ManufactuRed Housing - The Taft School

this bizarre education…. It meant that once I got to Harvard,I could spend all my time hanging out at the Lampoon.”You get the feeling Beard doesn’t just make it look easy;it is easy, for him. Beard’s parodies explore the dimensions ofabsurdity with exquisitely funny simulations of their originalsubjects.There are lots of humor books about dogs and cats onbookstore shelves, so what makes French for Cats, A Dog’sNight Before Christmas and Poetry for Cats stand out? Beardhas an uncanny knack for sounding like a dog or a cat,even in French. “Il ya peut-être eu un malentendu. Sortez del’endroit où je fais mes sommes immédiatement. (Perhaps therehas been some misunderstanding. Remove yourself from mynap place at once.)”He can also imitate all kinds of writing styles—epic poetry,for example, or iambic pentameter, or blank verse.His humor is purely funny, with a Wodehousian cadence.There’s something gentle and sweet about his writing, evenwhen he’s gleefully spoofing golfers and sailors and other assortedmembers of his own privileged class. Unlike plenty ofother funny writers, there seems to be no chip on his shoulder,no hint of vitriol or self-loathing.Life at Taft was a mix of classical education,adolescent mayhem and rigid authoritarian rule.“And the dining hall served Spam.”not his forte. (It’s possible he even may have cut up a frog ortwo but admits that, without any girls to throw eyeballs at,there wasn’t much fun in it.)It was at Taft, Beard says, that he learned to write. Hehoned his skills in part through sheer volume. In additionto his column for the Papyrus every other week, he was alsoassigned a weekly 1,200-word essay. And on a regular basisBeard and his classmates faced the dreaded English class exerciseknown as the 2–8–2 (2 minutes to think, 8 minutes towrite and 2 minutes to correct their work).Beard credited these exercises for instilling a facility tocommunicate in the English language. “It was also,” he concedes,“the making of a great bullshit artist.“There was an expectation to perform at a certain level,both academically and behavior-wise,” says Beard. Life at Taftwas a mix of classical education, adolescent mayhem and rigidauthoritarian rule. “And the dining hall served Spam.”Beard joined the army reserve in the early ’70s. “I don’twant to make Taft out to sound like an actual gulag,” hesays, “but I do recall thinking that, after Taft, Army foodtasted pretty good.”By the time Beard graduated from Taft, he “had the functionalequivalent of a college education.” Between Rectoryand Taft, Beard received eight years of Latin instruction. Asthe introduction to Latin for Even More Occasions points out,he “spent a good part of his wonder years reading the works ofCaesar, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Catullus and Plautus.” Beardnever dreamed he would be “fortunate enough to cash in on“Henry’s humor has never been mean,” says Cerf. “Hehas a wicked sense of satire, but it is never raunchy humor,and it never skewers people. It may make them look silly, butit’s always gentle and fun.”To create a good parody, Beard says, “you need somethingto start with.” The copy often co-opts its original subject,• Bad Golf My Way (with LeslieNielsen & E.H. Wallop, 1996)• The Unshredded Files ofHillary and Bill Clinton(with John Boswell, 1996)• The Official Exceptions tothe Rules of Golf, CentennialEdition: The Hacker’s Bible(with John Boswell, 1997)• Zen for Cats (1997)• Rationalizations to Live By(2000)• Skiing (2002)• Fishing (with Roy McKie, 2002)• Where’s Saddam? (2003)• The Dick Cheney Code:A Parody (2004)• X-Treme Latin: Unleash YourInner Gladiator (2004)• X-Treme Latin: All the LatinYou Need to Know for Survivalin the 21st Century (2005)22 Taft Bulletin Spring 2008