The concept is to write an opening line to a book - a sentence so horrible that anyone who read it would immediately close the book, throw it in the garbage and picket the author's house. I've never done very well with this particular challenge, but here's what I came up with.
Ayo, peep this. Back in the day (and I mean way, way back in the day), this crazy powerful cat, God, said the word and ‘bam’, everything came outta nuthin’ – the sun, the world, even the hood… everything.Here's the judges' input:
K: This is a tough one. Yes, it’s gross and ham-fisted. Does it teeter on the brink of intentional comedy? Yeah, I think it does, but in the end it sounds more desperate to be cool than anything, like an after-school special written by 45-year-old white guys. 4
DK: I’m not sure I’d want to read Genesis, or the Bible, in this style (I’m not sure I’d want to read Genesis all the way anyway), but it feels a little too much like trying to be bad. 1
So... yeah. My first one of the season and a 2.5 overall. There was some discussion on the actual site about the nature of the challenge itself and the extremely subjective nature of what is "bad" and what is just trying too hard. Both judges seemed to think mine was trying too hard to be bad. Spooky was able to fight through it, DK wasn't. Fair enough. In retrospect, I do hate the "bam" that I put in there. If I had to write it over again, I'd leave that out.
I would take a little bit of an exception to DK's comment about "trying to be bad" for a couple reasons. First off, that is, of course, the point of the challenge. I could understand if mine felt forced, but that actually leads me into my second point.
We live in a world where this dude makes albums and sells them to lots of people (a recurring set of skits from one of his albums, which were actually the inspiration for my entry, were titled "The World's Greatest MC", where KJ opined about Jesus' status as "world's greatest MC"). More power to him if he's able to do that, I guess, but the point is that my paragraph (which is obviously meant to be Genesis 1:1, as taken verbatim from the "Thug Life" bible) is actually right about in line with the overly-thick desperation to be cool and relevant that exists in some segments of Christianity. These people were all around in church when I was growing up, the 'Thug Life Bible' might not exist, but the mindset certainly does. I suppose Poe's Law could come into play, as it often does in these matters, but I've seen too much sincerity from certain corners of this niche to make me think that it's as simple as "trying to be bad".
Either way, the rest of my team bailed me out, so we keep on marching. Well played, vogons, I get to keep using one of my favorite categories, and we keep thinning out the herd.
