Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA, has traded his usual two turntables and a microphone for haiku. The verses were written to help promote Yauch’s Brooklyn Friends School pal Michael Crewdson’s book Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger. Crewdson is holding an online haiku contest themed around extinct, endangered, or mythical creatures. Yauch offered the following elegy to the Sasquatch: “sasquatch o sasquatch / stricken down with crotch rot; BOOF! / old yeti ya-ro.” New York asked Yauch to explicate. “Ya-ro is basically ‘yeah, right’ or ‘I doubt it.’ And BOOF! is kind of like ‘Zing!’ or ‘Ho snap, that was humiliating,’ ” he said. Might Yauch try to go pro in haiku? “Are there professionals? That would be an interesting job. ‘Honey, I had a hectic day at the office today. My second line had six syllables, and I just couldn’t make it work.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Table of Contents: May 22, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!