Life lessons from losers (book review of a FReeper's book)

Go ahead and laugh at the offbeat stories that lighten up our daily news: the thief who gets caught in the air vent, the helicopter patrol that stops for doughnuts, the man who treats his head lice with gasoline, then dries his hair in front of a wood stove.

Pat Reeder thinks so. In a decade of making a living by chronicling humankind's folly, the Dallas comedy writer has become something of an expert on screw-ups big and small.

That insight has convinced him that cautionary tales can be as useful as the most serious self-help volume or business tome.

"Mistakes are the easiest thing to learn from, but only if you learn from other people's mistakes," Mr. Reeder says. "Nobody ever sees themselves."

A company called Napa Naturals hit the market in 1984 with cans of pure fruit juice with absolutely no preservatives. The product broke sales records in the winter and spring. Then summer came, the non-preserved juice started fermenting – and literally exploded off the shelves.

Two men in Sacramento, Calif., had successfully robbed a few banks. They were caught on their last job when one man went in for an unauthorized withdrawal and his partner thought he had enough time to take the getaway car through the car wash across the street.

The transit authority in Merseyside, England, spent $10 million on 70 new buses. Turned out that they were exactly 11/2 inches too wide to fit through the town's toll booths, which was discovered when the buses started running.

A state bar association presented a Fogginess Award for a legal brief that began, "Non-contingent, conceptual, semantic connectedness is an absolutely necessary condition for sameness of meaning."

A fellow in El Paso was being escorted out of a bar for being intoxicated and belligerent. To better express himself, he reached into his pocket to pull out a gun. But he used his prosthetic arm instead of his real one, and the heavy weapon pulled the prosthesis right off. He went to jail.

A fellow in Florida on the lam for cashing $200,000 in bad checks taunted police by sending them a video in which he declared, "Now you know what I look like! Catch me if you can!" Officers went to his mother's house and arrested him.

A couple in Massachusetts had a cable access show in which they displayed stray cats for adoption. One day they accidentally left the tape rolling for three extra minutes, during which the man screamed profanity at a dozen kittens who wouldn't hold still. Cat lovers weren't amused.

A miracle healer in Hong Kong spent her life savings to go to Chile and heal the hole in the ozone layer by staring at the sun seven hours a day for 49 days. The only changes occurred in her retinas.

School officials in Georgia suspended an 11-year-old girl for 10 days for bringing a chain to school. The flimsy 10-inch chain connected her Tweety Bird wallet to her pants.

He hopes to prove it with his new book, which has a title that super-motivators Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins aren't likely to use: Nine Hallmarks of Highly Incompetent Losers.

"The same mistakes are made by dumb criminals and by great corporations," he says. "The only difference is the scale of the catastrophe."

Mr. Reeder, a Dallas native, says his fondness for bloopers started in childhood. Later in life he held jobs in radio ranging from DJ to producer to coffeepot-washer, and spent a few misguided years in corporate marketing.

With his old roommate from North Texas State, George Gimarc, he wrote Hollywood Hi-Fi, a book that unearthed and made fun of many amazingly awful recordings by celebrities who should have known better. Mr. Gimarc, by the way, still inflicts songs by the likes of Bette Davis, William Shatner, Farrah Fawcett and Jack Webb on the public every Saturday night on KRLD-AM (1080).

"We're planning a sequel," Mr. Reeder warns. "It's amazing how much of this stuff is out there."

In the late 1980s, Mr. Reeder wrote for Morning Punch, a Dallas-based joke-writing team that faxed funny material to radio DJs every day. He wound up marrying one of his collaborators, Laura Ainsworth, and in 1991 they set up their own service, The Comedy Wire.

"Basically, we read the news all day long, then we write jokes about it all night," Mr. Reeder says. "Somehow we send out five full pages of material by 4 a.m."

The big targets are usually obvious: Clinton, O.J., Michael Jackson, Britney Spears. Ferreting out the insignificant-yet-ridiculous news of the day to lampoon is a bigger challenge.

Mr. Reeder won't reveal all his secrets, but acknowledges that the boom in weird-news compilations on the Internet has made life easier. Nowadays, when Romania opens a Dracula Land theme park or a high school wrestling coach bites the head off a live sparrow to inspire his team, word gets around.

"Over the course of years of combing through stories of dumb criminals, stupid decisions and general idiocy and failure, you start to see the same themes pop up over and over again," Mr. Reeder says. "I realized I have a huge backlog of material that I could use to illustrate basic truths."

So the hallmarks fell into place, from Never Plan Ahead to Lose Sight of Your Goal to Call Undue Attention to Yourself.

Just as business schools scrutinize case studies of real companies, Mr. Reeder has plenty of true-life examples to bolster every point. With a bit more attention to detail, for example, the convenience store clerk who robbed his own store after taping over the surveillance cameras might not have used transparent tape.

Had they focused on communicating more clearly, Coors might not have tried to sell beer in Spain with a slogan that translates as "turn it loose" – which in local slang also means "get diarrhea."

If that fast-food cook had smoked only legal substances, it might not have seemed really, really funny to garnish the police officer's burrito with pot.

"I'm only limited by the ways in which people around the world find ways to screw up, which means I'm unlimited," he says.

Lest anyone think his maxims are only reflected in petty crooks, small-scale blunders and folks with low IQs, Mr. Reeder is happy to wax poetic about New Coke, the XFL and most any dot-com you can name.

"Everybody loves the dumb criminal stories," he says. "But as every woman knows, if you leave a guy alone for a while he'll do something dumb. So if you get a bunch of guys together to form a big corporation, they couldn't possibly do anything dumb, right?"

Mr. Reeder misses no opportunity for a joke, but he also has some of the same impetus as the motivational gurus who fill business and self-help bookshelves.

"People seem so hellbent on making the same mistakes," he says. "I figured I'd get more information across if I wrap it in a candy-coating of humor."

For now, Nine Hallmarks of Highly Incompetent Losers is being sold only through Mr. Reeder's Web site, www.comedy-wire.com ($10, plus $2 for shipping and handling).

"The way this business works, I can sell it cheaper and make more money doing it myself," he says.

He also has started dabbling on the lecture circuit, hoping to succeed where he says others have failed.

"If all those seminars worked, we should be up to our necks in competence," he says. "Are you surrounded by competence?"

The people who book those seminars might not be convinced yet, but Mr. Reeder is sure that preaching the gospel of failure gives him a clear advantage.

"I'll show you how to become an incompetent loser," he promises. "Then, like most people who attend lectures, you can go out and do the exact opposite of what you've heard."

Way to go, Pat. By the title, I thought it was going to be about RATS and their minions on loser messageboards.

Outstanding review ... and a good approach with the book and seminars.

I'll have to go to the site and get the book. Will enjoy the material, ill enjoy the humor and laughs, and will support another FReeper all at the same time.

BUMP

he reached into his pocket to pull out a gun. But he used his prosthetic arm instead of his real one, and the heavy weapon pulled the prosthesis right off.

Damm I hate when that happens

Thanks for posting this article. I own the Hollywood Hi-Fi book, and it's hilarious. I look forward to reading the authors' take on losers.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.