If This Isn't From a Book, It Should Be
-
Showing posts tagged Comedy
-
from Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! October 1, 2011
A kind of continuation on an earlier talk about board game movies
The CW have green-lit a new reality show where celebrities play an old party game. I agree with Peter Sagal: Faith Salie’s answers were so much better. Can you imagine Celebrity Red Rover?
-
Frankenstein’s Monster
For a friend: in an episode of BBC Radio panel game The 99p Challenge, there was a round called “The Secret Lives of Monsters” where the four comedians imagined the private lives of villains and beasties. Here are lines from the Frankenstein’s Monster round:
- What is in the mail today? Oh no! Nothing but bills! And look—they have addressed it to Frankenstein again! I am not Frankenstein! I am Frankenstein’s MONSTER! F. Monster! Is that so hard?
- Why couldn’t he have given me, like, a name of my own? I quite like Keith.
- But I don’t want to be called Frankenstein’s Keith either.
- Keith McCluskey I quite like.
- I’m going to have a monster and call it Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster!
- The thing I hate the most is when Dr. Frankenstein goes, “Oy—MY Monster! Over here!”
- Is that the dating agency? Do you have anybody made up of parts of other people?
- “What do you look for in a woman?” Other people!
- Do you think I look better in a polo neck? Or does it just draw attention?
-
UnknownUnknown10Plays“[P]eople have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. The reason for that is very simple—I was having a lousy year, for all sorts of personal reasons that I don’t want to go into. … I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note …”
—Douglas Adams, 1998
inverviewed by Matt NewsomeLike many readers, I found the ending of Mostly Harmless to be disappointing, unsatisfying, and a real downer. Sure some loose ends get tied up, but the last pages leave the reader hanging to a kind of narrative void with little hope in sight.
Luckily, Douglas Adams himself has admitted that the Hitchhiker’s Guide saga should have a happier continuation and/or conclusion.
Unluckily, Adams passed away in 2001 before a sixth book could cohere.
Re-luckily, writer and director Dirk Maggs took the Hitchhiker’s Guide back to where it began, even before the novels: BBC Radio 4 (and with much of the original cast as well!). And in doing so, Maggs got a chance to wrap up the Guide saga in what I consider the most satisfying of conclusions. (There’s even a nod to the Lintilla clones; the Lintillas’ storyline was only explored in the radio show when Susan Sheridan wouldn’t return as Trillian for the original second season.) Share and enjoy.
(This post mainly came about when a friend read the first four books and professed a fondness for the character Fenchurch. Posting this felt like personal duty.)
-
John Finnemore: BBC Radio comedian, frequent David Mitchell collaborator, ‘Cabin Pressure’ writer and author, and now answerer of fan letters.
-
Saw Ray Cooney’s ‘Run for Your Wife’ in Dinner Theater
Nothing like a classic broad British opening-and-shutting doors Oh-God-the-police-can’t-see-you-here-quick-hide-in-the-bathroom sex farce.
A few others I adore: Charley’s Aunt; Noises Off; the average episode of Fawlty Towers.
-
It’s been a while since I laughed at something so sick and wrong.
Another gem from the Animation Show DVDs. Most of Disc 2 is amazing. For me, only F.E.D.S. was less than thrilling.
“Fallen Art”
dir: Tomasz Baginski -
A bit of Shakespeare for you
-
Poem a Day #13
NYUKU
moptop; frizzy; bald;
punching; slapping; poking eyes;
Moe; Larry; Curly
—April 13, 2012
My National Poetry Month Challenge -
Iorz Feixfuli, M. J. Yilz
So the story is: some people have always thought that the English language should be revised and/or standardized. After all, in what demented language does the word eight sound exactly the same as ate, but though, through, rough, cough, thought, and bough all have different ways of pronouncing -ough?
Click the title to read a letter from a Mr. M. J. Shields to the Economist newspaper in 1971 about such spelling reform. In the letter, he illustrates the reform as he describes the process. It wil twist yor maind. Wud iu eva get iused tu xis? Yair and enjoi!
