KING DORK - FRANK PORTMAN

King Dork - Glossary

Che Guevara (chee goo-ey-VAH-ra): a Latin American revolutionary famous for his sexiness and hip t-shirts. A cross between Elvis and Charles Manson. An inexplicably adored Holden Caulfield for the political-minded.

King Dork - Glossary

Bob Dylan (BAY-bee ZIM-er-mn): there was a time in my life when I fervently wanted to be Bob Dylan. Then I realized that practically everyobody else in the world wanted to be Bob Dylan, too, and that if we all got our wish, being Bob Dylan would be so common that it would be completely meaningless to be Bob Dylan, even for the actual, original Bob Dylan, and the world would essentially end up exactly the same as it was before. The alpha Bob Dylans would beat up the less alpha Bob Dylans, the female Bob Dylans would confuse the hell out of the male Bob Dylans, the teacher Bob Dylans would make the student Bob Dylans read The Catcher in the Rye, the parent Bob Dylans would call continual inane family discussions with the kid Bob Dylans, and the sadistic, psychotic structure of the universe would be more or less preserved. Nature is a bitch.

King Dork - Glossary

The Catcher in the Rye  (KAT-sha-rin R'lyeh): don't fight it. Relax. Clear your mind and let the magic take hold of you. You're floating, floating on air. Take the book. Go on, take it. You know you want to. That's it. Nice and slow. Isn't it so much easier this way? One of us, one of us, one of us...

King Dork - Glossary

Black Sabbath (BLAY-ack suh-BAWTH): pentagrams, inverted crosses, capes, tights, drugs, de-tuned guitars, unlimited recording budgets--what could go wrong? The eighteenth-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

King Dork - Pg 323

   In the end, though, the attempt to save the world by forcing people to read The Catcher in the Rye and dressing casually and supporting public television and putting bumper stickers on Volvos and eating only weird expensive food and separating your cans and bottles and doing tai chi and going to the farmer's market and pronouncing Spanish worlds with a cartoon-character accent and calling actresses actors and making up your own religion and so forth--well, the world refused to be saved that way.

King Dork - Pg 318

   Now, Sam Hellerman had said I was "hung up on" Matthew 3:9-11, and he wasn't wrong, though it took a lot of thinking before I figured out why. It wasn't only because the passage kind of creeped me out and kept popping up. And it wasn't only because the brood of vipers kept reminding me of Rye Hell and the Catcher cult. I think it was also because it was something real, a piece of a book people had been reading for thousands of years, a part of the world that existed independently from any of our conjectures. I was because my dad had probably read that quote, probably thought about it, probably wondered, as I had done, what it meant and how it applied to his life and the world. And he had read The Seven Storey Mountain and may have wondered why the SSM guy had chosen it for his epigraph. In a way, it put my dad in a picture made up of things that weren't entirely imaginary or theoretical. It allowed me to imagine myself in his place in the past. And those opportunities were pretty rare.

King Dork - Pg 318

   In the end, I didn't want my relationship with my dad to be about Mr. Teone, or substitution ciphers, or broods of vipers, or pornography, or police corruption, or any of that stuff. And in reality, it wasn't about any of those things, though it's easy to forget that when you're trying to solve codes and piece together an explanation out of scraps of paper and notes in the margins of books. I'm not a good detective, and I don't even really want to be one. The only part of it that matters is that I miss my dad and wish he weren't dead. And that I love making out with Celeste Fletcher and hope to be able to do it again one day. Family values and ramoning. That's reality.

King Dork - Pg 302

   In movies and books there's this thing called a character arc, where the main guy is supposed to change an grow and become a better person and learn something about himself. Essentially, there's supposed to be this part right at the end where he says: "And as for me, well, I learned the most valuable lesson of all." Now, if I were the main guy in a movie, I'd have the most retarded character arc anyone ever heard of. I didn't learn anything. What's the opposite of learning something? I mean, I knew stuff at the beginning that I don't know anymore. Bits of my life simply disappeared. I'm more confused than I ever was before, and that's really saying something.

King Dork - Pg 246

   Say you're a kid in this field of rye. You try to find a quiet place where you can be by yourself, to invent a code based on "The Star-Spangled Banner," or to design the first four album covers of your next band, or to write a song about a sad girl, or to read a book once owned by your deceased father. Or just stare off into space and be alone with your thoughts. But pretty soon someone comes along and starts throwing gum in your hair, and gluing gay porn to your helmet, and urinating on your funny little hat from the St. Vincent de Paul, and hiring a psychiatrist to squeeze the individuality out of you, and making you box till first blood, and pouring Coke on your book, and beating you senseless in the boys' bathroom, and ridiculing your balls, and holding you upside down till you fall out of your pants, and publicly charting your sexual unattractiveness, and confiscating your Stratego, and forcing you to read and copy out pages from the same three books over and over and over. So you think, who needs it? You get up and start walking. And just when you think you've found the edge of the field and are about to emerge from Rye Hell, this AP teacher or baby-boomer parent dressed as a beloved literary character scoops you up and throws you back into the pit of vipers. I mean, the field of rye.
   Sound good? I'm sorry, but I'm rooting for the kids and hoping they get out while they can. And as for you, Holden, old son: if you happen to meet my body coming through the rye, I'd really appreciate it if you'd just stand aside and get out of my fucking way.

King Dork - Pg 228

   I truly had no idea what was going on, but it was beginning to dawn on me that having no idea what's going on is a more or less defining part of the whole coupling process.

King Dork - Pg 225

   In its own way, this unexpectedly retarded attempt to make a phone call was like a little Hitchcock film: all suspense and delayed gratification with plot twists and multiple false endings. I waited ten minutes and dialed again, and waited another ten minutes and dialed again, thinking that I would not be too surprised if it were answered by a mysterious German-accented voice asking me if I had the formula and telling me to wear a red carnation and come to the Oberausterplatz. But no. "Didi's phone, leave a message."
   I took a deep breath. "This message is for Deanna Skoo--"
   Deanna Schumacher picked up the phone, and she didn't mention the Oberausterplatz.

King Dork - Pg 224

I wanna ramone youheir and ici.
I wanna ramone youlá and aujourd'hui.

If your boyfriend's been postponed
and if we won't be chaperoned
and if you wanna get ramoned,comment? come on, come on...

King Dork - Pg 169

   Maybe she could even dress up as Fiona for me from time to time. When you think about it, it wouldn't be too different from how grown-up wives dress up in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms for their husbands, except in Deanna Schumacher's case she'd be in her Catholic schoolgirl uniform to begin with and would have to take it off in order to put on the Fiona costume and then put it on again when we were done pleasing each other. Or maybe I could just develop the school uniform fetish myself, so she wouldn't even have to do the fake Fiona thing. I'm sure she'd appreciate that, with her busy schedule and so forth.

King Dork - Pg 156

   "What's the name of the band again?" he said, after our second practice.
   "Occult Blood," said Sam Hellerman, "Mopey Mo on guitar and vox, me on bass and teleology, you on drums, first album Pentagrampa."
   "Well, first of all," said Todd Panchowski, "I play percussion instruments, not 'drums'." Second of all, he added, he didn't want to jam with a band with the word "occult" in it. There was some Fellowship rule against it. So he happened to be wearing an I, Cannibal t-shirt depicting a skeletal grim reaper cutting off a nun's head with his scythe. Maybe they hadn't given him the "be nice to nuns" talk yet.

King Dork - Pg 148

   Because I'm so brilliant, I had blown up the left channel on the stereo in my room, too. I was philosophical about it: after all, a lot of the records I like are in mono. But we were running out of consumer electronics products to abuse in the name of Rock and Art.

King Dork - Pg 145

   Madame J.-M. frowned at us. We weren't supposed to speak in English in Advanced Conversation. So we continued in French:
   "What time is it?" I asked
   "It is 11:05," she replied.
   "Thank you very much," I said. "What a shame. If it pleases you, what do you call yourself?"
   "I am sorry," said Yasmynne Schmick. "I am hungry. The young girls wear a very pretty dress. They eat and play soccer with the mother and the fathers. My name is Yasmynne. I am four years old."
   "Ah, yes," I said. "The young people love to buy discs of pop music for dancing and for holiday making." I chose my words carefully. "They... they... my God: they eat beverages. It is true. My two friends Jean and Claude go to the cinema yesterday to view films. What a surprise. They eat. They are flowers."
   Yasmynne Schmick nodded. "Thank you very much. I am sorry." Her face clouded over. "There is a match between two opposing teams at the stadium. It is true, is that not correct? Therefore, my little friend," she said quietly and with a sad smile, "all the world very much loves the automobile who calls himself a cat."
   "You are correct," I said hopelessly. "I am enchanted. Our little green hat is orange on the head of this very interesting horse."
   "Would you like to sleep with me this evening?"
   "Thank you, Mr. Roboto."
   It was kind of fun. That Yasmynne Schmick was all right.

King Dork - Pg 133

I'm still not all that clear on what's involved in doing sweet, ordinary boyfriend-girlfriend things. I just assume it's a lot of making out and groping in public, sex in cars, blow jobs in public restrooms, going to movies, eating at restaurants, listening to the radio, arguing about trivia, and--what else? Do you help each other with your homework?... Does she ask you which dress makes her look fatter, like Carol does with Little Big Tom? Does she throw a stapler at you and stop talking to you for days when you can't figure out the right answer? Do you share your secrets and deepest fears with one another, or are those subjects still just as weird and awkward and best not brought up, maybe even especially to someone to whom you are constantly, incessantly, relentlessly giving the time?

King Dork - Pg 133

   I have this idea, a dream, really, that part of what it would mean is that the boyfriend is in this little club with the girlfriend where when one is hurt or troubled or being assailed by the cruelties of the world, the other decides not to be on the side of the world but to join forces with the other member of the club against the world, even if it's frowned upon, even if it's a doomed scenario, even if the world is definitely gonna win. Like you're allies. The last remnant of your people. A Sex Alliance Against Society. But maybe I have it all wrong. It does sound like a quaint, far-fetched idea, now that I've put it in words. And also overly dramatic, if something can be o. d. and q. at the same time.

King Dork - Pg 84

   Now, I admit, maybe I got into it at first because it was so clearly the opposite of what everyone else liked. But whatever: it's some of the best rock and roll music there ever was. I think normal people think it sounds corny or wimpy, not realizing that there would have been no Ramones without "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy." But I'm quite confident that when we're all dead, history will clearly conclude that my retro rock revival was years ahead of everybody else's retro rock revival.