SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.
[READ: December 26, 2021] Skiing Tales of Terror
My daughter T., got this book for me for Christmas. She bought it at a flea market. She told me that she thought I’d like it because it looked like the kind of cartoon books that I like (she is referring to the original editions of The Far Side that came in the short but wide comic style).
A fair guess.
Except that the content is entirely about skiing. Which is something I have done maybe three times in my life. And which I’m terrified of.
So, content-wise it’s not really my wheelhouse.
And yet, this book turned out to be pretty fascinating. It is a mix of jokes about skiers and genuinely helpful skiing tips. Indeed, if I had read this book before the first time I Went skiing I would have probably enjoyed the experience a lot more.
The cartoons aren’t amazing, but they are quite practical. And there are all kinds of suggestions for what to do while skiing.
The several pages on Learning to Fall was the simplest and yet most visually useful thing I’ve ever seen about falling on the ski slope.
You can learn about hockey stops, inverted helicopters, and overcoming fear. Learn how to use your poles without impaling yourself or someone else and just what the heck a “butt glissade” is.
There’s also a ton of (mildly) amusing pictures of skiing “jokes.” Like, “learning to ski is often not unlike getting stomped by bikers in a deep freeze.”
There’s also this definition:
geek: generic term for beginner skiers. Also describes daring-yet-exceptionally-awkward skiers of higher skill levels.
Throughout the book there’s jokes about the ACME Personal Air Bag System that inflates on impact. And then all of the dangerous places you should NOT wear it (bathroom stalls, for instance).
I was also amused by the perpetual mocking of snowboarders as dangerous, reckless punk rockers with mohawks. Fascinating history (not in this book), Snowboarding (or snurfing as it was called) was invented in 1965. It became more widespread in the late 1970s and 1980s and became more formalized in the late 1980s. So this book is mocking snowboarders just as they were starting to become codified and hugely popular.
There’s also lame, obvious, circa 1990 joes about Texans, the Japanese, people from Joisey (all not too offensive, but very obvious).
The last few pages are Apres Ski Cartoons. In other words, really lame, non-ski-related “jokes.”
About French restaurants
Hamster-sack
Hot Air Rubber Chickens [?? WTF]
A really long joke about NASA baseball caps [?]
More than one penguin joke [??]
Fascinatingly, the publisher mostly publishes books about kayaking, climbing, whitewater sports, and other outdoor activities. I wonder if they are all cartoon books.
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