Book Review: Seagalogy, by Vern.

If my mind had a wrist, this book would have broken it and thrown me through a window.

I normally don't feel like shadow boxing or meditating on the finite nature of man before reading a book. But this book, this awesome and terrifying book, leaves me more than a little worried that its subject, the likewise awesome and terrifying Steven Seagal, is somehow out to get me (or at least knows I am reading about him). The author applies his “Badass Auteur Theory,” or “the idea that in some types of action or badass pictures, it is the badass (or star) who carries through themes from one picture to the next” to the whole of the seagal's oevre, including musical efforts.

If you doubt the strength of the author's theory, ask yourself how any episode of any show would be transformed by even the most fleeting glimpse of Steven Seagal.

The most effective support for B.A.T., though, is the existence of the book itself. Since Seagal appears in it, it becomes a "Steven Seagal Book" rather than just an extremely readable and entertaining journey through all things Seagal. How about a "dizzying look through the seagalian lens, whose refractory power transforms governments into criminal agencies, submarines into helicopters, ponytails into widow's peaks, and of course, arms into pretzels."