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Comedian hits bully pulpit

By Dan Craft
dcraft@pantagraph.com

Bully, bully for Brad. Comedian-author Brad Tassell, that is, whose life has been dominated in recent years by the brutish and the belligerent.

His award-winning book for teen and pre-teen boys, "Don't Feed the Bully," has become a hit with not only teen and pre-teen boys, but also teen and pre-teen girls, all of whom have been taken with his meditation on the wages of bully-dom.

His comedy act for grown-ups mines humor from the current state of American society, where our sense of entitlement has led to every adult's assumption that he or she is smart and everyone else on the planet is not.

They're raving idiots, in fact.

Both sides of the Tassell tussle will be on display this weekend in Bloomington.

At 3 p.m. Saturday, he takes over Barnes & Noble Booksellers' kids' corner for a 3 p.m. show, offering a mix of comedy, singing, magic and clowning, all of it keyed to themes explored in "Don't Feed the Bully."

That night, he heads over to the Tree House Comedy Lounge on Ireland Grove Road for two shows (8 and 10:30 p.m.), both geared to an older sensibility, but still addressing, with a spoonful of mirth, society's penchant for bullying its way through life.

"I wasn't a great target for bullies as a kid," Tassell admits. "But I was bullied some."

And, much to his own disappointment, he worked the other side of the fence, too.

That first-hand experience has found its way into the book, which won the Top Choice Award as Best Teen Novel. It's framed as a teen version of a hardboiled Raymond Chandler-style detective story targeting that tough-to-crack male readership beginning at around age 10 and peaking at about 14.

The hero is Hannibal Greatneck III, a sixth-grade student who becomes a private dick after he finds a cage in the middle of his classroom.

The cage is there because the school has decided to deal with its bully problem by handing over all the power to another bully. Hannibal must find the clues, outwit the villains and put the school back in the hands of students and faculty.

Tassell's goal with the tale: To snare the short attention spans of notoriously book-phobic boys in the above-named age range via the catnip of an easily managed, funny, hip detective story.

In Brad's day as a fickle 12-year-old, it was the "Encyclopedia Brown" detective series that kept his eye glued to the printed page and craving more with each turn of the text.

"Don't Feed the Bully," he says, has been engineered to exert maximum of the literary equivalent of sex appeal.

Call it size appeal: The book was physically designed to be "taller and thinner" so that its chapter stops and 128 pages of text wouldn't seem so psychologically daunting.

"Boys, especially those in the 11-to-12 range, have trouble making the jump to good literature and chapter books, so we made this longer and thinner," Tassell says.

In addition to taller and thinner, the story also offers a hidden four-step agenda for beating (not beating up) bullies: 1. Staying calm; 2.) Assessing the likelihood of violence; 3.) Having a thick skin and sense of humor; 4.) Collecting evidence.

Along the way, Tassell seeks to raise the reader's sense of self-esteem.

Though he wasn't a poster child for bully victim as a kid, Tassell does point to two pivotal moments in his coming of anti-bully age.

The first was in junior high school, when the short, red-haired, freckled, big-nosed, braces-wearing Tassell decided to face the bully music. He did it by walking past a stretch of schoolyard where the bullies smoked and jeered. Instead of taking the detour, per usual, Tassell walked right by the group and endured "the dumbest insults I ever heard in my life."

Eventually a police car drove by, and "I think they (the bullies) were kind of glad it was over, too, because unless they started hitting me they had nothing."

After that, Tassell knew that confronting your worse fears, rather than fleeing them, was entirely feasible.

On the other hand, Tassell found himself playing devil's advocate when he found himself teasing a fellow student with the kind of wounding comments kids are known for.

"I learned I could be kind of a mean bully, even though I was 4-foot-8 and 97 pounds," he says. "I learned you can really hurt people with the things you need to say to be able to make fun of them."

Tassell didn't set out to become a best-selling, award-winning novelist for young people. He began his career in comedy, then dabbled in other forms of writing, eventually producing a half-dozen books in various genres, for both adults and kids.

These days, his stand-up comedy gigs have taken a back seat to his authorial pursuits, especially since the success of "Don't Feed the Bully."

But as a veteran of around 10 past appearances at the Treehouse Comedy Lounge, he decided to turn his Bloomington trip into a homecoming of sorts.

The grown-up shows, he assures, "aren't dirty," but they're keyed to adult matters like marriage, child-rearing (he has a 5-year-old daughter of his own working her way toward the "Don't Feed the Bully" demographic) and, yes, our society's prevailing sense of entitlement at all costs.

"My comedy show has kind of taken a turn toward talking about how, as adults, we've become bullies in society, where we go through the McDonald's drive-through and some kids leaves the pickle off the hamburger and we scream at them like they've murdered somebody because they forgot the pickle."

Tassell, of course, turns it into a joke: "By the way, if, as adults, you drive through a McDonald's and you think your order is going to be right, then you're the idiot!"

Still, he notes, "When we get older, suddenly everyone else becomes stupid, and it gives us the right to be as mean as we can be to them."

Whether via kids' books like "Don't Feed the Bully" or stand-up routines aimed at the kids' elders, Tassell's main goal in life is, first, to make everyone laugh, and, second, to make everyone realize that what they're laughing at is also serious business demanding a cure.

Laughter being the best medicine, "my concept is to be funny and to have fun and hope that some great lessons end up sticking, like a good bowl of oatmeal, to the ribs."

At a glance

Comedian and author Brad Tassell will be performing for both kids and their elders in a pair of local appearances Saturday:

• At 3 p.m., Tassell will make a free appearance at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 1701 E. Empire St., Bloomington, with a show aimed at families and their kids, particularly in the 6-to-14 age range. Featured will be magic, singing, jokes, a discussion on bullying -- specifically via his award-winning book, "Don't Feed the Bully," which will be well-stocked at the store. For more information, call (309) 662-1506.

• At 8 and 10:30 p.m., Tassell will headline grown-up comedy shows at the Treehouse Lounge & Comedy Club, 2060 Ireland Grove Road, Bloomington. Appearing with Tassell will be opening act Brian Hicks. For ticket information and/or reservations, call (309) 662-5231.

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Take a look

Comedian-author Brad Tassell will perform twice in Bloomington this weekend, at 3 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble Booksellers and later that night for two shows at the Tree House Comedy Lounge. Below: "Don't Feed the Bully" is Brad Tassell's award-winning novel for teens and preteens.

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