Fry voices and fly boys

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Short items, from the Mann with a short attention span:

—The pending move of the Sussexes to Vancouver Island’s North Saanich is partly due, says The Guardian, to the racism aimed at the biracial Meghan Markle by the noxious, lacerating British tabloid press.

But racism is nothing new in Blimey (or in the U.S.): The motivating force behind Brexit, I’ve long suspected, is simply the dislike of swarthy foreigners by many Brits. It’s summed up by a memorable cartoon I once saw, depicting a supposed sign on the U.K. side of the Chunnel when it first opened. The sign posted by fearful cultural revanchinists read: “ The Wogs Start Here.”

—I do wish Rose Theater owner Rocky Friedman would bring in the new and acclaimed doc “Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer.”

After all, he once exhibited “Obit,” an acclaimed doc about the New York Times’ obituary writers. And Port Ludlow’s Tony Brenna, one of The Perspirer’s star reporters for years, just might show up to take questions, as he did recently down in L.A. at its premiere.

—Speaking of The Enquirer, it ran almost weekly cover stories after The King’s death starting with “Elvis Is Alive and Living In….” (fill in the blank with a location and blurry photo). These fake-news covers finally caused Memphis’ coroner, the guy who should know, to quip,  “If Elvis is alive, he’s walking around without any of his vital organs.”

—More Enquirer people: Every time I see the clueless crowds behind Herr Twittler at one of his ego-stroking rallies, I am reminded of noted journalist/cynic H.L. Mencken’s great description of these MAGA types: He called them “The BOOB-wa-zee.”

—Aqua Mann: Even though I’m one of what Barney Burke called “the few” in his opinion piece here last week, this regular swimmer agrees with the former Leader reporter: We don’t need a new pool. The one we have right now is quite well-maintained and well-staffed, thank you.

City money would be far better spent for low-cost housing, curb ramps, etc. I daresay that the tiresome new-pool zealots are, well, all wet.

—Vox Populi?: I didn’t know there was a name for something that’s annoyed me for years until I saw it in a Sunday “Doonesbury” strip recently: Fry voice.

It’s a pattern, often heard from young females, of dropping down to a lower register at the end of a sentence, which changes how the vocal cords vibrate together. It has an airhead quality to it.

One notable local practitioner is on Seattle’s KIRO-FM, where gal-on-the-go reporter Rachel Bell is a frequent fryer. Bell, by the way, was in PT not long ago and did a glowing report (in fry ) on the good sandwiches here at the Penny Saver.

—Speaking of newspaper obits, they can actually be quite wry and amusing, and  The London Daily Telegraph’s final tributes certainly are. So well-written, in fact, that there are several book collections of them, which I’ve read and love for their Sahara-dry humor. The Telegram’s obit collections about the “Mustaches,” a Brit term referring to the practice of once requiring facial hair on officers, are among the best, and display the famous British “stiff upper lip” stoicism. One Mustache obit might typically go: “After RAF Capt. Nigel Eaton-Hogg’s de Havilland Mosquito was shot down over Southeast Asia, he parachuted out and, badly wounded, was pursued by Japanese soldiers. Eaton-Hogg spent three days secreted in a banyan tree nursing his wounds. Then the downed pilot forded several rivers, took three bullets in his leg, and hiked 100 kilometres for five days to safety. After a lengthy stay in Queen Victoria hospital recovering from malaria, he asked for reassignment back to the Asian theatre.”  The Telegraph’s obits on British wartime military nurses and their depredations are just as amazing.

—Speaking of obits and the underground, this short verse from always-clever punster and poet Ogden Nash comes to mind:

“It’s not the cough that carries you off …

“It’s the coffin they carry you off in.”

(PT humorist Bill Mann always welcomes funny items from readers. Newsmann9@gmail.com )