And Another Thing...
by Eoin Colfer
There are many reasons to approach this book with great skepticism. It's a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" book that was not written by Douglas Adams; strike one. It was written by Eoin Colfer, who achieved success with the Artemis Fowl books, of which I read the first installment and was not particularly impressed; strike two. And it was produced after Adams had shuffled off his coil, and apparently without his participation; a Wikipedia entry claims that some of the story elements came from Adams's plans for a sixth installment, though it remains vague about just how much of the work comes from his efforts. That should be strike three and it's out.
Except that it's not. Somehow, Colfer made it safely to first base, or whatever is the equivalent in cricket. This came as a big surprise...but then, surprises are part of the raison d'etre of the Hitchhiker's series.
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Friday, August 14, 2015
Recently Read
The Good, the Bad, and the Furry
by Tom Cox
There's a downside to being cat crazy. Actually, there are a lot of downsides to being any kind of crazy; but right now I'm just focused on the cat crazy part. A downside of being cat crazy is that you can't just pass by anything cat related, even when you just happen to spot that something out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes that impulse can lead you seriously astray.
Case in point: The Good, the Bad, and the Furry by English author Tom Cox. I just happened to spot this book on the New Releases shelf at my local library, and felt compelled to grab it and take it home with me. That result probably owes a lot to the picture on the cover, which shows Cox's cat The Bear soulfully staring out at all who pass by, just begging cat crazy people like yours truly to pick up the book and take it home to read--a process not unlike adoptions at the local Petco.
by Tom Cox
There's a downside to being cat crazy. Actually, there are a lot of downsides to being any kind of crazy; but right now I'm just focused on the cat crazy part. A downside of being cat crazy is that you can't just pass by anything cat related, even when you just happen to spot that something out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes that impulse can lead you seriously astray.
Case in point: The Good, the Bad, and the Furry by English author Tom Cox. I just happened to spot this book on the New Releases shelf at my local library, and felt compelled to grab it and take it home with me. That result probably owes a lot to the picture on the cover, which shows Cox's cat The Bear soulfully staring out at all who pass by, just begging cat crazy people like yours truly to pick up the book and take it home to read--a process not unlike adoptions at the local Petco.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Reel Reviews
A Million Ways to Die in the West -- This movie way wind up being Seth MacFarlane's Bananas or Sleeper; it is like one of those early Woody Allen vehicles in which its auteur carves out a unique niche for himself and tells a story (and jokes) that no other filmmaker working today would or could. The laughs come consistently--occasionally uproariously--and from such a skewed angle that they're entertaining in their idiosyncrasy alone. The other interesting thing here is the performance by Charlize Theron, who has previously been good but never this likeable and approachable before. This is must see stuff for comedy fans...maybe not so much for the wilting flowers (raunch dominates the humor here; few of the jokes are suitable for "polite company").
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Recently Read
I Don't Care if We Never Get Back
by Ben Blatt & Eric Brewster
What is it about baseball that makes even its most partisan supporters feel the need to trash the game? To readers who delve into I Don't Care if We Never Get Back, that may not seem like a pertinent question. Since the book is a travelogue relating the ups and downs of two friends on a 30 games in 30 days road trip, and most of the downs are related to things that happen beyond the ballpark, you could be forgiven for believing that this book does little to besmirch the game of baseball. But it's not as simple as that.
Clearly, for no other sport would such a trip be possible; only baseball plays its games on such an abundant schedule that a game a day for a whole month would even be plausible. And no other sport would inspire one of its fans--note: one fan, despite the book's two authors; more on that below--to even contemplate such a trip, including going to the trouble of developing an algorithm that would provide--in theory--the most efficient driving route to get one's self all the way across the country and back for all those games, in minimal time. Only a baseball fanatic would go to such trouble, and thus the game itself comes under some scrutiny when the concept goes a little sour.
And sour it goes, on more than one occasion. Co-authors Blatt and Brewster find themselves in trouble all over the place: torrential storms that threaten their tightly woven schedule (not to mention their lives on the roads); ticketing troubles, including an unfortunate scalping incident; utter exhaustion due to lack of sleep, and its consequences; and a friendship strained to the limit by one participant's lack of enthusiasm for baseball.
It's that last item that hangs over the narrative right from the start, making the reader wonder why in the hell Brewster, who doesn't care much for the game, would agree to accompany the baseball and statistics mad Blatt on such a trip in the first place. It's out of friendship, of course, and that acknowledgement comes in due time, but the damage to the reader's enjoyment of the story is done long before Blatt and Brewser--in their prose, at least--come to terms with their fraternal feelings for each other. The authors play up the conflict for comedic effect, but for most readers the laughs are few and far between; the most likely impression the reader will get from these chapters is the sense that these guys are not very pleasant to be around. Why then would one want to waste time reading a book about them?
Other problems abound here, the major one being the choice to write the book in both second person and third person voices. The more illiterate among us probably wouldn't even notice, but if you understand composition at all, you're not likely to enjoy a narrative that bounces back and forth between "We did this..." and "Eric said this..." or "Ben checked that..." Perhaps it should have been a warning that the need to share author billing--and thus torment the voice of the narrative--would make for a less than successful book (and, for that matter, road trip).
Some further issues, mostly mechanical problems, take some steam out of this work as well. At one point, during a discourse on the worshipful attitudes fans take towards their favorite ballplayers, the authors offer this nugget:
There are a few redeeming notes here and there. The boys' rumination, in the course of a game in Baltimore, on the nature of "The Star Spangled Banner"--the national anthem as question, not statement, at least in its usually performed verses--is insightful and thought-provoking, even if the authors step on their own premise a few paragraphs later. And, as noted above, when Blatt and Brewster do finally acknowledge the depth of their friendship and what it means to them, they are redeemed (somewhat) in the reader's eyes.
Unfortunately, that redemption comes too late in the game to affect the outcome. I Don't Care if We Never Get Back has to go down as a loss for the authors and their readers. As with baseball itself, having a little respect for the game going into it is a big help; otherwise, the game is famous for humbling its participants. Blatt and Brewster should have learned that lesson on their trip, and if not then, then certainly by the time their book was published.
by Ben Blatt & Eric Brewster
What is it about baseball that makes even its most partisan supporters feel the need to trash the game? To readers who delve into I Don't Care if We Never Get Back, that may not seem like a pertinent question. Since the book is a travelogue relating the ups and downs of two friends on a 30 games in 30 days road trip, and most of the downs are related to things that happen beyond the ballpark, you could be forgiven for believing that this book does little to besmirch the game of baseball. But it's not as simple as that.
Clearly, for no other sport would such a trip be possible; only baseball plays its games on such an abundant schedule that a game a day for a whole month would even be plausible. And no other sport would inspire one of its fans--note: one fan, despite the book's two authors; more on that below--to even contemplate such a trip, including going to the trouble of developing an algorithm that would provide--in theory--the most efficient driving route to get one's self all the way across the country and back for all those games, in minimal time. Only a baseball fanatic would go to such trouble, and thus the game itself comes under some scrutiny when the concept goes a little sour.
 |
| I Don't Care if We Never Get Back by Ben Blatt and Eric Brewster |
It's that last item that hangs over the narrative right from the start, making the reader wonder why in the hell Brewster, who doesn't care much for the game, would agree to accompany the baseball and statistics mad Blatt on such a trip in the first place. It's out of friendship, of course, and that acknowledgement comes in due time, but the damage to the reader's enjoyment of the story is done long before Blatt and Brewser--in their prose, at least--come to terms with their fraternal feelings for each other. The authors play up the conflict for comedic effect, but for most readers the laughs are few and far between; the most likely impression the reader will get from these chapters is the sense that these guys are not very pleasant to be around. Why then would one want to waste time reading a book about them?
Other problems abound here, the major one being the choice to write the book in both second person and third person voices. The more illiterate among us probably wouldn't even notice, but if you understand composition at all, you're not likely to enjoy a narrative that bounces back and forth between "We did this..." and "Eric said this..." or "Ben checked that..." Perhaps it should have been a warning that the need to share author billing--and thus torment the voice of the narrative--would make for a less than successful book (and, for that matter, road trip).
Some further issues, mostly mechanical problems, take some steam out of this work as well. At one point, during a discourse on the worshipful attitudes fans take towards their favorite ballplayers, the authors offer this nugget:
In World War II, the United States government name a 422-foot ship the SS Christy Mathewson [sic] after the legendary Giants pitcher. The military, which surely should have no shortage of its own heroes to draw from on the battlefield or in the halls of Congress, chose to honor a man who threw a ball a shorter distance than a soldier could throw a grenade.Um, no. That ship was named after Christy Mathewson, who, in addition to a Hall of Fame pitching career, served during WWI and thus suffered exposure to poison gas (during a training exercise) that left his lungs permanently damaged and susceptible to tuberculosis--a condition that ended his days on the mound. That story is well-known among baseball fans; how did the baseball-obsessed Blatt not know it, or not care enough to avoid besmirching the memory of one of the game's legends? Beyond that major gaffe, other instances of careless writing pop up: the sentence that begins "It's difficult to appropriate the exact moment..." (presumably, 'appropriate' should be 'approximate'); the chapter headings where the home of the Reds is spelled 'Cincinatti'; and the chapters where accounts of certain games get short shrift. Again and again, Blatt and Brewster come up short as proofreaders, at the least, if not as prose stylists.
There are a few redeeming notes here and there. The boys' rumination, in the course of a game in Baltimore, on the nature of "The Star Spangled Banner"--the national anthem as question, not statement, at least in its usually performed verses--is insightful and thought-provoking, even if the authors step on their own premise a few paragraphs later. And, as noted above, when Blatt and Brewster do finally acknowledge the depth of their friendship and what it means to them, they are redeemed (somewhat) in the reader's eyes.
Unfortunately, that redemption comes too late in the game to affect the outcome. I Don't Care if We Never Get Back has to go down as a loss for the authors and their readers. As with baseball itself, having a little respect for the game going into it is a big help; otherwise, the game is famous for humbling its participants. Blatt and Brewster should have learned that lesson on their trip, and if not then, then certainly by the time their book was published.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Ace in the (Memory) Hole
I guess we really do change over the course of our lives. I recently had one example of my changing tastes/moods/whatever confront me in an unexpected way: I no longer listen to the Adam Carolla show.
This came as something of a surprise to me. I have been listening to Carolla regularly ever since the "Loveline" days back in the late '90s. I was on board from the start when the Aceman moved to morning radio back in the middle of the last decade, and I joined him on his post-firing journey into the new medium of podcasting--of which he has now become one of the leading impresarios, if not an actual new media mogul. I even read his first book. That's a long history as a relatively devoted follower.
True, I never bothered much with his television ventures like The Man Show or Crank Yankers (the former just never interested me, the latter--puppets acting out crank phone calls--should have passed without comment just for stupidity alone). And it is also true that I never kept pace with Carolla's output; once he moved his gig into downloadable territory, I invariably fell further and further behind the recent stuff, until my most recently listened to episodes were dated nearly a year behind the newest postings.
I guess that should have been a clue. Obviously, if I couldn't be bothered to listen frequently enough to keep current, the value must not have been all that great in my eyes (or, if you will, ears). Yet, I had been behind before, and made catch up efforts in the past. So why did I feel the need to abandon Carolla now?
My gut tells me to point the finger at the changes I've heard in Carolla's show in recent times. (I can't say how recent, because, remember, I was listening to year old shows by the time I pulled the plug.) For one thing, the promos just got overbearing; each episode of the podcast suffered from heavy intrusions of commercials for products that I would never bother buying. For the most part, I'm OK with someone making a buck for his efforts, particularly when he is supplying a product that has no price. But sometimes it seemed that the frequent commercials were damaging to the flow of the show, enough so to sap away the entertainment value. Let's face it: patience is a limited resource--test mine, or anyone else's, at our peril.
More troubling, perhaps, has been Carolla's ever-greater tilt towards right wing politics. One guest I recently heard on the show was some guy--I don't remember his name, and feel unmotivated to look it up, for obvious reasons--who wrote a book trashing the Occupy movement--a favorite target for Ace's ire. Carolla has long had a fairly conservative bent on many political issues (to be fair, he's relatively liberal on other, especially social, issues). I've heard him make comments with which I disagreed before--but, having done my own homework on Occupy and other issues, and knowing the fallacies embedded in Carolla's view of these issues, I found listening to his erroneous diatribes ever more tedious. Also, I started to suspect that some of his guests were not being booked "organically," but were coming at the direction of outside forces. (Carolla's affiliation with radio host Dennis Praeger may represent the nexus through which the "right wing echo machine" has recruited another outlet.) I can be forgiving when the intellectually lazy Adam Carolla forms a judgment that lacks a certain amount of depth; but I'll be damned if I'm going to be played for a sucker and drawn into listening to Fox News farm team players on the sly.
(An aside: Carolla's intelligence is a frequent butt of his jokes, but the man isn't dumb. He is, however, an untrained intelligence. Adam's strength lies in what he can diagnose through direct observation; anything that requires examination beyond surface details often leads him astray. That is the weakness that makes some of his rants tedious to listen to and undermines the show's quality.)
Perhaps worst of all, as the guest roster grew to include more junior league Hannity wannabes, fewer and fewer guests came on who really had something meaningful to offer. Comedians, once a staple of the show, largely faded from the guest roster. By the time I dropped my subscription to Carolla's show, it had been months since I had heard Dana Gould or Greg Fitzsimmons or any other comics on the show. While I get that it may not be possible to bring in one time staples like Joel McHale--he's grown too big for the show, of course--it would have helped immensely if Carolla's staff had made the effort to connect with the next round of up and coming entertainers, instead of bringing in people who just had a book to sell, or a political axe to grind (or most likely, both at the same time).
That lack of entertaining guests, I think, points to the tragic truth of why I had to dump Carolla's show: it had just gotten so boring. Each episode played out with such a sameness to it; the same rants, the same characterizations of the same people, a sameness to the tone of Alison Rosen's news...hell, even Bryan Bishop's drops--long an entertaining staple of the show--had grown repetitive and stale. The Adam Carolla Show has become, to use the hosts own oft-applied expression, fucked out.
Is there a larger implication in this act of mine? Probably not. I doubt that others are feeling the same way about the show as I do. The show still rides high on the iTunes charts, and once they're hooked, people will keep listening to/watching the same damn show for years regardless of quality. (For example, just look at all the ridiculously long-running series on TV these days.)
And now that I think about it, I'm not even sure my abandoning the ACS reflects any real change in myself beyond, perhaps, a sense that I no longer have time to waste on anything not really interesting to me. I don't seem to have missed the show since I formally stopped listening and deleted all the downloaded shows. (I have also deleted his website from my "Sausage Factory" at right; I can't in good conscience provide a link to a product I won't listen to myself.)
I guess all I'm really saying is, things change. A lesson none of us may have needed, but one that should not go unheeded. So it goes.
This came as something of a surprise to me. I have been listening to Carolla regularly ever since the "Loveline" days back in the late '90s. I was on board from the start when the Aceman moved to morning radio back in the middle of the last decade, and I joined him on his post-firing journey into the new medium of podcasting--of which he has now become one of the leading impresarios, if not an actual new media mogul. I even read his first book. That's a long history as a relatively devoted follower.
True, I never bothered much with his television ventures like The Man Show or Crank Yankers (the former just never interested me, the latter--puppets acting out crank phone calls--should have passed without comment just for stupidity alone). And it is also true that I never kept pace with Carolla's output; once he moved his gig into downloadable territory, I invariably fell further and further behind the recent stuff, until my most recently listened to episodes were dated nearly a year behind the newest postings.
I guess that should have been a clue. Obviously, if I couldn't be bothered to listen frequently enough to keep current, the value must not have been all that great in my eyes (or, if you will, ears). Yet, I had been behind before, and made catch up efforts in the past. So why did I feel the need to abandon Carolla now?
My gut tells me to point the finger at the changes I've heard in Carolla's show in recent times. (I can't say how recent, because, remember, I was listening to year old shows by the time I pulled the plug.) For one thing, the promos just got overbearing; each episode of the podcast suffered from heavy intrusions of commercials for products that I would never bother buying. For the most part, I'm OK with someone making a buck for his efforts, particularly when he is supplying a product that has no price. But sometimes it seemed that the frequent commercials were damaging to the flow of the show, enough so to sap away the entertainment value. Let's face it: patience is a limited resource--test mine, or anyone else's, at our peril.
More troubling, perhaps, has been Carolla's ever-greater tilt towards right wing politics. One guest I recently heard on the show was some guy--I don't remember his name, and feel unmotivated to look it up, for obvious reasons--who wrote a book trashing the Occupy movement--a favorite target for Ace's ire. Carolla has long had a fairly conservative bent on many political issues (to be fair, he's relatively liberal on other, especially social, issues). I've heard him make comments with which I disagreed before--but, having done my own homework on Occupy and other issues, and knowing the fallacies embedded in Carolla's view of these issues, I found listening to his erroneous diatribes ever more tedious. Also, I started to suspect that some of his guests were not being booked "organically," but were coming at the direction of outside forces. (Carolla's affiliation with radio host Dennis Praeger may represent the nexus through which the "right wing echo machine" has recruited another outlet.) I can be forgiving when the intellectually lazy Adam Carolla forms a judgment that lacks a certain amount of depth; but I'll be damned if I'm going to be played for a sucker and drawn into listening to Fox News farm team players on the sly.
(An aside: Carolla's intelligence is a frequent butt of his jokes, but the man isn't dumb. He is, however, an untrained intelligence. Adam's strength lies in what he can diagnose through direct observation; anything that requires examination beyond surface details often leads him astray. That is the weakness that makes some of his rants tedious to listen to and undermines the show's quality.)
Perhaps worst of all, as the guest roster grew to include more junior league Hannity wannabes, fewer and fewer guests came on who really had something meaningful to offer. Comedians, once a staple of the show, largely faded from the guest roster. By the time I dropped my subscription to Carolla's show, it had been months since I had heard Dana Gould or Greg Fitzsimmons or any other comics on the show. While I get that it may not be possible to bring in one time staples like Joel McHale--he's grown too big for the show, of course--it would have helped immensely if Carolla's staff had made the effort to connect with the next round of up and coming entertainers, instead of bringing in people who just had a book to sell, or a political axe to grind (or most likely, both at the same time).
That lack of entertaining guests, I think, points to the tragic truth of why I had to dump Carolla's show: it had just gotten so boring. Each episode played out with such a sameness to it; the same rants, the same characterizations of the same people, a sameness to the tone of Alison Rosen's news...hell, even Bryan Bishop's drops--long an entertaining staple of the show--had grown repetitive and stale. The Adam Carolla Show has become, to use the hosts own oft-applied expression, fucked out.
Is there a larger implication in this act of mine? Probably not. I doubt that others are feeling the same way about the show as I do. The show still rides high on the iTunes charts, and once they're hooked, people will keep listening to/watching the same damn show for years regardless of quality. (For example, just look at all the ridiculously long-running series on TV these days.)
And now that I think about it, I'm not even sure my abandoning the ACS reflects any real change in myself beyond, perhaps, a sense that I no longer have time to waste on anything not really interesting to me. I don't seem to have missed the show since I formally stopped listening and deleted all the downloaded shows. (I have also deleted his website from my "Sausage Factory" at right; I can't in good conscience provide a link to a product I won't listen to myself.)
I guess all I'm really saying is, things change. A lesson none of us may have needed, but one that should not go unheeded. So it goes.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Recently Read
Unusually Stupid Americans
by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras
I'm on a losing streak--there's no denying that.
What else to make of Unusually Stupid Americans, the second entry in my quest for some lighthearted Summer reading? As with my first choice, the lamentable tome The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman--a book so dull and disappointing I actually forgot to post my written review of it--my second grab for a literary breeze proved to be a dud.
Unusually Stupid Americans features "a compendium of all-American stupidity"; that is, it's a collection of infotainment items gathered together under several vague topic headings (government, business, food, etc.) and presented for the reader's amusement, in bite-sized morsels. It's a well-worn concept, seen repeatedly in many published works of humor, one which promises lots of laughs without much effort on either side of the equation (reader or author).
On the plus side, the book is not hard to read; no slogging through difficult passages required here. And at least some of the items presented here are silly enough to draw out a guffaw or two.
But not nearly enough of those items are that funny. Worse still, the text is presented with a heaping helping of snark; authors Kathryn and Ross Petras (they're siblings) lay on thick their contempt for their subjects. That would be all well and good if their own contributions amounted to the height of wit and intelligence. Unfortunately, their text presents the reader with little more than boilerplate commentary on the stupidities on display--writing on a par with the humor column of a once a week small town newspaper, with all the banality that implies.
Thus, a book that should have taken a day and a half to read ended up sitting in my bedroom for weeks. But at least I get to get rid of it when I return it to the library. If the local branch is not particularly assiduous about weeding the collection, then--based on its merits--Unusually Stupid Americans may remain on the shelves there, unmoved and unread, for years. Maybe decades. Maybe until the pages rot away to dust. And who will be stupid ones then?
by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras
I'm on a losing streak--there's no denying that.
What else to make of Unusually Stupid Americans, the second entry in my quest for some lighthearted Summer reading? As with my first choice, the lamentable tome The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman--a book so dull and disappointing I actually forgot to post my written review of it--my second grab for a literary breeze proved to be a dud.
Unusually Stupid Americans features "a compendium of all-American stupidity"; that is, it's a collection of infotainment items gathered together under several vague topic headings (government, business, food, etc.) and presented for the reader's amusement, in bite-sized morsels. It's a well-worn concept, seen repeatedly in many published works of humor, one which promises lots of laughs without much effort on either side of the equation (reader or author).
On the plus side, the book is not hard to read; no slogging through difficult passages required here. And at least some of the items presented here are silly enough to draw out a guffaw or two.
But not nearly enough of those items are that funny. Worse still, the text is presented with a heaping helping of snark; authors Kathryn and Ross Petras (they're siblings) lay on thick their contempt for their subjects. That would be all well and good if their own contributions amounted to the height of wit and intelligence. Unfortunately, their text presents the reader with little more than boilerplate commentary on the stupidities on display--writing on a par with the humor column of a once a week small town newspaper, with all the banality that implies.
Thus, a book that should have taken a day and a half to read ended up sitting in my bedroom for weeks. But at least I get to get rid of it when I return it to the library. If the local branch is not particularly assiduous about weeding the collection, then--based on its merits--Unusually Stupid Americans may remain on the shelves there, unmoved and unread, for years. Maybe decades. Maybe until the pages rot away to dust. And who will be stupid ones then?
Recently Read
The Areas of My Expertise
by John Hodgman
Mildly amusing.
That was the opening line I was hoping to use in this review of John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise. It seemed appropriate, given what I have long seen of Hodgman's work on The Daily Show. His segments, tough few and far between (there may be a hint there), can usually conjure up a good dose of laughs. And I want to be as charitable as possible, because comedy is hard. Being funny isn't easy.
But, apparently, being interesting isn't all that easy either.
I rarely review a book I have not bothered to finish, but in this case I've decided to make an exception. Not once but twice, during the process of reading these pages, I actually fell asleep. I don't mean my attention wandered for a minute or two; I literally dropped my head and shuffled off to snoresville, two separate times, while slogging through Hodgman's words. That was enough to call it for me--boring, unentertaining, and not worth the rest of my time.
Perhaps the failure lies in the premise. As a compendium of ostensible facts drawn from Hodgman's supposedly vast knowledge of everything, the book seems tailor-made for quick, easy and light-hearted fun. But Hodgman's literary persona--a written version of the same arch, stealth-silly, and supercilious character from The Daily Show--comes across as vastly more off-putting in print than it ever does on TV. Even in bite-sized morsels of text the effect quickly becomes grating and robs the jokes of any real impact, muting the funny through the overweening impact of that unlikeable identity.
So much, then, for one title from my supposed Summer of light reading. The Areas of My Expertise will not cut it in any season, be it for light reading or some weird form of personal punishment. Avoid it.
by John Hodgman
Mildly amusing.
That was the opening line I was hoping to use in this review of John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise. It seemed appropriate, given what I have long seen of Hodgman's work on The Daily Show. His segments, tough few and far between (there may be a hint there), can usually conjure up a good dose of laughs. And I want to be as charitable as possible, because comedy is hard. Being funny isn't easy.
But, apparently, being interesting isn't all that easy either.
I rarely review a book I have not bothered to finish, but in this case I've decided to make an exception. Not once but twice, during the process of reading these pages, I actually fell asleep. I don't mean my attention wandered for a minute or two; I literally dropped my head and shuffled off to snoresville, two separate times, while slogging through Hodgman's words. That was enough to call it for me--boring, unentertaining, and not worth the rest of my time.
Perhaps the failure lies in the premise. As a compendium of ostensible facts drawn from Hodgman's supposedly vast knowledge of everything, the book seems tailor-made for quick, easy and light-hearted fun. But Hodgman's literary persona--a written version of the same arch, stealth-silly, and supercilious character from The Daily Show--comes across as vastly more off-putting in print than it ever does on TV. Even in bite-sized morsels of text the effect quickly becomes grating and robs the jokes of any real impact, muting the funny through the overweening impact of that unlikeable identity.
So much, then, for one title from my supposed Summer of light reading. The Areas of My Expertise will not cut it in any season, be it for light reading or some weird form of personal punishment. Avoid it.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Driven Insane, Just By Looking At It
Bonus reading: the now legendary Tales of the Plush Cthulhu.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Visual Aid
My sister sent me this pic, one of the best I've seen it a while. Nobody's colder than Ice.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Comedy Gold, Medical Division
I actually got this email yesterday from Kaiser:
Lord knows why they sent this to me. I know people think I'm crazy, but I never expected to see a howler like this in my email inbox. While it is funny in its way, it's also disturbing to think that my health insurance company apparently can't keep one patient straight with another. Especially the ones who have a "bona fide major mental illness." If I go in for a rectal exam, I wonder who will receive those results.
And by the way, how much of a great pleasure can it be working with someone who has a "bona fide major mental illness"? That cat's got some strange ideas about how he spends his joy time.
The delights that come from having a common name, I guess.
Dear Stephen:
Please accept this note as certification of the fact that you have a bona fide major mental illness, are on disability because of said mental illness, faithfully take major medication to control your symptoms, and will be in treatment with us for the forseeable future.
And may I add it is a great pleasure working with you.
Best wishes,
(doctor's signature removed)
Lord knows why they sent this to me. I know people think I'm crazy, but I never expected to see a howler like this in my email inbox. While it is funny in its way, it's also disturbing to think that my health insurance company apparently can't keep one patient straight with another. Especially the ones who have a "bona fide major mental illness." If I go in for a rectal exam, I wonder who will receive those results.
And by the way, how much of a great pleasure can it be working with someone who has a "bona fide major mental illness"? That cat's got some strange ideas about how he spends his joy time.
The delights that come from having a common name, I guess.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Reel Reviews
Zombieland -- This is hardly earth-shatttering stuff. No one was going to be played off at the Oscars for their work in this film. But it's exactly the kind of movie that even the snootiest, most elitist film buff needs to see every so often--a weird, violent, somewhat unhinged work of straight-up cinematic fun. Special props for one classic cameo, and for a closing sequence at an amusement park which is just the kind of inspired, mayhem-packed payoff everyone was waiting for. Indeed--besides zombies, who needs brains? Posted 7/9/11.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Recently Read
In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks
by Adam Carolla
I approached this book with a lot of caution. As it turns out, that caution was merited.
Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of Adam Carolla, having listened to his radio and podcast work since the late '90s. Carolla is a funny guy, and no one in the field of comedy can quite match the accomplishments of his unique oeuvre. But he has famously declared himself an enemy of the written word, and profoundly lazy to boot. Mix those ingredients together, and you can only expect a book by that same man to be something of a disappointment.
That said, In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks is a decidedly mixed bag. As a long-time listener, I am more than familiar with many of his "greatest hits"--subjects that the Ace Man brings up again and again, a penchant for repetition that is part single-mindedness, part radio production habit. Anyone who has heard Carolla rant on perennial subjects will expect this book to rehash many of those tirades, and that expectation is met spot on. They're funny rants, mostly, but we've heard them all before. There is very little new territory covered here, and intelligent long-time followers will have trouble avoiding the feeling that they were suckered into shelling out hard earned cash for content they've already heard ad nauseum.
I avoided that pitfall by checking the book out from the library. Score one for me.
Beyond the "old hat" problem, In Fifty Years... also stands as a notorious example of self-fulfilling prophecy, and perhaps as a monument to everything that is wrong with the publishing industry.
Addressing the former, as noted above Carolla is notoriously not a fan of literature, having even gone so far as to refer to himself as illiterate. Given that starting point, it comes as no surprise that reading In Fifty Years... can be a trial for anyone who is a fan of the written word. True to the man's spoken words, the text stands as a forest of bad grammar, bad usage, poor word choice, faulty syntax, even a misspelling or two. The botched writing almost serves as a badge of authenticity; you'd expect a book Carolla wrote on his own to be this poorly written.
Except that he didn't write it on his own; Carolla has expressed copious thanks on his podcast to his associate Mike Lynch, who was so important to the production of Adam's book that, as the acknowledgements section states, the book "would never have become reality without his involvement." One suspects, on that very sound evidence, that Lynch did a lot of the heavy lifting as far as writing this book goes (and bears some of the blame for the stylistic problems). Oddly though, Lynch does not get a co-author credit here. There isn't even an "Adam Carolla (large type) with Mike Lynch (small type)" credit--just a slice of gratitude in the acknowledgements. That ungracious lack of full credit where it's due seems beneath the good guy reputation that Carolla has maintained throughout his media career.
Of course, there is an explanation for that implied slight: this book was contracted to be written because Adam Carolla is a...I almost want to gag just from typing the word..."celebrity." He has been a fixture on TV and radio for years. He is a "star" whom many have seen dancing on a very popular competition show. He has built a broad audience with his very successful podcast. Simply put, In Fifty Years... reached the printing press solely because the name on the front cover was a ready-made marketing point. Whether or not the famous author's collaborator got any credit was irrelevant right from the start. Only the celebrity factor, and how that could be used to market a book, mattered to the publisher.
That, of course, points towards that second problem noted above: what's wrong with the publishing industry. And that problem is an exclusive interest in books that will sell themselves through name recognition to an already existing market--the quality of the product is aggressively irrelevant.
One might expect an Adam Carolla book to be poorly written. But in fact, the book is not just poorly written, but poorly edited--or perhaps not edited at all. Many of the textual inadequacies of In Fifty Years... could have been easily rectified with a minor amount of careful and attentive editing. Clearly, the text as it stands shows that that did not happen. Doubtless, if the publisher were asked, the lack of editing would be explained away with the lame excuse about not wanting to dilute the author's natural voice, of wanting to retain as much as possible Carolla's speaking style in the written word.
But that bullshit just doesn't fly. Moving from audio show to written work means moving from medium to medium, a shift designed to reach a new audience. And that new audience will be, for the most part, unfamiliar with the Ace Man's idiosyncratic voice. Longtime listeners forgive Ace's verbal deficiencies. But a new audience of readers, meeting Carolla's work for the first time, will contain many who will see these poorly written pages and simply conclude that the Ace Man is an idiot. Carolla himself probably has no problem with the book's lack of editing, but a little careful revision would have served to make him look better in the readers' eyes. The author will lose some of his potential new audience, people who could have added major numbers to his listenership, because they will make a dismissive judgment about him based on that lack of careful editing.
Of course, perhaps Carolla and his publishers have no concern about growing his audience. In that case, In Fifty Years..., with its repetitive rehash of old radio rants, serves as little more than a swindle designed to preach to the already sewn up choir--and to get them to shell out money for content they've already heard over and over again.
That, then, is the dilemma delivered by In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks. What is the intention with this book? To reach new audiences? If so, the poor quality of the text undermines that goal. Or is the goal to fleece the suckers? In that case, the book will probably succeed on those terms, and the quality of the writing is irrelevant. But if so, that bodes ill for any future literary efforts by the Ace Man. A true American Genius, Abraham Lincoln, knew that you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Adam Carolla should keep that in mind as he prepares this volume's sequel--make it good, and make it new material, or the returns will diminish in a big way. In that latter case, whether or not we all turn into chicks, in fifty years few people will be paying much attention to the works of the Ace Man.
by Adam Carolla
I approached this book with a lot of caution. As it turns out, that caution was merited.
Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of Adam Carolla, having listened to his radio and podcast work since the late '90s. Carolla is a funny guy, and no one in the field of comedy can quite match the accomplishments of his unique oeuvre. But he has famously declared himself an enemy of the written word, and profoundly lazy to boot. Mix those ingredients together, and you can only expect a book by that same man to be something of a disappointment.
That said, In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks is a decidedly mixed bag. As a long-time listener, I am more than familiar with many of his "greatest hits"--subjects that the Ace Man brings up again and again, a penchant for repetition that is part single-mindedness, part radio production habit. Anyone who has heard Carolla rant on perennial subjects will expect this book to rehash many of those tirades, and that expectation is met spot on. They're funny rants, mostly, but we've heard them all before. There is very little new territory covered here, and intelligent long-time followers will have trouble avoiding the feeling that they were suckered into shelling out hard earned cash for content they've already heard ad nauseum.
I avoided that pitfall by checking the book out from the library. Score one for me.
Beyond the "old hat" problem, In Fifty Years... also stands as a notorious example of self-fulfilling prophecy, and perhaps as a monument to everything that is wrong with the publishing industry.
Addressing the former, as noted above Carolla is notoriously not a fan of literature, having even gone so far as to refer to himself as illiterate. Given that starting point, it comes as no surprise that reading In Fifty Years... can be a trial for anyone who is a fan of the written word. True to the man's spoken words, the text stands as a forest of bad grammar, bad usage, poor word choice, faulty syntax, even a misspelling or two. The botched writing almost serves as a badge of authenticity; you'd expect a book Carolla wrote on his own to be this poorly written.
Except that he didn't write it on his own; Carolla has expressed copious thanks on his podcast to his associate Mike Lynch, who was so important to the production of Adam's book that, as the acknowledgements section states, the book "would never have become reality without his involvement." One suspects, on that very sound evidence, that Lynch did a lot of the heavy lifting as far as writing this book goes (and bears some of the blame for the stylistic problems). Oddly though, Lynch does not get a co-author credit here. There isn't even an "Adam Carolla (large type) with Mike Lynch (small type)" credit--just a slice of gratitude in the acknowledgements. That ungracious lack of full credit where it's due seems beneath the good guy reputation that Carolla has maintained throughout his media career.
Of course, there is an explanation for that implied slight: this book was contracted to be written because Adam Carolla is a...I almost want to gag just from typing the word..."celebrity." He has been a fixture on TV and radio for years. He is a "star" whom many have seen dancing on a very popular competition show. He has built a broad audience with his very successful podcast. Simply put, In Fifty Years... reached the printing press solely because the name on the front cover was a ready-made marketing point. Whether or not the famous author's collaborator got any credit was irrelevant right from the start. Only the celebrity factor, and how that could be used to market a book, mattered to the publisher.
That, of course, points towards that second problem noted above: what's wrong with the publishing industry. And that problem is an exclusive interest in books that will sell themselves through name recognition to an already existing market--the quality of the product is aggressively irrelevant.
One might expect an Adam Carolla book to be poorly written. But in fact, the book is not just poorly written, but poorly edited--or perhaps not edited at all. Many of the textual inadequacies of In Fifty Years... could have been easily rectified with a minor amount of careful and attentive editing. Clearly, the text as it stands shows that that did not happen. Doubtless, if the publisher were asked, the lack of editing would be explained away with the lame excuse about not wanting to dilute the author's natural voice, of wanting to retain as much as possible Carolla's speaking style in the written word.
But that bullshit just doesn't fly. Moving from audio show to written work means moving from medium to medium, a shift designed to reach a new audience. And that new audience will be, for the most part, unfamiliar with the Ace Man's idiosyncratic voice. Longtime listeners forgive Ace's verbal deficiencies. But a new audience of readers, meeting Carolla's work for the first time, will contain many who will see these poorly written pages and simply conclude that the Ace Man is an idiot. Carolla himself probably has no problem with the book's lack of editing, but a little careful revision would have served to make him look better in the readers' eyes. The author will lose some of his potential new audience, people who could have added major numbers to his listenership, because they will make a dismissive judgment about him based on that lack of careful editing.
Of course, perhaps Carolla and his publishers have no concern about growing his audience. In that case, In Fifty Years..., with its repetitive rehash of old radio rants, serves as little more than a swindle designed to preach to the already sewn up choir--and to get them to shell out money for content they've already heard over and over again.
That, then, is the dilemma delivered by In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks. What is the intention with this book? To reach new audiences? If so, the poor quality of the text undermines that goal. Or is the goal to fleece the suckers? In that case, the book will probably succeed on those terms, and the quality of the writing is irrelevant. But if so, that bodes ill for any future literary efforts by the Ace Man. A true American Genius, Abraham Lincoln, knew that you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Adam Carolla should keep that in mind as he prepares this volume's sequel--make it good, and make it new material, or the returns will diminish in a big way. In that latter case, whether or not we all turn into chicks, in fifty years few people will be paying much attention to the works of the Ace Man.
Sunday, July 13, 2003
Reel Reviews
Zelig -- It's a brilliant concept for a movie: retelling the forgotten story of a "chameleon man" of the '20s and '30s in a "mockumentary" style. The execution is uneven; occasionally it reaches hilarity, though for most of its length Zelig simply maintains an even (though funny) keel. Interestingly, though it is now twenty years old, the movie's period focus--and purposely aged look--keep it from looking overly dated. If only Woody Allen's whole career could have kept itself so fresh. Posted 7/13/03.
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