The Toadless Boy

Something inside of me every summer says I need to read more. I get plenty of Internet reading in as well as technical how-tos but does that really make you an interesting person? I can’t say, “I just finished reading the Internet last night and I found it to be shallow and pedantic.”

A few weeks back on the WOXY boards someone made reference to a band, Augie March. After listening to and enjoying them, I learned that they were considered a “literary band” much like the Decemberists. In fact, I read, the band’s name is a literary reference. I figured if a band is willing to devote their name to a character then it must be a character worth reading. I tracked down The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow at my local library. I gave it about 20 pages before I said, “Each sentence, each paragraph, each page is like Saul shat out every word that could possibly be used to describe this scenario but when it came to sentence breaks or carriage returns he was constipated.”*

While back at the library a week later for their used book sale, J found a hardback copy of a book I talked about all the time. I probably talk about it alot because it is the last book I can remember reading. I read Alas, Babylon in Mrs. Rothgeb’s 7th grade reading class and could basically remember it was a nuclear holocaust book that takes place in Florida. I remember distinctly how everything in the book happened with the sky the color of a Florida sunset. My mind’s camera was always stilted and you could see the river meander to the sun. No dramatic shots from the dog’s eye view took place in this novel. The feeling and the picture drawn in my mind was so distinct and unique that I never forgot this book (except the title which J and I had to Google). So I bought Alas, Babylon, I was going to do a first (not counting picture books or Benny, Benny, Baseball Nut) and reread a book. I was hoping to experience that same sense of wonder, but after 80 pages in, the Florida sunsets weren’t as disturbingly orange and the author wasn’t speaking to a 7th grader’s mind.

The instance that pushed me over the edge was when the main character was trying to be all badass and drop Latin phrases in to dire circumstances. This alone is incorrect because when a person is trying to make sense of a situation as important as impending doom, they would not try to gunk it up with stupid Latin phrases. But then if someone was so cocky and douchebaggish to actually want to use a Latin phrase in this situation, they wouldn’t take the time to define it in English afterwards for the benefit of the reader like he did.

I probably would have hung in there until at least the first atom bomb was dropped but steaks with a friend last night put The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in my lap. J had already read this and told me some about it but I didn’t have the landscape or the plotline pre-pictured like my previous attempted book. It’s an easy read for sure but the genius of the writing so far isn’t that he’s able to use a thesaurus but that he’s able to speak exactly what someone is thinking in their writing. The fictional “author” within the book is autistic and is not able to lie so the thoughts are honest and precise. So many times I find myself agreeing with the narrator that I am wondering if I have fictional autism.

A really clever part is where the narrator is explaining what a “metaphor” is. In very precise language, he describes the Greek origins meaning “to carry something forward.” A metaphor is “when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn’t. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.”

So there you have it, my bildungsroman of summer reading if you will. Only this is more of a reverse bildungsroman in the most Goldilocks-sense.

* “This is not a metaphor, it is a simile, which means that it really did look like he shat on the page, and if you make a picture in your head of Saul Bellow shitting on a page, you will know what the book looked like. And a simile is not a lie, unless it is a bad simile.”

If you’ve talked to me for more than a minute there are a few things you learn that I always talk about. One of them was my first real job. I worked at Sports Connection in Cincinnati, designing and printing uniforms and shirts for the local schools and sports teams. There I developed an obsessive eye for fonts, color schemes (despite being color-deficient), uniforms and logos.

I will walk past Buffalo Wild Wings and immediately think “Chilada.” I will see any sort of investment firm/golf outing flyer and think “Bank Gothic.” Just because it says “Bank” doesn’t require you accountants to use it. When J and I were looking at sample wedding programs (or brochures, as I keep calling them [like we’re trying to sell the crowd on this marriage {”Could I interest you in something in J and Zach?”}[how’s that for nested parentheses?]]), we saw one created completely in Harlow. It was like they sat down to their computer and decided they wanted something wedding-y, like a script of some sort. The first one that came up was Harlow and they said, “Golly, ain’t that fancy like?” The bride’s full first name was Brandi.

Once at a friend’s* Super Bowl Party, he “linked” me to Uniwatch. It is a blog devoted to uniforms but on a more repetitive and obsessive scale than my obsession. I read it daily on my reader. I may be an RSS subscriber but I am certainly not a subscriber to its preachings. The author (occasional ESPN.com Page 2 author Paul Lukas) is oftentimes crabby about his ideas on uniforms and I think discourages a lot of innovation or thinking outside the box. Steadfast rules like “No purple…ever!” and encouraging “stripes for stripes’ sake” is pretty lame. Sometimes though there are some interesting factoids thrown around and great links to in depth history of some uniforms. (Not today. Today he is bitching about the pink used in celebration of Mother’s Day and for awareness of breast cancer. He never grasps the idea of using “ugly” for a purpose. Would you have been made “aware” if it was honored by properly wearing your stirrups with the higher part in the back? I think only Paul would have)

One of the sites referenced in Uniwatch is SportsLogo.net. This site has a huge collection of the history of major teams’ logos. Go to the site and look at your favorite team and reminisce about logos passed (is it “past” or “passed” in this case?) When I moved to Cincinnati from WV, this was the Reds’ logo. Along with thinking it was hideous, I never understood what Mr. Red was doing. It looked to me like he had just finished pitching with his left hand. But then why was his right foot forward and why was his left hand closed tightly already? Did he take a running throw? According to the site, he’s “running.” Is he rounding a base using his closed fist to grasp the base as he turns? Or is Mr. Red actually related to the Suns Gorilla?

So now I’m hoping when I punch you in the face you know it’s because you are wearing a full-size circle shaped logo on your T-shirt or when I hug you it is because you are accenting your navy shirt with a nice orange trim or undershirt.

* This past weekend I happened to catch a girls’ soccer game coached by “friend” against a school that rhymes with Colon. Despite a loss I did get to note that the team is outfitted in a very popular Admiral model. They were big sellers at the Sports Connection because they were really sharp looking in blue and white on a budget. I wonder if Coach Friend picked them himself or if that was an AD decision.

I was watching the NBA Shootaround before the Bulls/Pistons game tonight. (Is it just me or is the Eastern Conference more “street”? If my moms was watching the game she would say, “Are they playing football?”) Then a commercial came on because I was watching live TV(!) and it was one of those commercials: the kind they show at non-regular season sporting events on TV. The commercial says, “We realize how important the sport you are currently watching is to the heartbeat of life, so buy our product.”

This one was a Kia commercial where people from all walks of life^TM are reenacting the buzzer-beater. Doing the whole “3-2-1…and the crowd goes wild!” thing with everyday items: teenager with dirty clothes from his dirty room, dude hanging out with other dude throwing something in the trash and my favorite, Asian man cooking shrimp in an Asian restaurant (I’m pretty sure he banged a gong and solved some math after that).

Then the “ad wizards behind this one” incorporated the car by showing the hard working girl, overcoming the adversities of having plenty of unnecessary sports scholarships available for her, shooting foul shots in her driveway while the oppressive man (read: supportive father in a minivan) drives up and gives her a loud friendly toot “hello” from his Kia Taxi. The sound of the horn represents the sound of the buzzer as she sinks (a banked in) foul shot.

But here’s my whole point of writing this. When I test-drive a car or ride in a friend’s car I have a few simple ways of telling the quality of the vehicle without needing to know anything about cars. They are how the door feels when you shut it and how good the horn sounds. If you were deciding to sell a Kia and were only going to show it for 2 or 3 seconds, would you feature the horn? And if you chose to feature the horn would you use the real Kia horn or dub it with something less sickly sounding? Poor ad decision. Not that I saw a Kia in my future anyway.