Archive for the humor Topic
Book Parodies
If you liked Beth’s post about the Twilight parody, you’ll want to check out The Huffington Post’s slideshow of parodied books. They’re also collecting reader suggestions for a new slideshow to be posted on Friday. (And you can vote on what you think of the current parodies.)
Samples from the slideshow:
Find the parodied book.
Cake Wrecks – From Blog to Book
TV programs such as Cake Boss and Ace of Cakes show us an amazing array of beautiful cakes but there is an equally entertaining side of the cake business — the goof-ups and the downright bad ideas!
Cake Wrecks, a fantastic blog showcasing funny cake bloopers and misguided artistry, is now available in book form. Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong by Jen Yates features “the worst cakes ever, including the ugly, the silly, the downright creepy, the unintentionally sad or suggestive, and the just plain funny.”
Featured on the cover is the cake that started it all…
Nightlight: A Twilight Parody
Juvenile? Maybe, but I couldn’t help snickering at this parody of Twilight, written by the Harvard Lampoon. I wouldn’t pay $13.95 for the whole thing, but if I cared more about Twilight…maybe.
Having read the first book* in the Twilight series, I can confirm that the writing is ripe for ridicule; I found myself wanting to create a drinking game in which I did a shot of whiskey every time Edward emitted a throaty chuckle, or said something to Bella in a husky voice, or Edward’s eyes were described as butterscotch, amber, topaz, golden (WE GET IT, THEY’RE YELLOWISH), or every time Bella bit her lip.
Anyway, here’s the excerpt:
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It was then that I saw him. He was sitting at a table all by himself, not even eating. He had an entire tray of baked potatoes in front of him and still, he did not touch a single one. How could a human have his pick of baked potatoes and resist them all? Even odder, he hadn’t noticed me, Belle Goose, future Academy Award winner.
A computer sat before him on the table. He stared intently at the screen, narrowing his eyes into slits and concentrating those slits on the screen as if the only thing that mattered to him was physically dominating that screen. He was muscular, like a man who could pin you up against the wall as easily as a poster, yet lean, like a man who would rather cradle you in his arms. He had reddish, blonde-brown hair that was groomed heterosexually. He looked older than the other boys in the room—maybe not as old as God or my father, but certainly a viable replacement. Imagine if you took every woman’s idea of a hot guy and averaged it out into one man. This was that man.
“What is that?” I asked, knowing that whatever it was it wasn’t avian.
“That’s Edwart Mullen,” Lucy said.
Edwart. I had never met a boy named Edwart before. Actually, I had never met any human named Edwart before. It was a funny sounding name. Much funnier than Edward.
As we sat there, gazing at him for what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than the entire lunch period, his eyes suddenly flicked toward me, slithering over my face and boring into my heart like fangs. Then in a flash they went back to glowering at that screen.
“He moved here two years ago from Alaska,” she said.
So not only was he pale like me, but he was also an outsider from a state that begins with an “A.” I felt a surge of empathy. I had never felt a connection like this before.
“That boy’s not worth your time,” she said wrongly. “Edwart doesn’t date.”
I smirked inwardly and snorted outwardly. So, I would be his first girlfriend.
********************
The entire book, called Nightlight, will be available for sale November 3rd.
*and by that I mean all four, in fairly rapid succession
Ian Frazier wins Thurber Prize
More awards. They are coming thick and fast with the Nobel so close now that you can smell it. Ian Frazier’s Lamentations of the Father – a book of essays – has won the Thurber Prize, which acclaims American humour. He gets a paltry $5,000. That’s probably a couple of hundred dollars per gag and being funny isn’t easy.
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