Review: We've Got Looners!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 5, 2014
When I was a teenager, fresh out of high school, I helped my dad replace septic tanks one summer. I'm well versed in other people's (expletive deleted). I've shoveled out leach fields while standing knee deep in it. I've seen tampons as big around as basketballs. I lived in a small town, so all the neighbors would come over to watch. They wanted to see other people's . . . stuff, too.For some reason, when I picked up this book I thought it was going to be about kleptomaniacs. I thought people were going to steal a bunch of $#!T from other people.Instead, it was about me. It was about clowns cleaning up other people's excrement. And I, who shoveled poop for a summer, got schooled on excremental terminology. I learned about the "downtown brown." I have heard about cleveland steamers, dutch ovens, upper deckers, and all that jazz. But downtown brown was new to me. That alone made the book worth it for this reader, but let me take further measures to persuade you to read this book.There are looners!For me that'd be enough to draw me into the digital folds of this book, but there's moreLike a murderous Fred Savage.On a serious note, while this book is humorous (construing guys riding 10-speed bikes adorned with christmas lights as menacing, for example) there's also something serious going on under the surface. When it comes right down to it, we're all clowns dealing with other people's crap. While a realization like that would normally be pretty depressing, and such a disposition is usually considered bleak, Hunt masks it with enough humor so that it isn't quite as painful as such a realization should be. After all, as my mother used to say, you only have two options. Either you laugh at life or cry. There's really no middle ground. But laughter can help make bleak reality seem a little less painful.Somehow, this book finds the middle ground. The bleak reality is completely metaphorical so as to spare you the pain of reality. But it's there. Under the surface it is there, waiting for you.And that's how a good book should be. It should be fun throughout the entire read, then slap you with rubber clown shoe after you read it.Other People's ____ hurts so good after the fact. But that's only if you really want it to hurt. It will love you however you choose upon reading. And you can take that to the bank.