What is legend tripping? There’s a good chance you’ve already done it. Remember sneaking off into that cemetery at night as a kid to see if there were any ghosts? What about hearing there was a monster lurking in that old abandoned building and wanting to check it out? Or reading about a UFO landing site and wanting …
When You’re Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire
Office copier folklore-those tattered sheets of cartoons, mottoes, zany poems, defiant sayings, parodies, and crude jokes that regularly circulate in office buildings everywhere-is the subject of this innovative study. this type of folklore represents a major form of tradition in modern America, and the authors have compiled this raw data for scholarship-and entertainment. These creations of the Paperwork …
Did You Hear About The Girl Who . . . ?: Contemporary Legends, Folklore, and Human Sexuality
Ever hear the one about the man who wakes up after a chance sexual encounter to discover he’s been involuntarily relieved of one of his kidneys? Or the tiny gift-wrapped box from a recently departed lover that reveals a horrible secret? Everyone knows contemporary legends, those barely believable, often lurid, cautionary tales, always told as though they happened …
Legend and BeliefDialectics of a Folklore GenreLinda DéghAn acclaimed folklorist asks “What is legend?”Legend and Belief is a descriptive and analytical study of the legend, the most prolific and characteristic form of folklore in contemporary Western civilization. Not that the legend does not have ancient roots; like the tale, the joke, the ballad, the proverb, and mummery, it …
Most of Richard Dorson’s thirty years as folklorist have been spent collecting tales and legends in the remote backcountry, far from the centers of population. For this book he extended his search for folk traditions to one of the most heavily industrialized sections of the United States. Can folklore be found, he wondered, in the Calumet Region …
Was Marilyn Monroe really a size 16? Was Lucille Ball a communist? And what’s the truth about the infamous bloopers on such shows as The Newlywed Game, Password, and The Tonight Show? In a town that thrives on rumor and gossip, urban legends proliferated long before the term was coined. Now the brightest new voice about the movies …
Legends are arguably the most common narrative form of folklore in American society. From sex acts to business transactions, from fashion to food, from heroes to heroin, rumors and legends take on every charged topic. Children circulate texts about toys and candy; teenagers share stories about sex, drugs, and rock and roll; young professionals commiserate over the hazards …
Now available in paperback, this book has been updated to include more humorous, entertaining myths that keep the rumor mills churning. Richard Roeper, the current co-host of Ebert & Roeper and the Movies, knows a lot about urban legends-tales so deliciously tasty that you desperately want it to be true. Find out: Does the “bonsai kitten” Web site …
Collected primarily in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia during the classic era of black ‘street poetry’ (i.e., during the late 1960s and early 1970s) these raps, signifyings, toasts, boasts, jokes and children’s rhymes will delight general readers as well as scholars. Ranging from the simple rhymes that accompany children’s games to verbally inventive insults and the epic exploits …
Yo’ Mama: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes, and Children’s Rhymes from Urban Black America
Collected primarily in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia during the classic era of black “street poetry” (i.e., during the late 1960s and early 1970s) these raps, signifyings, toasts, boasts, jokes and children’s rhymes will delight general readers as well as scholars. Ranging from the simple rhymes that accompany children’s games to verbally inventive insults and the epic exploits …