Once again, I’m coming at you fresh after the Before Bed Story With Hailee, a daily event with my one year old daughter. She said her first words after I had finished tonight’s book.

They were:
“You’re screwin’ with my head, right?”

I quickly read her a second story and hoped that she would forget the words she just said and return to babbling nonsense. If she asks, I’ll say her first words were “Dadda” or possibly “Glortch”
Then I decided I needed to write my thoughts down after pouring myself a good stiff drink. Unfortunately all my beer is up at the trailer, as are my Coolers, and my forty ouncer of Vodka, and my White Rum, and my Bombay Gin. As you can probably guess, the majority of my drinking is done there.
So I poured myself a big glass of the only thing I had left, three fingers of Crown Royal (over ice) with a can of Berries and Cream Dr. Pepper.

After you get past the first few slugs it’s surprisingly palatable.

But before I begin this pantsing…perhaps a little something to liven the mood.
I was going to include a joke about Muppets but the only one I know includes a reference to the alluring aroma of Pork and would be off the chain as far as inappropriate, so I had to broaden my parameters.

After three days, Jesus passes away and goes up to heaven. He has missed Joseph quite a bit and is anxious to see him again, to tell him that he had always loved him as if he had been his true father.
At the gates, he asks Peter as to Joseph’s whereabouts but Peter doesn’t know.
Soon he runs in to Michael, but Michael is too busy practicing his Kendo in the mirror and is oblivious to his surroundings.
He finds Gabriel in a corner playing some Louis Armstrong, but Gabe hasn’t seen him either.
He's pretty sure that John the Baptist tells him to go soak his head.
Angered, he stomps around the clouds, searching impatiently.
Suddenly, through the mist, he spies a small old man wandering lost toward him. Could this be his father? Surely there are millions of old men in heaven…
“Old Man,” he asks softly, “can I help you with something?”.
“I’m looking for my son.”, the old man replies near tears, “I haven’t seen him since he was a boy.”
Jesus tries to suppress the excitement in his heart, “Can you describe him for me? Maybe I can help.”
“Well... I came from a small village, I was a carpenter... so he may have done some carpentry... ohh, and he’d have very distinct marks on his hands and feet from where he had been fixed to a cross...”
Finally, Jesus can contain himself no longer,
“FATHER!!!” he yells, falling to his feet and hugging the old mans legs.
The old man puts a hand on his head and cries “Pinocchio?”


Tonight’s first read for my little girl was So Big! (keep your off color comments to yourself please) by Anna Jane Hays, Illustrated by Christopher Moroney. It is no small irony that the illustrator’s last name contains the word MORON, but more of that later.
It’s a level 2 Sesame Beginnings reader (6 to 12 months) Published by Random House

If you’ve read me, you will have noticed that I have yet to rate anything with one star. It’s not normally in me. If I hate something that much I usually just shut up and avoid it. I can’t be bothered to waste my time with something I have that much distaste for.
I have a special fondness for kid’s books and likewise The Muppets. Generally if you combine Muppets and Kids and Books you’re already starting out with three easy stars.

But go back up to the top… look at that one lone star. The reason for this is because e-Pinions will not allow me to give NO stars.

I will begin with the pros:

1) The book is only 74 words long (not counting letters like I and A). That means this review is already almost 10 times longer than the book.

2) There is no 2

Now the cons:

1) The book is only 74 words long. It takes 3 minutes to read and that’s while doing funny, exaggerated voices. I have onions in the fridge that have the ability to focus for longer than that.

2) The book has no Plot. It’s simply a collection of things that Baby Elmo can do, like reach down low and sing La- La La. I swear, if my daughter is denied Harvard because of the 25 I.Q. points that just squirted from her brain like sweat from John Goodman’s neck fat, I’m suing Random House.

3) The illustrations are horrible. Elmo doesn’t look anything LIKE Elmo.
Well, that’s not exactly correct I guess. The illustrations here look like Elmo as The Joker looks like Jack Nicholson... like Edvard Munch’s person in the portrait The Scream looks like James Carville.
This is what Elmo would look like if you jammed a reverse bear trap in his mouth... sideways... and popped it open. As much as I relish the thought it’s really scary to see.

Let me go back and read that analogy and see if I have done the description justice.

Nope, I think I can do better.

When I was a kid, I was a bit of a rapscallion like many. There was, of course, a time when I threw a rotted tomato against the side of a wall. The resulting splotch looked vaguely like Elmo.
Several years ago, while cutting down trees in the ravine behind our house, my dad slipped and jammed the chainsaw into the bone under his knee. I swear, I wasn’t anywhere near him. The gelatinous clot of blood that jetted from his leg and spanked the nearest tree stump looked vaguely like Elmo.
These illustrations look slightly less like Elmo than those first two examples.

That's better.

The eyes are waaaaaay too big, the head is the wrong shape, the fur is coiffed more than Farrah Fawcett Majors' in Logan's Run and the drawings themselves are so simplistic that they look as if they had been drawn on an inch by inch square piece of paper and then expanded to 1000 times their original size. You’ve seen this effect, where every line is a quarter of an inch thick.
I was unsurprised when I dug out another book that my daughter has by the same illustrator and found he had given Grover collagen lip implants. My favorite Muppet now looks like either a blue, monstrous version of Angelina Jolie or a furry Al Jolson in a Minstrel Show.
I am NOT making too big a deal out of this. Kids are acutely aware of the likenesses of their favorite cartoon icons. Mess with them and you’re dead. How many of you remember that one kid whose parents gave him the discount Bugs Bunny t-shirt (or Mickey… or Fred Flintstone) and all you could think was “Damn... spring for the extra five bucks man...” before you mercilessly taunted him for the rest of the year.

4) The 7 pages of this book are each the thickness of a dollar coin and therefore indestructible. At first, this was going to be a pro, but then I went back and looked at the illustrations again. My daughter will never be able to destroy this book... and some masochistic part of me, that was taught that books should never be destroyed, simply can’t. I feel the need to point out that this was the same logic that led my mother into acquiring an entire cold storage room (from floor to ceiling) of Harlequin Romances.

I was luckier than most. I acquired this book at Winners and only had to drop 7 Canadian bucks (damn... that’s a buck for every torturous page) instead of the original asking price of twelve.

Twelve dollars for this is a twisted joke. I wonder if I still have the receipt. I’d spend the seven bucks in gas just to get it out of my house... and no, I can’t just throw it out.
That would be the same as destroying it.


Recommended: No

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