Ian's Friday of Very Nearly SUPER AWESOME!

Like you, I work hard for a living.  So like you, I look forward to the end of my Friday workday like I look forward to my hot wife, a cold beer, and lukewarm reviews of my writing.

The end of my Friday workday brought THREE ALMOST-AWESOME THINGS:

Almost-Awesome thing #1:

My boss got field-level ticket vouchers to see my American League West Champion Oakland Athletics, and gave them to me for the final home stand this week.  AWESOME.

Today is September 13th, which is now under arrest for willfully and maliciously appearing on the calendar after the expiration date on these vouchers.

Almost-Awesome Thing #2:

I got off my (ever larger) behind and took the Sales Manager tour of my local health club.  This place has EVERYTHING!  Pools spa sauna equipment-y machines FREE classes tennis courts basketball courts racquetball courts Superior Courts so you can work out during Jury Duty!  This gym has a Chiropractor and a Masseuse!  AWESOME.

Q. What does a membership with [Don't Be Hecka Fat] Health Clubs cost?

A. Our company policy is not to quote membership rates over the phone, because the price depends on the type of membership that would best fit your lifestyle.  This membership costs six-tenths of the annual GDP of Equatorial Guinea.

Q. What forms of payment are accepted for the monthly dues payments?

A. We prefer checking or savings ACH information and will also accept credit cards (Visa, Master Card, Discover and American Express). No prepaid cards.  We accept payment in major limbs, but there will of course be a processing fee.

I’m pretty sure I can get sleek and sexy in my free week.  I’m good.

Almost-Awesome Thing #3

I got to be Hero Dad and save the day!  

A contingent of giggly teenage girls (“Dad!  We do NOT GIGGLE!!!” *glare, followed by eye roll*) is converging on my home tonight to watch a BRAND-NEW movie that the USPS was supposed to have at my house today.

I got home as the mailman pulled up to the mailbox. Bills, junk mail, urgent mail OPEN NOW oh nope that was junk mail too - no movie.  POSTAL SERVICE, THOU HAST FAILED ME!

Hero Dad to the rescue! Whipping out the Dad Phone, I reserve the movie on Redbox, retrieve it from the red movie Tardis and march triumphantly back to the house carrying my kill.  HERO DAD SAVES THE DAY!  AWESOME.

Already on the mantel at home:

[Wife]: Oh.  It arrived yesterday.

A: We are watching the movie that I BROUGHT HOME.

B: Those girls absolutely DO giggle.

C: LET’S GO, OAK-LAND!

D: I still get a cold beer.

E: My wife is still Hawt.

F: AWESOME.

About Books: From the Sublime to the Ridiculous to the FREAKING Hysterical.

My Books To Read shelf has gotten short shrift this year, as I've been catching up on my comic book reading instead.  I have read all of 2008 and am in the beginning of 2009, comic-book-wise.  At this pace I've got about five years worth of non-comic books staring at me reproachfully so I need to become independently wealthy soon and get to reading more.

{on a related note: Man Seeks Philanthropic Readers to Help Make Life Pillowy-Soft}

I have read two and a half books since whenever the last time was I posted a book review:

Tenth of December by George Saunders.  This is possibly the most amazingly brilliant book I have read in my entire life as far as I can remember right now.  I won't say I couldn't put it down, because the opposite is true.  I NEEDED to put it down quite frequently.  This is a book of short stories, each one of them an absolute masterpiece; each one of them containing the equivalent emotional impact of being hit by a cement truck.

This is an athletic read.  Each story is told sparely, and it's up to the reader to fill in all the little details.  There is no superfluous word, there is nothing in any of the stories that is not ABSOLUTELY NECCESSARY.  Oftentimes my hamster wheel brain struggled along with the story, working and working to discern what was actually going on and why.  Then (when Saunders doles out the last few pieces of relevant information) everything clicks and you understand the story (brilliant, joyous, horrifying, or funny - often all of the above), you are captured.  Saunders HAS you.  You are trapped in the intellectual and emotional reality he has created, and your own day-to-day reality is nowhere near as compelling.  IT'S THAT GOOD.

I occasionally thought I was going to abandon Tenth of December because I wasn't man enough to handle the heartbreak of watching characters who live at the mercy of the dubious quality of our humanity.  But I was always compelled to pick it back up, because who wants to say they weren't emotionally capable of finishing the most brilliant book they've ever read?

George Saunders (bless him) finished up with two lovely and redeeming stories.  

Because I read e-books now (which is still weird for me and feels like a betrayal of the rest of my book-reading life reading paper books - books books), I didn't know I was at the end of the book until I was done.  It was a shock that there were no more stories.  I felt robbed of the rest of what I could have read, had there actually been any more.  It was like I had made a friend in the afternoon and then found out in the evening that the friend had just died.  Only - it was a book.

If you're strong enough, READ TENTH OF DECEMBER.

Maybe it's my fault.  I wanted some lighter reading after George's book so I picked up My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler, with whom I am not familiar but the interwebs say she's freaking hilarious.

I'm a fan of people who detail their own personal shortcomings because we can all laugh at the stupid things we humans do, right?  Ite's why those Liberty Mutual commercials are so fun to watch.  Humans are hysterical, especially when we recognize how stupid we are and yet do our stupid human things anyway and have to live with the consequences.

Either I missed the parts where Chelsea was funny when detailing her own failings, or Chelsea missed all the parts where she was supposed to write things in a way that was funny.

I was not amused by this book.  I was not amused by Chelsea Handler's Chelsea character, her worldview, the things she said, or much of anything that happened to Chelsea in her book.  I found the Chelsea character to be shallow and repugnant and tiresome and not funny.

Maybe Chelsea is hysterical in real life but is just not good enough a writer to make me see how hysterically funny she is.

Maybe the second half of the book is deliriously fun, but I was done before I hit the halfway point.  ABANDON SHIP.

I laugh a lot.  I laugh at things nobody else thinks are funny, but if its funny to me then I'm sure as hell going to laugh at it.  Sometimes that makes me the @$$hole in the room.  Sometimes I have to LEAVE the room while under direct fire from LASER DEATH WIFE LASER GAZE.  Sometimes I even have to sleep on the couch.

But I don't really laugh out loud at books anymore.  I'll stop reading and look up from my book with a big smile and say "WOW . . .!" because for me that means "I just read something really really fantastic and it was so much better and different than the things I think to myself that are funny, but THAT - that thing I just read?  THAT was pretty damn good!"

And then Everything's Perfect When You're a Liar by Kelly Oxford., which starts out fairly good (amusing self-absorbed bratty kid) to meh (okay dumb teenager) to "hey that's pretty good and worth my time to read" to "damn, that was totally good", to the David Copperfield chapter which was "Oh my God that is the most brilliantly honest and funny goddamn thing I have ever read in my entire life this year!"  

It is at THAT point that I know I will read every single word of the rest of the book even if it gets a little bit boring, and even if the rest of the book sucks (which it totally did NOT), I will still insist my friends read it even just for the David Copperfield chapter.  And also I will buy Kelly's next book.

In fact, I told my wife she had to read the David Copperfield chapter and she gave me her noncommittal grunt.  Later, I mentioned it again and she went all wifenuts and told me SHE KNOWS I want her to read it and this is the THIRD TIME I have told her to read it and STOP BUGGING.

I tried to tell her she was exaggerating because this was only the second time I had mentioned it and she didn't even speak, she just gave the the You're Stupid look and held up three fingers because even when I am You're Stupid, surely I can count three fingers.

[Later, when she was ready, my wife read the David Copperfield chapter and nearly peed herself.]

If you're reading this and haven't read Kelly Oxford's book, stop reading this and go read that instead.  It's better than this review you're reading.

Not The Best Food Authority

[Daughter], foraging in pantry: What's in these crackers?

Me: Ants.  And butter and wheat.  But mostly ants.  It's what makes them crunchy.

(silence, while [Daughter] looks at me with her best dead-eye expression)

[Daughter]: Mom, what's in these crackers?

Re: Your Cat

Before I start talking about you and your cat, let's start with a moment of consensus:

Please raise your hand if you are a big fan of cat poop.

. . . [waits] . . .

Unless you are a dog and you think cat poop is a tasty meat-based candy treat (in which case ohmygodI'mgonnabarf), I shouldn't see a whole lot of hands in the air.

If you are a cat owner / enabler who attempts to keep your feline and its poop inside an enclosed area then I salute you and appreciate you, while still acknowledging your basic character weakness in the area of pet selection.

Disclosure: I do not like cats.  This fact doesn't change, even just for YOUR kitty who is a GOOD kitty and who "acts just like a dog".  NO IT DOESN'T.  IT IS A CAT and it acts like a CAT and I do not like cats.

Nevertheless I accede to society's ruling that cats are somehow more acceptable as pets than feral, rabid, lesion-sporting rats, although I do not agree.

But this isn't about how your cat behaves at your house, it's about how your cat behaves at my house.

If you are one of the MILLIONS of cat owner / enablers who feeds their cat and lets it roam, THIS IS ABOUT YOU.

Have you wondered where your kitty goes when it wanders, enjoying its freedom? I will tell you: IT COMES TO MY HOUSE AND CRAPS.  It craps in my flowers and on my lawn.  It craps in the mulch where my vegetables try to grow.  It craps right outside my living room window, the main source of fresh air in my home.  

I find your cat’s poo daily.  My favorite is every week when I canvass each quadrant of the lawn very slowly and pick up all the cat crap I can find before starting the mower and stepping in/rolling over the pile I always miss.

At night your kitty mates near my bedroom window (with all the spine-shredding screaming and fighting and spitting that cat-mating entails).  While your cat is mating outside my bedroom, I am not mating inside my bedroom.  I am outside hunting for the goddamn garden hose.  If there was that much screaming and fighting inside my bedroom then there wouldn't be any mating for at LEAST a week.

During the day (in-between rounds of "Hide the Feces Somewhere Surprising" in my yard), your cat kills birds and leaves the carcasses on my porch as if to say "Thank you for cleaning up my diarrhea yesterday; I'm leaving you this gift to find after a 106-degree day.  And by the way, bird feathers make me vomit.  Guess where?".

This behavior makes me hate you much like I hate your cat.  I am not by nature a hateful person, but really what choice do I have left?

When the subject of super powers comes up (Flight or Invisibility?  Super-Strength or Super-Speed?) I say this: I want the power to track cat crap back to the cat who made it, then track the cat back to the home of the last person to feed it, then to teleport both the cat AND its crap INSIDE THE HOME OF THAT PERSON.  

Outside their bedroom door if possible.



Also: Discovery: Crazy Cat-Lady Syndrome and Cat Poop Raises Owners Suicide Risk

Fall, Winter, Spring, Shirtless

For those of you who have not met me in real life, I probably have to explain what happens every summer when I remove my shirt.

Every single summer in the eyes of women, I am inextricably linked to the image of Daniel Craig shirtless.


It's probably because we share a common Scottish heritage; we are both vital, virile animals that can bend a woman's will until she begs us to please for god's sake put the shirt back on before she loses all self-control.

We are linked.  I have not yet met a woman who can gaze upon me bare-chested and not think to herself, "I wish it was Daniel Craig shirtless instead of this guy.  I am going to lose control of my lunch".

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all my friends and loved ones who have cast away time and energy and life and breath and sanity and dignity and personal boundaries in the pursuit of raising small humans in hopes of training them to be serviceable members of society, instead of Congresspeople.

There is never a guarantee of success or appreciation, but I appreciate the mothers in my life.

Yesterday [Wife] and I had a good conversation about my mom's lasting impact on how we parent the Reddoch spawn. Although we've missed my mom for the last nine years, my kids continue to reap the benefits of the privilege of being her grandchildren.

So this is me hoisting a beer in honor of moms I know.

I am still drinking it out of the bottle, and I am not using a coaster.

Keep on Mom-ing, Moms.

Baseball is Not a Coy Game

[Wife] on the Oakland Athletics scoring six runs off the Houston Astros in the bottom of the FIRST INNING:

"No way!  You can't just give it all up like that in the first inning - that's not professional baseball!  You can't just give it up like that, like a drunken coke whore at a bachelor party! 

At least be like the friendly debutante after the ball - put up a good fight, let the other team spend time on the other bases for a while, then give it all up in the late innings - THAT I get. 

But the FIRST INNING?!  You haven't even seen all nine guys yet!  Have some self-respect, Astros."

Pet Calendar

On April 14th my Oakland Athletics are hosting the Detroit Tigers and having their yearly Pet Calendar and Pet Adoption Day.  Sure, it SOUNDS harmless enough, but I have mixed feelings. 

I often used to participate in this day, but it always led to heartbreak.

I LOVED my last pet calendar, but sadly it expired just one year after I adopted it. 

Every day after I took it for a walk, it looked a little more tired and ragged.  As each month passed, my pet calendar got thinner and thinner. 

Finally I could see the writing on the wall. 

...But I suppose I should have known: every pet calendar's days are numbered.

This economy is just nuts

Saddest economic indicator at the grocery store today.

Cashew Halves being promoted with bright signs at the middle of the shelf.

On the bottom shelf of the end cap: Cashew Halve nots.

[Daughter returns home after performing in an all-schools concert]

Me: Did you have fun tonight?

[Daughter]: Everybody had fun tonight!

Me: Oh! Did everybody Wang Chung tonight?

[Daughter]:  What?!

Me: Did.  EVERYBODY.  Wang.  Chung.  TONIGHT.

[Daughter, giving skeptical teenager look]: Nobody had Chinese food.  Is this an old person thing?

Me: Me and your mom would've Wang Chung-ed.

[Daughter]: I'm leaving now.

Me, shouting after her: WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE, EVERYBODY WOULD'VE WANG CHUNG-ED TONIGHT!

Acting Advice

[Daughter]: I'm going to be featured in a drama showcase in May!

Me: You mean people are coming to our house to watch that thing you do every morning when you get up late and then fly into a tearful, shouting arm-waving panic because you're going to be late and your parents are ruining your life because we make you eat breakfast anyway?

[Daughter]: ... No. I'm going to do a scene and sing a couple of songs.

Me: Well, get up on stage on time and don't sing with your mouth full.

How did I get to be the Masshole in this argument?

Crisis at work today nearly ended badly when I stood on a chair and yelled, "I can't believe all of this pointless bickering! At a time like this when we all need level heads, we must pool our resources and focus on the goal or we will absolutely FAIL! This is no time to be petty and selfish - there's too much at stake."

With all eyes on me in the moment of silence, I told my coworkers, "Now - handle things like adults - despite your differences. I need to continue building alliances among the Quarians and the Krogans, so we can all of us together construct the Prothean megaweapon and destroy the Reapers before there's no one left in the galaxy to argue!"

I take it as a personal triumph that no one contradicted me or stopped me from going to my car.

On a related note, I finally started playing Mass Effect 3 this weekend.

Daughter's Family Barbecue

[Wife] and I in the kitchen, talking in low tones. We say [Daughter]'s name in conversation.

[Daughter] (yelling from a far-flung corner of the house): "DID YOU CALL ME?!"

Me: "NOBODY CALLED YOU! WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT YOU."

[Daughter]: "WHAT WAS IT ABOUT?"

[Wife]: "WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT HOW GOOD YOU ARE, SWEETIE!"

[Daughter]: "REALLY?!"

Me: "ALMOST. WE WERE TALKING ABOUT HOW GOOD AND LEAN YOU ARE, AND HOW SWEET YOU WOULD BE IF WE BARBECUED YOU."

[Daughter]: "WHAT?!!"

Me: "WE'RE THINKING ABOUT A LUAU PIT, BUT I'M NOT A VERY GOOD COOK, SO YOUR MOM WOULD HAVE TO MONITOR THE PROCESS. HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU THINK YOU'D FEED? KEEP IN MIND WE WOULD ALSO HAVE SIDE DISHES."

[Daughter]: "YOU'RE A HORRIBLE FATHER!"

Me: "NO, I'M A HORRIBLE COOK! I AM A GOOD FATHER WHO'S PLANNING TO SHARE YOUR GOODNESS AND SWEETNESS WITH A WHOLE PARTY FULL OF PEOPLE! I'LL EVEN LET YOU CHOOSE WHAT KIND OF BARBECUE SAUCE WE'LL USE! CHOOSE SOMETHING THAT WILL STILL ALLOW YOU TO DEVELOP A CRISPY SKIN."

[Daughter]: "WAAAAAH! I'M RUNNING AWAY TO DISNEYLAND!"

Me: "DON'T BUTT INTO OTHER PEOPLE'S COVERSATIONS, THEN!"

About Books: John Dies at the End by David Wong.

Last weekend I read John Dies at the End by David Wong.


It's got all kinds of accolades, which you can easily find for yourself here. 

The only/best quote I'll repeat goes something like "A cross between Douglas Adams and Stephen King."


John Dies At The End began as an online goof and became a popular web-episodic project, and then it was a book that people loved, and now it is also a movie opening very very soon.  Or now, depending on your geographic location.  Also there is a sequel called This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It, which sits on my bookshelf waiting for me to get to it one of these years when everybody else has already read it, loved it, and long-since moved on.


Bottom line:  Ian liked John Dies at the End.  I was highly entertained and laughed out loud many times.  Not the kind of laughed out loud that ends in me writing LOL, but the kind of laughed out loud that caused my family to look at me funny and, in the case of the dog, jump off my lap and go sulk in another room.  I don't get enough time to read, but I gobbled this thing down in a single weekend.


The book's protagonist (David Wong) is a career loser.  Always been a loser, continues being a loser during the book.  Sometimes Loser is also known as Average Guy, but that's not accurate.  Some of us are below average, which can result in being the protagonist of this book.  Wong's best friend John is also a loser and as a bonus reminds me 100% of a dude I knew in College also named John, also a severe social misfit also a druggie, also holding a severe misconception of himself as an actual musician.  So it's him I pictured throughout the book, which made the whole thing funnier to me.


There is a level of prolific imagination throughout the novel that is often exhausting.  It's like mental gymnastics (which, for lazy people like myself, can result in the burning of actual calories).


As a reader I can see where the author’s initial love and enthusiasm for this project flagged and was replaced with a case of the "Well, NOW what?s".  The middle of the book lags, then kind of slowly ramps up to become a decent novel without the density of experience that we had in the first half.  So while I can call the book "uneven", an uneven road can be one helluva ride.  And this one is quite a ride.  With penis jokes and poo jokes.


I don't have a ratings system and I'm not going to use one.  I can give it a "Two Feet Up" rating because that's how I spent my weekend, but that's as close as I'll get.


I believe I'm looking forward to the movie, opening right now at a theater near me.

The Not Roger Ebert Movie Review


The John Dies at the End book page on Amazon

The actual review quote I was too lazy to put in the body of my actual post:
“David Wong is like a mash-up of Douglas Adams and Stephen King . . . ‘page-turner’ is an understatement.” --Don Coscarelli, director, Phantasm I–V and Bubba Ho-tep [Um, this is also the guy who directed the John Dies at the End movie - Ian]


An actual review from an actual book reviewer:

From Publishers Weekly

In this reissue of an Internet phenomenon originally slapped between two covers in 2007 by indie Permutus Press, Wong—Cracked.com editor Jason Pargin's alter ego—adroitly spoofs the horror genre while simultaneously offering up a genuinely horrifying story. The terror is rooted in a substance known as soy sauce, a paranormal psychoactive that opens video store clerk Wong's—and his penis-obsessed friend John's—minds to higher levels of consciousness. Or is it just hell seeping into the unnamed Midwestern town where Wong and the others live? Meat monsters, wig-wearing scorpion aberrations and wingless white flies that burrow into human skin threaten to kill Wong and his crew before infesting the rest of the world. A multidimensional plot unfolds as the unlikely heroes drink lots of beer and battle the paradoxes of time and space, as well as the clichés of first-person-shooter video games and fantasy gore films. Sure to please the Fangoriaset while appealing to a wider audience, the book's smart take on fear manages to tap into readers' existential dread on one page, then have them laughing the next. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The actual book flap text:
STOP.
You should not have touched this book with your bare hands.
NO, don’t put it down. It’s too late.
They’re watching you.
My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours.
You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it’s too late. You touched the book. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye.
The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

The important thing is this:
The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension.
John and I never had the chance to say no.
You still do.
Unfortunately for us, if you make the right choice, we’ll have a much harder time explaining how to fight off the otherworldly invasion currently threatening to enslave humanity.
        I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind:

None of this is was my fault.

About Books: Holidays On Ice by David Sedaris

Horribly Boring Book Corner: Holidays On Ice by David Sedaris

I am a literature addict.  A desperate fiend who can, despite the pressures of job and marriage and fatherhood, devour TWO fine pieces of literature in a one-month span.  Ssssssmokin'!

The fine print:  I started Holidays On Ice in December.  And it's only 166 pages.  And each page is the size of a Thank-You card (like the ones I haven't written to people yet because who has time to be polite and properly thankful when there are books to read?).

This is the first David Sedaris book I've read.  I've read and heard essays by the guy and found them delightful.  The blurbs on the back of this wee tiny book were bursting with colorful praise.  I, regretfully, am not.

Like any good breakup: it's not the book, it's me.  I laughed myself silly at least three times, which probably means the book is worth the price.  But overall, I just can't really endorse the book as a whole.

Sedaris does a fantastic job weaving tales that shed light on himself and his family, and the real and unreal things that happen to him from childhood and beyond.  There is a shameless and quite funny wrongness about these tales that is truly delicious, but often veer from edgy to mean in just a few paragraphs.

This is where he loses me.  His satire of us as Americans begins (in almost any story) with a recognizable situation  which gets ridiculous and funny in a way we all recognize (if we're willing to admit it), and then continues getting worse and worse until he is treading firmly in the area of "This isn't funny anymore, can it please end now before it gets any worse", and then it doesn't actually end there.

So: if that's your thing, this may be your book.  It's not my thing, but it is my book because I bought it.  And I will likely re-read several of the stories.  But I can't endorse the entire work.  I am breaking up with this book, but hopefully we can still remain friends.

Again, it's not you, David.  It's me.

About Books: Carte Blanche: The New James Bond Novel by Jeffery Deaver

Horribly Boring Book Corner: Carte Blanche: The New James Bond Novel  by Jeffery Deaver

I have now successfully read one book so far this year; you are now successfully reading my review of reading one book so far this year: Carte Blanche: The New James Bond Novel  by Jeffery Deaver.  

It took me awhile to write this small review mainly because nobody seemed to like it on Amazon, but I liked it and it chipped away at my self-esteem a little that nobody else seemed to think it was as cool as I thought it was and I guess I’m a little bit weak-minded, okay? The main criticism of Deaver on Amazon is pretty much this: “While Deaver tries to imitate Ian Fleming, the book just isn’t very engaging and Deaver’s a big fat failure”.

Hmm.  As a kid I read every single James Bond book Ian Fleming wrote, and I distinctly remember a little bit of that not-riveting-ness with Fleming as well.  

Maybe it was that the more Fleming wrote about food and wine and spy kit and the particulars of awesome cars, the more he got away from the narrative - but I still read every single word, so it’s not like it spoiled my reading experience, it more just made me long for and Aston martin, which I had never seen as a kid.  Well, okay, so Deaver does a lot about wine and and food and cars and spy kit and it’s just as disengaging as Fleming, only not any more or less so I guess the big criticism is that Jeffery Deaver isn’t Ian Fleming, which is also true of most other people I know.

I am also not currently Ian Fleming, but I like to compare myself to him in that I

1. am also named Ian and
2. like Fleming, wanted to play James Bond in movies, but nobody else wanted me to.  Also,
3. he had a house named Goldeneye;I had a fish with the same name.  

We were practically blood brothers, Ian Fleming and I.

While I was reading Carte Blanche I bored my entire family  by saying “Wow!” a lot because I felt Deaver had a real hang of how Fleming wrote and a good spin on the Bond character even if he brought some of Bond’s attitudes forward in time from the Neanderthal 60’s to the teen-of-the-century (what the hell are we calling this decade?).  Bond is no longer as cruel and heartless as he was in the Fleming books, but he’s still swingin’, Baby!  He still gets the girls and he still drives fast and he’s still smart and violent, so Licence to Envy achieved for this reader.

I feel the Fleming estate chose their writer well - not like the last guy they chose (Raymond Benson, who seemed most like Ian Fleming in that they are both dead, as far as I can tell from Benson’s writing style).

My only beef with Deaver were the GOTCHA! surprises - where Bond is hanging by one fingernail over a pit of man-eating crocodile-eating piranhas, three seconds before the bomb explodes, and the chapter ends on a cliffhanger . . .

And the new chapter begins with some version of “But what the villain didn’t know AND NEITHER DID THE READER BECAUSE THERE WERE NO CLUES WHATSOEVER TO FIGURE IT OUT, is that Bond's ally Dr. Deus Ex Machina was waiting in the wings with some man-eating crocodile-eating piranha repellent and an extremely delicate crane which daintily and lovingly rescued Bond by his last fingernail, enabling Bond to race away like he was never hurt in the first place and capture the bad guy while tastefully tonguing the girl who started the book by hating him.

These brought me out of the story long enough to give the evil eye to the current page, shake my head, and keep reading.  Once I may have involuntarily said, “Grrr . .  .”, but that’s about as strong as my criticism got.

The book is a reboot (in effect the very first James Bond novel ever!  Again.), a great place to start, and a fun place to play for awhile.

Breakfast at the Reddoch Howse

[Wife]: I got this great grinder so it's easier to make cinnamon toast!

[Son]: that's an interesting grinder design. It's like a little plastic vortex of pain and destruction.

[Daughter]: The chunks on the bottom were given a longer prison sentence. They have to watch all their cell mates get mutilated and eaten.

Me: Why would cinnamon and sugar be in prison?

[Daughter]: Because they're evil.  Yet . . . sweet?

[Son]: Like college girls.

Me: And a lot of old women.

[Wife]: Wait -

[Son]: Geez, Mom, did you buy this from Mitt Romney?  Is he selling GRINDERS FULL OF WOMEN?!

[Daughter] (beginning to use the grinder on her toast): Yay, cannibalism!

[Wife] (head in hands)

Me: Hon, I think you need a chaperone when you grocery shop.

Why I Like Texting With My Teenage Daughter

A Huff Post

This is me, shamelessly Riding the coattails of the Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Huffington Post.

Here is my own Huff Post.  I am writing it after coming down from a fit of annoyance at my boss, who may or may not have some severe hearing loss and / or mild brain damage. I don't even think he noticed I was annoyed, which itself is annoying.  I need to improve my level of Huffiness.

When my wife gets huffy, everybody knows it.  She huffs and puffs, and then lectures start leaping out and grabbing you.  You had better hope you weren't on the way to the bathroom, Mister, because she's got a good twenty minutes of Huff Lecture with your name on  it.  My children are quicker than I am and scatter when the huffing starts, which leaves me as the only dumb sucker in the room available to be trapped by The Lecture.  Often I am trapped in a Lecture that is all about what the children just did before they escaped, because I am the only idiot left in the room.  I can hear my kids high-fiving each other from their bedrooms while I weather the Huff.

I typically just go off in a huff by myself.  Perhaps I will slam a door so everybody can be warned that I Am In A Huff.  But then I feel bad about it and my Huff loses its steam.  Within about ten minutes I've read something brilliant or funny and I run back out to share it with someone in my family and they will look at me with this expression that quietly says, "Oh, look who's back from their little Huff already?" and then I feel small and lame because I forgot I had gone off in a Huff in the first place.  I am not a very good Huffer.

My 13-year-old daughter is Absolute Queen of the Dramatic Huff.  She's nowhere near as scary as my wife, but I can see that with practice she will someday become quite effective at it.  She's at her best and most creative when she crafts her Huffy Defensive Excuses: "Well, I was going to start the project like I told you, but my friend Darrel has the notes and he lost his phone and his email doesn't work and he said he would email me back once it came back up so obviously there's nothing I can do right now anyway so would you please both get off my back because I am trying my very best and it's never good enough for you!"

 My son is somewhat left out of the mix because he doesn't get huffy.  He gets snooty, which is annoying and maddening.  But this is a post about Huffs.

How effective is your Huff?  I'm not talking about sniffing glue or paint, but how righteously indignant you might get when you see someone sniffing your glue or your hard-earned paint.  Do people care about your indignation?  Why or why not?  (Explain, in 100 words or less.)

Things you can do in A Huff:
Stomp off
Storm off
Stalk off
Walk off

Things you cannot effectively do in a Huff:
Hop off
Sidle off
Dance off
Eat the last of the pudding.

Clearly, the most effective Huff involves a dramatic exit and plenty of bluster.  If you do it right, you stomp off / storm off / stalk off with the sense of satisfaction you get from knowing you just left behind a bunch of fools who stand slack-jawed where you left them, looking guiltily at one another in a tense hush.  If you do it wrong, then you look back during your dramatic exit to find those poor fools laughing at you as you leave.  

Don't look back.  Just exit.

Ineffective Bozo Prize for Ineffective Huffs goes to my dog, who feels she is a Very Important Person, and when she feels slighted will *sigh* angrily and slink off to her bed in a huff.  This is not as impressive as she'd like it to be.  Clearly if she could she would be shouting, "NOW you've gone and done it!  Your apathy and inattention has just COST YOU THE LOVE OF YOUR DOG!"  

"SEMI-PERMANENTLY!"

And then she flumps dramatically into her soft bed and curls up into an angry little ball of seething self-pity, which really affects nobody.  The thing is, she knows this.  Clearly, she is aware of her own ineffectiveness but can't think of anything better.  When she's flumped down in her seethe ball and you go near her, she burrows a little tighter into herself and attempts to avoid eye contact.  You can almost hear her say, "Go away - can you NOT see that I am slunched here because I reject you because you cannot recognize a Good Dog when you see her and someday the Great Dog of the Sky will descend and BITE YOU because you neglect me?"

I have promised myself I will never slunch off in a huff.  I will know they're laughing even if I don't look back.