Meet the Scorpions, Boston's 'All Hard-Guy' Book Club
Your book club is so gay! That's what the Scorpions, a group of hard 20 and 30-something guys who meet for PBRs in Boston shitholes to talk about books, say. Their motto? "We read. We bleed. And we kick ass."
The New Yorker's Book Bench blog discovered these sad, young, hard literary men, all of whom say they work in "law, publishing and high technology." When these hard guys meet up, they just don't talk about books, they also do hard things like playing paintball and gambling and shooting guns and engaging in contests involving feats of strength. The group's founder, who goes by the hard name of Tanaka, had this to say about why he started a book club exclusively for Boston's rock hard swinging dicks:
I started this club as an anti-establishment book club that spits in the faces of the traditional girlie clubs where people don't discuss the book, and just drink wine and talk about relationships. I have a good number of smart, successful friends who are very well read, and want to kick ass like I do. Throw in beer, competition, and seedy locations, and we had the perfect recipe to have fun while motivating us to continue to read and kick ass collectively.
According to their website, these hard boys love books by hard authors like Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemingway, but hated C. D. Payne's Youth in Revolt because it just wasn't hard enough for their tastes. Shockingly, there are no Chuck Palahniuk books on their list of past selections, but just give it some time — after reading Chuck they'll probably all spontaneously drop their pants and start masturbating in front of each other, because that's the type of shit hard guys do when they're totally intellectually stimulated, and there wouldn't be nothing gay about that at all because it's all about being hard baby!
Long live the Scorpions! If there's one thing this world needs more of, it's "anti-establishment" book clubs.