"Evelyn Woodhead Speed Reading Course" is a parody skit of the numerous speed reading courses available in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s written by Cheech and Chong that first appeared on the 1973 album Los Cochinos. The title refers to the Evelyn Wood course.
Voiced by Tommy Chong, the piece begins with the words delivered phonetically:
| “ | Ever since I took the Evelyn Woodhead sped ridin course, my ridin has im-PRO-v'd won-der-FULL-y. I ricommend these Evelyn Woodhed Speed Riddin Course to all my frens out there and you tell 'em that you heard it here first... on Roller Derby | ” |
The short spoken word testimonial style skit was an effective parody of commercials that were prevalent on television and radio stations in that era.
Famous quotes containing the words speed and/or reading:
“Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)