“What Kind of Book Is It?”

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Pigeons in holes (thanks, Wikimedia!)

One of the hardest — yet most important — questions an author often has to answer about his work is the one asked by this entry’s title.

Now, it’s not hard at all to answer, for many authors and even more books. When you walk into Borders or Barnes & Noble, when you browse Amazon, it’s all organized by “type”: romance along this aisle, SF over there, “literature” along the walls, and so on. The problem is that it’s these classifications which determine “what kind of book” a given title is — not the other way around.

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The Smell of Pages Burning in the Morning

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Not really. But the new Book Roast site (also linked permanently over there at the right, under the Je Ne Sais Quoi… category) promises to be not only a generous labor of love, but an audacious experiment in book and author publicity.

Here’s the idea: Each week, for five days Every day during the last week of each month, one author a day will post an excerpt from his/her recent book:

…followed by three questions loosely related to the passage. Some questions are silly, others are straightforward and the rest are plain crunchy. For dessert, the author picks the winner who answers the most questions correctly – or the most creatively.

The winner then will receive a copy of the book in question.

(It’s not spelled out, as far as I can tell, but the answers provided by site visitors will presumably be posted in the comments for each excerpt.)

They bill this as a contest, and so it is. But it’s also a very cool way for authors and readers to cross paths and interact… and (not incidentally) help the authors get much-needed exposure.

The first go-round begins Monday, June 23, with a “roast” of Bernita Harris‘s Weirdly.

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Package Design Slogans

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One of my little… well, I hesitate to call it a fetish. Doesn’t have the same level of intensity. (Er, or so I imagine.)… Anyway, one of my almost unconscious preoccupations is to notice product packages. All kinds of packages: breakfast foods; video games; aspirin bottles; gift wrap; so on and so forth.

Of course the actual physical structure is often ingenious, all the Tab As and Slot Bs and spot-gluing. It boggles, simply boggles that someone was clever enough to create some of these things.

But aside from the structure of packages — the way the cardboard or plastic is folded, crimped, cut, and stamped — what interests me is the text printed thereon, by which I mean the non-functional text. Not the instructions. Not the FDA and FTC warnings and notices. Rather, I mean the product names (sometimes) and the flat-out advertising copy which graces the packages.

For instance, there’s the following. (Note that it’s trademarked, by the way.) Any guesses what product’s packaging might include such inspiring verbiage?

Mystery product slogan: 'Dream - Imagine - Create'

A hint for those of you who might be telling yourselves something like I know I’ve seen this somewhere…

Mystery product slogan - hint

Update, 6/19/2008 10:12 am: If you really really need to know the answer to this mystery, see the full package (with some product) here. And if you’re still not sure what that is, go to the manufacturer’s home page. Ponder, then, the larger mystery of the mystery slogan’s… umm… grandiosity?

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Mr. Excitement

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So, The Missus indulged herself by going on a beach mini-weekend with a girlfriend.

Of course I pounced on the opportunity for a hedonistic erstwhile-bachelor weekend of my own.

And before you get your collective backs up (or, alternatively, let your collective imagination run riot): no, I didn’t do anything that a stereotypical bachelor does. Even an erstwhile stereotypical bachelor. Here’s how I spent the last couple days:

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The Boy Hears Himself (Part 1)

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A Recordio reel-to-reel recorderDuring an… odd few years in my younger life, my friend Dean and I became absorbed in experiments involving a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The brand name which Dean and I both “owned,” in those days when electronics were still manufactured domestically, was “Recordio.” (And yes, all right: we didn’t own them; our fathers did.)

What “odd few years” would these have been? I am pretty sure we first started doing this at around age 12. And — because of some of the “work” we did, particularly our parodies of popular TV shows — I know we must have continued at least to around age 15 or 16.

These experiments revolved around a fictional radio station, call letters CBX. Most CBX productions were ad-libbed “newscasts,” frequently starring the same two people: anchorman “Don Gurky” (played by Dean) and roving reporter “Quentin Frammistan” (guess who). I don’t have any idea how Dean came up with his character’s name; I know where Quentin Frammistan came from, though. The first name came from Quentin Reynolds (author of a series of Landmark Books — history for kids — whom I frequently cited back then as “my favorite author”); the word “frammistan,” which meant God only knows what, often appeared in the text of MAD Magazine.

In addition, two other friends put in occasional appearances. Alan’s character, Harry Two-Seven, had been so named by Dean for (I’m sure) no particular reason. Like Quentin, Harry was (most often) a field reporter; unlike Quentin, Harry tended to get caught up in situations of an embarrassing nature — something like Biff, on the Letterman show.

The other friend came along some time after we’d first started the “station” — yes, CBX endured for more than a few weeks — when we met him later in high school. His name was Tom, and his character’s name was Colonel Tom. Quite independently of us — he lived in the next town, which until we got to high school might as well have been the next planet — Tom had had his own imaginary radio station for a while. During the waning months of both stations’ life cycles, we swapped personnel every now and then.

In addition to the newscasts, CBX occasionally produced Special Events, such as (again, ad-libbed) parodies of Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. From the start, many of these Special Events featured a, umm, well, I guess you could call it a musical comedy troupe with the remarkably unembarrassed name “The Peenie Players.”

Hey, gimme a break: we had barely hit puberty yet. We certainly hadn’t heard of Dr. Freud. No, we chose the name strictly for its sound: nasal and plosive. And the reason this sound was important in the name was that it was important in the Peenie Players’ body of work, which consisted entirely of speeded-up versions (a la David Seville and The Chipmunks) of familiar songs and works of literature. (The latter ceased to be considered literature after the Peenies were through with them.)

Imagine my surprise and, well, delight (?) when a CD of some Peenie Players recordings came to me — delivered (I think) by my brother, from Dean.

More, including some samples, below.

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Signature Samuel L.

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Last night The Missus and I watched 1408 on DVD. If you’re not familiar with the film’s plot — or that of the Stephen King story on which it’s based — and don’t want to follow that link to the corresponding IMDB page, here are the tagline and plot summary from there:

Tagline: The Dolphin Hotel invites you to stay in any of its stunning rooms. Except one.
Plot: A man who specializes in debunking paranormal occurrences checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel. Soon after settling in, he confronts genuine terror.

The man in question, one Michael Enslin, played by John Cusack, is determined to stay in the room over the objections of the hotel manager, Gerald Olin — played by Samuel L. Jackson. Olin says although he does a good job as a hotel manager, he has no training as a coroner and is tired of cleaning up the “mess” which inevitably results when people stay in 1408. So he no longer books people into that room.

Enslin doesn’t get it and requests more details. What sort of spook, spirit, ghost, long-legged beastie is supposed to be responsible for all the death and destruction?

“You misunderstand me,” says Olin, “I didn’t say there was a spirit or ghost.” It’s the room itself, he insists. And then, in classic Samuel L. Jackson form, he sums up: “It’s an evil f*cking room.”

I noted the line at the time but didn’t think much more about it until watching a couple of the “special features,” which in this case were mini-documentaries (“webisodes,” for cripe’s sake) on the making of the movie. The scene is excerpted in both of these featurettes…

…but in both, what Jackson says is, “It’s an evil room.” No F-word at all.

It does make one wonder if the scene was re-shot in neutered form for release in the mini-docs. That wasn’t my first thought, though. I actually prefer to think that the re-shooting took place for the scene as it appeared in the final version. I picture a handful of screenwriters sitting around in a bar, congratulating one another on the great job they did with the script. (They didn’t do a great job, but in the post-production afterglow, it’s easy to imagine, they may have.) Suddenly one of them stops in mid-sentence and slaps himself in the forehead.

“What?” they all ask him.

“I just realized,” he says, “we’ve got Samuel L. Jackson in a key role… and he never once says ‘f*ck’! We can’t do that!”

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