Tag Archives: Parody

Literature, Oddments

Your Baby Monsters: A Mini-Guide to Their Care and Feeding

From left: Twiggus, Flerjoob, Snorgustuflox and Zmoojius

Number 37 in the Cryptids Large and Small Series of Monster Care Guides by Dr. Skeezix Fremulon, World-Renowned Monstrologist

 Welcome to the Wonderful World of Monster Care!

In order to keep your baby monsters healthy and happy during their crucial early months, Dr. Skeezix Fremulon has formulated this short-form guide to baby monster care based on his original three-volume classic guide to a monster’s first year. We at Téras Publishing have provided Dr. Fremulon with key details about your particular monsters so that we may provide you with this customized guide.

First, Meet Your Monsters

 All four of your monsters are crepuscular fneedids, and each first emerged from its hanging cave pod at twilight during a January full moon. As you know, crepuscular monsters prefer to dine at twilight and absolutely avoid noshing during the noon or midnight hours. Because they are young, they need more sleep than adult monsters. They prefer to rest suspended upside-down like bats, but they are versatile beings and can adapt to resting in any position given practice.

Being flabjescent (finger-dwelling) monsters, they sleep with their eyes open so that they can always be aware of micromovements that might require them to rearrange their eyes, claws, antennae or fingers. Do not be alarmed if you awake to find them staring at you. They may actually be sleeping. If they are awake, you are likely to find that they are simply admiring your good looks.

Monster #1: Twiggus

Twiggus is a Jaundiced Pricklebelly. A gentle, jovial soul, her favorite foods are gooseberries and Triscuits. Her gelatinous eye pockets are light-sensitive and they act as night-vision goggles that allow her to see in perfect darkness. Her antennae are ticklish, so be careful that when you flex them, you do so delicately. Twiggus likes nomming lightly on fingertips and rolling in cotton balls. Her favorite performer is Charles Mingus.

Likes: Ginger-lemon tea, being read to during late-morning snack time, doing needlepoint, engaging in philosophical discourse

Dislikes: Chervil, mangoes, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the letter M

Monster #2: Flerjoob

Flerjoob is a Tangerine Zogulanthropus. Anxious and easily startled, he needs frequently soothing. Though he does not own an automobile, he is always worried that he has misplaced his car keys. Has a tendency to shriek quietly when startled, and he startles easily. His shrieks are barely audible, but they rattle Snorgustuflox, so they are best avoided. When he is nervous, he finds tapioca pudding and golden raisins very comforting.

Likes: Having his teeth counted, being told that he’s a good boy, doing jigsaw puzzles featuring photos of rubber ducks, sharpening crayons

Dislikes: Loud noises, strobe lights, polyester blends, bar soap

Monster #3: Snorgustuflox

Snorgustuflox is a Celery Queezix. Singularly lacking in self-awareness, Snorgustuflox thinks he is easy-going and friendly because he waves at everyone all the time, but his gruff barking voice and aggressive manner often put people off. He is desperate for friendship and will wiggle his ferny antennae with glee when having a conversation with a new friend, but his direct questioning and habit of interrupting may be considered rude. He reacts badly to time-outs and benefits from a more relaxed approach. Gentle reminders and pleasant distractions when he becomes overbearing work best.

Likes: Cilantro-based herb blends, under-ripe bananas, hang gliding, luna moths

Dislikes: Fox News, cough syrup, backgammon, socks

Monster #4: Zmoojius

Zmoojius is a Flangified Multiocularian. A practical joker, she likes bending her eyestalks around corners, sticking them into things and commenting on what she sees. As a rare aubergine-snooted variety, she tends toward self-importance, but she has a good heart and is more likely to pick flowers for you with her clasping flangicles than to pinch you with them. A romantic monster, she enjoys eating Valentine heart candies and listening to soft-rock ballads while staring up at the moon.

Likes: Rom-coms, cornstarch, the way people’s eyes scrunch up when they smile, sphagnum moss

Dislikes: Cider vinegar, dust mites, egg salad, stand-up comedy specials

In Conclusion: Relax and Enjoy Your New Friends

It is normal for baby monsters to sleep for up to 23 hours a day and to cluster together in strange combinations. They play a mini-monster variant of Twister that requires no mat or spinner, so don’t be surprised if you find them gathering and piling up in unexpected ways. They are quite fond of bubble baths and underwater toe rides. They play hide and seek whenever possible, and particularly enjoy hiding in medicine cabinets, refrigerators, underwear drawers and glove compartments.

While your monsters have strong opinions, they are gentle souls at heart. You will find that as long as they receive frequent smiles, kind words and good snacks, they are quite easy to live with and will provide years of enjoyable companionship.

 

Film & Television, Literature, Oddments

Nihilism and Nightlights

little-man

The Little Man movie rating system has been used by the San Francisco Chronicle since 1942. The excited Little Man above signifies a critic’s greatest satisfaction and is equivalent to a four-star rating.

• • • • • • •

The following is one of a series of six film review parodies I wrote for the Sunday Punch section of the San Francisco Chronicle some years ago. In each piece I wrote about outrageous, nonexistent foreign films and reviewed them in the voice of a pompous film critic. This was the second parody of the six.

• • • • • • •

Among the new foreign film releases this season are two films by female directors: Bebe Francobolli’s ode to Dada, Ciao Chow Chow, and Christiane de Geronimo’s children’s thriller, Nightlight.

Francobolli is the daughter of the Suprematist painter Mazlow Molotov (“The Black Russian”) and Constructivist painter Kiri de Kulpe Kloonig (a former courtesan known as “The Dutch Treat”). Bebe’s parents met in Rome at an international stamp-collecting convention and became Italian citizens before their only child was born.

Named Bebe Francobolli (literally Baby Postage Stamps) after her parents’ avocation, she refused to become a philatelist and rejected the art of her ancestors. She turned to Dada, the nihilistic movement that created “non-art,” laughed at overly serious artists and spawned Surrealism.

These influences can be seen clearly in Ciao Chow Chow, in which Bebe herself stars. Translated from Italian into English, and then back into Italian again, with no subtitles, the film begins and ends with Bebe waving goodbye to her beloved Chow dog, Antipasto, symbol of her lost youth and of her ridiculous early films.

Ciao is a parody of a self-parody, masterful in its simplicity and in its bold statement that life is to be laughed at, and that nothing is serious or sacred.

Basically nihilistic, with Dadaist subject matter and camera angles, this film is convoluted and uneven, personalized and stylized, and will make no sense to anyone who has not seen Bebe’s early travelogue films. Yet, Bebe promises that it will be her last film work, and that alone has prompted critical acclaim.

Avant-garde director Christiane de Geronimo’s Nightlight tells the terrifying story of the night the Mickey Mouse nightlight burned out in the Turner household. Little Bobby Turner is forced to face The Clown Puppet, The Vicious Animal Slippers and The Dreaded Man from Under the Bed.

Filmed in black and white, Nightlight captures the shadowy horror of every child’s bedroom, and forces even the adult viewer to come to grips with The Thing in the Closet. Not for the squeamish.

De Geronimo’s earlier attempts at children’s thrillers include The Teddy Bear with No Face, Scream, Barbie, Scream and Revenge of the Katzenjammer Kids, in which comic-strip characters from the past are set loose on an unwitting Nebraska farm town.

Nightlight, the third of her bedtime stories series, features the late French film star Estella de Lumiere in her final role before the dreadful accident on the set of Murder on the Trampoline.

Next month, two recent remakes: Canadian filmmaker and ice-hockey champion Pete Steed’s sport-oriented version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Fujiko Shiatsu’s sumo wrestling remake of The Music Man.

 

History, Politics & Current Affairs

Why the Boston Globe’s Trump Satire is Good Journalism

Globe 1

The Boston Globe’s satirical front page warning of life under a Trump presidency, published in their opinion section on April Fool’s Day

This morning the Boston Globe shared a brilliant piece of satire in their opinion section: a mock-up of what their paper would be like one year from today if Donald Trump were to win the presidency. Predictably, social media is blowing up with explosions of outrage from people who don’t know the particulars or the place of opinion pieces in journalism and have no awareness of the importance and history of satire in affecting political change. They say they are appalled and offended and that the Boston Globe has lost all credibility. Let us pause to consider some important truths.

The mocked-up pages of the newspaper did not take over the front of the newspaper. Those who go to the Boston Globe will find the satire in the opinion section, the same section in which other political positions are taken every single day in thousands of newspapers and news sites across the nation and around the world in the form of editorials, op-ed pieces and political cartoons.

For those who cry “Outrage!” that the Globe would stoop so low as to share a political opinion in the form of satire, I ask them: does your favorite news source publish opinion pieces? Have you never seen a political cartoon? Do you not read infographics which selectively choose which facts to highlight every day? These tools have been used to sway popular opinion and have been integral pieces of journalism for hundreds of years. Newspapers and journals have always taken stands; very few of them do not endorse candidates for president. The best of them present their opinion pieces in the clearly labeled opinion section; they do their best to report the facts with little adornment throughout the rest of the paper and then put the opinions of their editorial board and columnists in a section expressly labeled as a place where people take sides and try to persuade. The Boston Globe did exactly this with their publication of their “Donald Trump’s world” satire.

Confused and misinformed modern readers often erroneously believe that it is the job of the media to be completely without bias at all times. Ironically, this idea is most often promulgated by followers of extreme-right news media whose every pronouncement has conservative political overtones. There is not a middle ground to every question, and the correct journalistic response to opposing views is often to refuse to sit squarely in the middle and pretend that there is no right or wrong answer when facts point clearly to one side over the other. In many situations, there is a clear and fundamental truth at stake, and not just a matter of opinion. Vaccines do not cause autism, for example, and sweeping worldwide climate change is real. Reporting on such issues as if they were controversial and unanswerable questions would be to mislead readers into thinking that established facts are mere opinions.

When trained journalists turn their well-informed and often cynical eyes on a world full of opposing opinions, murky details and obvious facts, it is their job to not only gather and separate facts from misstatements but also to ask questions about where those facts will lead us. It is their job to think of the likely consequences of a world in which each of the presidential candidates went on to be elected and then ran their administration according to their stated beliefs. Usually they do this in words or cartoons. In a world in which newspapers are quickly dying for lack of readership and most people gather the bulk of their news from online sources, the most effective way to get attention for their opinions is now to take chunks of information and spread them via Facebook or Twitter or Instagram alongside punchy visuals.

Globe 2

Another page from the Boston Globe satire

By creating a stunning visual parody mini-newspaper as a warning of what could come, the Boston Globe knew that they would be able to get attention for their opinions and get people to consider consequences in a more visual, visceral and immediate fashion. They knew that they were taking an editorial risk, but that their message would be carried and discussed by thousands of news outlets and social media platforms around the world. They decided to present an editorial in visual form to get attention, yes, but they buttressed their opinions with facts, quotes and context in the way of a warning. This is their Orwellian admonishment to those who will not bother to read newspapers or consider facts anymore.

The job of any editorial board is to get attention and sway opinion by asking people to consider the consequences of their choices. Those who raise the alarm that the Boston Globe has now shown itself willing to trick people with fake news are the same people who haven’t bothered to actually look at the well-produced parody itself, nor to consider that they get much of their own information from avowedly conservative sources with axes to grind who are more than willing to publish opinion and pretend that it is fact.

As has happened throughout history, a large proportion of the population is bored by and tired of politics and won’t read the facts about the candidates’ actual stances on substantive issues. The average citizen of the U.S. only thinks of the candidates in broad, cartoonish terms without thinking through what the consequences of our electoral choices may be. People justify their political agnosticism and ennui by saying that all candidates are equally corrupt and evil and all of them will lead to the same bad outcomes, so their votes are meaningless and futile. This is demonstrably false.

Being a good citizen requires mental effort and a willingness to expend some time and expose one’s opinions to rigor. Lives and livelihoods depend on it. Rights are won and lost over such things. People starve or go without medicine or surgery because of politics. Wars begin and end, countries are invaded and people go to jail or are freed or executed based on the choices we make at the polls. The stakes are so incredibly high that those who spend their lives following politics obsessively and who report on these issues feel they have a duty to use every tool they have in order to get us to sit up and take notice when it’s time for us to make life-changing, world-altering decisions. The Boston Globe has done this using pointed and potent (and clearly labeled) satire. I applaud them for it.