This is my second post in a row about Book of Ratings — Part One, about Hobo Signs, is here.
So, this is my actual introduction to Lore Sjöberg: he’s upgraded. This is his first Rating in newfangled videocast form, friendly for YouTube glory. Here’s Lore’s rating of the state quarters of California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, and West Virginia.
State Quarters, Part 7, by Lore Sjöberg
[via Spectre Collie]
This is a two-part post — I found a very funny website, and I’m pretty sure that I must have been living under a rock to have not seen it before now. I also couldn’t choose just one thing on it to post, so I’m doing something completely unheard of, and posting two things. HA! Enjoy.
Lore Sjöberg takes lists of things — anything from ” Pasta Shapes” to “Aspects of Santa Claus” and rates them on a grading scale. He gives out a lot of Cs and Ds, a few As, and practically no Bs. And he’s really goddamned funny.
Given our penchant for hobos ’round the old Junkyard Clubhouse, I couldn’t help but love his rating of Hobo Signs, the chalk symbols hobos used to communicate what they knew about a town to the hobos that might come after them. They’re a sort of Hobo Fodor’s. Here’s a sample of Lore’s assessment:
The Owner Isn’t Here
This doesn’t seem very good. Unless the owner is thoughtful enough to erase the symbol on his way back in, this is about as useful as a symbol meaning “it’s six-thirty.” I suppose you could carefully inscribe it somewhere where it’s going to get concealed whenever the ower gets home, maybe by putting it in his driveway or writing it in dust on the welcome mat, then spreading some dirt around the walkway so that the owner wipes his feet when he comes home. But that doesn’t seem like the sort of things that hobos do. When you’re playing word association, “hobo” is rarely followed by “elaborate plan.” D-
Lore’s three-part series on Hobo Signs can be found here, here and here. You can find all his ratings at, appropriately enough, Book of Ratings. And of course, there is a book, if you want to take your ratings reading on the road. [via Spectre Collie]
Today, I would like to discuss one of the true classics of the Disney live action canon: Monkeys, Go Home! This 1967 film has it all… monkeys* — four of them, and they’re <dramatic echo>SPACE MONKEYS</dramatic echo> … Dean Jones … ’60s protests … Love, Frenchy Style … and as if that weren’t enough (no, stop! no, really!) … Maurice! Chevalier! And! The! Title! Ends! In! An! Exclamation! Point! Can you feel the hilarity?! So zany!!!
*phew* … I’ll take it down a notch or two now, before someone reaches through the screen to throttle me.
Alright now, where was I? Oh yes. Monkeys, Go Home. I mean, Monkeys, Go Home!. In this delightful, fun for the whole family maybe some of the family film, Dean Jones plays Henry Dussard, an American who has just inherited an olive farm he has never seen, in the south of France. Ooh la la! Being an American, he’s got some nutty ideas about how to turn this olive farm into a profitable venture — by hiring chimps instead of people to work the farm. Luckily, he previously was a chimp trainer for NASA, so he’s got a team of recently-retired space chimps at his disposal. So wacky!
The little French town doesn’t like the idea of having to compete against a chimp-run farm, and they mount an underground resistance against Dussard. The chimps strike back by mounting a protest of their own, fighting for their right to work just as humans do. At the same time, a boozy French broad shows up claiming to be Dussard’s long-lost cousin (and she is truly fabulous, played by Yvonne Constant), staking claim to half of Dussard’s farm, and threatening Dussard’s budding relationship with a barely-legal French tartlet, played by Yvette Mimieux.
And just for good measure, Maurice Chevalier plays the town priest, who shows up now and then to impart some heavily-accented wisdom, and sing a song or two.
This is quite possibly the slapstickiest, monkeyest, wacknuttiest of all the Disney films. The hilarity, it ensues. This film… well, it’s sort of the Disney version of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I can’t help but wonder why they’ve released it on DVD, but I’m so glad they did. I kind of love it.
Oh! The music! The music is the best part, and I’m not kidding around here — I would sincerely buy Robert F. Brunner’s soundtrack/score. It’s great ’60s light-quirk-funk-pop stuff.
* Technically, chimps aren’t monkeys, but for the sake of simplicity, today we’ll say they are. It’s Topsy-Turvy day! Shrimp are fish! Tomatoes are vegetables! Mama’s Family was funny!
The romantic musings of a seven-year-old. [via Darth Daddy]
I found this on eBay a few years ago, got it for something like $10:
Any words describing its beauty would just be superfluous.
How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? [Amazon.com]
A thoughtful treatise from Hiroyuki Nishigaki. From the Book Description on Amazon:
I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out.
In addition, he also can have burned a strong beautiful fire within his abdomen. It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration.
If you don’t know concentration which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like a hell.
Don’t you feel better already?
Children and grown-ups become wild about his treatment and come back begging for more, more of LUIE LUIE.
