Book club meeting discussing Melancholy Queasiness and the Art of Infinite Opera Singing. Ugh.
Saturday, Jun. 14, 2003 - 23:15

Dear boys and girls,

Tonight, being a happening Saturday, most people are out carousing or frolicking, but we, my friends, are having a book club meeting, because we like to improve ourselves and exercise our minds, ne cest pas?

You: You don't really know French, do you?

Me: Au contraire, mon frere. I took a semester of French. Je suis fatiguee.

You: Damn, if I knew how to say "you are dumb" in French I would have said that here. How about in German? Du bist ein Dummkopf.

Me: Oh, I didn't know you knew German. How erudite of you.

You: I know everything you know.

Me: That's true.

You: Let's start. I have better things to do on a Saturday night than sitting around arguing with some imaginary person.

Me: Wait, I'm the one who should be saying that.

You: Oh yeah. Okay. Today we're discussing The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton, and since it took us all of 10 minutes to read, which we were very pleased by, especially given the grueling 10 month torture that was our previous book, this will be our only discussion of it, unless there is further discussion by others not present tonight.

Me: Okay, what do you think is the overall theme in these works?

You: Theme? They're just a bunch of silly poems about screwed-up imaginary kids, like a kid with an oyster for a head and a girl with eyes all over her face.

Me: Is that really all you see? Or can you go deeper?

You: You sound like your English teacher from your junior year of high school who you hated. Remember? He was always looking for the "deeper meaning" in everything, and you hated him. Damn it, why can't things just be silly sometimes?

Me: Why can't a cigar just be a cigar?

You: Aaah!!!

Me: But consider this poem, "Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love":

Stick Boy liked Match Girl,
he liked her a lot.
He liked her cute figure,
he thought she was hot.

But could a flame ever burn
for a match and a stick?
It did quite literally;
he burned up pretty quick.

You: Are you allowed to put the whole thing here?

Me: Yes, we're reviewing and discussing it, not trying to pass it off as our own or make money off of it. How does anyone review anything?

You: Okay. Well anyway, that poem's not all that deep, even if you take it as just being about being in love and not about Stick Boy and Match Girl.

Me: Yeah, I know. But what about this, from "Voodoo Girl":

But she knows she has a curse on her,
a curse she cannot win.
For if someone gets too close to her,
the pins stick farther in.

That's like about keeping people distant and stuff, and if you want to let them in there's the danger that you'll get hurt.

You: Yes, very deep. How about "Jimmy, the Hideous Penguin Boy":

"My name is Jimmy,
but my friends just call me
'the hideous penguin boy.'"

And that's all it is. What's so deep about that?

Me: But why is it in quotes?

You: I don't know. I don't care.

Me: And what about the poem from which the book got its name, "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy"?

You: Yeah, um, the dad had problems in bed and had to eat the kid, and yeah, um.

Me: I thought the way that poem started was really beautiful:

He proposed in the dunes,
they were wed by the sea,
their nine-day long honeymoon
was on the isle of Capri.

You: Aww, that's nice.

Me: And what about the pictures?

You: Oh, the one for Melonhead! With the green stuff under the shoe and the eyes and a little arm sticking out! Ha ha!

Me: Yeah, and there was the one, I can't remember, but all the faces, and one had a beret on!

You: Ha ha!

Me: Ha ha!

You: And what about the poem with the teddy bear and the grizzly bear!

Me: Yeah!

You: Anything else?

Me: Yes. I was sitting in Borders reading this because I didn't want to buy it and because the libraries here don't have it, so I was sitting in Borders as I said, and I kept getting distracted by that whore Sarah Brightman. Whore.

You: Are you calling Sarah Brightman a whore?

Me: Me? No. No, I'm sure she's not a whore, I just don't like the way she looks into the camera when she sings, and the way she whores herself whenever she's around Andrea Bocelli, like putting her cheek on his poor blind shoulder. Meanwhile, Andrea Bocelli is so nice and always has his eyes closed and looks nice, but Sarah Brightman either is staring wide-eyed into the camera like a whore, or she's putting her cheek on Andrea Bocelli's shoulder like a whore.

You: You're totally calling her a whore!

Me: No I'm not. I didn't say 'whore' once!

You: Okay.

Me: I just don't like that whore Sarah Brightman.

You: And she was distracting you at Borders?

Me: They were playing her music and it was annoying, because I just kept thinking, "This is that damn whore Sarah Brightman, isn't it?" Ugh. I feel queasy.

You: Maybe you shouldn't be so vitriolic.

Me: Maybe. Sorry, fans of Sarah Brightman. She has a decent voice. Whatever.

You: End of discussion. What are we going to read next?

Me: I don't know. I can't think now, I feel queasy. Maybe we'll have another meeting about this book and I'll announce the next book then. Or whatever. I'll announce it later. Do you have any suggestions?

You: No.

Me: Ugh.