Issue 2 Archive

Roadog: the Movie: Pt. 1
Steve Almond
(An exceptionally odd compendium of things Steve said or did on his increasingly annoying book tour)

APRIL 2002

1. Colloquy between Steve & Nathan Morris (age 4) of Clemson, S.C.:
     S: Hey Nathan, you know what?
     N: What?
     S: Chickenbutt.
     N: You’re a chickenbutt.
     S: You’re a monkeybrain.
     N: You’re a toilethead.
     S You’re a redneck.
     N: You’re a tootface.
     S: What’s a toot?
     N: You’re a poopbreath.
     N’s father Keith: Please stop calling Steve a poopbreath.
     N: Poopbreath.

2. Number of times Steve has been asked whether he’s ever slept with a woman who ejaculates: 1.

3. # of times Steve has been asked why he writes about his penis so much: 1.

kritics korner (This week’s episode: Oh God, you like me. You really like me): “Every couple of years, a writer comes along who tries so desperately to show that he’s got his finger on the pulse of his times that it makes you wish the times would just die already. Bret Easton Ellis, Amy Tan, Jay McInerney — they keep on appearing, up-and-comers who wear zeitgeist like Armani and whose sole mission in life seems to be to fill us in on the difficulties of being young, affluent, pampered, and (horrors!) oversexed. Steve Almond, whose new short story collection is called My Life in Heavy Metal, wants to join the list ... Almond writes nice sentences ... unfortunately, his frequent recourse to shallow epiphanies is just plain annoying. Almond complains at 7 pm, Monday at Olsson’s Books & Records.” — Washington City Pages, March 28

4. Number of times Steve has said fuck so far on this tour: 213.

5. Number of times Steve has said fuck so far on this tour in front of an audience: 73.

6. “You can’t do a keg stand in a prom dress, cuz your dress will fall up over the keg and no one will know how much you drank.”
— Received wisdom from Angel Lynette Johnson (age 20), resident of Harlin County, KY, during the Greyhound bus ride from Harrisonburg, VA to Washington, DC

7. Number of tattoos Angel Lynette Johnson showed Steve: 2.

8. Steve’s chief calorie source on the road: Skittles.

9. “If my son had a vagina, he’d write about that.”