I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MUCKAFERGUSON-“MC Speller” (2010).

I had never heard of Muckaferguson.  Okay, that is not true, as I see I made a post about them because of the They Might be Giants song “John Lee Supertaster.”  Because the real John Lee is a indeed a supertaster and was in the band Muckaferguson. (And John Flansburgh of TMBG produced this album).  So there.  But I still hadn’t heard them until now.

This song comes from that album.

The album is a flurry of genres and styles, and amid all of this, we get this old school beat box rap (sorta early Beastie Boysish).  And I like it because it is quite funny.  And since it’s only a minute and a half long, I’ll put all the lyrics, because I can’t pick a favorite line:

my name is mc speller and i like to spell…s p e l l spells spell. mc speller and i love to spell…q u e u e spells queue.

he’s a maniac, ya’ll. here comes the heart attack, yo. chris likes food. andy like atari. i like the work of john baldessari. my rhymes are fresh and my moves are hard. i play the plastic guitar like baudrillard.

my name is mc speller and i like to spell…d a d spells dad. mc speller and i love to spell…r h o n g spells wrong.

i’m mc scared of bees, ya’ll cause you know that i’m scared of bees, ya’ll. when i see a bee i run because by definition i’m scared of bees.

yo, i’m comin’ to you straight out of sutton in suburban south london. white, middle class, educated 20 something. i got me degree in pure mathematics. i don’t like to rap i’m just being sarcastic.

r i g h t spells right, mc speller’s gonna spell all night, talkin’ about. n i g h t spells night, mc speller spells everything right

Despite the kid friendly nature of some of some of these songs, the album as a whole is definitely not kid friendly (I mean, look at the cover and, frankly the band’s name).  The song “I Wanna Get…” is all about getting, well, F’d up, so be mindful.  But many of the songs are delightfully witty.

John Lee, incidentally, is also responsible for the show Wonder Showzen, so if you know the show, you get a sense of the kind of mischief he makes.

[READ: August 9, 2014] My Homework Ate My Homework

Regardless of how I felt about Guinea Dog 1 and 2 (overall I liked them quite a bit), it was impossible not to snap up a book with a title like this.  Especially when the book is about a ferret.  (The cover is by the same artist as the Guinea Dog books, which led me to assume the style was similar, which it was).

This book is about 10-year-old Zaritza (the unusual name is never explained).  She is… dramatic.  And is a fan of dramatic….  pauses.  She is incredibly excited to be playing Calamity Jane in the upcoming traveling theater production of Calamity Jane.  She has watched the film dozens of times and has her “Calam” down perfectly.

The problem is that if she doesn’t bring her grades up she’s won’t be allowed to do extra curricular activities.  Like drama.  She is not the best student, so rather than actually doing her work, she decides to do some extra credit.  Like bringing the classroom pet Ferret home for the weekend.  She hates the ferret.  She hates its smell, she hates its look. Hates it.  But she needs the credit.  And so it comes home.  And then she forgets to close the cage door and the ferret gets out.

Panic!

While the ferret is out, and they are trying to catch it, Zaritza hears something–gnawing.  And that’s when her homework ate her homework.Of course, Zaritza doesn’t seem to know all the details of how extra credit works.  Like if she doesn’t actual do her real work extra credit won’t count.  And with her homework chewed up, it’s not done.

So now she has to get some help with her math.  She gets help from Eden, a very shy girl who studies very hard.  But Eden is no pushover, and she makes Zaritza work hard.  But it pays off and Zaritza is allowed to try out for the play.

When the drama players come to the school however, they are not what she thought they’d be. They think that Zaritza is too much, and, strangely enough, they think that Eden, shy, quiet, can barely speak at all Eden, would make the best Calamity Jane.  What is going on?  Zaritza is annoyed by Eden and eventually blurts out that Eden can’t be Calamity Jane because Eden is Asian.  This is not good, obviously, although Zaritza didn’t mean it to be offensive, she was just telling the truth as she saw it.  Nevertheless, Zaritza not only gets into trouble but she makes Eden super mad at her.

The question of course, is how will Zaritza deal with the trouble she has caused, especially since it doesn’t seem like it will get her the lead anyway.

I really liked the way the play ultimately is a disappointment to Zaritza anyway because the guy in charge of the players has rewritten the play so that he gets all the lines and Calamity’s role is greatly reduced.

Strangely enough this story felt like Guinea Dog in that the main character is adamantly opposed to a critter in her house.  Rufus didn’t like his guinea pig and Zaritza doesn’t like the ferret.  And again, the hostility was excessive, I felt.

And as with the Guinea Dog series, I enjoyed the ancillary characters more than the main charter.  Zaritza’s baby sister Abalina (what is with these names?) was wonderfully hilarious.  She calls the ferret “fur” and says “uppy uppy” and abbreviates just about everything else (as a little kid would do).  And of course, if you laugh when she says something she says it over and over again.  This was fun to read aloud and made the kids laugh a lot. The kids’ parents were also fun.  This one reversed the roles so that the dad was more fun (he is also…dramatic), whereas her mom is far more serious.  The drama team was rather over the top (I’m not sure they’d be admitted into the school with the way they acted, but it made fora  funny set of characters).

I also enjoyed how every chapter title stared with “My Homework…”

This was a really enjoyable book and even though it was a little longer than Guinea Dog, it was a much faster read.