Monday, February 11, 2013

King of Perverts and the Nasty Boys

Uh, Brian. You do know what kind of blog this is right?

Relax, I just want to show you some pictures I took...

I went to the used book store the other day with the daughter and bought this.









I grabbed it because of the dated cover and because it looked like it could be a fun crime fiction book. Two things.

The first is that the first page tells about the characters. You don't see that too often in crime fiction books so that's kind of cool.



The second is that this was a TV show. I have no memory of this show at all. Does anyone remember this show? You can see a preview of the show here (embedding is disabled on this video). I'm sure it's goofy as hell but I'd love to watch this.

Now on to a book.

Poor Dennis. He’s a regular sort of guy who’s recently been dealt a shitty hand by life: he lost his job, his wife hates him and wants a divorce, and it turns out she was also cheating on him as well. Now he’s living on his brother’s couch. Holy fuck, that sucks. Dennis can’t imagine things could get much worse, and that’s why he jumped at the opportunity to take part in a new reality game show: a “sexcathlon” where the first person to achieve 10 increasingly difficult and perverted sexual challenges wins a million dollars and is crowned King of the Perverts. Dennis doesn’t care about the title, he just wants the money, but now he’s not sure he can make it to the end. Enduring a golden shower and following through with an Abe Lincoln are hard enough, but he’s losing his nerve and fears what act of perversion will come next. He’d like to drop out, but his Russian bear of a cameraman, Mongo, has other plans for him and that million dollar prize, and Dennis has to decide which is worse: winning the King of the Perverts, or losing it.
After reading the synopsis I was unsure. It’s simple for a premise like to go awry. So I downloaded a sample to my Kindle and found the tone lighter then I expected. It was also laced with a crude black humor resulting in laugh out moments.

That was enough for me to take a chance on the rest of the book. And I’m glad I did.

Yes, this is a vulgar book and is not for everyone. But it’s also surprisingly warm and winds up as a love story. There is also a biting commentary on the cynicism of reality TV, not the least of which is because it isn't hard to imagine a show like this in real life. One of the sex challenges is down right laugh out loud funny, you wouldn't ever think you would laugh at something like this but clearly Lowe has a great comedic touch.

Feeling adventurous? Give this one a try.


1 comment:

Jack Badelaire said...

I remember the Nasty Boys TV show, although I was just a kid back then and I'm not sure how much of the series I actually remember. The idea of a secret SWAT-like team of cops who are a mystery to the rest of the force, to protect them from all the other crooked cops, is actually a pretty awesome concept.

Honestly, this would be a pretty awesome rebooted TV series, a sort of Untouchables meets The Shield...hmmm. DIBS.