For four years, Mark Titus sat the bench for the Ohio State men's basketball team. In that time, it appears he was paying attention, honing his powers of observation (and a sense of humor), and starting a blog about his experiences that would eventually become a book. We asked him a few questions on the eve of the Final Four:

Omni: Do you know anyone out there on the court this year?

Mark Titus: I know all of the guys on the team pretty well, but the only current player who I played with is William Buford.

Omni: Did any of them hurt you in practice?

Mark Titus: Will never hurt me in practice, but Dallas Lauderdale, who was a senior on last year’s team, fractured my foot my junior season (which put me out for 12 weeks) and tore up my shoulder my senior season (which ended my career and I had to get surgery to fix).



Omni: What’s the response to your book been like from the Ohio State community?

Mark Titus: Pretty much every Ohio State fan that I’ve heard from has enjoyed it because it gives them an inside look at some of the best OSU teams and players in the history of the program. My goal in writing the book was to give readers an honest idea of what it’s like to be on a top-notch Division I basketball program, and for the most part I think I accomplished that. I wrote the book solely for 18-34 year old guys, so some people who don’t fit that demographic aren’t fond of my crude sense of humor. But that’s primarily the only criticism the book is getting, which is perfectly fine by me.

Omni: Did sitting on the bench make you funnier?

Mark Titus: Yes and no. I’ve always been the class clown and the guy who screwed around at practice, even when I was the best player on my high school team. But being a benchwarmer created a lot more opportunities for me to goof off because I didn’t have to take things as seriously as I did when I was the best player. Also, because it was so hard for me to earn my teammates’ respect on the court since I wasn’t as good at basketball as they were, I thought that being funny would make it easier for them to accept me, so I was always thinking of jokes and funny things I could do to gain their respect that way.

Omni: You were drafted by the Harlem Globe Trotters. Did you play for them? If so, what was that like? If not, why not?

Mark Titus: I didn’t actually play for them, but I did go to a 3 day mini-camp on Long Island and got to train with the team a little bit. It ended up not working out for a variety of reasons that I fully explain in the book, but the gist of it is that they weren’t exactly as glamorous or professional of an organization as I had thought they were.

Omni: If Ohio State doesn’t win on Monday, who will it be and why?

Mark Titus: Kentucky, because they’ve been head-and-shoulders better than every other team in the country this year.

Let's talk about Sweet Farts. I'm guessing we're mostly grownups here, but we are going to talk about the series of books called Sweet Farts. Sweet Farts by Raymond Bean.

Like many of you (as I imagine you), Sweet Farts is not something I ever contemplated picking up. Aside from being 43 years old, I also never contemplated bringing it home to my five-year-old, since I thought only the worst could come from it, as parents–especially parents of boys–should instinctively know.

I try to take several multi-day backpacking trips every summer, and last year my son started expressing interest in camping. I decided a light introduction was in order, so I took him to a "resort" in the Cascades–a compound of nine rustic cabins at the northern edge of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, all lacking electricity and the usual civilized amenities. The caretakers met us at the parking lot and drove us up the mountain on a deeply rutted eight-mile logging road, dropping us off with our packs and cooler at our tiny A-frame called Larkspur. 

And then it rained. Not your typical Pacific Northwest drizzle, but a socked-in-drops-the-size-of-hummingbirds mountain storm. We made a couple of easy forays into the forest and called it good, deciding to wait out the rain till morning, but in the morning, it was even worse. Suddenly I was looking at 24 hours in a 20×10 unelectified box with an easily bored pre-K jaguar. Edmond Dantès never had it so bad.

In a move of total desperation, I reached for my Kindle, which I had brought in order to catch up with my unread pile of virtual New Yorkers. (By the way, that's the biggest benefit of the Kindle that I have found: there's no guilt in an invisible stack of unread magazines.) Incredibly, I had one bar of reception, and given the weather, maybe only one chance to get it right. It had to be something that would take some time to read aloud, while absolutely guaranteed to keep him entertained. Sweet Farts.

I started reading, my son predictably doubled over at all of the expected places. But while I was reading, I learned something else about Sweet Farts: it's actually about teaching scientific method. As it turns out, the protagonist–Keith–is a fourth-grade boy with a perception problem. That is, he's mistakenly fingered as the perpetrator of several heinous gas attacks, and accordingly ostracized and dubbed "S.B.D." by his classmates. Rather than play the victim, Keith takes the offensive, planning a series of experiments designed to eliminate the foulest odors of human gas. A quest to find the titular Sweet Farts.

Still with me?

Author Raymond Bean (a nom de plume) is a school teacher, so we may infer that he is an expert in the field. He takes the experiments seriously, and Keith's hypothoses and test results are rigorously documented. By the end, the reader has a good sense of the process required to reach sound conclusions based on a series of testing and iteration.

Also, there are lots of fart jokes, and my kid loved it. So Mr. Bean seems to be onto something where it comes to getting kids interested in reading. After the jump, take a look at his five tips to encourage young people to develop a lifelong love of words in the age of video games and infinite cable TV. And check out all three Sweet Farts books, as well as other titles by Raymond Bean.

Comments? Let 'em rip.

For Young Readers, Is It Books vs. Everything Else?

If you're anything like me, you went through periods in your childhood when you didn't like reading. My earliest memories of books are wonderful. The picture book period in my life was filled with Dr. Seuss, Disney characters, and Frog and Toad. But, as I learned to read on my own, I remember finding it harder and harder to find books that I liked. My parents and teachers expected me to read longer chapter books, and I wasn’t always onboard. It was about this time that I started playing a new gadget called Atari, discovered this channel called MTV, and my family got a brand new color TV with a newfangled remote control (with cord). 

Today, countless distractions, most of them digital, compete for our kids' attention (and they’re much cooler than Atari). Kids have choices when it comes to their entertainment, lots of choices. Books have stiff competition and some parents are left feeling they’re fighting a battle of books vs. everything else. So how can you help your youngster learn to love reading in a world saturated by media and all things digital?  You can't…I’m kidding, of course you can, if you try some of the tips below.

5. Read With Your Child: Many parents stop reading with their children around the time he/she can read chapter length books independently. Stop what you’re doing when they have reading time and join them. I don't care how old they are, they'll learn to love reading with you.

4. Reduce Book Hopping: Many kids read bits and pieces of books. They read a few pages of one book on Monday and then a few pages of another book on Tuesday and so on. Encourage your child to read entire books. If he abandons a book make sure he understands why. Was it too hard, too boring, too "lovey"?

3. Find Balance: Many kids watch tv or play video games for hours a day. Help your child find a balance between digital time and reading time. Sacrificing one or two episodes of Spongebob or iCarly a day can do wonders.

2. Set Goals: Many kids languish in the same book for weeks on end, never really connecting to the book. Prior to reading a book, set a goal for the completion date. Instead of having time limits for daily reading, i.e.: thirty minutes a night. Try setting page goals, i.e.: twenty pages a night.

1. Get Tech Savy: Young readers love digital devices! Get him his own digital reader. He'll love the ability to buy books instantly and digital readers make finding new books easier than ever before.

There's no perfect plan for helping your child love reading. Be supportive, patient, present, and let the video games and tv cool off a bit.              

There may never have been a time in human history that lacked some type of literary controversy; no doubt someone objected to the ridiculous story told by a particular set of cave paintings back in the day. But the swiftness of the internet has allowed the modern version of such controversies, and the discussion of them, to reach critical mass in scant hours, eliciting reaction worldwide.

The latest blow-up concerns critically acclaimed and award-winning author Christopher Priest’s denunciation of the just-released Arthur C. Clarke Award finalist ballot. The Clarke Award rewards the best science fiction published in the United Kingdom, and Priest believes the judges did a bad job, citing Lavie Tidhar’s Osama and Simon Ings’ Dead Water as better possible choices (some would also include Priest’s novel The Islanders). But, further, Priest apparently believes this is a dereliction of duty so severe that the judges should be sacked immediately and the award retooled.

Who are these benighted finalists, ironically receiving so much more attention now that Priest has called them out?

• Greg Bear, Hull Zero Three (Gollancz)
• Drew Magary, The End Specialist (Harper Voyager)
• China Miéville, Embassytown (Macmillan)
• Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
• Charles Stross, Rule 34 (Orbit)
• Sheri S.Tepper, The Waters Rising (Gollancz)

To the untrained eye it may appear to be a typical late-era Clarke Award list: a combination of genre writers well-respected in the field and some outliers better known outside of genre. According to Priest, however, it consists, in part, of an under-achiever (Mieville, a three-time winner of the award), a novel by Tepper dismissed as “a quest saga [with] a talking horse. There are puns on the word ‘neigh’”, and, in perhaps the most instantly twitter-viral part of his analysis/rant, this description of the writing of Charles Stross: “Stross writes like an internet puppy: energetically, egotistically, sometimes amusingly, sometimes affectingly, but always irritatingly, and goes on being energetic and egotistical and amusing for far too long. You wait nervously for the unattractive exhaustion which will lead to a piss-soaked carpet.”

The reaction to this outburst has been fascinating, in that so little of it has devolved into calling Priest names or joining him in unthinking pillorying of the Clarke Award. (My own, humorous, response can be found here.)

John Scalzi weighed in with a long and reasonable post in which he wrote in part that “Mr. Priest’s contribution is the first this year in what is sure to be a lot of barking at clouds concerning science fiction award nomination slates, all of which will essentially boil down to ‘my tastes are different than yours, and your tastes are wrong.’…That said, as a representative of the format, it’s pretty good: Mr. Priest writes it with an engaging amount of piss and vinegar, varies his tone from target to target (more in sorrow than in anger for Mr. Mieville, blithe condescension for Mr. Stross, outright contempt for Ms. Tepper), and to his credit, offers viable suggestions for an alternative slate.” Scalzi goes on to suggest Priest’s punishment be to serve as a judge next year.

Fantasy writer Catherynne M. Valente’s post “The Tears of Christopher Priest” took an interesting and multi-faceted tact by expressing ambivalence about Priest’s conclusions while defending the necessity of defending literary standards: “…Sturgeon’s Law applies, the center cannot hold, and very occasionally, as high-maintenance lunch-to-literature conversion machines, we need Mommy and Daddy to not be proud of us to spur us on to write better books, to synthesize the high and the popular a little better every time. You will find a thousand authors arguing that what is popular is ipso facto good and anyone who says otherwise is a pseudo-intellectual heel. One guy should be able to say the opposite.”

Even a misfire from the usually capable Damien G. Walter (who writes for the Guardian online), in ascribing all kinds of envy-related motivations to Priest’s post, provoked some interesting discussion. The counter-argument to Walter’s assertion is not just that one may be both a curmudgeon and make a statement not influenced by personal resentments, but that precisely because Priest is a well-known author, with several awards and a movie made from The Prestige, he can afford to expend the good-will and political capital necessary to engage in this kind of searingly critical examination. (At the same time, it’s in part because Priest chose to rant-analyze rather than just analyze, including what could be considered personal attacks, that Walter was moved to write his piece in the first place.)

The best response, however, came from one of the finalists, Charles Stross. He immediately owned the “internet puppy” label, seemed to find the whole situation funny rather than insulting, and even created a T-shirt based on Priest’s attempt to insult him. The way he described Priest on twitter and elsewhere also showed a certain amount of respect that the initial post certainly did not require Stross to extend to Priest.

The upshot of all of this controversy and discussion may be a more heightened awareness of the stakes for next year’s judges (as if that were needed). But mostly, especially given the good-natured, non-trollish reactions, it appears the situation is a net win for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Certainly, more people now know about books like The Testament of Jessie Lamb than would have otherwise and take a look at books mentioned as worthy finalists but not on the list—including Priest’s own The Islanders. So, in the end, readers are the winners in the whole debate.

Is this what Priest wanted? Probably not, but in the ephemeral heat-lightning atmosphere of the blogosphere, it’s about the best result anyone can expect.