A Good Rebound Date Is Worth A Lot
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Dungeon Crawler Carl
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In case you missed it, I recently got set up on two rebound dates following the beautiful end of my relationship with Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go). The first date was arranged by my mom who, not surprisingly, got absolutely everything wrong. To avoid a bout of literary PTSD, I'll just point you to my last post.
https://dysfunctionalreading.khaos-monkey.com/the-rebound-problem-no-one-lives-up-to-her/
Dungeon Crawler Carl, or apparently, as the cool kids call it, "DCC," was my second rebound. This one was arranged by none other than my partner in crime, Bri (of the infamous Two Hobos and a Bri podcast... I mean blog. Wait, did I just come up with a new fun idea!?). Ishiguro came from the same group, so you may be starting to see a pattern. If not, I encourage you to go back through some of my previous posts. What should be abundantly clear by now (assuming you possess the pattern recognition skills of a five-year-old) is that this infamous trio tends to lean toward what one might call "good books." My other book club, on the other hand, leans heavily into the "I dare you to read this. You'll regret it more than taking a shot of cement mixer" category.
For anyone who hasn't heard of the book, first, shame on you, go slap yourself a few times. Second, think slap stick humor meets RPG (for you non-nerds, that stands for "Role Playing Game"...if you need more than that, you're too cool to be reading this blog) meets Warcraft.
DCC absolutely delivered on the rebound front. The infamous Princess Donut is introduced on page one, a cat who quickly establishes herself as a modern-day hero, smooshing bugs with missiles and generally being an absolute badass. And then there's Carl. A regular dude who more-often-than-not has some wildly fun, creative, and effective ideas to kill scary shit. From that first page forward, much like a good first date, there was plenty to laugh about. Sure, by page ten, you knew this wasn't going to be the kind of relationship you wanted to settle down with. There wasn't exactly a whole lot of intellectual stimulation happening. But for a rebound? You really couldn't ask for much more. Well, actually, you could. I just realized there wasn't any sex in the entire book. That was a little disappointing.
I wish I'd written down some quotes while reading, but apparently I was too busy enjoying myself to do anything productive. What I did do was immediately Google Carl costumes. I'm now engaged in a multi-day debate with my lovely wife over whether it's "worth it" to spend a couple hundred bucks on a costume that will inevitably be worn exactly once. The answer is about as obvious as the question of whether sex is appropriate on a first date: YES! Some investments are simply too important to leave to the financial committee.
So, DCC, thank you for bringing me back down to earth after Ishiguro left me wondering if I'd ever experience happiness again. I've got a couple of other books lined up for my other book clubs, but I'm already looking forward to my second trip into the DCC universe. Hell, maybe this time there'll even be some sex. A guy can dream.