Books4YourKids Weighs In

The sublime books4yourkids blog just posted a kind write-up of my pocket guide series.

Titled “Great Books for Summer”, it reads:

Need to keep the kids occupied during a long, hot summer?

Bart King is the man for you (and your kids ages 9 and up)! Author of the superb The Big Book of Boy Stuff and The Big Book of Girl Stuff he has also written these little gems. All of these books will get kids out of the chair and even out of the house doing something nifty and creative, but, I have to tell you that it is IMPOSSIBLE to read any of Bart King’s books without turning to the person next to you and reading a paragraph or two out loud to them. The information inside is the kind you (and your kids) will want to share!

The Pocket Guide to Games brings you games your kids can play without computers, joysticks, game boards or even game pieces, in some cases. Most of what you’ll need you can find around the house, or at the nearest hardware store... there is an INDEX so you don’t have to go flipping through the book five times before finding that great game you saw...Just reading the game descriptions out loud was amusing for the kids I was with.

Your kids may spend more time reading The Pocket Guide to Mischief than actually making it... if you’re lucky. There is a lot of great collected information in this book, including stories of pranks played throughout history and lots of funny responses to everyday situations... Brilliant!

Gathered from The Big Book of Girl Stuff, which was written with the help of his five sisters and fifty other girls, King brings his great sense of humor and wealth of knowledge...[and] The Pocket Guide to Boy Stuff is full of super-cool facts and finds that actually made me a little jealous...

How to Teach Rebels a Lesson

Whenever possible, I watch movies with subtitles to help me appreciate the dialogue.

This is especially important with kung fu movies. In this genre, I turn the subtitles on AND cue the dubbed English, to get that sublime lip-synch mismatch.

This pays off during a classic like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Not only is the dubbed dialogue kooky, but the subtitles are different from the dubbing! The best subtitle of that film:

“We must capture the rebels and kill them to scare them off!”

Let's review:
1.) Capture rebels.
2.) Kill them.
3.) Scare them off.

That’ll teach them a lesson!

The Duck-Handled Umbrella of Death

I’ll never get anxious about another author event again.

Because no matter what might go wrong, I can’t come close to the atrocity committed by children’s author Alison Uttley. She wrote the venerable children’s books about the “Little Grey Rabbit.” (Remember Fuzzypeg the Hedgehog?)

Please to enjoy former children’s book publicist Gwyn Headley’s account of organizing Uttley’s appearance at a Children’s Book Fair in Westminster:

[Uttley] was a sour little old woman, with no small talk, and I was clearly merely a minion. But I was quite good at publicity...At half hourly intervals the PA system hollered out ‘ALISON UTTLEY!! LITTLE GREY RABBIT AUTHOR!! HERE AT 12!!’

Teachers were whipping their charges into a state of frenzy…We’d placed Uttley on a curtained daïs, and on the dot of 12 the curtain rose. A howling crowd of excited children stormed the stage.

As Uttley hadn’t bothered to listen to a word I’d told her, she was completely unprepared for this. Dimly she perceived an overwhelming mob running at her and with British pluck she unhesitatingly grabbed her duck-handled umbrella and waded into the attack, felling infants right and left.

The kiddies paused, briefly regrouped, then broke up and ran off, screaming in terror. Uttley strode among them, lashing out freely.

The Meet The Author session was abandoned, and I was asked to escort Miss Uttley out of the fair.

Miss Uttley's newly published diaries show that this behavior was no aberration! (For an explanation, and also to see the source of the Uttley/Grey Rabbit graphic, go to The Guardian.)

Marketing Mistakes!

I've yet to have my author photo appear on one of my books. That's a good thing; it's what people in the biz call “savvy marketing.”

I understand this. As a reader, author photos have played a role in whether or not I've gotten a book. And that brings me to Thrift: Rebirth of a Forgotten Virtue. This book is aimed at drawing attention to “thrift” (as in “saving money”).

Its ad reads, “In an age when corruption and greed have crowded out personal responsibility, Thrift is lively, topical, and immediately useful.”

Fair enough! And what kinds of coupon-cutting traits does author Theodore Malloch's photo reveal?

Oops. Better luck next time! (More details here.)

The Greatest Soccer Goal in the History of the Universe!

At least, I think that's what happens...

Which Is Better: Mysapce or Utube?

According to a poll reported on at the Daily Mirror, the most commonly misspelled word in the United Kingdom is “definitely.”

Other problem words included broccoli, phlegm, indict, bureaucracy, prejudice, and unnecessary.

The pollsters’ conclusion: “Technology is contributing to our inability to spell.” As for popular opinion, among the people who were polled, 42% believed that poor spellers are “thick.”

Along similar lines, USA Today has a story about the most commonly misspelled words in Internet searches. Contenders to the throne include previous winner definitely (aka, definately, definetly, defiantly); convenient (convient, convienent, convinient), nauseous (nautious, nauseas, nausious), and mischievous (mischevious, mischievious).

The leaders among search terms are “Swan Flu,” “Brack Obama,” “Mysapce,” “utube,” and “Gogle.”

Okay, okay, these are at least mildly understandable errors. But “Paperview boxing”?! Puh-leeze. There’s only one explanation: Someone out there on the Internet is a bit thick. (And stop looking at me!)

Brilliance Makes Jon and Kate Smile

I was pleasantly surprised to find that The Pocket Guide to Brilliance was Kristi Turnquist's lead in her "Pop Talk" column in the Oregonian. Many thanks!

Apes, Aliens, Identical Twins, and Revamping

The following comments were reportedly taken from student manuscripts being workshopped at a “major” university. (Questions about their legitimacy should be directed to Tanya Rey at reytanyaATgmail.com.)

—“I love that everybody in this story has the same name, but it was a bit confusing.”

—“Maybe a little less time should be spent describing the Cheetos in this scene.”

—“It’s your story, your voice, your choices, and I don’t want to question them, but why these words?”

—“The jungle images and alien abduction seem to clash a bit here.”

—“You probably don’t need about half of what’s written here.”

—“This character seems more like a retired librarian than a former terrorist.”

—“Is this a typo or are you being experimental?”

—“You talk about pregnant raindrops and chaos and auditory canals and ‘the passing of time’ as ‘an orifice,’ when you could really just be talking about humidity and ears.”

—“Apes, aliens, then an identical twin romance = too much Sci-Fi. (But I do like what it says about the duality of nature.)”

—“The problem is I have all these questions I don’t necessarily want you to answer for me. I raise these questions to let you know that there were questions, and if you had intended me to perceive the answers to any of them, I didn’t.”

Hey, that reminds me that when I was writing The Big Book of Girl Stuff, my sisters were proofing the chapters. I neglected to make clear the value of specific feedback, however, which resulted in this message from an unnamed sibling. (Hi Boom!)

“I'm not trying to be too brutal, but I couldn't sink my teeth into this. There just wasn't anything that stood out and said ‘what a great idea’ or ‘wonderful advice.’ If you revamped it, maybe that would be the best place to start.”

You see the problem. Do I throw the chapter away or just kill myself? But while I initially despaired, it turns out that if you “Select All” in Microsoft Word, and then push the F13 button, it revamps the entire manuscript!

BTW, the comments at the top arrived here via McSweeney’s. (Except for the one about identical twins, which was altered to justify that picture!)

You Know How to Eat a Blog? Just Push It Into Your Mouth Until It's Gone.

I saw the 1947 noirish pot-boiler The Lady from Shanghai recently. It contains the following soft-boiled dialogue between Rita Hayworth (as Rosalie Bannister) and Orson Welles (as Irishman Michael O’Hara).

Rosalie: [What if] I don’t know how to shoot?
O’Hara: It’s easy. You just pull the trigger.

This brought to mind the genuinely hard-boiled dialogue from 1944’s To Have and to Have Not wherein Lauren Bacall elevates Humphrey Bogart’s heart rate:

You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.

To complete the trifecta, I just read here that during a 1939 visit to the U.S., Queen Elizabeth was presented with a hot dog. Unsure of how to proceed, she asked Franklin D. Roosevelt for directions.

Queen Elizabeth: How do you eat it?
FDR: Very simple. Push it into your mouth and keep pushing it until it is all gone.

The queen chose to go with a knife and fork.

Photo of Queen Elizabeth and Eleanor Roosevelt from UPI.

No One Wants to Dance to Tales of Heartbreak and Infidelity

Carrie Brownstein writes a music blog for NPR (“Monitor Mix”) where she mused on wedding songs. I've paraphrased her conclusions below.

1.) People will dance to a song they didn't know, as long as it’s instantly catchy and followed by a universally known and loved song.

2.) A single genre is too esoteric at a wedding.

3.) No one at a wedding wants to be angry or dance to tales of heartbreak and infidelity.

(I would add to this list that with very few exceptions, no wedding playlists should contain songs that are more than five minutes long.)

Anyway, Carrie concluded her entry by asking “What songs should never be played at weddings?” Reader comments did the heavy lifting on Brownstein's posting and here:

—The theme from Star Wars/played as the bride and groom left the church
—“You Are The Woman That I've Always Dreamed Of”/Firefall (but it’s so bad that it’s great, yes?)
—“Yesterday” or “Eleanor Rigby”/the Beatles
—“White Wedding”/Billy Idol (you saw that coming, right?)
—“Creep”/Radiohead
—“It’s Business Time”/Flight of the Conchords
—“Send In The Clowns”/Judy Collins
—“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”/Righteous Brothers
—“These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”/Nancy Sinatra
—“Lyin’ Eyes”/The Eagles
—“The Way We Were”/Barbara Streisand
—“I’m not in Love”/10cc
—“Gold Digger”/Kanye West
—Novelty songs like “The Chicken Dance” (is that its real name?) and “Makin' Whoopee”

I've never heard Paul Simon's “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” at a reception before, but that'd be a most inauspicious choice for the couple's first dance. Oh, and for some reason, “Free Bird” (the live version, natch) is a must-play at all King wedding receptions. As the guitars ratchet up, this transforms the dance floor into a well-attired mosh pit. (I’m not kidding!)

Bicycles Subverted for Selling Cars?!

Hey, if the best way to sell a car is by comparing it to a bicycle, doesn't that market bicycles?

That's What I'm Talking About

Mountain View Middle School is most excellent.

I Did Not Want to Dance...

...but after seeing this guy's moves, there weren't no two ways about it.

Barbarians at the Ticket Office Gates

I know what it is to withstand barbaric crowd behavior at a concert. I have been jostled in Motörhead’s mosh pits. I got a huge wad of gum stuck to my shoe at a Frank Zappa show. And I was once politely heckled at a Black Flag performance. (Apparently, wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a punk-rock event is outré. Who knew?)

But nothing I’d seen prepared me for last night’s Oregon Symphony Orchestra performance with Pink Martini.

A half-dozen flamboyant women of a certain age sat behind us. Their attitudes were brash, their voices, fortissimo.

“Do you remember the last show we saw here?” declaimed one.

“Tom Jones!” responded the Greek chorus. “He was fabulous!”

As their remembrances turned to Welsh virility and underwear flung on stage, I sank into my chair and my soul sank within me.

(But I got better!)

Electricity Changes Everything

This ad ran in LIFE magazine 53 years ago. Its caption reads:

Plenty of electricity can make your home of the future a house of marvels!...

In the future, you’ll be able to flip switches to raise or lower table and work surfaces to any height. Electricity will bring beds out of walls in the evening —then “make” them and fold them into the walls in the morning. The power that controls your home’s climate will even do the dusting.

So I want to know why I still have to make my bed!