Friday, January 25, 2013

Y Kant Katt Read?

I am a writer, obviously. That is, if you can suspend disbelief for a minute and accept that the title also encompasses half-assed bloggers who only write when they have something to bitch about. And I have always thought I am a decent writer, when I actually apply myself. But the truth is, there are a lot of folks out there who would laugh me right out of cyberspace for even thinking something so ludicrous. Why? Because I don't like to read.

Burn them smart-ass books.


Actually, I should be more specific. I'm not a fan of reading books. I read blog posts, news stories, and educational articles on a daily basis, but something tells me that real writers would put me in my place about that right quick. As it turns out, the last time I voluntarily read one of them sammiches with words inside was three years ago, when I picked up Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. This was the first book in the better part of ten years that truly piqued my interest. And while grim tales of working-class ennui probably aren't gonna make anyone's summer reading list, I really enjoyed the book. It was a fucking Christmas miracle. Never mind that it happened during an extended power outage in July; the point is I did it by my own volition. Wait, is it by or on? And does volition even mean what I think it means? Proof my dumb ass needs more book-learnin', I reckon.

It wasn't always this way. In my early grade school years I loved to read. Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume in particular had a finger on my pulse, with their vividly realistic and endearingly awkward characters and easily relatable tales of pre-teen trials and tribulations. These kids had real problems! Just like me! But for every Ramona the Great and Superfudge, there were hundreds of things I was made to read that I absolutely did not want to. If it didn't have a precocious myna bird running amok, I wasn't about to crack that fucker open.

But this is par for the course. In elementary school reading is crammed down kids' throats for the duration. One can expect to write no fewer than 5,739 book reports by fifth grade. And when it's not book reports, it's abridged versions of age-appropriate short stories with a shitload of "How well did you read?" comprehension exercises at the end. Whether due to an undiagnosed learning disability or the fact that 95% of our reading material was chosen for us, I sucked at these. After years of struggling and, believe it or not, the occasional ill-advised attempt to overcome it, I just decided to say fuck it and let my brain atrophy, which I'm sure it's still doing to this day. But hey, at least I know cool words like atrophy, right? I should find some way to work it into my resume.

In all seriousness, though, it really does suck when a child decides they hate learning. I was about ten when it happened to me. Fourth grade was kicking my ass academically and socially—it didn't help at all either that there were forty (!) kids in my classand I just kinda stopped giving a shit about most things. I decided it would be best to aim so low in everything I did that no one noticed or cared if I succeeded. It's okay to know your limitations, after all. But the fact remained that I would still have to read on occasion if I didn't want to be held back for like ten years, so unless I wanted to be the only fourth grader shaving her legs and shopping around for IUD's, I had to find some kind of compromise. I could have picked up some Cliffs Notes, or I could have requested tutoring. But those things make too much sense, so instead I tried to compensate for my shortcomings by diving headfirst into some of the most intangible dreck ever committed to print. Seriously, the shit I read would make Fifty Shades of Grey look like Huck Finn, which incidentally was the 1999 winner of the coveted Katt's Most Hated Thing Ever award. In your face, part-time job at Burger King.

Despite every empathetic impulse in my body, I will share these pieces of work with you in a minute, but first, a little background. It would've been bad enough if I were just dumbing myself down out of sheer apathy (I was). But one thing I don't half-ass is my ability to sabotage myself. I use my whole ass on that one. You see, I actually read supremely retarded books knowing full well they were supremely retarded, and yet still under the firm belief that they were viable alternatives to more serious, scholarly fare. You know, the kind that doesn't earn you a big fat red "See me" written across your book report.

So sit back, relax, and weep for my childhood as I share with you the seeds that sprouted a lifetime of bibliophobia. This is totally a thing. I feel a little better about myself now. But that'll soon change.

Home Alone

Yup, feeling pretty damn bad about myself right about now. But the person who should really feel bad is Todd Strasser, the "author" who felt the need to novelize the incredibly popular Home Alone movies. I did in fact own both of these books, and read them each multiple times. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movies as much as the next guy. And as a (shitty, lazy) writer, I can dig that it's probably not as easy as it looks to translate digital media to prose. My over-ambitious attempt to write a similar novelization of Final Fantasy 6 as a kid could attest to that. And for what it's worth, I'll say that these books are as loyal to the source material as they can probably be. But despite Mr. Strasser's technically proficient transcript, these novels could not in any way, shape, or form be considered academic. But that sure didn't stop my delinquent ass from trying to prove otherwise. 

Indeed, both of these books rounded out my roster of selections for the Book It! program two years in a row. If you're around my age you probably remember Book It!, the incentive program that fostered the love of reading in children by stuffing them to the gills with Pizza Hut cuisine. I won't lie, it worked for me. I ate so much pizza from 1988-92 that I'm surprised I don't weigh 500 pounds. And all of it was bought and paid for by my passion for low-brow film novelizations. Sha-fuckin'-zam.

But at least I read something, right? Well, just have a look at these select quotes from both books. I realize that they are children's books and therefore impeccable style and tone is neither necessary nor appreciated all that much, but I'm probably lucky that reading these books didn't turn me into one of those shitfucks who says 'alot'. As in, "I loved these books alot, but there pretty dumb lol". Fifteen puppies were just boiled to death as a result of my typing of that sentence. Fuck you, Todd Strasser. I do like the POW BANG PIFF KABLOOIE effects, though. I no longer have to sit up at night wondering what it would sound like to have my head set on fire by a blowtorch. So...thank you, Mr. Strasser. You bastard.

Fun fact: While I was a little long in the tooth for these kinds of books by 1997, Todd Strasser saw fit to squeeze one more wet fart out of the Home Alone franchise with a novelization of the third movie. Now we know why people become atheists.


Bingo

I'm starting to think these movie novelizations were a thinly-veiled attempt at getting kids who'd rather ooze their way into the couch cushions in front of the TV to pick up a book instead of the remote now and then. Because nothing could be more stimulating for young minds than reading a half-assed transcript of a movie they'd already seen ten times and memorized word for word. The truth of the matter is, I have never seen this movie. Not even on TBS or ABC Family or any other channels that show crap film marathons on weekends. Thanks to IMDb, I learned that Bingo is the story of a misfit boy and his equally ne'er-do-well canine companion who escaped from a circus. Clearly Oscar-caliber stuff here.

So then why the novel? Was it such a sleeper hit that it demanded its own written word adaptation? Or was A.L. Singer so hard-up for crack money that he/she grabbed the first $5.99 gas station bargain bin movie in sight and spent two weeks writing about it? The world may never know. For that matter, I wonder what possessed me to pluck this from the Scholastic book order sheet. I had not seen the movie, after all. I also wasn't a fan of the "live-action cute animal caper" genre that was so popular in the early 90's, so I probably wouldn't have seen it anyway even if the opportunity arose. So why did I pass up the latest Calvin & Hobbes compilation for this turd? Oh yeah, the whole willfully being a shithead thing.

I think the only reason I even remember owning this book in the first place is that it was instrumental in one of my more controversial "not a single fuck is being given" moments. In fourth grade, I actually wrote a book report about this book. A goddamn book report about a novel likely written under the influence of two metric shit-tons of low-grade cocaine, about a movie that was probably more of the same, with a picture of a dumb dog in sunglasses on the cover. I shouldn't be at all surprised that the mention of this at a parent-teacher conference was what led my parents to take a keener interest in the quality of my schoolwork. Fuck you, you stupid mutt, and your little human too.


Full Fucking House

Here it is, folks. Proof positive that I gave up on life between the ages of 11 and 13. Truth is, I had a weird love/hate relationship with the popular 90's sitcom Full House. That is to say, I watched it only in part because I had to. At the time, my best friend from next door and her sisters would get off the bus with me at my house after school and stay with us until their mom came to pick them up. Their absolute favorite show was, of course, Full House, so an hour of the time we could have been using to dig up clumps of dirt in the yard to throw at each other was monopolized by that sappy hokum. And because my mom, God love her, tried her damnedest to teach me how to get along with others, or at least acknowledge their right to exist, I had to deal with it without complaint. Rest assured, though, that I made up for it later with no fewer than three hours of bitching about The Greatest Injustice in the History of the Universe. It was enough that Michelle Tanner would surely wag her finger at me with a scathing "you're in big twouble mistow."

But then again, there was just some inexplicable allure about the show. I mean, assuming that real life families could somehow suppress the murderous voices, living in a huge house and having all sorts of wacky adventures would be boss. But then yet again, this was also during that emotionally choppy time when I discerned that being a malcontent was much more rewarding than bonding with people over shared interests, and so I went through that obnoxious phase where I hated things that were popular just because they were popular, even if I sort of secretly liked them. I was hipster when hipster wasn't cool. Wait, it's still not cool. Damn.

Anyway, Full House. At the zenith of the "very special episode" and "schmaltzy cello music" era of non-offensive sitcoms, Full House was a one-stop shop for totally realistic depictions of the dangers of teenage drinking and irritating neighbors with offensive foot odor. And someone apparently found great literary potential in this. Will wonders never cease. I also noticed that the author's name is conspicuously missing from the cover of this masterpiece. Considering there are more than a few unauthorized publications based on the show, I would guess it was largely an issue of legality. But then again, none of the books I found during my search named an author. Maybe they were all in fact written by the same person, someone who wasn't talented or ambitious enough to write about something worthwhile, but still smart enough to realize he/she would probably be sued and/or murdered eventually when the public at large decided it wasn't amused anymore. I'm on to you, anonymous shitty author. But I can take consolation in knowing no one in good conscience would have paid you more than $15 to write all of these books.

I'm a fine one to talk, though. I owned at least two of the books, including the one pictured above, each consisting of short novelizations of a couple of episodes. I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around why I owned any of the fucking things when my emotions toward the show ran a gamut that was not all that conducive to the type of rabid fangirlism that would lead one to start collecting Full House books. My best guess is I couldn't find any more shitty movie books.

I do remember reading at least one of them in fifth or sixth grade, when the school brilliantly decided that having each grade do a read-a-thon, in which students read as much as humanly possible over the course of a few months, would keep the flames of passion for reading alight even through the turbulent middle school years. The winning grade won a pizza party or some such. I would have proposed rocket-powered dirtbikes for everyone, but then again we've already established that I'm not all that internally motivated.

Of course there were plenty of other kids like me who would put forth roughly zero effort in this endeavor, but luckily for us the points in this contest were racked up by hours spent reading, rather than books completed. I don't think my grade ever won the contest, thanks in no small part to assholes like me, but at least it meant I wouldn't have to turn in any more sheets indicating that I spent 2.5 hours on Tuesday night reading Nintendo Power and 1.2 on Wednesday reading about Joey Gladstone and the very special episode in which he and his girlfriend Alanis Morrisette get kicked out of the Sunday matinee. I should have been beaten more. Fuck you Dave Coulier, and your little Canadian too.


I think I've grown on a personal level today. I recognized that my underachieving and self-loathing tendencies can be traced back to my latent fear of failure. Oh wait, no, it's that I realized the real path to success for an author lies in the ability to capture the profound insight on the human condition as experienced by two inept burglars who can't stop getting hit in the face with paint cans. The Schizophasic is giving serious consideration to stepping down from the blogging game and concentrating full time on committing classic films to print to be cherished for generations. Hey, has anyone written Mother, May I Sleep With Danger: The Novel yet?

1 comment:

  1. We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers.Long but informatic Article dear nice.

    Informal Sports

    ReplyDelete