Washington Post writer Hank Stuever begins a three-day sign-and-speak stint in North Texas tomorrow -- a sprint compared to the marathon of spending three years, on and off, living in Frisco in order to document how folks spend Christmas up thataways for his book Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present. Tomorrow night he's got a signing at the Barnes & Noble in Stonebriar Centre; on Wednesday, he'll be at Legacy Books in Plano; the day after, at Barnes & Noble near the TCU campus. So happens I've got two spare, unread copies of the tome (one was Schutze's!), which'll go to the first two Friends of Unfair Park who can make a convincing case for living in Frisco want them.
Update: Both copies are gone. Thanks for playing -- and for all the e-mails that read like this one from a good Friend of Unfair Park who passed on a gratis copy: "Looks like an interesting book, but it's so contrary to anything I attach to Christmas."
The area of town where I live is so much more Legit than the area of town where you live, although these areas are 20 minutes from each other.
"Look at me. I'm a cool hipster who likes to make fun of those squares living in the suburbs."
Taking shots at those squares is like shooting fish in a barrel. At least the author could have come up with something a little more challenging.
The Lilly White, upper middle class x-urbs are engendered specie.
Fuel prices, tightening credit and racial demographic changes all conspire to make them monuments to conspicuous consumption and ethnic cleansing that will never again be duplicated on that scale.
Frisco is the last stop on the "white flight" express.
Here's that 2006 profile to which the saint refers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050201873.html
Hey, if Steuver's book is nearly as funny as his WashPost portrait of Rod Dreher (our "professional Ned Flanders impersonator"), it'll be worth the price.
Who don't know over the top better than a "gay writer"?
So, a gay writer sneers at Christmas, Christians, conservatives, and a suburb of Dallas for 336 pages? An epic work of remarkable originality, I'm sure.
Look at me. I'm a cool hipster who likes to make fun of those squares living in the suburbs.
COB, it's all yers. Up at the front desk. And ... we're all outta books.
I too am a Frisco resident (no thanks on the book) and agree with Joe. Christmas is nuts up here. The materialism that seems to have taken over the holiday season is sickening. That goes for our society as a whole not just the suburbs.
Maybe one benefit of this so called "recession" is possibly people will get away from the out of control holiday consumerism and get back to the true meaning of the holidays.
The only times I've been to Frisco is for Roughriders games. I'd like to read about how life is like up North.
Joe, there's a copy at the front desk with yer name on it. 2501 Oak Lawn, 7th floor. One more left.
Hey, I'll take one.
I like living up in this part of town, but to deny that there isn't a lot of over-the-topness during the season would be foolish.