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48 responses total.

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Heh. 
 
I thought the most you could wager on the Daily Double was the greater of your
current points and $500, in the first round.

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I don't get it.  Usually these little scenarios featuring Grexers are funny.
Jamie, were you trying to make a point by doing a really stupid one?

Oh man.  You people really have no sense of humor. 

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no...more like Gen. Burkhalter, I guess.

I love the Sean Connery bits on the SNL Jeopardy. =}

Jamie tries to be funny and fails, and when people don't laugh he says 
that's because they don't get it??  That almost *is* funny.  (Brooke's 
comment in #5 is obviously a joke.  Either that, or she's just trying 
to hide the truth from Jamie.  What a horrible role to have to play.)

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        I remember a poetry circle once that was like that.  Everybody loved
everyone else's poetry, as long as it was someone in the circle that'd written
it.  Mutual admiration / masturbation.

You people have no sense of humor.  This was actually somewhat 
entertaining.  I think I even chuckled once while reading it.  I am 
particularly amused by the notion that the worst thing Jamie can find 
with which to saddle me is that I keep calling him an asshole.  Oh, well, 
if the shoe fits...

Alex, you're an asshole.  I'll take Foods for $100.

I actually laughed quite a bit, though not in a derogatory way.  I just found
most of the "responses" amusing.

resp:6 :: did someone resurrect Punch?  I thought it was long dead 
and gone.  

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Did Alan Coren come back to the revived Punch?

re10:  gee...that's sort of sad, really.

you two actually call eachother and have conversations
about your bbs experiences?

I repeat, what a horrible role to have to play.  

yeah, i guess so...

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actually i thought the keesan parody was pretty fleshed out, but the other
and russ persons were there just so he'd have an excue to make fun of keesan.
i would've liked to have seen 2 other grexers equally made fun of.

i chuckled.

I'm with oval on this one.  The basic concept is amusing and the keeson 
parody is funny.  The parodies of Russ and Other barely touch on their 
targets, and that of "Alex" misses the target completely.  Or maybe it 
doesn't.  Not being able to parody himself, or perhaps just failing to 
notice that he is a suitable target for parody, is a pretty good Jamie 
parody.

Darn, I wish I had time to do a re-write on this.  I'd turn Alex into 
Alex Tregrex and introduce a fourth contestant (I know there are only 
three, but who cares) named JP2.  JP2 hasn't noticed that he is a 
contestant.  He keeps trying to run the show, pose questions to the 
other contestants, invent new rules, judge the correctness of the 
answers, and generally drive Alex crazy, while losing the game 
spectacularly.  The Other character would leap on every opportunity to 
respond to JP2's actions with insults directed at JP2, in the mistaken 
impression that he is doing Alex a favor by doing so.  I might drop 
Russ.  There are so many more interesting subjects for parody - mvpel, 
bdh, md, lk, rcurl, janc.

But, I have a week to get my whole house packed, so there is no time to 
play.  Anyway, I've got a baby sleeping on my left arm and typing one 
handed is slow.

Ouch.  ;)

In my younger days I did some parodies vaguely like #0, but
not quite.  I won't tell you exactly what they were like, so
that it will be a surprise in case I decide to do another one
someday.

As Jan notes, only one of the parodies in #0 is any good.
Seems to me we had a much better parody in a recent Agora
when Russ, Leeron, and one or two other folks did nice jobs
of parodying themselves.

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I remember a spate of pseudonymously entered parodies on M-Net around 
1992, mostly entered under various *wood names.  (Was the mulberry name 
inspired the the other wooden pseudos?)  Some of them weren't exactly 
parodies - they were stories with starring characters whose names were 
the same as actual M-Net users, but had no other obvious points of 
similarity.  

A few of the "wood" items can still be found in Mnet's classics.cf.

resp:17 Barry, how come you never call me up to talk about bbs? 

re27:  i just...can't.   next time we go out for
chicken fried steak and grits, maybe.

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Ah, I see.  [takes notes]

Jamie and I talk about a lot of things - especially when I am kicking his ass
in pool.

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I'll put that on a t-shirt and make you wear it when we go bowling next.

Re 26-27.  Thanks for the pointer.  The "wood" items are 12-27 in the
M-Net classics conference.  They date mostly from March through May of
1992.

I think the point of these stories, at the time, was that many or most
M-Netters had never met a lot of the major figures.  Dan Napolitano
(keats) in particular avoided meeting any M-Netters he didn't know
already.  So there was a lot of lurid speculation and gossip about what
people were like in "real life".  The *wood stories took this speculation
to sometimes hilarious extremes.


          Chelsea, Michigan is a small farming community, about
     fifty miles west of Detroit.  It's here that Jiffy brand
     cooking mixes are made.  The renowned Chelsea High School
     football team won the state Class B championship last year.
     We traveled to Chelsea on a recent sunny day to visit one of
     its best known residents, Daniel A. Napolitano.
          Mr. Napolitano's farm is located just west of town.  Any
     visitor would be intrigued by the unique fence surrounding the
     property, a sturdy compound of black creosoted timbers; the
     word "NAPOLITANO" is spelled out in glittering razor wire.
          Mr. Napolitano, a big, bluff, broad-shouldered, muscular
     man with a shock of graying blond hair, opened the roadside
     gate and greeted us warmly.  He wore a tattered green T-shirt
     bearing the emblem "World's Greatest Grandpa", faded jeans and
     penny loafers.  He led us into the nearby ranch house,
     distributed chilled cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and
     introduced us to his wife Brenda and dog Shep.  Brenda took
     our coats, and we settled down in the living room for the
     interview.
          Between sips of beer, we asked Mr. Napolitano who had
     been the three greatest influences on him.  "First, John
     Wayne," he said quickly, stabbing the air with a thick finger
     in a decisive gesture.  "Second, Meg Geddes.  Third, Steven
     Jobs."  He guffawed loudly, knocking the ashtray off the
     table.
          On the subject of foreign competition, we asked him what
     cars he likes.  "Cadillac's the best -- Lincoln second," he
     stated with authority.  "No other car on the road can touch
     them."
          How did he feel about the breakup of the Soviet Union?
     He shook his head.  "It's tough to lose something so familiar,
     even an evil empire," he said sadly.  "But those people
     deserve a hell of a lot better than what they were getting!"
          Where did he expect to go from here?  He grinned
     enigmatically.  "You'll keep hearing from me, never fear!"

               Posted by Al L. Maplewood, March 24, 1992
               (now item 23 in the M-Net Classics Conference)

Another one:

     It was an otherwise tedious Sunday morning, involving the usual
     rapid-fire channel changing to find some interesting tidbit among the
     morning's dreary religious programming.  As I quickly passed talk
     show after gospel hour after talk show, my eye chanced upon a
     brightly enamelled studio set.  I lifted my finger from the remote
     control device as I further noticed a glowing neon logo, entitled
     "The Gallivanting Gourmet," displayed on the back wall.  The studio
     consisted of a sparkling ocean blue kitchenette, complete with
     convection oven, gas range, rotissiere, wok, hibachi, microwave,
     bread-baking machine, salad shooter, and an impressively sized
     juicer.  Racks of copper-toned pots and pans were artfully arranged
     on one wall, while a dizzying array of ladles, forks, knives, mixers,
     whisks, spatulae, spoons, and other implements lay in trays attached
     to the opposite wall. 

     The show's theme song, apparently some sort of plucky little banjo
     duet, died down.  Our host stepped onto the set to the eager applause
     of the studio audience.  He was dressed in a frilly dill-colored
     apron and little else, a toque perched at a saucy angle atop his
     head. Even so, I was unprepared for the shock I received when I saw
     the show's credits flash across the bottom of the screen.  Their
     curlicue letters boldly announced that our host was Chef Aaron! 

     I had never met the elusive Mr. Larson, but I am certain that I could
     now easily spot him at any PicoFest.  A soft halo of blond ringlets
     suffused his rounded, cherubically smiling countenance.  Two
     well-fed, quivering chins underscored every cheerful word he spoke. 
     His aqua-blue eyes sparkled naughtily as he flirted with the
     delighted home audience.  A suffusion of rings adorned each of his
     fat, sausage-like fingers, and his startling girth was such that he
     might easily be Paul Prudhomme's younger brother. 

     The centerpiece of Chef Aaron's show on this occasion seemed to be
     desserts, as he began to chatter with his adoring audience about the
     preparation of a delicious torte.  He placed his ingredients on the
     counter in precise order.  He used no recipe card or cookbook.  I
     wondered if there were some sort of teleprompter in use, as Chef
     Aaron seemed to have an impressive ability to keep the long and
     complex list of ingredients in their proper places.  I hastily
     grabbed a pad of paper and began to scribble down the recipe as the
     Maitre rattled it off. Treacle? Where, I wondered, would I be able to
     purchase treacle locally? Perhaps the local Kroger's might stock it. 

     Chef Aaron kept up an effervescent monologue as he worked.  "I'm so
     happy to see all you ladies here bright and early this morning!  I
     feel so lucky to be here myself.  Did I ever tell you that I almost
     ended up as a lawyer?"  He shook his head as the audience murmured
     sympathetically; the studio lights glimmered for a moment off a small
     tear that had gathered at the corner of one eye.  "I had chosen law
     for its financial rewards, not for any joy it might have brought me. 
     My first love was always cooking. I remember Maman scolding me for
     ruining her convection oven with my mud pies!  I pleaded with my
     parents, but Maman insisted that I enroll in a respectable career." 

     The camera focussed on his hands as he fastidiously kneaded the
     butter and flour of the torte.  Not a crumb of dough dulled the
     surface of his shiny rings. "It was in my final year of law school
     that I was whisked away from what promised to be a dullard's life. 
     You see, I had long ago brought suit against a cagey ex-lover who
     left me for a ground-breaking career in religious physics.  Just as I
     was prepared to accept my degree and accept a back-breaking job as a
     slave at some tedious New York firm, I was awarded millions of
     dollars in a palimony suit."  He smiled knowingly at Camera Two and
     winked.  "Oh, I know it sounds cruel, honey, but if you want to make
     an omelette, you have to break a few eggs!"

     Muffin, my cocker spaniel, chose that very moment to hurl himself
     into my lap, striking the remote control as he did so.  Instantly,
     the screen was filled with images of cheap stained glass, and the
     room echoed with the sound of gospel music: "Send your money to God,
     send your money to God...."  I quickly recoved the remote device, but
     strangely, I was unable to find that channel again, and TV Guide
     provided no clue to any "Gallivanting Gourmet."  Disappointed, I
     headed to the kitchen for a Sarah Lee cheesecake. 

             posted by Phineas Taylor Balsawood, April 16, 1992
             (now M-Net Classics Conference item 19)

Wow, those are great.

silly midwesterners.

lol.  Remember, they can say the same about US, luv.

Here's another one.  I can't believe I actually wrote this!

     A Morning with Steven Michael Rosenwach-Gordon
     ----------------------------------------------

          "The transcendental function of the connection of feedback-
     controlled action with three modes of inference is shown in the fact
     that we progress through learning from problematic views to new ones
     capable of habitualization only if we apprehend reality under a
     determinate schema,"  intoned Professor Steven Michael Rosenwach-
     Gordon. "This objectification of the reality of nature is grounded in
     the forms of inference coordinated in the behavioral circuit." 

          His students shifted uneasily in their seats.  "Bullshit,"  one
     of them muttered. 

          We were sitting in on Professor Rosenwach-Gordon's class on the
     Logic of Inquiry.  The shabby lecture hall was packed, but it' seemed
     that today's material was a bit over the heads of some of his
     audience.

          The professor looked down at his notes and continued earnestly. 
     "Only if we attribute something like instrumental action to nature
     itself can we deductively discover new hypotheses, deductively derive
     conditional predictions from them, and confirm them through continued
     induction."  He took off his heavy wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them
     on a hankerchief.  "Questions?" 

          A voice drifted from the back of the room.  "Is this going to be
     on the exam?"

          Professor Rosenwach-Gordon looked up, startled.  "Why, yes, of
     course it will be.  This point is quite central to the understanding
     of the pragmatistic framework of the learning process!"

          Once the class hour was over, we accompanied the good professor
     back to his office in the Philosophy Building.  He laughed when we
     asked him about his name.  "I was christened Etienne Michel," he
     explained, "I Americanized it to Steven Michael after I was expelled
     from the Sorbonne."

          His office was unexpectedly spacious, and contained a prodigious
     library.  We noticed many volumes by and about Hegel, Kant, Marx,
     Schoepenhauer, Habermas, Dilthey, Descartes, Freud, Kierkegaard and
     Wittgenstein.  Another section, partly hidden from view, was stuffed
     with what appeared to be Harlequin romances.

          He cleared away some papers and turned on the espresso machine. 
     "But the symbolic structures taken by hermeneutic understanding as
     its object cannot be reduced to components of pure language
     completely defined by metalinguistic rules of constitution," he said,
     laughing heartily at his own joke.  We accepted a cup of very
     passable espresso in a white china cup.

          "The coffee bean offers us the answer to all the questions of
     life,"  he said, downing a cupful.  "All it asks of us is proper
     treatment to become the nectar of the Gods."

          We agreed heartily.

                   -Posted by Al L. Maplewood, March 26, 1992
                    (now item 25 in M-Net Classics Conference)

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