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Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" -- "I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!" |
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Friday, January 15, 2010Mark LeynerI recently finished "Et Tu, Babe," by Mark Leyner. How to describe it? Basically, it's a surreal account of the fictional exploits of Leyner's alter ego, a steroidally swollen, debauched rock-star author who protects his turf with paramilitary ferocity. It's really funny in spots and wildly imaginative, but like the other book of his I've read, "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist," it doesn't really have a plot, and after awhile it starts to drag. Does the idea of someone stealing a vial of Abraham Lincoln's morning breath from a federal facility and getting incredibly high off it sound enticing? Then you may enjoy "Et Tu, Babe," by Mark Leyner. Excerpt No. 1: "In my hammock, I listen to the rain hit my helmet and wonder if it's true or simply my mother's fanciful apocrypha that as a child I'd listen to the patter of the space stones on the aluminum roof of the 'museum' where Father kept my brain-dead brother alive, impaled with hundreds of fish hooks, and I'd discern winning Lotto numbers. "Like ballistic war-cannoli that fly through the sky and plunge into people's mouths at incredible speeds, rigid microscopic larval creatures hurtle through time." Excerpt No. 2: "It'll be a long flight home ... Fortunately, I'm seated next to a fascinating passenger. She's Flo, a chimpanzee selected by Jane Goodall from among chimps at Tanzania's Gombe National Park, who was taught a sign language vocabulary of over 2,000 words. Flo often appears on MacNeil-Lehrer, "Nightline" with Ted Koppel, and CNN, participating in panel discussions on animal rights, the use of animals in medical research and cosmetics testing, etc. Luckily I learned sign language when I dated the Academy Award-winning deaf actress Marlee Matlin when I lived in L.A., so communicating with Flo is no problem. I learn that she's flying to the States to "speak" at a demonstration against a new product that's been introduced by Burger Hut called Rhesus Pieces: bite-size chunks of rhesus monkey coated in granola and deep-fried." .: posted by hornswaggler 8:41 AM| |
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