Margaret Atwood, fearsome goalie?

And other risible matters

Posted

—New Testaments: OK, Margaret Atwood’s best-selling new book, “The Testaments,” probably won’t be President Bobby Bonespurs’ favorite book. Oops, forgot. He doesn’t read those.

Like Atwood herself, the long-awaited follow-up to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” is grim and cheerless. It’s about a patriarchal dystopia, something Donald of Orange would appreciate.

I’ve known Atwood’s work since I lived in her native Canada. She’s a skilled writer, but she’s not exactly good for a laugh. Or... is she?

There is an antidote to Atwood’s grim lack of frivolity, and I know just where to find it.

Go to YouTube. Enter the search term “Atwood Goalie.” There you will find a gem unknown to all but a few Americans.

It’s a short segment from Canadian humorist Rick Mercer’s CBC-TV show. In it, Atwood, in full goalie armor and on skates, warns opponents through her mask, “You don’t deke Margaret!” He shoots...she blocks! Until I saw this funny hockey bit, I never pictured the author as a good sport. I was wrong.

—More Female Literati: It’s pretty well known that another popular, sober woman writer, Annie “Shipping News” Proulx, now lives here. But PT also was recently the summer residence of one of this country’s top female humorists, Merrill Markoe.

I recently had coffee with Markoe, who did a house swap with a PT resident for her home in Malibu. Markoe, who had her first cartoon in the New Yorker published while she was here, was taken with PT.

“We really liked the place and are looking at real estate,” Markoe, David Letterman’s erstwhile partner and creator of his “Stupid Pet Tricks” segment, told me, “It was a pleasure being here.”

—More Seriousness: This weekend’s PT Relentlessly Earnest, Humor-Impaired Film Festival is not exactly, shall we say, a mother lode of comedy. Here’s my idea for a film that would fit right in here:

“A wayward Senegalese orphan is adopted by a Romany family in Bucharest in this powerful documentary. He becomes a naturalist, reconnects with his spirit animal, and learns the meaning of life as he pursues parsnip poachers back in his beloved native land. This observational indigenous visual narrative features a soundtrack by Koffi Olomidé and Gordon Lightfoot.” Better get in line early for this one!

—Say It...Backwards: We’re nearing the end of the last palindromic week of the century. All the dates, like today’s 9-18-19, are the same written backwards or forwards. The numeric fun ends tomorrow.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been attendant revelry about this out at The Palindrome.

You know what backwards aficionados say? Go hang a salami I’m a lasagna hog.

—The Nimrod Imbroglios: That’s the subtitle of Arcata Eye publisher Kevin Hoover’s funny book collection, “Police Calls 2.”  Several readers have told me how much they enjoyed a few of the recent ones in our last column.

The small weekly’s police blotto, er, blotter, has attracted a national audience. Writing the forward in the book is Jon Carroll, long-time columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and one of the best writers I’ve read at any major daily.

Carroll’s classic description of cult members is “unglued adherents.” And he once memorably wrote of the fading resort area where I lived, “The decay is part of the charm.” (That would apply to several Peninsula locales I dare not name).

In his forward to Hoover’s latest book, Carroll’s description of California stoner mecca Arcata out-Keillors Keillor:

“Arcata,” writes Carroll of the small THC-entric town, “is a place where all the men are unsteady, all the women have issues, and all the children know rather too much about organic produce.”

OK. By popular demand, more Police Calls, from the Eye book collection:

—“A traveller positioned himself in front of an F Street pet shop and told passersby he was going to eat his dog.”

—“Contrition and reparations followed a scarf ‘n’ scram at a downtown cornucopia of delights and arterial plaque buildup for young and old.”

—Finally, one that could well apply here: “We checked with Satan himself on this one, and it’s true —a special level of hell exists for anyone who would graffiti a Victorian home. By doing so, one chap made his reservation.”

(PT resident/humorist Bill Mann is ever on the lookout for funny people and risible items. Bring the funny to: Newsmann9@gmail.com.)