IN: Born in Riverside, California to Patricia (nee Howard) and former major leaguer Bobby Bonds, Bonds grew up in San Carlos and attended Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, where he excelled in baseball, basketball, and football. He played on the junior varsity team during his freshman year and the remainder of his high school career on the varsity team. He garnered a .467 batting average his senior year, and was named prep All-American. The Giants drafted Bonds in the second round of the 1982 MLB draft as a high school senior, but the Giants and Bonds were unable to agree on contract terms when Tom Haller's maximum offer was $70,000 ($177,510 today) and Bond's minimum to go pro was $75,000, so Bonds instead decided to attend college.

During his playing career, Bonds was frequently described as a difficult person, surly, standoffish and ungrateful, among other unflattering adjectives. However, in one interview with Terence Moore in 2016, he acknowledged regret over the persona which he had created. He attributed it to a response to the pressure he felt to perform as a young player with the Pirates. Remarked Bonds, Hell, I kick myself now, because I'm getting great press [since being more cooperative], and I could have had a trillion more endorsements, but that wasn't my driving force. The problem was, when I tried to give in a little bit, it never got better. I knew I was in the midst of that image, and I determined at that point that I was never going to get out of it. So I just said, 'I've created this fire around me, and I'm stuck in it, so I might as well live with the flames'. Bonds reports that for a short time during his playing days with the Giants he changed his demeanor at the behest of a group of teammates, resulting in him smiling much more frequently and engaging more with others with a pleasant demeanor. Shortly thereafter, Bonds says, in the midst of a slump, the same group of teammates pleaded that he revert, having seemingly lost his competitive edge, and causing the team lose more. In spite of his protest that they would not appreciate the results, his teammates insisted. Bonds says he complied, maintaining that familiar standoffish edge the rest of his playing career.
QUESTION: Did this help his public image?
IN: A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. The word derives from the Italian burlesco, which, in turn, is derived from the Italian burla - a joke, ridicule or mockery. Burlesque overlaps in meaning with caricature, parody and travesty, and, in its theatrical sense, with extravaganza, as presented during the Victorian era. "Burlesque" has been used in English in this literary and theatrical sense since the late 17th century.

The word first appears in a title in Francesco Berni's Opere burlesche of the early 16th century, works that had circulated widely in manuscript before they were printed. For a time, burlesque verses were known as poesie bernesca in his honour. 'Burlesque' as a literary term became widespread in 17th century Italy and France, and subsequently England, where it referred to a grotesque imitation of the dignified or pathetic. Shakespeare's Pyramus and Thisbe scene in Midsummer Night's Dream and the general mocking of romance in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle were early examples of such imitation. In 17th century Spain, playwright and poet Miguel de Cervantes ridiculed medieval romance in his many satirical works. Among Cervantes' works are Exemplary Novels and the Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes published in 1615. The term burlesque has been applied retrospectively to works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and to the Graeco-Roman classics. Burlesque was intentionally ridiculous in that it imitated several styles and combined imitations of certain authors and artists with absurd descriptions. In this, the term was often used interchangeably with "pastiche", "parody", and the 17th and 18th century genre of the "mock-heroic". Burlesque depended on the reader's (or listener's) knowledge of the subject to make its intended effect, and a high degree of literacy was taken for granted. 17th and 18th century burlesque was divided into two types: High burlesque refers to a burlesque imitation where a literary, elevated manner was applied to a commonplace or comically inappropriate subject matter as, for example, in the literary parody and the mock-heroic. One of the most commonly cited examples of high burlesque is Alexander Pope's "sly, knowing and courtly" The Rape of the Lock. Low burlesque applied an irreverent, mocking style to a serious subject; an example is Samuel Butler's poem Hudibras, which described the misadventures of a Puritan knight in satiric doggerel verse, using a colloquial idiom. Butler's addition to his comic poem of an ethical subtext made his caricatures into satire. In more recent times, burlesque true to its literary origins is still performed in revues and sketches. Tom Stoppard's 1974 play Travesties is an example of a full-length play drawing on the burlesque tradition.
QUESTION:
Was Burlesque popular only in one country?