MSNBC posted a list of the 11 lamest blogs on the internet. They posted it as a slide show, which is a pretty lame way to post anything, but perhaps it was self referential. Anyway, the award for lamest fictional blog goes to The Adventures of Pat O’Neil.
Let me put this succinctly. If I was out drinking, and the author of that article told me he thought the Adventures of Pat O’Neil was lame, I would fight him. There would be face punching, body kicking, and whichever bar we were at would join the ranks of bars Mia is not allowed in. I would gleefully dive into a fracas about the merits of Pat O’Neil’s adventures, sober or not, were I to stumble across such a thing. I’d probably be perplexed later at the various coincidences necessary to put me in such a situation but would in no way allow these future perplexities to prevent me from adding one large, belligerent Mia to the conflict ensuing.
The Adventures o’Pat are a very bizarre, occasionally humorous series of first person narratives. They aren’t so much a normal story as the author’s brain vomiting ideas onto a page in purely creative stream of conscious narrative. Nothing’s very well polished, and I really wish the author would do something to duplicate the paragraph, as it can be pretty hard to read. But the sheer non-stop flow of ideas is incredible. The author is constantly putting something new out there. It’s always absurd and usually impossible. I don’t think I laughed aloud once. But there’s no end to the creativity within it. It’s so understated that the author seems to ignore comedic potential in favor of dry comments about flying squirrels. It reminds me a lot of “Shoot ‘Em Up.” In that the joke was that the main character would be involved in a shoot out carrying a live baby less than five minutes into the movie. Here it’s the meth ninjas and his sister named Frank.
The author isn’t under the illusion he’s writing great literature. He ain’t. But as he says, if you want great literature, go to the Gutenberg. He recommends you start with the Odyssey, I say the Illiad, but any Homer will do. But you know what Homer doesn’t have? A sense of humor. Pat’s adventures are to be amused by. Read them and smile a little. You won’t fall out of your chair laughing. But if you like that style of humor, it’s entertaining none the less.