Yes, but has author Dav Pilkey bought any hippos with the proceeds of the Captain Underpants series?

Or is he all hat and no hippos?

Speaking of hats, I saw High Noon on the big screen last weekend. It really kicked ass. Though 1952 must have been a slow year in movie music if "Oh Don't Forsake Me Oh My Darlin'" won an Oscar. Though the couplet

He made a vow while he was in prison
That it would be my life or his'n

deserves only the highest praise.

Usually when some artwork or book or movie gets blamed for something, I can't speak from experience when I say "it would have happened anyway." Because I haven't killed anybody, for example.

But I speak from experience when I say that I drew lots of poop years before this book ever came out. Only I was not so clever to put hats on the poops. Usually they were simple poop-bombs, dropped by naked witches on flying broomsticks, onto unsuspecting gnomes.

Witches and poops -- it's like a super-special J. K. Rowling/Dav Pilkey team-up! American children, worship Satan and play with doo-doo! Matt, you fiend!

What's weird is my masterpiece (admittedly, my friend Paul in third grade did most of the actual drawing of this one, I did the story-line) didn't even get me in trouble with the teacher. She just smiled and acted like she was impressed. Yay for the 70's and self-expression!

Re High Noon -- it was the very first disc that Theresa and got from Netflix. Maybe it's better on the big screen, but we found it rather slow and pompous -- and that tune really got on our nerves. We enjoyed much more this similarly titled Gregory Peck film.

Re: Do Not Forsake Me -- that song is forever etched into my brain, thanks to a stunt by a local radio station back in the early 1980s. There I was, eagerly waiting to hear the American Top 40 (how times have changed), when I realised that every song the DJs announced - 'Every Breath You Take', 'Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong' - was followed by the haunting refrain of 'Dew naht forsake me oh mah darrrlin... on this our weddddding dayyyyyy'. This went on *all day*.

Turns out they were trying to break a world record (for annoying the crap* out of listeners, no doubt).

*Obligatory on-topic reference.

I just realized that the quotation from the Times is an unfortunate example of a basic flaw in subject-verb agreement -- more evidence of the insidious influence of witchy-poo on our culture.

And Rory: If forced to choose between "Do Not Forsake Me" and "Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong" I think my auditory lobe would shut down in frustrated protest.

Speaking of subject-verb agreement* I enjoyed this article about a local teacher who found a grammatical error in the PSAT and got the question removed. Man, I thought I'd never be able to throw this in.

original article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51947-2003May13.html

follow up to his critics:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33433-2003May23.html

*Mandatory link of relevance

Sorry for the laziness.

link one

link two

Often, Oscars, like many awards, are given not for the named achievement, but for something else that was worthy and ignored, or for lifetime achievement. In this case, perhaps the farsighted Oscar voters were honoring Tex Ritter for having fathered John Ritter.

High Noon slow and pompous? Maybe Netflix sent you Weekend at Bernie's II, "by mistake." Main character stiff but with a cowboy hat and a strong sense of honor? Then you were watching High Noon. Main character stiff with a beach hat but with no senses whatsoever? Weekend at Bernie's II.

Perhaps "stiff" is better than "slow" -- my point is, neither Theresa nor I felt particularly engaged by High Noon -- I found both main characters off-putting, honor or not. This may, however, be because I more or less knew the story, I believe from a MAD magazine parody. Perhaps this was also because I'm more used to the more cynical "modern" westerns of Sergio Leone and Eastwood, which probably makes me like some country fan who is into Garth Brooks and not George Jones. Oh well. I also liked "The Searchers", but I haven't seen much else of the John Wayne canon.

And by singling out "Weekend at Bernie's II (Cadaver Boogaloo)" I take it you are by implication endorsing the original Weekend at Bernie's as pleasurable family viewing.

Actually, it is based on a true story wherein a video editor of your acquaintence found that someone previously using a video editing booth had left his Netflicks account open on the computer there, leading our protagonist to put WaBII at the top of his hapless victim's Netflicks request list.

The choice of WaBII seemed to me diamond-perfect divine inspiration, one which I stare at in wonder as if at a dew-covered spider's web or an Ansel Adams print on the wall of one of your better medical offices. My use in the above post was but a minor homage to this moment. Though to have done so without giving credit is probably a pretty touch matter in a New York-based publication such as yours.

Am I fired?

Touchy.

Freedom of stink is not Constitutionally protected, but we are entitled to pursuit of crappiness. . .