Perelman Tonight: "You rat!" -- Part 2 of "Mama Don't Want No Rice" (Chapter 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman")

"The terminal point for our soiled laundry
will be Bali," I announced masterfully.

"'In the hands of Disraeli, irony can be a formidable weapon.' I rejoined. 'In a lout it becomes merely offensive.'"

-- from tonight's installment of "Mama Don't Want No Rice"

by Ken

Last night we dived into Chapter 4 of The Swiss Family Perelman, "Mama Don't Want No Rice." which finds the family experiencing Hong Kong, and in which the eponymous "Mama" and the Perelman offspring launched a food revolt.

"I refuse to taste another spoonful of that excelsior!" announced the margravine in a ringing voice. "We've been on this blasted reef four days and all we've eaten is barnacles and boiled string! I want something that sticks to the ribs."

"Hamburgers!" the children caught up her refrain. "We want flapjacks with maple syrup -- chicken enchiladas -- apple pandowdy!"

In the ensuing hubbub the unwary paterfamilias let slip a hitherto closely concealed secret: that the ostensible destination of the journey, Siam, was on the itinerary or anywhere close, that in fact they were headed for the island of Celebes.

"Just a second, Jocko," she interrupted, quivering with anger. "Do I interpret this to mean that you inveigled me all the way to Siam and then switched the deck on us?"

"Of course not," I said placatingly. "It's a little extra dividend -- kind of a warm-up for Siam, so to speak. By the time you get back from the Moluccas -- if you ever do come back -- Siam will look like Rockefeller Plaza."

Exactly as instinct had warned me, the poor thing kicked up the most preposterous fuss. She drew a ghoulish picture of a remote and unexplored archipelago swarming with vampire bats, anthropophagi, and virulent diseases; cited some absurd fiddle-faddle about the war in Java (a grotesque designation for the minor police action in which the Dutch, to preserve order, had unavoidably bombed Djokjakarta and were being forced to kill a few thousand extremists); and having pilloried me as irresponsible, a delayed juvenile, and an erotic dreamer nourished on Terry and the Pirates, flung her arms around the children and defied Lucifer himself to drag her to the East Indies.

Which is where we pick up tonight, with an even more fraught itinerary fact about to be spilled.


FOR MR. P'S ATTEMPTS TO PACIFY MRS. P, CLICK HERE

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN: OUR STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1, "Rancors Aweigh"
Part 1 -- Launching yet another journey
Part 2 -- San Francisco-bound
Chapter 2, "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"
Part 1 -- The journey begins!
Part 2 -- Hooray for Hollywood!
Part 3 -- "Move over, Asia"
Chapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder"
Part 1 -- "Aboard the President Cleveland"
Part 2 -- Putting on the feedbag
Part 3 -- Hawaii to Hong Kong
Chapter 4, "Mama Don't Want No Rice"
Part 1 -- Breaking news!
Part 2 -- "You rat!"

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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