Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Seven And A Half Hours Of Silence
Seven And A Half Hours Of Silence[edit source]
Mr.Soot Gremlin 
-Talk 23:11, January 24, 2011 (UTC)
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PEE REVIEW IN PROGRESS of giving you his opinion and pretending you care. |
| Humour: | 7 | Hey, Soot Gremlin! I hadn't even noticed you slipping into our little wiki. I see you've spent a lot of time tricking out your userpage. Xhibit would be proud.
I also see that you haven't had a featured article yet, and that this is really your first serious mainspace article. Well, the good news is: I think this article has a featurable concept. A lot of my Pee Reviews end with me saying "This will never work; write something else." That's not the case here. With some work, this could go to feature. The bad news is, it needs a lot of work. Let's start at the start. Quotes: Problematic. Four quotes is a lot of quotes, especially if they don't interlink with each other. The Lennon quote gets a smile out of me. The Oscar Wilde quote is okay, but there's no reason for it to be a Wilde quote. Ringo and George's quotes swing, but in my opinion, kind of miss. I think you should cut this down to just Lennon. Infobox: Not good. Sorry. You have the single being released in September of 1970 - even though the Beatles, for all intents and purposes, disbanded in late 1969. Why? Larry King is reviewing it, calling it "just what America needs," which just seems random and not very apropos of anything. And "My Long, Hard Dick" is just a bit of utterly juvenile crap thrown into what looks like a fairly sophisticated article. You don't need to have a userbox; for most articles, they don't work. In this article, I think it's not working for you. Lede: Pretty good! You establish your premise right off the bat, which is a funny one. You have critics scrutinizing it and comparing it to other Beatles work, which is, honestly, a pretty decent satire of how ultra-seriously critics took the Beatles. You mention John Cage's similar (but less ludicrious) experiment in a way that's funny. There's a few things that don't work well, though. The "Dinklewank" is too juvenile and breaks up your tone. The "so darn cute" also breaks the tone too much. In my opinion, a lot of the humor in this article comes from the very serious, very deadpan treatment of what would have been the stupidest thing the Beatles ever attempted. If you break out of your deadpan voice to say things like "Dinklewank," you're just vandalizing your own article. It's a bad idea. Recording Difficulties: This is my favorite section. The inability of the Beatles to stay quiet because they were so wrapped up in their own peculiarities was hilarious. I don't really approve of George Martin hitting on Paul, though; this article is too deadpan to toss in a gay joke that way. The sentences "You have to give credit to Mr. McCartney. He had a lot to deal with" also break tone, although they might be okay if they were in parentheses. Rastafarianism is pointless and should be removed. I enjoyed Paul fiddling with the EQ, as though it makes any difference whatsoever to cut the bass end on tape noise. Time: The tone starts to unravel here again. It's too casual! This article is really only going to work if it's written in an encyclopedic style and it's totally deadpan. What I'd really like to see is more discussion of the 12 discs. Did the single cost $50 because of the price of vinyl? Did they consider recording it at an ultra-slow 0.5 RPM to get it on a single disc? Did they, perhaps, consider recording it at 0 RPM and advising listeners to unplug their turntable completely? That kind of thing. When an idea is this absurd, trying to explain it in a way that would actually make sense can be very funny. Reception: Again, tone. "There were mixed thoughts." is a weak sentence. A better one would be "Seven and a Half Hours of Silence was received with mixed reviews in both the British and American press." Keep it encyclopedic. But, John's response - 10 seconds of him fucking Yoko - was just hilarious. I love it. This section is really short; can it be lengthened or combined with others? In general, a section should not be shorter than the picture illustrating it. Revenue: What I'd do here is lose the title "revenue" and delete the sentences about how much it made - that's not really very funny. We don't need specific numbers; specific numbers almost never make anyone laugh. Just fold Paul's quote to Patricia Nixon into the "Reception" section and you'll have improved both sections. Box Set: Not bad! I really smiled at the sentence "For some reason people get so worked up when a piece of music is put into a box," although I'd reword it a tiny bit, to "For some reason, people tend to get really worked up when a piece of music is put into a box." I don't quite understand why George Carlin is in the article, though, and my first impression is you should take him out of it entirely. You have enough material to work with without randomly bringing Carlin in. Cover Image Controversy: A section about a cover image controversy is very appropriate for this article, but this is not the section you want. Please don't put Rod Blagojevich in your article - it just fucks it up. Paul's naked chest? Meh. Try to satirize the reaction to the White Album cover a little more - if you have a minimalist cover, talk about fans poring over it with a magnifying glass. This might also be a fun time to talk about how the album cover played into the "Paul is dead" hoax. |
| Concept: | 9 | Very funny concept. Obviously, plenty to work with here. |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | Your prose is what's going to make or break this article. As I said, I think it's absolutely critical that the article have the dry, academic tone of an encyclopedia while it's discussing the ridiculous concept of the most revered band in human history releasing seven and a half hours of silence as a single. Sometimes you nail that tone; sometimes you miss. But, I think I discussed that adequately in the first section. |
| Images: | 5 | The pictures could use work. First of all, a bunch of small pictures isn't usually a great idea. Pick your best three; make them look encyclopedic but with funny captions. Please lose the LOLcat - there's just no reason for that to be there. It's forced into the article, and it's more annoying than funny. I got the biggest smile at "That cheeky little muchkin!" Sometimes, simple is best. |
| Miscellaneous: | 8 | I have a lot of hope for this article. |
| Final Score: | 35 | It's good to have you aboard! It's not every day we get a noob in who can actually successfully write a funny article. I sincerely hope that you work on this, polish it up, get your first feature, and get your promotion to CUN. In the immortal words of Rob Schneider: YOU CAN DO IT!! |
| Reviewer: |  pillow talk 19:53, February 3, 2011 (UTC)
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