You Can't Catch Me!

The other day at Green Apple, I found a seven dollar remainder copy of the postmodern masterpiece The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith.

That evening while attempting to read the title story to Risa and Vida, I struggled. I struggled because "The Stinky Cheese Man" made me convulse on the floor in an unflattering and uncontrollable fit of snorting laughter. I could hardly bear it, I tell you. Risa and Vida stared at me like I'd suddenly grown a third hand, a fact that only served to spur on my state of mental disequilibrium.

"The Stinky Cheese Man" is a re-telling of the classic "Gingerbread Man" tale in which a cute little cookie fresh from the oven escapes being eaten while he runs around yelling, "You can't catch me!" The Stinky Cheese Man also scoots about daring various characters to catch him. "Run run run as fast as you can. You can't catch me. I'm the Stinky Cheese Man!" he says. But what the Stinky Cheese Man fails to realize is that nobody is chasing him at all. Why? Because his head appears to be made out of a giant wheel of parmesan (with a single wedge cut out), he has a bacon mouth, two olives for eyes, and stinks to the heavens.

Okay. It seems funnier when you're actually reading the book.

I swear.