Pun Salad

We note an upcoming event, possibly featuring Pun Salad's unoffical and (most importantly) unpaid mascot, Cathy Poulin:

Today, Bob's Discount Furniture, the fastest growing furniture retailer in the northeast, with stores in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island, announced that its new Community Outreach Van will be visiting the Andrus Children’s Center, Yonkers, NY and joining over 150 children in an Olympics Opening Ceremony celebration with ice cream, fun and entertainment. The ceremony will include an Olympics-style parade and torch lighting ceremony along with student reports on various countries around the globe.

The Olympics Opening Ceremony celebration will take place at the Andrus Children’s Center cafeteria, 1156 North Broadway, Yonkers, New York this Friday, July 18, 2008 from 12 Noon to 2 p.m. “I’m looking forward to this wonderful, rewarding experience as the children learn more about the countries around the globe while having some fun along the way,” said Cathy Poulin, TV personality, Bob’s Discount Furniture. “The various programs of the Andrus Children’s Center have such a positive impact on the children and families in our area. We are gratified to be joining the children and their families in making this event a huge success.”

[For new readers: we get many, many, many Googling visitors looking, inexplicably, for Ms. Poulin.]

In this one, Travis is recovering from the events of the previous book, The Green Ripper, in which he lost his love Gretel. A friend asks him to check out the unsolved two-year-old murder of his tycoon father; by seeming coincidence, the timing of his death turned out to work to the financial benefit of one of the tycoon's ex-wives. Any skulduggery, there, Trav?

Well, of course there is.

Even though the book was written back in the early 80's, there's not much that seems glaringly out of date. McGee's beloved Florida is threatened by overpopulation. He encounters bikers, the drug trade, shady movie folk, and hot air balloons. We still have those things today!

But mainly one notices MacDonald's masterful way with the written word, sharp insightful observations, described well. He's been dead for over twenty years, but reading one of his books will make me miss him all over again.

What was I thinking? Watching Strange Wilderness a couple days ago, and now Meet the Spartans. Maybe I should just give up watching movies. Now, Meet the Spartans is slightly funnier than Strange Wilderness. But that's like saying Britney Spears seems to have her life a little more together than does Lindsay Lohan.

Oh, yeah: since this is "one of those" spoof movies, both Lohan and Spears are targets. And American Idol. And Ellen Degeneres. And Sylvester Stallone. And the penguins in Happy Feet. And … well, the general idea seemed to be: throw in enough pop culture references to pad the movie out to 90 minutes or so, never mind if they are actually funny or not. And they're nearly all not.

It's essentially a spoof of a good movie, 300. It was written and directed by a couple of guys who also wrote and directed some of the Scary Movie series. Those weren't great, but they weren't this bad, either. I like tacky spoofs. This is just mostly stupid. I'm sorry.

Here is a transcript of Al Gore's speech today, entitled "A Generational Challenge to Repower America". And that challenge is:

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

It's difficult to see how a serious policy proposal about electricity generation can avoid the N-word. On the other hand, when you're simply a blowhard sermonizing to True Believers, it's easy to see why you might want to steer clear.