King Dork

Tom (aka Chi-Mo, aka King Dork) is a nerdy, disaffected high school sophomore. Bored with the drudgery of high school, the abuse of "normal people," and his embarrassing hippie parents, he spends his free time coming up with band names with fellow terrible musician Sam Hellerman.

After Tom's boring English class gets off to a dreary start, Tom finds his deceased father's old copy of The Catcher in The Rye, along with several other books, all of which contain underlinings and notes that help Tom decode several ambiguous, coded notes his father left in the books. All Tom knows is that his father's buddy in coding went by the nickname "Tit."

While Tom is figuring out the mystery of his dad's coded messages, he has his first sexual encounter with a spacey stoner chick named Fiona. Unfortunately, he cannot find any evidence of Fiona's existence, leaving Tom with another mystery to piece together.

Notable in that the cover, featuring the title and author of The Catcher in The Rye crossed out, explicitly advertises the book as a modern counterpart to Catcher.

The book was written by Frank Portman (a.k.a. Dr. Frank), the lead singer and chief songwriter of Bay Area punk band The Mr. T Experience.


 * All of the Other Reindeer: The more popular kids at school (read: nearly everybody in school because Tom is very close to the bottom of the hierarchy), whom Tom bitingly calls "psychotic normal people."
 * All There in the Manual: The book contains a glossary loosely detailing and defining esoteric vocabulary words, cultural icons and a number of rock and roll bands used and mentioned within the narrative itself. Loosely, because some of the definitions would leave a reader who didn't already understand the references stumped.
 * All Women Are Lustful: Or at least, they will all cheat on their boyfriends.
 * Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Tom's stepfather, Little Big Tom, is this trope personified. Tom's stoner mother isn't much better.
 * Appropriated Appellation: At their first concert, Tom dubs his band "The Chi-Mos."
 * Bi the Way: Sort of. Maybe. The Unreliable Narrator interprets it this way. At the very end,
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Mr. Teone, the weird, giggly assistant principal who constantly greets Tom with nonsensical comments.
 * Embarrassing Middle Name: Mr. Teone's full name is
 * Full-Name Basis: Sam Hellerman especially; Tom refers to nearly all of his peers by their full names
 * Funny Aneurysm Moment: Tom and Sam Hellerman base their entire concert around mocking Mr. Teone, including a song called "I Saw Mr. Teone Checking Out Kyrsten Blakeny's Ass."
 * Gambit Roulette: Tom is unsatisfied with Sam's explanation of the clues they collected because it has shades of this.
 * Give Geeks a Chance: At the end,.
 * A Good Name for a Rock Band: Tom and Sam Hellerman's favorite pastime is coming up with band names and album covers.
 * It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Tom loves to mispronounce words for comic effect; the book even has a glossary of his mispronunciations, complete with altered meanings. There's also Deanna Shumacher, pronounced "Skoo-macker."
 * In fact, mispronunciation proves to be a vital game-changer in  and revealing to Tom that was   was
 * Lyrical Dissonance: "Thinking Of Suicide" from the audiobook.
 * Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Subversion: When Tom finds out that, he briefly wonders if maybe the man has Hidden Depths.
 * Never Live It Down: Tom's "Chi-Mo" nickname - a career aptitude test gave him the result "Clergy," and the "normal people" in the room turned that into an excuse to call him "Child Molester," which was eventually shortened. At this point very few people even remember the origin of the shortened name.
 * The Plan: When Tom finds out the truth behind "Dud/Dude List", a social experiment conducted and game played by girls within the high school, the recent rapid changes in his sex life, and Sam Hellerman's association with girls out of both their leagues, Tom suspects that Sam Hellerman had been behind everything and that he could never have failed with the proper information. To wit:
 * Sadist Teacher: Gym teacher Mr. Donnelly. Mr. Teone is a borderline example, being more of a repulsive Cloudcuckoolander than a sadist.
 * Totally Radical: Not the speech, but the reference to Recovered Memory Therapy - the book takes place a few years after the practice had lost its trendiness, and was published long after it had stopped being relevant.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Averted. Although the book was released in 2006, the story itself is set in 1997.
 * Unfortunate Names: Pierre Butterfly Cameroon, victim of hippie parents.
 * Unreliable Narrator: Tom is pretty thoroughly biased against anybody and everybody, and very prone to misinterpreting things.