What do you call a group of cats? A clowder. That’s so weird.

For the Snook: Squirrel Fishing. There was a squirrel fishing bit on that Japanese betting show Banzai a few years back that Snookums still reminisces about. I’ve never seen him laugh so hard.

When I was 15, I read The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. I absolutely loved it. It was a fantasy with a princess and a dragon and magicians and secrets and I wished more than anything that I had written it. So I spent, like, a week plotting my own fantasy and inventing characters. There was a princess… and a dragon… and some magicians… You see where this is going. Eventually I realized that all I was doing was rewriting McKinley with different names. It wasn’t original and it wasn’t interesting. I decided imitation wasn’t the sincerest form of flattery and gave up the effort.

Christopher Paolini didn’t. He’s a weird home-schooled teenager “genius” who’s written this year’s pseudo-Harry Potter book of choice (according to the publishing industry, anyway). It’s called Eragon. It’s been getting a fair bit of hype so I picked up a copy last weekend. I regretted it as soon as I got home. There’s a gushing quote from Anne McCaffrey on the back! (I’ve never been able to get through a single Dragonriders of Pern book so her recommendation doesn’t exactly carry a lot of weight with me.)

It only got worse once I cracked it open. The first problem is the kid’s writing style. You can read some for yourself here. He actually says: “In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.” *snort* In practice, as far as I can tell this involves using lots of adjectives. Mountains are “forbiddingly solemn”, forests are “thickly treacherous”, and the danger is always “intensely palpable”. Once you get past the affected style, the story itself isn’t that bad… as long as you don’t mind rolling your eyes at the obvious influences. It’s like he put the Pern books, a complete set of Lord of the Rings, a dog-eared copy of Beowulf, and the shooting script of Star Wars into a blender and this is what popped out. He even prefaces the book with a map that might as well be Middle Earth. The story is full of elves, monsters, dwarves, men, dragons, men who ride dragons, etc. There’s no humour and no originality, other than in the combining of all these things. I keep waiting for hobbits to show up.

Am I being too harsh? I’m only halfway through, so maybe it gets better towards the end. Right now I’m just plugging along out of curiosity and duty. I dunno, maybe I’m just jealous that nobody ever offered to publish my derivative crap. At any rate, I can’t exactly recommend this one to the Potter fans yet.

1. What was your first grade teacher’s name?
Mrs. Weir. As in WeirD. She was this really scary mean old lady. I remember that one little boy had to transfer into our class from the other first grade class, and she made him stand up at the front of the room and admit that the reason he got transferred was because the other teacher couldn’t teach him to read. She also tied the class bully to his chair once with a jump rope because he wouldn’t stay seated. Another time she took him out in the hall to paddle him and she called all the other teachers to come out and watch. She was scary. The only good thing about her was that her ancient husband was a Shriner so the whole first grade got to go to the Shrine Circus for free.

2. What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?
I loved Saturday morning cartoons. Mom would set out my bowl of cereal the night before and leave me a cup of milk and a baby orange juice in the fridge. (Remember those orange juices? In the little plastic containers with the foil lids? I miss those.) I’d get up at 6 a.m. and sit there for, like, five hours. My favorites were the Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes show, the Smurfs, and Garfield and Friends. I also think I’ve seen every episode created of Muppet Babies. I wasn’t a fan of those weird grown-up shows like Kid Video and Dungeons & Dragons. They were just a little too surreal for me.

3. What was the name of your very first best friend?
Hmm. I haven’t had a lot of “best friends,” but I think my first one was Annie Fleck. We’d sit up all night playing with her huge Barbie collection (she even had Jem and the Holograms!) and then we’d play Nintendo Track & Field (on the cool running mat) and listen to Tiffany and prank call boys in our class. Her Mom was a manager at Dairy Queen so she was always bringing home prototype snacks, like cherry-flavored Dilly Bars. We’d swim in the lake and ice skate on it in wintertime and host awesome slumber parties. She was fun. I haven’t talked to her in years. We drifted apart after I changed schools in junior high.

4. What was your favorite breakfast cereal?
Whichever sugar-laden nutrient-free novelty one Mom wouldn’t buy us. Once I got a little older and my tastes settled down, I’d choose Golden Grahams every time.

5. What was your favorite thing to do after school?
Since our parents didn’t get off work til later, we all ended up at a local babysitter’s every afternoon. Luckily there was a playground in the field behind her place, so if it was warm we’d play out there. In the winter it was mostly TV. (That’s where my “Days of Our Lives” addiction started, to tell you the truth.)