As interesting as the first four chapters were, i was beginning to believe that i was going to completely love this book. Section five began to make me doubt.
It was faily hilarious that Dave was paranoid about the babysitter molesting and possibly murdering Toph and eating all their food... for about the first five pages. Then I kind of took Logan's perspective... Point made, move on. Beyond that, (or i should say, during his ramblings about the perverted homicidal sitter) the parts about his friends was good in that it helped us understand Toph better. he grew up around older kids mostly, since his next youngest sibling is thirteen years his senior. While at the party he is not having a good time because he is still worried about Toph. So what does he do? He calls up an old friend and invites her out. When they are totally drunk and trying to have sex on the beach a group of teenagers come around and mess with them. I hope I wasn't the only one that thought Dave was awesome at first for trying to get the wallet back, and then greatly disappointed by how far he took it. He went from heroicly brave for taking on all of them to whiny and mean when he made them walk around with him while threatening them with deportation. AND he didn't even have the wallet in the first place.
A seperate point I would like to make is that he becomes a total jackass in section 6. Throughout the Real World interview he tries to sound like this tragic hero for america, like the obvious choice for the role. At first he did this well, and then he started talking about possibilities for the show, trying to write himself into it. I think that probably pissed MTV off. Who the hell is this kid to try to tell us what kind of show we are making and who we have to cast? Down to the gender and ethnic background. We all know what type of show they are making, but MTV wants to keep their sense of "we know and you don't and we are awesome for doing it." And by plugging his magazine during the interview i'm almost certain they were convinced at that point that it was the only reason he was there. Which is true. The whole first part of the chapter he is making fun of his contributor for wanting to be on the show.
I have to admit though, the stuff about the nude pictures and the captions was interesting. Now we see things like that all the time in magazines and commercials, but I am pretty sure we didn't before this. So it was interesting to see how they were pushign the envelope and changing the way people looked at bodies.
In Section 7, he decides to promote for the magazine by having the guy who IS picked for the show down to see some of his artwork. they pretend not to care about the cameras, but then when the cameras don't show up for the nude photo shoot they are admittedly disappointed. The section about him and Toph at the marina was bringing me back to the original story. They are, I have decided, what I like most about this book. Two bothers, both still children in their own way, living together through tragedy. Enough with the poetic ideals though. I also enjoyed the section about John. Except for all the swearing, i found it both fast paced and timeless. I felt like it was a moment in time that did not change. Through all the searching and swearing, nothing happened. But it was still fast and energetic and interesting. And this is what I liked best about it: "But don't they know? Didn't the dispatcher--- When I come to the part about how we don't know what he took or when...
I liked that finally, I didn't have to read about something twice. That he wasn't ranting or swearing about it all over again.
But yes, i liked the section about the friend attempting suicide, although how he got out of bed and decided to leave mid treatment had me confused since it lasted longer than the other imaginary scenes. But I think that I have convinced myself that it is an allusion to "john" deciding after the fact that he did not want to be in the book, and then he was persuaded to allow dave to use his story.
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