I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-“Tacky” (2014).

“Weird Al’s” newest album comes out tomorrow.  In preparation he has created 8 videos, which will be released one a day for 8 days.   The fact that the release day is the same day as the second video bothers my sensibilities, but what does that matter, honestly.

I have pre-ordered the CD, but because of a shipping issue, I likely won’t get it until all of the videos have been released, so I’m going to keep media silence except for the videos.

This is a parody of Pharrell William’s “Happy,” the most ubiquitous and catchy song in recent memory (my son recognized the parody from the opening drum beats).

The video is a star-studded extravaganza all done in (I believe) one take.  The guests include: Aisha Tyler, Margaret Cho, Eric Stonestreet, Kristen Schaal and Jack Black.  All of the stars are dressed crazily as they sing some very funny lines about being “tacky.”  We wondered of course who dressed the stars (was it Al, or did they bring their own–we like to think they brought their own).  There are some very funny lines in the song (the pregnant line, the Kanye West line, the resume in comic sans), and of course, the melody is spot on.

Now that my kids are in school and they are exposed to pop music, I had to wonder if they will know more of the original songs than I do.  We’ll see.

[READ: July 2, 2014] Bookhunter

I enjoyed Shiga’s other books, but I loved this one.

Bookhunter is about a member of the library police.  He doesn’t go after fines, he goes after serious book criminals.

Set in the 1970s (and drawn in a wonderful brown and tan style, Special Agent Bay seeks out those who would censor or steal books.  In the opening scene, Bay and his agents have tracked down a man who has stolen all eight copies of the Oakland Public Library’s “The China Lobby in America.”  After a detailed plan (involving radioactive ink), the agents storm the culprit’s building,  When the suspect threatens to immolate himself and everyone else, Bay hatches a crazy plan straight out of an action movie.  It’s very exciting

The main part of the book though, concerns a book that has been stolen.  Copyrighted 1838, it has been on special display at the Oakland Public Library.  But something’s not right about the book and the library is sure it is a forgery.

What I loved about this main section was how many men Bay has at his disposal.  Like the scientist who carbon-dates the book (not to mention his whole task force). As with Shiga’s other books, he is impressively knowledgeable of technology (or he’s making things up, I don’t know).  In this case he knows about locks, security systems and means of ingress into a library.  He is also staggeringly knowledgeable about book binding and printmaking (in this case, the criminal clearly made his own copy of this book at home). He also calls the criminal Kettle Stitch.

They determine that the book was removed by using  different circulation card, will they have to search the 850,000 volumes to find the missing one?

The team continues working, gathering fingerprints, doing research on created cards and book check out records.

They find a criminal who “returned three copies of Judy Bloom’s Forever with the erotic passages removed from each one.  But finally they need to jump into the Bookmobile (which has a CB radio) to track down any likely suspects.   There’s a wonderful red herring at the end of the book

Although this story pokes fun at library police, it does so in a knowledgeable and fun way and is very exciting as well  If you know the library world it is even funnier.