Parody letters make amusing collection
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 7, 2001 9:00 p.m.
BOOK INFORMATION Â
Title: Dear Alice…
Author: Steve Ryniak
Publisher: Muse World Media
Price: $8.95
Pages: 103
By Michael Rosen-Molina
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
With millions of letters pouring in from readers, it’s a
simple fact that advice columnists like “Dear Abby” and
“Ann Landers” could never get around to answering every
single one. Considering some of the bizarre problems that do make
it to print, the public can’t help but wonder what might have
been in all those rejected letters.
Author Steven Ryniak has put together “Dear Alice,”
a collection of strange and unusual parody letters that would never
have seen the light of day.
“Dear Alice” is a mixed bag. It consists entirely of
phony letters begging for advice on completely ludicrous problems.
A “reader” from Raleigh, N.C., decides to build his own
tollbooth in the street by his house. Another from San Bernardino
is upset to discover that his new home comes complete with 45 acres
of marijuana fields and that the local police are becoming
suspicious. An irate Denver resident wants advice on an argument
with his roommate whose spitting cobras, poison arrow frogs, black
widows and Australian death adders ““ apparently part of his
biology thesis ““ have broken loose from the grocery bags
they’re kept in and swarmed all over the room.
In a nutshell, this isn’t the typical advice column fodder
about whether the toilet paper should face toward or away from the
wall.
A Denver reader complains that his son has spent the last eight
years in college, wasting over $240,000 of his father’s money
to study such esoteric subjects as “Dramatic Literature of
the Druid Renaissance,” “Applied Nebuchadnezzaromics in
Contemporary Babylonian Domestic Policy” and “The
Romantic Sonnets of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers.” In
addition, he’s also studying a foreign language ““ Ewok
““ a tool which he uses against his father whenever he demands
that his son stop goofing off and graduate already.
Unable to cope with the constant stream of Ewok obscenities
““ his son’s only response ““ he naturally turns to
fictional advice columnist “Alice” for help.
This scenario would be screamingly hilarious if it were true.
Since it is obviously fictional though, the humor suffers somewhat.
This sort of book is usually funny because it uses real examples
from real life, thus allowing the reader to mock the writers’
awe-inspiring authentic stupidity. Just as Jerry Springer loses a
lot of its trashy appeal once the audience starts to suspect that
the incestuous vampire hicks are really just actors, “Ask
Alice” isn’t nearly as funny as it would have been if
the letters were real.
The letters, liberally peppered with obscenities, are obviously
fake. If the language wasn’t enough to convince you of this,
quite a few involve severe bodily injuries that would have killed
the letters’ authors before they would ever have had a chance
to write away for advice on their wounds. One unfortunate fellow
was hit in the groin, full force, with a twenty-pound steel
sledgehammer.
Despite the fact that the letters are not real, most of them are
funny enough to keep a reader’s interest. Ryniak does have an
exquisite gift for phrasing and he manages to capture a rare blend
of vacant stupidity and frightening insanity with his pen.
Many of the letters are quite amusing, especially one brief
passage wherein a reader fears that he got a chicken pregnant and
now wants to know if he has to pay child support. He ends his
letter by nonchalantly stating that the encounter also left him
with a case of herpes. The absurdity of the idea makes it almost
impossible not to laugh.
Another letter concerns claims made by a certain pharmaceutical
company. A skeptical reader notes that the label on a bottle of
pills promises that they will allow you to run “70 miles per
hour, just like a damn cheetah.” Another drug promised that
it would enable its taker to breathe underwater, also “just
like a damn cheetah.” The idea that a major firm would use
the cheetah analogy as a generic indicator of effectiveness is
funny enough. That they would feel the need to underscore it with
an expletive is even funnier. You don’t just run like a
cheetah; you run like a damn cheetah! It must work.
It’s hard to say why that’s funny, but it is.
“Dear Alice” is chock-full of such odd non sequiturs,
and ultimately, the large portions of the book that just
don’t make any logical sense are the funniest. Ryniak
gleefully hashes out hilarious page-long letters that defy
explanation. Readers will probably spend most of the book in a
confused haze, but that’s what makes “Dear Alice”
so worthwhile.
Because these are all supposedly rejected letters, no responses
from Alice are included. It would have been interesting to read
what Alice might have told her readers, whether she would take them
seriously or wonder at their idiocy.
After reading “Dear Alice,” one can’t help but
wonder what sort of column Alice writes that would attract such a
bizarre fan base.
