2008 Gestures in Literacy Champion: PDX Writer Daily

Now that was a titanic battle--another instant classic, we say. (The action took place here.) Chris always gets his points--you can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him--and Ms. Swift came out of nowhere to hit shots from waaaaaay downtown, but without the help of past stalwarts like Miss Malaprop, Keri and Co., Ben, or the mysterious Matthew, PDX Writer Daily was able to hold on and win Gestures in Literacy #6. And because of the sports narrative we've fallen into, that means we are also declaring ourselves winners of the series, four games to two. So now we hoist the imaginary GiL Cup, the symbol of our 2008 Championship, while not actually showering each other with cheap champagne, on account of we are just making this up.

Except for the part about winning. We really are claiming to have won this game that has few rules and almost no oversight or consistency. But of course those aspects of the sport only further made this a truly, truly special season for our team.

But you probably just want the answers to Gesture 6:

Star Wars light saber building kit
pocket knife
Indiana Jones costume
Spiderman costume
Ironman toy
All of the Pokemon Level X's
10 packs of Bakugan
rocket launcher dart gun
one golden Pokemon card
machine gun dart shooter
an iPod
a Pokemon pack of cards
the Ironman movie
a web shooter
some pants and some shirts
from Ethan
Nintendo DS game "Pokemon"
and more, too

Yep. That's it. "Some pants and some shirts," right? That one would have taken a couple levels of literacy backtracking for you to solve. You have to imagine a scribe who not only sometimes switches up "th" and "sh," but who also often transposes the letters, so that "ht" can actually mean "sh". And you would also have to imagine a culture in which the correct spelling of "pants" is [Weird P]-E-S.

Not fair. We know. But that's the breaks, kids.

So we would like to thank all players for a lovely 2008 Gestures in Literacy season. God bless you, every one. We will cherish this title forever, and no one will ever be able to take it away from us. Mostly, yes, because it doesn't exist. But still. But still!

Poverty Holidays Gift #14: The sports fiction of Matt Christopher

The classic is Catcher With a Glass Arm, but any number of Matt Christopher's original sports fictions for young readers are delightful. Some sample copy:

Catcher With a Glass Arm: "Just when he thinks he'll spend the rest of the season on the bench nursing his weak throwing arm, Jody learns what it takes to come through in a pinch."

The Kid Who Only Hit Homers: "When a mysterious man promises to make him a great player, Sylvester accepts and begins a phenomenal home-run streak."

Look Who's Playing First Base: "Mike Hagin offers his new friend from Russia the first baseman's position on the little league team before he finds out the boy can't play baseball."

There's more where those came from, folks--over a hundred more, according to an unnamed source. And it's not just baseball--Christopher covered all sports. And the books still sell at a price that is just right for the impoverished shopper.

Gesture #6 deadline tonight, midnight

PDXWD Readers have stalled on their deciphering of Gesture in Literacy #6, while the clock continues to tick.

Can you pitch in? Can you unlock the code? Santa's elves desperately need you to help them understand what is on the list...

Poverty Holidays Gift #12: Rick Bass, "The Hermit's Story"

Bass's The Hermit's Story is a short story collection. Of the title story, a reviewer earlier this fall said:

"'The Hermit's Story' is a story of the North, where once the boldest, most thrilling adventure stories were set. (The otherworlds we most commonly imagine today are farther off, in galaxies far, far away. Only the residue of polar glamour is left in our cultural memory, nostalgized now and then by McSweeney's). Bass's North is an unfamiliar North, though: a nighttime North, oddly warm and wet and cold at once, both frozen and so alive, ice-blue and fire-orange, of-the-earth and full of the smells of lake and mud."

The book has been seen around town.

We know everyone is curled in front of a fire reading books, but

Gestures in Literacy #6 is still open, and despite reader attempts, it continues to withhold many of its secrets...

Update 12/16: Okay, it continues to withhold four of its secrets...

Poverty Holidays Gift #9: Philip Roth's "The Counterlife"

Back in July, a PDXWD reviewer said of this novel:

"What was particularly impressive to this reader was the degree to which the shifts in reality and reflections-upon-writing in The Counterlife did not lessen the effects of the novel's realism. Roth's characters are vivid, their situations specific. He allows them to speak: when upset, his characters sometimes speak for pages. He allows them equality: the characters are intelligent, and when arguing, characters on opposing sides of arguments--whether those arguments are political or emotional--each make compelling points. He allows them honesty: his characters are frank about sex, about their most conflicted feelings, about the things they have done and why they have done them. And in this novel, he allows them the particular reflectivity built into a novel that features a novelist as the narrator: they discuss, quite naturally, the degree to which perhaps the narrator and main character, Nathan Zuckerman, likes to get himself into arguments and conflicts primarily because he thinks they will make for good source material for his fiction writing. Zuckerman responds to these thoughts. The novel proceeds."

It is available kind of close to our city.

Gestures in Literacy #6: The Christmas List Gesture

Series summary: PDXWD took games one and two, but then the Readers roared back to take an incredible, classic game three and then a game four that had PDXWD talking to itself. PDXWD offered what seemed a less-challenging gesture in game five, so many expected the Readers to take that game, as well. But in a stunning turnabout, the Readers stole defeat from the jaws of victory, and PDXWD took game five--and then also, somewhere in there, began narrating as if the whole thing were a pro sports playoff series in the 2-3-2 format.

Which means that now you're back in OUR house, Readers! Game six, baby! A sellout crowd in the arena, our discourse community basically shut down, all eyes on the Gesture--and just kind of comma-splicing fragments at this point, so damn excited!

BOOM BOOM shoof. BOOM BOOM shoof. BOOM BOOM shoof. BOOM BOOM shoof. Singing: We. Will. We. Will. Rock you.

Sing it!

We. Will. We. Will--[Oh! Interrupted by shockingly tasty guitar lick!] All right! [Super-70's guitar solo! Shredding as if to end all shredding!]

You have one week. And every time we say something tough like that, you solve it in an afternoon, so who knows what will happen? That's why we play the games, baby!