a freaky respect to the kumquats of Herve Villechaize

hide and seek
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

If you say to me, "I think Do-it-yourself Mad Libs sound stupid and unfun!" I will say to you, "You are wrong!"

You print out the words to Seasons in the Sun or a recipe for Waldorf salad, or, whatever, Lincoln's second inaugural speech, and solicit random words to replace key words in the text. So you get:

When in the land of flatulent raindrops it becomes handy for 678 people to accelerate the crumbly bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the bats of the earth, the separate and equal prestidigitation to which the Post-It notes of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a freaky respect to the kumquats of Herve Villechaize requires that they should declare the cappucinos which impel them to the separation.*

Trick is to get the right number of replaced words.

In other Things I Really Wish Would Happen, I wish there was a spelling bee for grownups in this town. They have one in Brooklyn, and now one in Seattle, and I keep pressuring the library to do one as a fundraiser - cash bar! prizes! public humiliation! I would win! - but so far no bites.

Also, the new book I hate myself and want to die had me cackling away for twenty minutes. How much do you despise Total Eclipse of the Heart? Did you know it's over 7 minutes long? How many seven-minute periods in your life do you not get back because they played it on the radio so much? Does its total psychotic awfulness make more sense now that I'm telling you it was written by Jim Steinman, the guy who wrote Paradise by the Dashboard Light for Meatloaf? Sure, turn around, bright eyes, and scare the living shit out of me.

And All By Myself - covered by Celine Dion! Ow! Rip my ears off before you subject me to that.

And, for my brother, Lucky Man by ELP is now officially a terrible song.

*Actual Mad Lib concocted in the librarians' office during a recent dull moment.