
These two Canadian white boys run a thoroughly half-arsed and downright stupid lecture on the A-Z of hip hop, educating similarly ignorant fools on how to be the baddest rappin' mofos this side of tha East Side. By the show's end you'll know what's so wack about tofu, be down wit' some hip hop exercise workouts and be crying bitter tears as you realise the terrible mistake of forgetting about Dre. The two performers are gleefully aware of their complete inadequacy as hip hop avatars, and work this side of things to excellent effect, relying instead on wit and surprise to counter their natural deficiencies. Anyone with any knowledge of hip hop (or comedy for that matter) will probably start the show deeply skeptical if not plain contemptuous, but few won't be won over by the final result. And of course there's plenty of bad jokes, puns and hokey physical comedy in there too, so don't go expecting comedy gold. Rather, it's gloriously trashy, silly and uneven but the net effect is hard to fault. The show's called Hip Hop 4 Dummeez, which perfectly summarises it, too.

Well, one of the weirder dreams of late, so we've gotten in that maestro of weirdness, Mr David Lynch, who'll be explaining some of the deeper symbolism of this thing. Hi Mr David Lynch.

Well hello.

So: what have you got?

Well, here's my take on it, AHFLV. There's a man with penguins for hands whose nose is dripping constantly, but he doesn't seem aware of it. A staccato stabbing piano soundtrack cuts in and out of consciousness, perhaps conjuring images of it being played by a recently deceased pope or perhaps some sentient balsa wood. Perhaps both, in a duet. You decide. Can we get some more light on the penguin hands? No, strike that, I like it better the way it was. I once held an exhibition of art made entirely from rotting meat, so that the flies and maggots which were attracted to the works became part of the art's meaning. This was well back in the day, of course. There's a feeling of two-dimensionality to Penguin Hands, so we'll have him reading a book and the book comes to life and we find ourselves in an operating theatre where all of the surgical instruments are made of thorny rose stems, so that the white-clad surgeons are constantly pricking their fingers. They don't seem to notice the tiny blood spots appearing on their gloved hands - but they're surgeons, they're professionals, they're probably used to it. Probably hopped up on painkillers, too. You notice, though, lying on that cold metal slab as they move towards you. Wait! Is this an operating theatre or a morgue? Are these people surgeons or bowler-hatted clowns? No no no, I would never use bowler hats, done to death. But maybe death is the point. Probably not. Don't dwell on it. It's just a dream, son.

Thank you for your contribution.

Not at all, a pleasure. You have a nice day.















I was absent this day, oddly enough. I think I had a bad case of quinsy that day, but it could equally have been a dose of scrumpox or Bronze John. I was a veritable treasure trove of archaic ailments, all once common but oddly lacking from contemporary medical dictionaries. In less than three years in my youth, I managed to suffer from trench mouth, La Grippe, grocer's itch, croup, bloody sweat, dock fever, dropsy of the brain and many good old bouts of the horrors.
Ah, Jemima. Paler than most, on account of an anaemic disposition which was eventually to be the end of her, she also saw a wasting of the brain which had many side effects. You can see here the tea towel she always insisted be draped across her head at a jaunty angle. She insisted it would come into fashion but I don't think it ever took off.
Beatrice here was quite the character. She always insisted that she was in fact a well-known gossip columnist for the New York Times, and suffered the humiliation of our derision and scorn at these outrageous claims. But what do you know? It turns out that when this photo was taken, Betty was in fact 43 years old and one of the most talked-about writers at that esteemed publication. We never could understand what she was doing in our class, but suspect a kind of Fast Times at Ridgemont High undercover deal.
Hmm. Now this might seem a bit distasteful for modern audiences, but you have to understand that we did things differently then. Nowadays, with access to modern medical facilities and vaccines and so on, it's hard to remember what it was like in the grip of a depression with no such things as antibiotics, regular meals or even clean water. But we stuck together. So gasp if you will, but I think it was right that we included Eric in our school shot, even if he had been dead for seven weeks. I mean, we kept him in class that whole time. After all, his parents had paid his tuition in full.
This is our teacher, Mr Singh. In retrospect, I do question the wisdom of employing a twelve year old Indian boy as our teach, but he arrived with very good references which included time spent teaching at Princeton, Harvard and MIT. The teaching staff was limited, and they could use all the help they could get. Also, Mr Singh's teaching style was pretty much limited to throwing paper planes at us, taking our lunches and starting singalongs (with songs we never knew the words to).
Gretel may be confusing to you younger folk. You see, back in the day, it wasn't uncommon for actual fairy folk to sign up for class. In this case, Gretel was a bridge troll. I don't know what she ended up doing, but then I haven't been back to Crook Neck for some time.