IT LOOKS LIKE A C**K!

by Ben and Jack
112 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin

Review by Marie Mundaca

Looking for the perfect Father’s Day gift, or something for the new grad? Well, look further.

Recently, GQ online declared the official end of the blog to book (or what they called Tumblr books) with the purchase of Hipster Puppies. But that won’t be published for months, so we lucky readers have many many more blog books to look forward to. But It Looks Like a C**k! isn’t one of them. It only seems like it would be a good idea for a blog. Smart boys Ben and Jack took it directly to publication, as if there was no Internet! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy just knowing that there are upstanding boys like Ben and Jack who have such old-timey values.

C**k! features lovely full-page color photos of things that look penile, with a handy graphic scale guiding the reader as to how trouser-trout-like said object is. Astute readers may not agree with the assertion that the exotic flower is only 17% weenie, while an aerial view of the Thames is 49%. I know I don’t agree. Were Ben and Jack trying to be inflammatory, or were they simply looking for something to fill up the book?

You can guess what some of the ding-a-ling simulacra are: strange fruits, cloud formations, fungi. But the vast number and incredible variety gives the book a wow factor. Gourds, sure, you expect that. But tomatoes?

C**k! features short essays on each pants porpoise simile, all of which are only vaguely humorous. And that’s weird because I usually find jerkin’ gherkins to be hilarious. But perhaps I’m not the target audience for C**K! For example, the text is in a little tiny font size (that’s not a euphemism), often dropped out white on light backgrounds. I can’t read that! Obviously Ben and Jack knew that their target audience were teens. I’m pretty certain that 13 year old boys will love C**k!, along with adults who enjoy the Twilight sagas. I do like writing C**k!, though.

But seriously, we must hail St. Martin’s Griffin for publishing this in the US—in the UK it’s published by the formerly esteemed Bloomsbury—for C**k! is something that should be read in the bathroom, and who would want to bring the laptop into the loo? Now we have this handy, slim volume to puzzle and laugh over all the different things that look like weenuses.

And, yes, they really all do look like c**ks.