BY LORAINE ANDERSON
Local columnist
December 28, 2007 04:00 am My birthday came last week, the one that delivers a gift all its own: The right to say for one more year, "I'm still in my 50s." A friend gives me "The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z," a hilarious new book by comedian-actor-playwright-author Steve Martin and New Yorker magazine cartoonist Roz Chast. "Everyone needs a children's book at our age," she explains. She is laughing, as am I, a good sign. She will turn "our age," as she delicately puts it, next month. I turn the pages and lose track of time in forests of rhyme and alliteration. Individual letters and sounds, in cartoon drawings of commiseration, spill out silly willy-nilly. They wiggle and squiggle until you just have to giggle. For example: "Excellent Edward, exceedingly picky, ate eggs with an eel whose earwax was icky." Or "Needle-nosed Nigel won nine kinds of knockwurst by winning a contest to see who could knock worst." Meanwhile, letters from foreign alphabets and languages, topped with carets and tildes, umlauts and accents, hang out on inside cover pages. They squeam, scheme, dream and even preen. "I can't believe they left us out!" "Maybe it was a mistake" "Don't kid yourself." "Maybe we'll be in the next book." "I feel undressed without my little shoe." The world is going to H in a Handbasket as we enter 2008, and perhaps I should Harp on that in this 2007 column of late. What the Hay, I say, it's your birthday. Why not play with Words another Way? What the Heck! I begin to trek through the Land of Thesaurus, where, like a brontosaurus, I root out words and hound sounds that zound and confound. Brain waves bump and thump and wump in new ways, wild with wile, wagging with whim, to bring the new year in. Laughs at my gaffes rise like giraffes in my craw. I want to draw quirky pictures like Chast's and crazy couplets like Martin's that jerk and lurk, dance and prance off the page. I pen a thank-you note to my Friend of Old, trying to frame the spectacular vernacular of "P," the first letter of her name. "Picture this! "A perceptive Pal of Panache procures a present of pastiche for a friend still in her Pifties. "Paste pasta on the pavement! "A poised porpoise plies the pond with purpose "A perky poodle has a penchant for playing piano. "Is a patsy a pigeon or a peacock -- or perhaps a pleasant pheasant?" Zappy Snappy New Year. Record-Eagle columnist Loraine Anderson can be reached at landerson@record-eagle.com or 933-1468.
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Photos
Loraine Anderson