The humor writing of Miles Kington

October 1, 2010 10:40 AM

High court hangups and There's no place like a hotel are short humor pieces by Miles Kington featuring the Socratically uncooperative testimony of one Mr Chrysler who's accused of stealing 40,000 hangers from hotels.

I got these from Mefi's own loquacious, though apparently they've made the rounds before. Kington died a few years ago, and I also enjoyed some of Kington's last letters to his editor about writing a farewell book, if he gets around to it.

posted by LobsterMitten (9 comments total)

I, too, can confess to have taken numerous Gideon bibles. I really needed one in every color.
posted by Gilbert at 10:59 AM on October 1, 2010

The Gideons are pretty supportive of people taking bibles, seeing as they're dedicated to Scripture distribution. And another reason to collect them is to catalog all the hotels in which you've stayed. Of course, you could also take a pen or some paper, marked with the hotel information, but those look less impressive on book shelves.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:06 AM on October 1, 2010

I thought the first piece was great, but the second not so much. I mean, Chrysler doesn't even ask any questions in the second one. It's like he's not even the same character.

The first piece is good enough to make up for it though. My favorite part probably is when he was asking about the name of the court.
posted by overglow at 11:11 AM on October 1, 2010

via Reddit, probably.

I wanted this to be real so badly.
posted by empath at 11:12 AM on October 1, 2010

Judge: And have you sinned no more?

Chrysler: Alas, no.

Very charming.
posted by malusmoriendumest at 1:09 PM on October 1, 2010

Heh. I enjoyed these!
posted by onlyconnect at 6:14 PM on October 1, 2010

via Reddit, probably.

We're sort of discussing this kind of thing over in Metatalk, so as a point of reference, please don't do this sort of thing. If there's something very notable and unambiguous about an attributional omission, that's one thing, but vague commentary about how something was also on another site is pretty much always chaff.
posted by cortex at 9:17 PM on October 1, 2010

I mainly linked to it because the discussion there was interesting.
posted by empath at 9:28 PM on October 1, 2010

Well, it seems all the voices in those pieces are Miles Kington, and you can read a lot more in the style, for example here: The Kington letters: Final words of a comic genius.

Then they decided to take out my gall bladder. When they did that, they spotted some irregularities in my liver and pancreas, and decided to take some samples, and it was after looking closely at those that they decided I had got cancer. Nosy parkers.

When you've been diagnosed with cancer (a phrase I still can't think of a good euphemism for, even though everyone I meet can think of a bad one), one of the most annoying books in the world suddenly turns out to be 1,000 Places To See Before You Die.

It would be immensely satisfying if I could round up a few fellow sufferers to mount a lawsuit against this preposterous volume, put together by one Patricia Schulz, and dubbed a "No 1 New York Times Bestseller", on the grounds that it caused intense suffering to those who are about to die and haven't a hope in hell of seeing all those places. Luckily for her, I have many enticing things to do with my remaining time; taking money from Miss P Schulz and then handing it all straight over to my lawyers is not one of them. Are not one of them. Are not two of them.

posted by philipy at 9:49 PM on October 1, 2010