Parodies Books

I have a lot of interests in things, and I can sum the command for this book up in three words: BUY SAFE HAVENS.
Safe Havens is a great strip about school kids and their offbeat talking animals. There is always a story to the strip and the artwork and timing is great-- you never know what'll happen next!
Anyway, I'm always looking for new Safe Havens books; it pleases me, and I'm difficult to please. The magic of the strip and the awesome characters and situations will totally blow you away. I insist, for the last and final time: BUY SAFE HAVENS!!!!

I first discovered "Safe Havens" on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website, and got addicted pretty quick- and had to get the book.The comic strip's artwork is quite pleasing to view, and the situations of the characters- mostly school age children and their pets- are in a similar vein as the long departed "Bloom County" or "Calvin & Hobbes" strips, although with a more up-to-date twist. Definitely a must for those who like offbeat (yet CLEAN) humor!

As is the case with many others, this is also my second book to read from Russell C. Connor. And like his first book, Race the Night, this one did not disappoint. The book takes on an aura of comedy early on, and at many points, this feeling resurfaces, but make no mistake...the action is there and in full force, leaving you to marvel at new plot twists and guess at what happens next. The stereotypical "Hollywood slasher flick" aspects of the storyline, which Connor himself pokes fun at in the plot, are also enjoyable to read, and completely enhance the overall readability of the book (and aren't so predictable, like one would think...) The novel is wonderfully laid out, and very clean and streamlined. The action is well-written into the plot, so as to make a believable story out of something that is a little less (or maybe more?) real than our grasp on reality lets us accept. Connor writes the novel very fluidly, keeping consistency from one subplot to the next, and somehow makes the whole thing come together at one final point in the book...then wrap up with a sudden and surprising conclusion. You may think you have read these types of books before, but you haven't read anything like Second Unit. Buy it today!

This story follows a secondary film crew as they work on a new film by the fable german director, Torsten Gross. Gross's films are legenday in europe for their extremely graphic death scenes and spot on special effects.

The crew has to deal with Gross's ruthless work ethic, extreme eccentricity, and the fact that the actresses keep dying off after they complete their role in the film.

This book is a delight to read. It will chill you with it's descriptive, disturbing imagery. You find yourself effortlessly entralled with the characters, and rooting for Davis and Jared almost from the get go. The suspense builds and builds to a stunning climax that will not leave your thoughts for at least a month. You'll never look at hollywood special effects the same.

As all sluggite fans should know by know, Sluggy Freelance keeps pounding out truth, beauty, freedom and above all warning about dangerous mini-lops. Fans of the previous books will not be disapointed with this one. And remember, all games should be called on account of naked chicks!

I gotta say that this is definitely one of the best webcomics in the world. Heck, better than any print comics in MY opinion. In any case, though, Sluggy Freelance is a beautifully drawn, creatively worded, hilarious tour de force that is sure to provide hours and hours of great entertainment.

For those of you unfamiliar with the comic, Sluggy Freelance is a webcomic started by Pete Abrams a few years ago. Since its debut, Sluggy Freelance has assimilated thousands and thousands of daily readers and has won numerous awards, both for popularity and content. It follows the lives of Torg, freelance web designer, and Riff, his friend the inventor/"freelance bum." Along with a warped cast of characters, such as Bun-bun the switchblade-wielding lop bunny, and Kiki the ignorant ferret, Sluggy is one of the most creative and entertaining forms of media known to man. If you're looking for an offbeat and entertaining comic that's actually got true humor, substance, and depth, check out this book.

One word of advice to new readers: Be sure to order the other books in the series first, as some storylines follow a certain chronological order. However, by no means is it necessary - the stories flow fine by themselves.

All in all, a wonderful book you'll be reading again and again.

this is hilarious. I laughed the entire time i read the book.

Jim Wrenn, author of the Clinton Liebrary Book 2001 Edition at clintonliebrarybook.com gives a rave review to SNL Presents The Clinton Years: "I laughed so hard my throat hurt. It will be banned from all public libraries because no one will be able to read it without laughing out loud. The book presents color pictures and text from SNL skits (about Clinton) in such a way as to elicit just as much laughter as watching the skit on Saturday Night Live."

I loved this book. It made me laugh... and really... what else can you do but laugh given the current state of our government and its politicians. It's pretty darn good.

If you watch The Daily Show... if you read The Onion... if you crave devastatingly hilarious, over-the-top humor... get this book. The side-splitters-per-page ratio is on a par with Jon Stewart's America (The Book). This book may not be as lavishly illustrated, but don't let that fool you. This is a must-have!

I saw Zork perform in a Memphis Bookstore after he held a SLAM poetry workshop at my son's high school and then held a ZorkSlam at a Memphis Barnes & Noble store [where Zork spotlighted my son & other student poets]. I was expecting at the Barnes & Noble event that Zork would be selling his book of poetry ["Stolen Snapshots: I am NOT a poet"], BUT I was not expecting that he had written a dumb $4 beer book. This book is pricelessly funny. I bought 6 copies to give to my lamer friends for Christmas. I particularly loved the page on "Beer Breakfast." I like Zork's poetry and performance and my son says he gives a great poetry workshop, but, if I were a betting man, I would bet that Zork has made MUCH more money selling a great goofy book like this. It's sad that poetry isn't appreciated enough in our society [although I love seeing our Memphis Schools trying to change this], but I have to think that Zork writing this dumb book was a smart thing. It was the best $4 I ever spent in a bookstore.
-- Howard D.

This is a charming little book. It's amusing to flip through, especially when one is utterly loop-de-looped. It's a good conversation-starter around the table in a pub, or at home. The models used on the cover are just absolutely stunning. They're the talented artist friends of the author: an eccentric, up-and-coming poet who is steadily making a name for himself in the poetry venues of NY and CT. So give it a try; buy the book! Support the arts! Support the arts! Support the arts!

Like most of the other stuff from the master, if you have a yen for humor with brains, please, please buy this book. A columnist for the New Yorker, screenplay writer for the Marx Brothers, humorist par excellence - do you need more reasons? How about the fact that he makes most other humorists look like college boys indulging in frat-house antics...

Buy and enjoy! And then, buy the rest of his oeuvre!!

Hilarious account of the year legendary humorist S. J. Perelman took his family (wife and two mid-sized children) on a trip around the world. A follow-up to the equally delightful "Westward, Ha!", his similar trip with illustrator Al Hirschfeld. They travel the South Seas and Asia, the Middle East and all over Europe, accumulating ever larger piles of impedimentia.

Every sentence sparkles with Perelman's unique and exquisite brand of "airy persiflage" (reassuring a threatening official of a tyranical oil company: "No muckraker I, I nervously assured him, but a vapid little tomtit writing elegiacs about temple bells and lepidoptera"). Not only funny, but a very interesting look at a the state of the world still readjusting itself from WWII. Heartily recommended.

This book is funny as hell! I found myself laughing out loud as I immediately identified with the annoying situations described in the book. I'm glad this stuff doesn't just happen to me! As an accountant, the title enticed me into buying it, but I think everyone can relate to it. It's a collection of gripes for which clever tax names are assigned. One of the features of this book is how it reads. You read the name of the "tax", you read the description, you identify with it, and then the name becomes hilarious.

Some of my favorite taxes were the Conga Line Tax, the Premature Evacuation Tax, and the BYOB tax. I even came up with a few taxes of my own! Many of these "taxes" also heightened my awareness of what goes on behind the scenes in restaurants, doctors offices, and supermarkets, to name a few. I would definitely recommend this book. I think it also makes a great gift idea.

Tax The Rude, Not Me! is an hilarious, very clever collection of well-crafted observations of 568 "tax classifications" that would justifiable serve as "pay back" for stress causative idiots, morons, rascals and jerks that abound all around us in modern life. For example there is the Friend for Life Tax: Non-profit organizations that penalize you for making a contribution; you know they'll sell your name to other groups, so you'll be targeted for more appeals, forever. And then there's The Check's in the Mail Tax: Sellout politicians who make you wait longer and longer to enjoy your "golden years" by pushing back the eligibility age for Social Security benefits, hoping you're long dead before you can finally collect. Taken seriously, Tax The Rude, Not Me! could offer a blueprint for balancing the budget and paying off the national debt by year's end!

Hutcheon's definition of parody is much broader than most, and I believe it is both fitting and useful. Parodic works, to Hutcheon, are not those which imitate at the expense of the parodied text (that's satire). Rather, they confront the past, and explore the difference between the parodied text and the present. As she writes, the pleasure comes from the degree of engagement of the viewer/listener in "intertextual bouncing" between the familiar and the new.

The book's premise is that parody is a genre fundamental to 20th century art forms. The works cited come from a wide range of disciplines, and are both modern and postmodern. The language is rather straight-forward and clear, a welcome diverson from many contemporary theorists. In fact, I found the book perhaps too repetitive, too focused on making a single point. Still, Hutcheon provides a thoughtful viewpoint from which to enjoy - and to make - art.

kalinin@terra.com.br
Linda Hutcheon's A Theory of Parody is one of the most important theoretical books of the decade not only on parody but also on postmodernism. The dispute over the worth of postmodern art revolves around one of its most striking features, i.e. the outburst of intertextuality in the form of parody and pastiche. This proliferation of parody has been described as an exhaustion of creativity, appropriation of the property of others, borrowing, pirating, and cannibalisation; all of which descriptions are quite derogative. Parodists have, therefore, been considered minor artists, who take out their spite on acclaimed authors by ridiculing them. Linda Hutcheon's views on parody are far more positive and allows us to analyse contemporary writers and give them their due worth. She claims that postmodern parody has changed in its essentials when it became an imitation with critical distance. It is a highly sophisticated genre and has come to be almost an autonomous literary form. It is, in fact, a form of literary criticism. According to her, parody is "repetition with critical distance;" it is "stylistic confrontation," a modern re-coding which establishes "difference at the heart of similarity." In short, in order for one to criticise any modern work of art, I believe that her theory becomes an essential tool, since it enables us to establish the relations between the work of art and all the included references, allusions and quotations, and moreover, to discover the evaluative judgement the author expresses on both the parodied texts and on his/her own text. Hutcheon's theory on parody helps us understand better what happens to the quotation from a canonical text when it is transported into a postmodern text which uses fragmentation and irony to subvert the original meaning. Conversely, Parodies offer a dialogue and a re-evaluation of the past in the light of the present, and a critical view of present from the perspective of the past.

This is a very funny book! Also check out Everything Texans Need To Know About The Other 49 States (Brook & Julie Syers).

One of the funniest books about sayings used in Texas that I have ever read. It is priceless!