Sure, it's scabrous, but is it funny?
Those scabrously funny folks over at Rottentomatoes.com are having fun with the reviews of "Clerks II." Here are some of the quotes that appear on the main page right now:
"If 'Clerks II' doesn't have quite the scabrous kick of its predecessor, the chance to revisit a classic premise must have renewed the writer in Smith, whose banter here often achieves a sharpness and quality." -- Justin Chang, Variety
"What was scabrously funny and charmingly amateurish in the 1994 black-and-white 'Clerks' is now less so on every level in the color bigger-budgeted sequel..." -- Emanuel Levy, EmanualLevy.com
"A tender, scabrous and very, very funny comedy that picks up 12 years after the original." -- Damon Wise, Empire Magazine (UK)
For the record, as of 10 p.m. PST, July 18, 2006, a Google search for "scabrous" + "Clerks II" yields 117 results. What will it be after Friday???
I'm really confused.. Is this some sort of injoke from the movie?
JE: No, it's just one of those adjectives that seems to be used ONLY in movie or book reviews!
To help the readers like myself:
scab·rous ( P ) Pronunciation Key (skbrs, skbrs)
adj.
1. Having or covered with scales or small projections and rough to the touch.
2. Difficult to handle; knotty: a scabrous situation.
3. Dealing with scandalous or salacious material: a scabrous novel.
OK but search engine databases, including Google's, are not updated instantly, correct? Doesn't it take a while for their spiders/bots to reach and update every page? (Think about how long it takes for the Google cache of each page to be updated--a couple of weeks, if I'm not mistaken.)
This is hilarious! Last weekend, my best friend and I were tossing out blurb words that have become meaningless-- Amazing! Stunning! I don't think "scabrous" is anywhere near losing its meaning, but it is kind of... weird that it would pop up in so many of these reviews. Will it be possible to write a review of Clerks 2 now and not use the word? Speaking of Kevin Smith, there's a pretty funny shout-out to Joel Siegel currently posted on his Web site. Apparently, Siegel was offended by Clerks 2 and, after 40 minutes or so, made quite a loud show of getting up and exiting the critics' screening, and Smith delights in taking him to task for it. And down at the bottom of the post is a link to a radio interview with Smith during which the hosts of the program get Siegel on the line. What transpires is amusing enough, and it takes a very surreal turn about two-thirds of the way through...
JE: I confess, I think I used "scabrous" or "scabrously" last week in describing "How to Get Ahead in Advertising" in my "Wither While You Work" piece. But it was also a pun on the skin condition suffered by Richard E. Grant. And I did try to listen to that interview, but clicked off after Siegel and Smith started going on and on about how many seconds Siegel's outburst lasted. You mean it got worse?
Ack! Like two ships passing each other in the night! I just saw your most recent post, dated less than an hour after I sent my last comment. Like you wouldn't know about this! Boy, is my face red...!
The surreal part comes about 10-15 minutes in, when it becomes clear that Siegel has had no idea it was Smith, sitting on the panel with the two hosts, with whom he has been arguing for 10 minutes. Admittedly, by this point the humor of the situation has worn off and it turns into one of those pretty typical talk-radio shouting matches. As I said underneath the other post, I would have had more respect for Siegel had he argued more cohesively about why he left-- but then Smith kept abrasively dismissing that avenue of the argument anyway-- and not kept denying he was responsible for the ridiculous, punny blurbs, obtained from the ABC Web site under Siegel's name, with which Smith and the hosts kept beating him over the head.
But I also came away (as I discussed under the later post) with less respect for Smith, and in particular his crass argumentative tactics, than I had before. And after reading some of the material in your most recent article, the whole affair seems a lot more brackish and sleazy than it did when I started listening to that interview.