Making Literacy Fun
I was just grooving to Miles Ahead but somehow I need something different for this. Maybe more like Jimi's "Watchtower."
Buzzflash is featuring a great GWB autobiography satire and review of same. This is terrific stuff, although as always those of us enjoying it are not really learning anything - how do we get Aunt Alice and Cousin Mort to read it? And then again, what about those others who can't even read?
I can only imagine how entertaining the whole product is, given the excerpts:
If you've taken a moment to listen to the Weekly Radio Address parody, you'll know that the creator and voice of the faux Bush truly knows his character. The quality, pacing and inflexion of the impersonation provides a sense of surreality only surpassed by Bush himself.
What makes the audio address consistently funny is the writing -- the flights of incoherence, the tangential mind swings, the verbal linguistics, and the tortured (one of Bush's favorite hobbies) logic that we've -- sadly -- gotten used to from a President not gifted with eloquence, class, or grace (or, really, much else beyond a giftedly wealthy family).
Scott Dikkers, the voice behind the WRA, knows Bush. He also knows comedy. As the editor-in-chief of The Onion, he is immersed in the flotsam and jetsam of daily news. Like its forefather in satire, National Lampoon, the Onion's writers have no sacred cows; everything is ripe for comment; irreverence is king. Sometimes, as they did on January 17, 2001, with this headline: "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'," they even predict the future.
In Destined for Destiny, Dikkers joined with Peter Hilleren to "help" write Bush's "unauthorized autobiography" -- a description as impossible as Douglas Adam's five-book "trilogy" on hitchhiking the galaxy -- and lets the voice and comedy of WRA's George Walker Bush guide us on a satiric odyssey of the life of a man who will forever remain the epitome of "The Peter Principle."
Dikkers and Hilleren have a lot to work with, from Prescott's efforts to aid the Nazis in WWII to Bush's future presidential library. Add to that a running gag involving Jesus' personal involvement in Bush's every decision -- and the hilarious photo essay showing Jesus' involvement -- and this book will make you laugh out loud in quiet reading rooms and on crowded public transportation.
Even the chapter headings are funny, beginning with "Like 'Roots' Only White," a description of Bush's family history so absurd, one might truly expect the real Bush to say it.
-clip-
On Barbara Bush:
"Apart from my mother, George H. W. Bush is the finest man I ever knew. My father met my mother at a debutante party when she was 30. He was immediately enchanted by her horse-like beauty, her forceful nature, and her immense stature."
-clip-
On meeting Laura Bush:
"I was blessed with the good fortune of meeting a wonderful small-town Texas woman who had a dazed and clueless stare reminiscent of a goat that had been struck between the eyes with a tire iron -- a halting kind of beauty which every man desires in a woman."
-clip-
On the morning of September 11, 2001:
"I flipped through the book to see if there were any amusing drawings of this outrageous animal, and just as I was getting to the resolution of an important plot point, an aide leaned in to me and said, 'Sir, America is under attack,' sadly interrupting my reading. I reprimanded that aide and refused to speak to him or anyone for several minutes, preferring to sit there an stew. What happened to the goat at the end? We may never know."
Buzzflash is featuring a great GWB autobiography satire and review of same. This is terrific stuff, although as always those of us enjoying it are not really learning anything - how do we get Aunt Alice and Cousin Mort to read it? And then again, what about those others who can't even read?
I can only imagine how entertaining the whole product is, given the excerpts:
If you've taken a moment to listen to the Weekly Radio Address parody, you'll know that the creator and voice of the faux Bush truly knows his character. The quality, pacing and inflexion of the impersonation provides a sense of surreality only surpassed by Bush himself.
What makes the audio address consistently funny is the writing -- the flights of incoherence, the tangential mind swings, the verbal linguistics, and the tortured (one of Bush's favorite hobbies) logic that we've -- sadly -- gotten used to from a President not gifted with eloquence, class, or grace (or, really, much else beyond a giftedly wealthy family).
Scott Dikkers, the voice behind the WRA, knows Bush. He also knows comedy. As the editor-in-chief of The Onion, he is immersed in the flotsam and jetsam of daily news. Like its forefather in satire, National Lampoon, the Onion's writers have no sacred cows; everything is ripe for comment; irreverence is king. Sometimes, as they did on January 17, 2001, with this headline: "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'," they even predict the future.
In Destined for Destiny, Dikkers joined with Peter Hilleren to "help" write Bush's "unauthorized autobiography" -- a description as impossible as Douglas Adam's five-book "trilogy" on hitchhiking the galaxy -- and lets the voice and comedy of WRA's George Walker Bush guide us on a satiric odyssey of the life of a man who will forever remain the epitome of "The Peter Principle."
Dikkers and Hilleren have a lot to work with, from Prescott's efforts to aid the Nazis in WWII to Bush's future presidential library. Add to that a running gag involving Jesus' personal involvement in Bush's every decision -- and the hilarious photo essay showing Jesus' involvement -- and this book will make you laugh out loud in quiet reading rooms and on crowded public transportation.
Even the chapter headings are funny, beginning with "Like 'Roots' Only White," a description of Bush's family history so absurd, one might truly expect the real Bush to say it.
-clip-
On Barbara Bush:
"Apart from my mother, George H. W. Bush is the finest man I ever knew. My father met my mother at a debutante party when she was 30. He was immediately enchanted by her horse-like beauty, her forceful nature, and her immense stature."
-clip-
On meeting Laura Bush:
"I was blessed with the good fortune of meeting a wonderful small-town Texas woman who had a dazed and clueless stare reminiscent of a goat that had been struck between the eyes with a tire iron -- a halting kind of beauty which every man desires in a woman."
-clip-
On the morning of September 11, 2001:
"I flipped through the book to see if there were any amusing drawings of this outrageous animal, and just as I was getting to the resolution of an important plot point, an aide leaned in to me and said, 'Sir, America is under attack,' sadly interrupting my reading. I reprimanded that aide and refused to speak to him or anyone for several minutes, preferring to sit there an stew. What happened to the goat at the end? We may never know."
posted by Sir Gumbo at 11:02 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home