Who says our kids aren't learning?

[skinem]

Received this e-mail--don't know how current...but, do know funny!

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners...


1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.


2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.


3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high
schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.


4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.


5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.


6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.


7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.


8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.


9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.


10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.


11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.


12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.


13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.


14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.


15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.


16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.


17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.


18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.


19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.



20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.


21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.


22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.


23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.


24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.


25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck.

[gailr]

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

My favorite. Concise. Succinct.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

Someone's been reading Douglas Adams...

-gailr

[Huny]

I think there is a lot of good tag line material here- and some good imagination at play. Maybe some of them should be invited to the Agora. They would fit right in.

[Bailey]

I love this one, I always have

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

Very descriptive!

mark making-and-breaking-alliances Bailey

[Perry]

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

This one has an almost haiku quality to it.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

And this one would go over well in Yiddish theater.

And how about "The sweltering weather left him listless, like a boat with an even keel"?

[sluggo]

...came across these sterling metaphors while googling "hocketed brass":

"producing a sound like a hungry ghost caught in a laundromat tumbler.";

"a timely reminder of how Canadians can imitate a New Orleans march at floodtide just as well as, to use a pop music reference, Kenny Gee and his Whizzers"

-and other gems too luminous to mention

[gailr]

Great, sluggo, but it asks the musical question: would actually hearing this disk be a letdown after a review of such tour de force? (Or even hometown gig de force?)

You know what this means: time to post the link to PDQ Bach again.

But other things remain the same: the concert will return to Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall after two years farther uptown, and the quality of the music hasn’t improved one bit. ...it contains impressive near-misses such as the 1712 Overture for really big orchestra (the NY Phil certainly qualifies here) and the Pervertimento for bagpipes, bicycle, and balloons, featuring the same bagpiper (Maurice Eisenstadt) and bicycle soloist (Prof. Schickele) who played the work 40 years ago at Philharmonic Hall...

-gailr
who was exposed to the Monk’s Aria from Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice (see lyrics page) at an impressionable age, which I think, explains a lot...

[tcward]

Sweet! PDQ rocks!

-Tim

[skinem]

PDQ has certainly done more to bring people to music that may not have otherwise.
Love the show!
By the way Sluggo, I've lost track of the thread the pic was posted in, but which one of the band members was you?

[sluggo]

PDQ has certainly done more to bring people to music that may not have otherwise.
Love the show!
By the way Sluggo, I've lost track of the thread the pic was posted in, but which one of the band members was you?

Jerry Grette, le pun français, usually on violin or mandolin, or guitar in the latter-day JazzFest. It's here in Res Diversae.

I haven't had the technical wherewithal to put the promised sound files up yet je regrette.

[Perry]

I saw Prof. Schickele perform live, maybe 40 years ago. What a hoot.

Was it part of his act, or another musical comedic act, that had a trombone player that looked like Albert Einstein, who would be fed a candy and get patted on the head at odd intervals?

[sluggo]

I saw Prof. Schickele perform live, maybe 40 years ago. What a hoot.

Was it part of his act, or another musical comedic act, that had a trombone player that looked like Albert Einstein, who would be fed a candy and get patted on the head at odd intervals?

He was in New Orléans just a coupla years ago. Did a gag where the orchestra got hung up on a single chord, he couldn't stop 'em until crawling around and pulling an electrical cord, whereupon they slid down the scale and stopped.