MPFC – If you know, you know

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, humor, satire, lampoons, parodies

Well, folks, this is a step up from Kindergarten: Everything I Ever Wanted to Know About ____* I Learned From Monty Python by Brian Cogan, PhD and Jeff Massey, PhD. Hmm. If one ignores the learned asides and references, the visual humor of Monty Python in its various incarnations is Kindergarten all the way. The bottom of the book cover has the footnote, "* History, Art, Poetry, Communism, Philosophy, The Media, Birth, Death, Religion, Literature, Latin, Transvestites, Botany, The French, Class Systems, Mythology, Fish Slapping, and Many More!" Various portions of the book do indeed treat of these items, and many more.

The authors make much of the educational background of the six Python members. No doubt, having been steeped in British culture about as much as one is able to steep, Python was eminently qualified to send-up nearly every aspect thereof. Even the "American Python" Terry Gilliam was a naturalized Brit after 1968.

The book is no parody of Monty Python; that's not possible. It is a series of riffs on their treatment of the various and sundry subjects. I have seen only one of the TV shows from Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Spanish Inquisition". The TV show ran on BBC from late 1969 to the end of 1974 and many episodes were re-run in later years on PBS. I've seen scattered bits that made their way to YouTube, and during the period that I could stomach watching PBS, I saw The Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The book's authors have apparently binge-watched the entire MPFC corpus several times.

I enjoyed the book. I can't write more than this, so I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to delve into it yourself.

Got a used star drive frammiswidget spacer handy?

kw: book reviews, science fiction, parodies, satire

One TV show I usually watch is "America's Funniest Videos". It is my laugh therapy (there's no other source of clean comedy on TV). I wondered once what it would be like to see several shows in a row. After watching a 2-hour special, I realized there is a limit to it; it just wasn't as funny by late in the second hour. I guess there are only so many ways for someone to get "minorly hurt", and great video shorts that don't involve accidents are rare.

I remembered this while reading plumage from pegasus by Paul Di Filippo. The author is a satirist and parodist, one of the best, and his target is Science Fiction. I found it is best to have another book I'm reading, while going through this one. It just doesn't do justice to the 43 pieces in the book to read one after another after another.

I don't look to parody or satire for new ideas. This was comic relief, and I enjoyed it as such.

Their English may be funny, but it's better than my Japanese

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, tour guides, parodies

I made some attempt to learn Japanese after marrying a woman from Japan, I really did. But I was already almost thirty, and the ol' memory was just harder to train by then. Two events convinced me I'd always need an interpreter.

Once, in a Japanese restaurant with my parents, I signaled the waitress and asked for water: mizu-o kudasai. She replied, yombai ma. I looked up in confusion, and she held up four fingers. As I struggled to catch my mental breath, my wife said quietly, "She's asking if she should bring water for all four of us" (yon is 4). I blurted, Hai, domo (Yes, thanks), and stayed pretty quiet for the rest of the evening.

On our first visit to Japan to meet my in-laws, I just listened, or spoke through my wife's interpretation, for a few days. Then one day, standing up, I hit my head on the doorway. I don't recall exactly what I said to my mother-in-law, but my intention was to say, "I am too big." Instead, I said something like, "I'm way too much." She fell to the floor, laughing until she cried. If you've never seen a woman of nearly seventy years, in a kimono, rolling on the floor, you're fortunate.

With those experiences (and a few other groaners) in mind, I picked up Here Speeching American: a very strange guide to English as it is garbled around the world by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras, with some trepidation, I might add. The cover proudly proclaims, "Bestselling authors of The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said.'' I almost have to look that one up...

A book like this almost writes itself. The work is in quote-gathering. With friends and correspondents around the world, one saves a lot of travel. The breadth of coverage is impressive.We're all aware of things like the L/R confusion the Chinese and Japanese experience...they have no L or R in their languages, but a kind of rolled D that sounds like both. So things like "Lental Video", "Rens Creaner" and "Burgel with Flies" are to be expected. Word mixups are more interesting, such as the title quote, found in Mallorca, Spain. The quotes that are genuinely fun are the mixups between noun, verb, and adjective forms: "Pork with Spicy" (a restaurant in Taipei) or "Foot Wearing Prohibited" (a Buddhist temple in Burma...they meant "footwear").

There are malaprops and other misplaced words: "Before going to work, have a few lapses in our pool" (a Bangkok hotel), or "Compulsory Buffet Breakfast" (Vietnam). And the inevitable Spoonerism: "Traffic may be conges to subjection" (Hong Kong).

However, for the most part, I found it a bit unsettling, making fun of others' ignorance. I've made it a practice, when I see something that is clearly a bad translation, to rewrite it (if it is short) and send the copy, with my compliments, to the company, if they want the chance to republish correctly. I figure, most of the time, they don't; many such items are one-off runs and won't be repeated. But I sometimes wonder what kind of business I could build on quick, low-cost proofreading via Email.

Nancy Drew Grows Up

kw: book reviews, mysteries, parodies

I grew up reading a great many sorts of books, but I particularly remember the Tom Swift series (original, not "Jr") and the Hardy Boys. I didn't pay much attention to Nancy Drew or the older Perils of Pauline; they were "girl stuff." Forty years later, my son read at least a hundred of the newer Hardy Boys series. We used to joke that, with each book covering a few day's time, the Hardys must have had a time machine to fit all that into the year they were 17 and 18. Later he read (probably) everything of Encyclopedia Brown.

Confessions of a Teen Sleuth by Chelsea Cain brings us up to date on the life of Nancy Drew, her college years—when she roomed with Carolyn Keene, her own Watson—marriage, later life and final adventure at age 82. We get a glimpse of the destiny of the Hardys, Tom Swift Jr., E. Brown and others.

The parody is designedly self-conscious, well enough written for that to add amusement rather than detract. There was a style to writing for the teen market of the 1920s to 1950s, and Ms Cain has captured it well. A fun read.