I Just Read About That…

“You Make Me” is a funny, weird song about the kinds of crazy things that being in love makes you do.  The song is frenetic with crazy sound effects.  Wikipedia says it is a style parody of Oingo Boingo which I never would have guessed, but I can certainly see it in retrospect.

“I Think I’m a Clone Now” is a pretty fun parody of that ubiquitous Tiffany song.  “Lasagna” is a parody of La Bamba and it starts with a very proper-sounding Italian accordion Italian solo.  The song turns into a preposterous over the top Eye-talian accented song about food.  “Melanie” is a song to a girl who won’t go out with him.  Perhaps because he is a stalker (and a weirdo!).  “Alimony” is a parody of “Mony Mony,” a song I particularly dislike, but I like Al’s parody which doesn’t exactly duplicate the sound of the original.

“Velvet Elvis” is in the style of The Police and you can certainly tell, but it doesn’t hit you over the head.  And yet when you hear all of the musical details, you realize just how genius the song is.  And I find that the more I listen to it the better it sounds. And the more you know The Police, the more you should be impressed by the musicianship of Al’s band.  “Twister” is a style parody of The Beastie Boys. It’s basically a commercial for the game and it works well in the style.  It wouldn’t work if it was longer than a minute, but for what it is, it works very well (and is funny to imagine the Beastie Boys doing it (especially circa 1987).  “Good Old Days” ends the disc as a sweet James Taylor-esque ballad about how things were so good way back when.  Of course it’s written from the point of view of a serial killer, so there is that.

This album showed Al really improving his musicianship and the quality of his parodies.  And more importantly, his originals (and the style parodies  were really taking off.  Al looked like he was on a major roll.  And then he made UHF.

[READ: March 13, 2013] Super Diaper Baby 2

As this sequel opens we see that professor Krupp was not amused by George and Harold’s first Super Diaper Baby comic book.  And he demands to know why all they can write about is poo.  Their answer, logically: what else is there?  But they take the Principal’s words to heart and decide to write about something else for the sequel.

And it has some surprisingly sensitive ideas in it.  As the proper story opens, we see Super Diaper Baby and Diaper Dog come to the rescue in a number of situations.  But they realize that Billy’s dad is feeling a little bummed because the people came to him for help first but the superheros took over.  It’s not easy being the father of  superhero.  They’re not sure what they can to help Billy’s dad.

Meanwhile, Dr Dilbert Dinkle, a mad scientist, has created the Liquidator 2000.  It will change anything into water.  And he demonstrates on the wall of a bank.  He explains the machine to his evil cat, Petey, who is bored by the doctor and does nothing but mock him.  (He is quiet evil).  Petey says it’s boring being the lookout for him.  But Dr Dinkle replies that that’s a Y.P. not an M.P (your problem not my problem).  Petey is not amused by this and continues to mock the Doctor’s breath.  Then he accidentally leans on the lever and turns the doctor into a puddle of water.

The Doctor is angered (obviously) but then he realizes that he can sneak under any door and take anything he wants.  This makes him meaner and nastier (but it hasn’t improved his breath).  Then one day Petey drinks the doctor (in Flip-O-Rama).  And then, later Petey pees the doctor out…which means the doctor is now all pee.  (I really laughed hard at that joke as I didn’t see it coming at all).  Then, like in the first book, there are a number of pee jokes, of the urine trouble variety, at the Dr.’s expense (I love when mad scientist are easily angered).

The streangest thing in this book is that it suddenly turns into a parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  The Grinch is one of Principal Krupp’s favorite books (after he tore out the last few pages).  And now that the Doctor is annoyed by everyone, he decides to take his revenge in How the Pee Stoled Potties.  And in pretty decent rhyming, Dr Pee steals all of the potties in town, which means everyone has to pee their pants.  But Petey is unimpressed that that’s all the doctor wanted.  He doesn’t think the doctor is trying hard enough.  So Petey comes up with the idea of stealing and then selling adult diapers to everyone.  It starts raking in mega bucks, but Petey and the Doctor fight over who will get tall the money.

So Petey’s giant robot cat grabs that same toilet paper sign (from book 1) and wipes up the doctor.  So now it’s just Petey in his mechanical monster taking over the world.  Until Super Diaper Baby comes up with a good idea (in Flip-O-Rama).  And yet, just when it all seemed over, here comes the Revenge of Rip van Tinkle.  For one drop escaped the giant toilet paper roll.  And when it re-forms with other pee in town, the Dr is back.  But once again Super Diaper baby has a good idea–he moves the earth out of its orbit and makes the planet freeze (so creative) which means the Dr freezes as well.

This gives the kids a chance to make Billy’s dad feel better and a chance to get in a good Uranus joke at the same time.

I don’t know if the hiatus recharged Pilkey’s creativity but this book was very very funny–it made me laugh a lot, but as with all of Pilkey’s newer books, there was more than just potty humor in it.  I really enjoyed it.