The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of children who don't go to sleep
June 15, 2011 4:52 AM   Subscribe

Go the F**k to Sleep as read by Samuel L. Jackson (no really). Audible is offering it as a free download (registration required). [Go the F**k to Sleep previously]
posted by Kattullus (53 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Frankly this is marketing wizardry. Kudos to whoever mentioned his name in the meeting.
posted by longbaugh at 4:59 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


I saw a link somewhere the other day *earnestly* asking "is 'Go The Fuck To Sleep' suitable bedtime reading for children?" And, although I myself have small children (whom I read to at bedtime), this was one of those occasions that had me sort of wishing the Earth would crash into the Sun.
posted by stinkycheese at 5:03 AM on June 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


was Bill Cosby not available?
posted by preferred nomenclature at 5:05 AM on June 15, 2011 [12 favorites]


Too predictable.
posted by rmmcclay at 5:08 AM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


The AV Club has a short video from the recording session.
posted by Kattullus at 5:09 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


America's seemingly insatiable appetite for hearing the word "fuck" in all media simply astonishes me. We are so easy to satisfy. Put the word fuck in a children's book, and you've got a best seller. Take the TV show "Hill Street Blues" and insert the world fuck in every line, and you've got a hit series: "The Wire". I know its going to be tedious, but we may as well get started rewriting all classic media in brand-new "fuck" versions, and so refresh them for a new generation:

"Call me fuckin' Ishmael."

"I am the shadow of the waxwing slain, by the false azure of the window pane. And I am fucked."

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a ... "
posted by Faze at 5:10 AM on June 15, 2011 [14 favorites]


craig3010 on reddit got his wish. But I'd prefer Chris Walken.
posted by Ritchie at 5:10 AM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


Nice post title!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:10 AM on June 15, 2011 [8 favorites]


Love the book, enjoy Samuel L. Jackson's work but the combo did not work for me here (although I loved his "Go the fuck to sleep, daddy?" story).

I think to make it sound more realistic they should have kept Samuel L Jackson awake in a cage full of howler monkeys for a day or two before recording.
posted by Deathalicious at 5:12 AM on June 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


Take the TV show "Hill Street Blues" and insert the world fuck in every line, and you've got a hit series: "The Wire".

If you think that's the only difference between "Hill Street Blues" and "The Wire"... but, you don't really, do you? No way.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:12 AM on June 15, 2011 [8 favorites]


Ooh! What about Dame Judi Dench? I'd buy that.
posted by Deathalicious at 5:13 AM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


The next step is for someone to take Jackson's f-bomb "Snakes on a Plane" rant and turn it into a legitimate children's book. The book on tape could be read by Helen Mirren.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 5:15 AM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


Walken would kill in this.
posted by bwg at 5:16 AM on June 15, 2011


Well, he did do Goodnight, Moon

(yeah, I know it's Jay Mohr, but his is the definitive impersonation)
posted by ShutterBun at 5:25 AM on June 15, 2011


This post was deleted for the following reason: I want these motherfucking Audible posts off my motherfucking Metafilter--cortex.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:26 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Deleted yesterday
posted by lampshade at 5:27 AM on June 15, 2011


Dammit, ShutterBun, I was just going to link to that!

Well, here's him doing the Three Little Pigs
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:28 AM on June 15, 2011


Werner Herzog will read it too! WANT.

I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and not going the fuck to sleep.
posted by netdpb at 5:30 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Deleted yesterday

Yesterday's link was to a site where only US users could download it. This has the main content also available via YouTube [albeit requiring signing up, but I think available for everyone] and is, thus, different.
posted by jessamyn at 5:36 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Needs more "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who don't go the fuck to sleep"
posted by fungible at 5:49 AM on June 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


America's seemingly insatiable appetite for hearing the word "fuck" in all media simply astonishes me.

I can't believe I'm taking the bait, but the humor here is only incidentally about the naughty language. It's really about the desperate, frustrated, thwarted, wit's end, running on fumes state of mind someone with a small, uncooperative child gets into when the only thing you want in the world is just a little time to be off duty and recuperate, but you cannot get your charge to do this one simple thing.

I haven't had to put children to bed for 25 years now, thank god, but the book speaks to me because of all the winter nights when I find myself outdoors with a flashlight at 11 pm waiting for the final dog to finish meandering about the entire yard to find the one and only right spot to pee and come in the house so we can get to sleep already.

Not everyone expresses that with profanity, but many of us do find ourselves thinking cathartic transgressive thoughts at these moments. The great thing about dogs is that you can actually say those aloud as long as you use a happy voice: "I love you, but right now I'd like to kill you and make it look like an accident."
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:06 AM on June 15, 2011 [12 favorites]


Hill Street Blues was just as popular, critically acclaimed and ground breaking in its day as The Wire has been now, flapjax at midnite, just as Ralph Waldo Emerson observed "there never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep" a while ago without having to drop the F bomb. That said, his first draft of "The American Scholar" in 1837 was entitled "A Fucking Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, the Cunts" before his editor asked him to tone it down a bit for the kiddies.
posted by joannemullen at 6:16 AM on June 15, 2011 [9 favorites]


A nice gimmick, and now that I've seen and heard it, I don't need to buy the book.

The ceeb is doing a bit on this this morning, under the guise of 'are your kids keeping you from sleeping'. Why I keep listening to The Current, other than because it's on when the radio goes off, I have no idea. So much more sensationalist and trendy than how a news show on the ceeb should be...
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:17 AM on June 15, 2011


This is a fucking terrible performance
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:18 AM on June 15, 2011


YouTube requires me to link the identity to Google account. Audible is no longer available outside ot the US. I'm gonna empathically cry myself to sleep in this cruel world where the cookie can no longer be entirely free.
posted by hat_eater at 6:50 AM on June 15, 2011


I'm in Canada and got it for free via audible to my itunes account.

(Can't get anything else delivered because of the postal lockout but that's a separate whine.)
posted by wenat at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2011


That was awful. The performance, not the book.
posted by fullerine at 7:23 AM on June 15, 2011


That was awful. The performance, not the book.

Yeah, Jackson added nothing. But I only saw the clip so maybe i'm wrong and half way through he gets the high voice and by the end indeed sounds like his pulp fiction character about to go off on somebody.
posted by cashman at 7:27 AM on June 15, 2011


I've got to hand it to Mr. Jackson; he's made a career of cussing in the strangest of ways. Who else can say the same?
posted by Kitteh at 7:30 AM on June 15, 2011


maybe i'm wrong and half way through he gets the high voice and by the end indeed sounds like his pulp fiction character about to go off on somebody

Yeah why can't Samuel L Jackson always just sound the way I like for him to sound??
posted by kingbenny at 7:31 AM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


America's seemingly insatiable appetite for hearing the word "fuck" in all media simply astonishes me. We are so easy to satisfy.

The fuck you say.
posted by orme at 7:42 AM on June 15, 2011


I was more entertained by this than I expected to be, honestly.

I can't believe I'm taking the bait, but the humor here is only incidentally about the naughty language. It's really about the desperate, frustrated, thwarted, wit's end, running on fumes state of mind someone with a small, uncooperative child gets into when the only thing you want in the world is just a little time to be off duty and recuperate, but you cannot get your charge to do this one simple thing.

I don't even have kids, but it definitely caused a flashback to my years of babysitting. The popcorn-sitting-down-to-a-movie bit was inspired. (Of course, as the babysitter, I did give in sometimes and let them stay up to watch cartoons...or with one girl, Kids in the Hall...as long as they were in bed before the parents were home!)
posted by epersonae at 8:27 AM on June 15, 2011


My kids loved it.
posted by jkaczor at 9:26 AM on June 15, 2011


YouTube requires me to link the identity to Google account..
hat_eater - did you try the MetaFilter YouTube viewer? Go to My Profile, edit and check YouTube and Vimeo Inline.
posted by MtDewd at 9:34 AM on June 15, 2011


BUT DAAAD WON'T TAKE THESE MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES OUT OF MY MOTHERFUCKING BED!
posted by at by at 9:36 AM on June 15, 2011


Yeah why can't Samuel L Jackson always just sound the way I like for him to sound??

When they said Samuel L Jackson was reading it, I know I'm not the only one that imagined him more impassioned. He was going for bedtime reading, but almost sounded bored.
posted by cashman at 9:36 AM on June 15, 2011


I wish they could get Julie Andrews to do the audio book -- she'd bring just the right blend of experience with children's stories, lullabies, and cussing like a merchant marine.
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:01 AM on June 15, 2011


When they said Samuel L Jackson was reading it, I know I'm not the only one that imagined him more impassioned.

Starting the reading with an exasperated tone didn't leave Jackson much leeway - the book's 'plot' is about acceleration of mood (de-celeration?!). When Jackson amped it up even more - getting louder and meaner - it just got scary.

The humor of the book is based on the parents' need for super-human restraint and patience ... every night ... over and over ... -- that is where the tension should be. Perhaps a Shakespearean actor could have pulled it off.

/dissecting humor (ack!)
posted by Surfurrus at 10:06 AM on June 15, 2011


the title of this post = BOSS
posted by bayani at 10:43 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


I'd rather hear him read a completely straight children's book, like Goodnight Moon, with his trademark menace.
posted by Eideteker at 11:08 AM on June 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


My kids loved it.
posted by jkaczor at 9:26 AM on June 15


But did they fall asleep?
posted by chavenet at 11:33 AM on June 15, 2011


Perhaps a Shakespearean actor could have pulled it off.

My first thought for "celebrities who should read this book for us" was Patrick Stewart.
posted by antifuse at 11:38 AM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


Werner Herzog will read it too! WANT.

Your wish... [via]
posted by howling fantods at 12:34 PM on June 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


meh. more low-iq internet lulz.
posted by RTQP at 2:15 PM on June 15, 2011


Faze: your little script could very well have been Deadwood.
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:15 PM on June 15, 2011


"The obvious merits utterance. Character is fucking pertinent."
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:16 PM on June 15, 2011


Bob Newhart. It needs Bob Newhart.
posted by dilettante at 5:09 PM on June 15, 2011


Dark Messiah: "Faze: your little script could very well have been Deadwood."

Oooh! Oooh! Ian McShane reading it as Al. Please!
posted by bwg at 5:30 PM on June 15, 2011


"Call me fuckin' Ishmael."

That chapter where he shares a bed with Queequeg just got pretty fucking interesting!
posted by Sys Rq at 7:48 PM on June 15, 2011


Dilettante, I'm with you about Newhart. I'd like to hear a Hollywood round-robin read of this. My favorite possibilities: John Hillerman, Adam West, William Shatner.
posted by bryon at 8:45 PM on June 15, 2011


Warren Zevon would have done this convincingly.
posted by hawthorne at 8:50 AM on June 16, 2011


The way that Samuel L. Jackson narrates this little gem is top notch, and will indeed help the book gather a wider audience that normally wouldn't dabble in such things.
posted by Dominic. Allen at 3:47 PM on June 16, 2011


Best believe I just got the free download.
posted by dapperkoala at 12:01 AM on June 17, 2011


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