Fratire

The Alphabet of Manliness

Some have conjectured that the metrosexual movement — a
flash-in-the-pan lifestyle trend now gone the way of the greaser or
the valley girl — has given rise to a response as macho as the
metrosexual was ambiguous. However, an interesting offshoot of this
grunting, unshaven, waggling movement is a genre of literature
dubbed “fratire.” As the name would imply, fratire is the funny
stuff of Mad magazine and the poetry of restroom walls. If
your fat, beer-guzzling friend could somehow fart in a sexist
manner, that would be an acceptable entry in the fratire literary
tradition.

Maddox, a no-last-name dude who’d surely be in the running for
fratire posterboy, passed through the Goleta Borders on July 17 to
sign copies of his new book, The Alphabet of Manliness.
From “ass-kicking” to “zombies,” Maddox’s 26-chapter release covers
what, in his opinion, any manly man should know. Yes, the book is
subjective. Yes, the book stands a good chance to offend most
people. And yes, the cover features a picture of a boxer clocking a
gorilla. But what makes The Alphabet of Manliness
different from the aforementioned bathroom-wall poetry is that
Maddox, a 27-year-old Utah native, actually knows how to set up a
joke. Clearly, honing his skills on his immensely popular personal
Web page, thebestpageintheuniverse.com, has taught the
author not only how to defy tradition in a way that makes readers
laugh — even when they know they shouldn’t laugh at the joke.

Copies of The Alphabet of Manliness, some signed by
Maddox himself, are available at the Goleta Borders.
 — Drew Mackie