Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Funnies

When M was home sick last week, Nathan bought a couple of books to keep him occupied. The Essential Calvin and Hobbes was a huge hit. The vocabulary in some of the strips is beyond him (he still slogs away, though, sounding out "in-fan-ti-cide" etc.), but a lot of the humor is right up his alley. He loves the Sunday strips with Spaceman Spiff, which incidentally, I've always found boring. Even V will sit and look at the book for ages. The best part, though, is watching M crack up. He literally falls over laughing sometimes. One of his favorites is a strip where Calvin hits Susie with a snowball and then teases her because her snowball is far to big to lift. Joke's on him when Susie puts Calvin into the snowball head down. Insert hysterical laughter here. Everyone who has been in our living room this week has said, "Oh, I love Calvin and Hobbes!" or something like unto it.

The other book Nathan picked up is The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr Seuss. I was reading the short story Too Many Daves to V this morning and couldn't read it aloud without laughing. The premise is that Mrs. McCave has 23 sons all named Dave. Here's the part that makes me giggle:

And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
And one of them Shadrack. And one of them Blinkey.
And one of them Stuffy. And one of them Stinkey.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate...
But she didn't do it. And now it's too late.

Paris Garters really gets me, who knows why. Also Putt-Putt and Stinkey. I especially love the -ey on Stinkey. Makes it fancier, right? Speaking of names, I need to find out the names of the kids in V's pre-school class. She's been talking about one boy with an incredibly garbled name. Shades of "Oddleboddle". (My sis' name for our childhood friend Alvaro).

2 comments:

Susan said...

Whoa! I cried I laughed so hard. That man's mind was wired differently. I also laugh every time I think about my poor mom trying to decode Oddle Boddle.

Naomi S. Adams said...

I love the Calvin and Hobbes where he tells his Mom that he has decided to grow a mustache. She doesn't look up from her book and tells him to "Go for it." Calvin wonders to Hobbes why she didn't put up more of a fight. :)

Makes me giggle. I might go dig out a Calvin book today.