Several folks I know have told me that they find blogger
Tyler Tarver hilarious. Until I started writing this post, I had never visited his site, but a quick peak told me that he has been posting regularly now for almost two years. His first published work,
Words and Sentences, is a sort of compendium of his blog posts. Given that I like to laugh every once in a while, I thought I would give this book a chance and picked up a copy. Here are a few observations from my reading.
- This author likely got a lot of laughs in high school from his classmates. This probably emboldened him to rise into the role of class clown. Now in his mid-20's, he has shown no signs of maturing in his sense of humor.
- Mr. Tarver clearly has a rather high opinion of his own work. He loves to tell you every other paragraph just how clever he thinks he is.
- The author's approach is to throw everything that he has at the wall and hope that something, anything sticks.
- While I sincerely appreciate his enthusiasm, and likely his style helps him in his job as a high school teacher, this book is the very epitome of sophomoric dreck. It is cloying in its inanity from start to finish.
- I have a shelf full of Dave Barry humor books and have thoroughly enjoyed each of them. Dave Barry's writing can sometimes be inane, but he pulls it off successfully because he knows when to ease off the reins and employ a subtle touch or let an anecdote tell itself without all the "wink wink, nudge nudge" overbearing ferocity of a young Howie Mandel on crack.
- Looking at Mr. Tarver's blog site, he clearly has some funny concepts and has lots of funny photos and randoms bits of silliness. I think Mr. Tarver's work is likely much more easily swallowed, and perhaps even appreciated, in much, much smaller doses.
I gave this work every possible opportunity to show me something, anything. I read every word and every sentence, but there is just so little here that connects with my funny bone. Of course, and this may be the key, I am pretty much a fossil and know nothing about anything. So, don't take my opinion as anything more than my opinion.
Several folks I know have told me that they find blogger Tyler Tarver hilarious. Until I started writing this post, I had never visited his site, but a quick peak told me that he has been posting regularly now for almost two years. His first published work, Words and Sentences, is a sort of compendium of his blog posts. Given that I like to laugh every once in a while, I thought I would give this book a chance and picked up a copy. Here are a few observations from my reading.
