Food Funnies

Ordered A Lettuce Burger Thinking It Would Come On Two Pieces Of Lettuce

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Apropos English:

Does your nose run and do your feet smell? Perhaps you were built upside-down.

Apropos the child and fish is this exchange from a BBC radio comedy I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again John and Mary sketch (performed by John Cleese and Jo Kendall):

Mary: I'm going to change the baby.
John: Good. Bring back a red-headed one this time.

-Paul W.

Apropos English:

Mary: I'm going to change the baby.
John: Good. Bring back a red-headed one this time.

-Paul W.

Does your nose run...

RECITATIVE: And in a vision Iphegenia saw her brother Orestes, who was being chased by the Amenities; and he cried out in anguish: “Oh ye gods, who knows what it is to be running? Only he who is running knows.”

-- P.D.Q. Bach, from the Cantata "Iphigenia in Brooklyn"

Recently saw a T-shirt with the words, "Shut up, liver, you're fine!" on it.

And I love P.D.Q.Bach!

Schickele is a good musician and composer and a runaway sense of humour - things like the "dill piccolo" for playing sour notes. I have several of his albums on vinyl. He wrote for film as well - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAucfms ... hK&index=7 which is Joan Baez doing the theme from the movie of that name.

Does your nose run...

RECITATIVE: And in a vision Iphegenia saw her brother Orestes, who was being chased by the Amenities; and he cried out in anguish: “Oh ye gods, who knows what it is to be running? Only he who is running knows.”

-- P.D.Q. Bach, from the Cantata "Iphigenia in Brooklyn"

As Schickele says in the introduction to the piece, "Where he got his text from we do not know. The Greek scholars I've talked to seem unaware that Iphegenia ever was in Brooklyn."

The recitative that you quote is followed by an aria consisting entirely of repeats of the phrase "running knows".

I have all of the PDQ Bach albums, as well as the two videos (The Abduction of Figaro and Houston, We Have a Problem). I saw two of his PDQ Bach concerts.

When I saw Silent Running in the theater, I almost fell off my chair when I saw that Peter Schickele did the film score. He did do serious music as well as PDQ Bach. At the time Schickele was arranger for Joan Baez, who did a couple of songs for the film. It's too bad that Silent Running is such an insipid film.

-Paul W.

I have all of the PDQ Bach albums, as well as the two videos (The Abduction of Figaro and Houston, We Have a Problem). I saw two of his PDQ Bach concerts.

I also have all or most of the albums and attended several of his NYC concerts.

It's too bad that Silent Running is such an insipid film.

I don't recall that it was insipid; overly earnest perhaps.

I am also fond of his Christmas carol, "Throw the Yule Log On, Uncle John" which reads just fine but the music pauses one beat prior to the comma, giving the effect, "Throw the yule log on Uncle John!"

One of my favorites is PDQ Bach's Art of the Ground Round. As Schickele explains, this is the combination of a ground--a repeating short bass melody (aka basso ostinato) with a round, or circular canon--a multi-voice vocal piece where each voice sings the melody at staggered intervals (Row, Row, Row Your Boat is a common example). In this case the interaction of the various staggered lyrics produces an unexpected and comic effect.

For example, the round Please, Kind Sir contains these two lyric fragments: "Look! Her face could launch a thousand ships" and "make yourself home, while she's up dressing". When these two phrases are sung together in staggered fashion the listener hears, "look up her dress".

-Paul W.

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