Book Review: The Ridiculous Race

Spoiler alert! Some surprises are revealed within this review.

Just finished reading The Ridiculous Race. Written by two former National Lampoon editors (including one of the co-writers for My Name Is Earl), the book tells the tale of two writers who race around the world (all for a bottle of Scotch). The only rule is no airplanes.

Although authors Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran write light-heartedly, occasionally you bump up against very serious and emotional statements and observations. Those moments, while few, are sufficiently presented to get you seriously thinking about the United States' role in the world. These sobering passages, mixed with silly tales of seemingly juvenile pranks played worldwide, also prompted me to reflect on how well off Americans are, even in a down economy while an unpopular war continues overseas.

Just when you think the book may be falling to simple, predictable jokes, you encounter an observation that proves telling. Which is good, as one of the authors cheats. When I first read of his jetting across the Atlantic, I feared the book's whole premise was spoiled, thereby rendering the entire "race" a joke in itself. But I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did.

In concluding what he learned from his whirlwind world trek, Hely intriguingly summarizes America's standing:

I got to thinking that America isn't like a bully, or a jock, or a cool kid. In the high school of the world, America is like one of those girls that's just effortlessly beautiful. So beautiful you can't even have a crush on her. A girl that isn't deliberately mean, it's just that she can't possibly understand how lucky she is. And people always do what she wants, without her even realizing it, so she never bothers becoming smart, or savvy about the other kids in school. Just with her airhead remarks, she's always accidentally screwing up the whole order of things. She doesn't even realize it.

Now, when you have a girl like that, the other kinda-pretty girls sort of like her but sort of hate her. That's maybe Germany, or France. And the ugly girls talk about her in the locker room, but are still totally afraid of her. That's Venezuela and Iran. The regular-looking dudes can't help but be awed by her. Maybe they try to woo her with poems. That's Great Britain. And the real twisted kids develop unhealthy obsessions about destroying her, just because they're infuriated at how unfair things are.

That's insightful, at least in my book.

Chandrasekaran, meanwhile, injects arresting moments of his own, including moving stories of sites and people he visits in Berlin, Palestine, Moscow and Cambodia.

All told, The Ridiculous Race was well worth $15. I read it in three days or so (that's how light it is).