Full Mental Jacket #5: Are Those Kids Yours?

If not for its subtitle, "American Families With Children Adopted from Other Countries," the title "Are Those Kids Yours?" could have gone in several different directions. Here are some of the subtitles I would not have been surprised to see on this book:

"A Bobbsey Twins Mystery"

"The Unauthorized Biography of Brangelina"

"A Journal of Three Years Raising Goats in Northern Scotland"

"My Life as a Child Molester"

"...And Other Questions Fathers With Creepy Mustaches Get Asked, by Dave Barry"

It's just so wonderfully blunt, I can't stand it.

Full Mental Jacket #4: The Super Cops

I was tempted to open -- and actually read -- The Super Cops, billed as "the true story of the cops called Batman & Robin," on more than one occasion. However, I was fairly positive that no matter how much they tried to make the cover look like a comic book, it would probably be fairly straightforward 1970s cop stories, none of which were interesting enough to get made into a movie starring Jackie Chan. Also, I'm pretty sure that Robin never had such a spectacular mustache.
The book did its best, though, even going so far as to make the back cover a collage of photos of the "Super Cops" in action, climbing fire escapes and jumping from rooftops, in what looks like a sequence straight out of the Beastie Boys' music video for "Sabotage." However, the publishers underestimated how little love I actually have for the Beastie Boys, as un-American as that may sound. In fact, "Sabotage" is the only thing they've ever done that I really enjoy -- plus, my friends used to call my 1981 Cadillac "the Sabotagemobile" because it looked like it belonged in that video. If they really wanted to get me, they would have showed the Super Cops climbing Bat-ropes up the side of a fake building, possibly with Sammy Davis Jr. peeking out the window in disbelief.

Full Mental Jacket #3: Foundations of Experimental Research

In Robert Plutchik's seminal work, "Foundations of Experimental Research," he discusses several important case studies that influenced the course of experimental research in the 1980s. One of the most important was a case in which a test subject was placed in a completely dark labyrinth with no food or water, but was told that he could find food (cherries, strawberries, bananas, pretzels) in the four corners of the maze. While he sought out these food items, four lab assistants in photoluminescent cloaks -- nicknamed "ghosts" -- were released into the labyrinth with orders to chase the subject down, thereby triggering both panic and alarm in the subject. However, the "ghosts" were ordered to back off whenever the subject ate anything. The ultimate point of the test was to prove that by triggering a "panic/alarm combination," the researchers could cause the test subject to eat more pretzels, and therefore gain weight. The "PAC-Man" tests never proved anything, but later versions of the test performed with female test subjects yielded much more tangible results.

Full Mental Jacket #2: Clown

I guess I'd always thought that professional clowns delusionally believed themselves to be entertainers of children, who always put a smile on their faces. If the cover (and back cover) of Emmett Kelly's autobiography is any indication, Mr. Kelly -- the godfather of circus clowns -- knew exactly what he was: an unholy monster. Clown: My Life in Tatters and Smiles shows Kelly in full-on sad hobo clown mode on the front cover, then again on the back, where he's terrifying the crap out of a small child. He even seems bored with the whole scenario, as if it's happened to him a thousand times before, and the screams of a boy are only the background noise to the career path he's chosen.


Now, I couldn't bring myself to read the autobiography of a frightener of children, but I imagine this book is required reading in clown college courses across America. But after looking at the back cover -- or, let's be honest, the front -- who in their right mind would choose to become a clown? Someone who hates children and wants to see them miserable? If so, I think that might explain the continuing existence of a clown industry, and it might be something that the police want to look into. That is, if they aren't profiling clowns for all serial killings and kidnappings already.

Full Mental Jacket #1: A Tale of Two Vikings

So one of the things I wanted to do on this blog was show off some books jackets from my collection of oddly titled, poorly illustrated or otherwise unintentionally hilarious book jackets. This week, I thought I'd start off with…A TALE OF TWO VIKINGS!

Aside from the book's obvious homage to Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" (I have no idea if the story is similar -- I have read neither), I just think it's hysterical what passes for a Viking on a romance novel cover these days. Granted, an actual, realistic Viking is probably not what women want to see when they're thinking about a nice, candlelight dinner, but if that's the case, why write about Vikings in the first place? The fact that they gave him black, pleated pants and a gold arm bracelet and called it a day is kind of insulting to Vikings. The best part about this book may be the fact that the two vikings in question are actually identical Viking twins, which is why THE EXACT SAME NON-VIKING DUDE APPEARS ON THE BACK COVER!

The summary on the back tries to draw comparisons between Vikings and today's men by saying that even Vikings won't pull over their longship and ask for directions. (I guess it's common knowledge that Vikings were always getting lost, which explains how they found America.) I will admit to not pulling over to ask directions, but unlike Toste and Vagn Ivarsson, I didn't "ride my first horse at the age of seven, and my first maid during my thirteenth summer." As the tagline on the front cover -- and the Saga of Eric the Red, if I'm not mistaken -- says, "Double the sizzle, twice the fun!"