (Kyle, look it up.)
You can’t logic someone out of something they didn’t logic into.
But to me, the extremists are not the problem. More disturbing than Kyle Chapman and this flaming, street-marching Hero Parade racism, is the racism we don’t notice. The racism of absence. Without wishing to sound all X-Files, look where we’re not.
In Middle Earth, where trees can walk and talk, anyone who isn’t white is an Orc. The so-called races — elves, hobbits, Rohan, dwarves — they’re not different races. They’re different heights. Of white people.
In Shortland Street, set in the New Zealand healthcare system, not one single doctor is Chinese or subcontinental. No Asian doctor, no Indian doctor. Not one. From memory, the last Chinese character was a drug dealer. (And I don’t mean pharmacist.) Sometimes, I watch Robbie Magasiva and pretend his character is secretly Chinese. (Much the way in the TV series Kung Fu, Kwai Chang Caine was played by that Chinese actor David Carradine.)
Should a soap reflect reality? Should Shortland Street resemble Queen St? Or should we accept that Shortland Street is actually science fiction, set in a parallel universe, where all Asian doctors have been wiped out, probably by a killer virus called Chapman’s Cure?
How do you fight an absence? Remember Obama’s election campaign? I was in the UK, and in liberal comedy circles, you could sense a nation looking down its nose at these bigoted Americans. How could a black president be such a difficult concept? But the hypocrisy was glaring: how white is British politics? Compared to the faces on the streets of London, the British power structure ranges from, hmmm, cream to ivory. A black prime minister for Britain? Good grief, they’re not ready for a black Doctor Who. That would make their heads pop. Even though Doctor Who travels through time, reincarnates, lives in a Tardis and battles Daleks, the notion that Doctor Who could be anything but white is, well, outlandish. (Quite frankly, with a name like Doctor Who, he really should be Chinese. Casting directors: let’s take a meeting. Doctor Hu?)
The absence of Asians in media meant my first Asian role model was Mr Spock. Spock, the Vulcan, was good with computers, inscrutable, and capable of great feats of martial arts. His eyes were arched, his pallor yellow, his haircut a bowl, probably recently emptied of rice.
The absence of Asians in media says this: we know you’re there, but we tune you out. As Paul Henry would say, you don’t look like a New Zealander.
Ask yourself: Why is it OK for Chinese to own dairies, but not dairy farms?

*****
Raybon’s show Awesome $ecrets of Winning Thru £aziness is part of the NZ International Comedy Festival in Wellington from May 17-21. Book at Ticketek.