A Pretty Badass Evening

Tonight I attended a reading/book signing by a guy who runs a website I like.

While factually correct, the above utterly fails to convey the sheer wonder and sphincter-crinkling awesomeness of the experience. Let me begin again.

I almost didn't make it. The address on the website was wrong. The escalator in the bookstore was out of order. The tiny room with a score of non-descript chairs and a rickety podium was tucked away on the 5th floor between the legal text books and the Spanish-language fiction. It might as well have been in a disused lavatory behind a locked door that said “Beware the Leopard.” But dozen or so hardy souls who successfully made the voyage were about to have their worlds rocked.

Of course you wouldn't know it to look at the guy we'd all come to see. For a cat who unapologetically goes by the handle “AmazingBen”, his slight build and spiky hair wouldn't exactly stand out in a lineup. But it wasn't his build that made him formidable. He does with words what his subjects do with swords and claws and fists (not to mention balls) of steel:

He. Kicks. Ass.

After putting us at ease with conversations that made us feel more like friends than fanboys, and an awkward introduction by a bookstore employee who was clearly well out of her depth, it was on. Jonathan slammed into a reading about Thor, the God of thunder, ass-kicking, head-splitting, mead-drinking and (inexplicably) fishing. It was accompanied by a frenetic slideshow that was at once visually compelling and hilarious. When his tale of destruction, deception, mythology, and mayhem drew to a close, there was stunned silence, then a roar of applause. You'd think that a dozen people could merely smatter, but we roared nonetheless. And this was just one of fourty such tales in his new book of legendary badasses.

You see, Ben Thompson runs a website called “Badass of the Week.” Each week he researches some incredible face-stabbing, scrotum-shredding, mind-blowing awesomeness from history, mythology, or nature, then brings it to life in a way that's about as far from a dry lifeless wikipedia entry as Boston is from Valhalla. And in a turn that's encouraging as hell to his fellow bloggers, aspiring writers, and unrepentant time-wasters, he's gotten two books published out of the website and has just gotten the deal made for a third.

If you haven't yet I suggest, nay, COMMAND you to go to badassoftheweek.com and read any entry. If, like me, you find yourself staying up most of the night trying to read EVERY entry, you might want to go to the nearest bookstore (once you're well rested enough to operate a motor vehicle), and buying Badass: The Book, or Badass: Birth of a Legend.

And if you still have any doubt about Ben's awesomeness, after the reading, the Q&A, and the signing, he invited us all to the pub next door for beers.

Badass.