WHEN: 12:00pm
WHERE: A Children’s Place

WHEN: 2:00
WHERE: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

11/8 - 3rd Place Books (Lake Forest Park) - 7pm
11/14 - Suburbia Coffee (Kent) - 4pm
11/17 - Gig Harbor Borders Grand Opening - 3pm
11/29 - Parkplace Books (Kirkland) - 6:30pm

So, pick up a copy today! Or order one! And if you already have one, go into a bookstore and tell them you heard about a new sports novel for middle-grade readers, that you can’t remember the name exactly, but you think it might be TOBY WHEELER: EIGHTH GRADE BENCHWARMER. Then, if the bookseller doesn’t have it say, “You’ve never heard of TOBY WHEELER: EIGHTH GRADE BENCHWARMER!?! Make sure your eyes go wide as you clutch the counter to keep from fainting from shock. Every little bit helps!

For now, here is one review from Booklist:

Eighth-grader Toby Wheeler is happy being a “gym-rat” playing pickup basketball games with his friends, so when the newly hired coach suggests he try out for the team, Toby is tempted. For one thing, it might bring him closer to his best friend, JJ, who is already a star. Lately, JJ has been ignoring Toby and treating him like a little kid. So Toby signs up, but the experience is not quite what he had in mind. Instead of being a player, he’s the twelfth man, the benchwarmer. Moreover, his budding relationship with recent arrival Megan becomes bumpy when he finds out the coach is Megan’s dad. This debut novel hits most of the right notes. Only the subplot about Toby’s parents and the conflict between his job in the lumber industry and hers as a conservationist seems unwieldy; otherwise, there’s plenty of basketball and the requisite amount of girl-boy interaction. With so much written about the friction between girl friends, it’s good to have a book that acknowledges that left-out feeling happens to boys, too.

* Vick co-defendant expected to make plea deal
* Nike suspends Vick’s contract; No. 7 jersey pulled
* Big Unit to undergo season-ending back surgery
* Ranger next to Tillman sure shooting was accident
* Evernham admits relationship hurt driver’s career
* Lawyer: Donaghy classmate expects indictment
* Congress wants WWE’s drug-testing documents
* QB Bulger signs 6-year, $65M deal with Rams
* Campus remembers Wake’s Prosser | Dies at 56
* Landis lawyers to defend Vinokourov | Stage 18

Can August 14th come fast enough?

FIRST LIGHT is an adventure, and a mystery. There is plenty that we are not told in this book, which means there is more for us to bring to the story. Thea’s people have quite a bit of history, and to tell it might have taken 1000 pages. I prefer to fill in the holes for myself. All of this means that FIRST LIGHT is built for speed. Yes, it chugs out of the gate, but that’s the genre, baby. When Peter and Thea do meet, I think you’ll be glad we got to know them first. Nicely done Rebecca!

I also read CAN I KEEP MY JERSEY, by Paul Shirley. I was drawn to the book because Paul is a living, breather benchwarmer. He’s played good minutes overseas and in development leagues in the U.S., and ridden some serious pine in the NBA. He earned his stripes as a writer by blogging while he was a reserve player with the Phoenix Suns, dishing about the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of his NBA teammates. As if we didn’t know. Still, in JERSEY, I was hoping for a behind-the-scenes, end-of-the-bench look at life in the NBA. That peep show didn’t come until the end, and was over very quickly. What preceded could have been the travel log of a field rep for John Deere who was working on commission. Crappy hotels, uncertain future, longing for home. It was like Tommy Boy without the bee scene. Really, if the point was that life as a professional basketball player for anyone not playing at the elite level is so unsexy that entire passages need to be devoted to our narrator doing laundry, then mission accomplished. Also, Paul Shirley has adult colic. Sure, he doesn’t not deny that he is a chronic malcontent. But being upfront about it does not excuse it. It does, however, weigh the book down like Barbara Hershey in Hoosiers. To borrow a phrase from Paul’s ESPN buddy, Bill, he was his own wet blanket. But I’m looking the past the author here. Paul Shirley has written some great stuff in his blog and I have to wonder if some of his better material was left out of the book. Why else would a very funny, honest guy with a backstage pass to the NBA be asked to write about washing his pants in a sink in Sioux Falls? We need to see the author’s cut of this book because I think there is more to this story.

I miss the 80’s. Nobody ever took the A-Team seriously, but it was seriously entertaining. There were more shoot outs, car chases, and fist fights in every episode than a season of 24. Ditto Knight Rider, the Fall Guy, the Dukes of Hazzard. The list goes on and on. Nobody writing for those ever won an award for anything, and they didn’t want one. Today? Action television is no fun. Sure, the first two or three seasons of 24 were blow-off-my-own wedding addictive and Lost has had a boat load of Whoa moments, but both shows went off the rails in their second or third years. That’s pretty fast. The reason is pretty plain. The shows are based on brilliant premises, but the premises are constrictive. It isn’t long before we’re wondering how many bad days one guy can have, or how many mishaps can happen on one tropical island? (Unless that’s the whole point, which is what made Gilligan Island endearing and Lost, lost.)

What about characters? Jack Bauer is a very good federal law enforcement officer and this line: “The only reason you’re still conscious is I don’t feel like carrying you” was gold, Jerry, gold. The subtly named John Locke is a piece of work too. But come on! What’s interesting about them compared to Mr. T? Officer Poncherella? KITT? The problem is there’s too much at stake. I care more about the hardworking family on the A-Team being bullied by the local moonshine runners than I do about whether a nuke goes off in downtown LA. At some point, it just becomes too hard to relate. The earlier shows kept their feet on the ground. The resolutions were predictable and convenient, but I bought in to it, because the show and I were both in on the joke. Now, nobody’s laughing.

It seems like two things happened at about the same time. A couple of good action/drama shows asked us to take them seriously. Law & Order and Homicide come to mind. (Wise Guy does not.) Simultaneously, the shows that didn’t ask to be taken seriously - Walker Texas Ranger - weren’t very good.

Ironically, I think sitcoms went in the opposite direction - from more to serious to more irreverent. EVERY 80’s sitcom had a homeless person at Christmas episode, an alcoholic uncle episode, a main character taking drug pills episode, and a very special will she or won’t she episode. Did you ever see a very special episode of Seinfeld? Or Two and a Half Men?

Of course, the true stars of the shows were not men, but vehicles. The motorcycles on CHiPs. B.A’s van. KITT. The Fall Guy’s Pick up. The General Lee. Magnum’s Ferrari. Can you name the vehicle of one character on television today? The only current iconic mode of transportation is House’s cane. When I watched Knight Rider, I didn’t want to be Michael Knight, I just wanted his car. When I watch Heroes… oh, who am I kidding, I’d stay up all night for a Third Watch marathon before I watched Heroes. The only memorable 80’s show not defined by a vehicle was MacGyver, but that’s it.

The challenge is, if a show is going to demand to be taken seriously, it has to earn it. And right now, there is only one show that accomplishes that. The Wire. I only started watching recently, and it changed the way I evaluate every other show I have ever seen. In comparison, 24 looks like amateur hour. Actually, the last two seasons of 24 were so awful Spy Kids 2 makes it looks like amateur hour. So why don’t I just change the channel? Because when something was good once, its hard to stop hoping it will be good again. (See: SNL). But I mean it about the Wire. It’s on a different level than everything else. The writing, the characters, the plotting. (Sopranos fans, I don’t know what to say to you because I haven’t been converted. We’ll have to agree to disagree.)

1) When choosing a size, remember that Slurpees are bound by diminishing returns. A melted Slurpee is just a warm, flat, syrupy coke. In hot weather, get a small Slurpee, then go back for another small Slurpee. If the weather is mild, go big.
2) The domed lid goes on before the pour.
3) Flavors named after a color or a summer blockbuster are not good; cola with a pull of cherry is.
4) The 7-11’s in Bangkok, Thailand are perfectly distributed so that a tourist who buys a 28oz Slurpee at one location will be ready for the next one just as the next location appears.
5) If you’re really thirsty, but kind of broke, put your Slurpee in a 64oz Big Gulp cup.

So to recap:

April 11: Jack William Heldring is born
June 2: Slurpee is purchased, summer begins
August 14: Toby Wheeler: Eighth Grade Benchwarmer goes on sale at a bookstore near you