One of my favorite Christmas gifts from last year, by far, was James Lileks’s Gallery of Regrettable Food. By far, this fine novel has provided me with hours of laughter, and has been an interesting coffee table book.
But something dawned on me whilst reading it: I could have written this book. While offering all due respect to James, the book itself is incredibly simplistic and lacking in original material; it’s mostly old cookbook pictures with, say, a three sentence paragraph serving as commentary. That’s it. I could do that.
In fact, why am I not doing that?
The first book I intend to write will be The Daily Ping: A Survey of Jackasses and Oreos. It will consist of screenshots of various Pingers’ comments with one or two lines of commentary. Ryan’s going to do the introduction and accompanying musical soundtrack.
But come on, here. This book isn’t a book. It’s enjoyable, yes – but it’s nothing requiring a fortnight of talent. James happened to have these cookbooks on hand, from his mother, and just added Post-It sound bites to them.
Of course, should I write the Ping book, I’ll have to deal with a few people criticizing me from other sites that are updated daily. I think I can live with that.
Posted in Miscellaneous