I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: JACK BLACK-The Goodbye Song (2009).

I love that Jack Black is a terribly terribly profane man, and yet he has also made a huge career out of doing kids shows and movies.  True Tenacious D are practically child men anyhow, but to think that the guy who sang some of those really dirty songs is also Kung Fu Panda?  Or the sweet guy saying goodbye to everyone in Yo Gabba Gabba land?

This song is, like most Yo Gabba Gabba songs, incredibly simple and repetitive (it’s mostly chorus singing goodbye) but each verse has one of the characters from the show singing a simple verse and JB saying something in return.

There’s nothing especially great about this song (you want it more for the visuals), it’s just always fun to hear Jack be funny and silly–and to rock out at the end.

[READ: May 9, 2014] File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents

I knew that his book was coming out and I was pretty sure it was Book 3 in the All the Wrong Questions series because, well, because it came out during the series and it was illustrated by Seth.  But it is not part of the series at all.  Well, that’s not true.  It is sort of part of the series.

It is set in Stain’d by the Sea.  Lemony Snicket is there with his mentor S. Theodora and all of the characters we have met so far in the series are here as well.  But this is a series of unfortunate incidents in which Lemony Snicket helps to solve some crimes or, if not crimes, at least possible crimes.  Thing of it as a short story interlude from All the Wrong Questions.  And yet, even though that seems dismissive, it is a great and fun read.

So despite being a little disappointed that this wasn’t the next book in the series (I’m quite hooked) I really enjoyed these short “cases.”  It also turns out that the “bonus” story that came in the Barnes & Noble edition of Book 2 is one of these incidents.  I didn’t enjoy it that much as a “bonus” story, but I found it far more enjoyable this time in the context of Snicket trying to figure things out here.

And what’s especially fun about this book is that it is set up in a way like an Encyclopedia Brown book–with the answers separated at the end.  What’s even more fun is that there are 26 “solutions.”  In theory you could look at the back and not know which one is for which story.  It’s especially funny because the “fake” solutions all reference things in the other stories (but wouldn’t quite make sense) so you could easily be confused by the “solution.”  I enjoyed this little trope because I ‘m not sure who they thought they’d be fooling, but they did it anyway.  But also if you didn’t actually flip through the answers you might not know the fakes were there–sort of like bonus scenes.

There are 13 stories in total.  There’s one about stolen gold (which has a very surprising ending), a stolen newt, a complex one about a series of broken windows and stolen items (I liked this one because in their ransom notes the thieves told the police that they would never be caught and the police believed them because it said so in the letter). There was a strange one about hobos and the alphabet and a rather gross one about a butcher.  The one about the sled was a little convoluted for my liking, but I rather enjoyed the midnight demon.  And the ending for “Three Suspects” was genius.  (It is called “Very Obvious”).  There’s also a story about the Yamgraz.  And I enjoyed how the final story “Figure in Fog” led us towards the third book (I think) without actually telling us anything about the book.

I also appreciated that the Swinster Pharmacy is referenced–showing that it is part of Stain’d by the Sea as well.  I didn’t love the Pharmacy book and it being referenced here doesn’t really change that, but it was fun to see it.

I think that these stories could be enjoyed by people who haven’t read the series.  It assumes some knowledge of the series, but it also fills in a lot too–so maybe just understanding what the series is about would be enough for this to be a more complete introduction to the series.