"A fascinating collection. It will break your heart."

In the recent past, whenever I have gone to any bookstore, I have more frequently been finding myself in the Humor section. Among the things I am looking for are The Areas of my Expertise, by John Hodgeman whom you might recall as the correspondent on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and half of the advertisement team for Apple Computers. He's the nerdy looking guy whose tagline is "I'm a PC." In this book, the author goes throughout history in an almanac-style presentation giving tidbits of trivia about events and figures and trends. The gag, of course, is that it's all completely made up.

One of my favorite finds in the Humor section is a book called Found II. This is, of course, the second published book in the history of Found Magazine, and the subject of the accolade quoted in the title of this post (David Sedaris said it).

For those of you not aware, Found Magazine is one of the greatest magazines in existence anywhere ever. Based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, this magazine was founded by Davy Rothbart, who, since he was a child, made a collection of items he found randomly on the street, in libraries, restaurants, schools, and so on. He then decided to make this the premise of the magazine. What eventually happened as his fan-base widened was that readers would send Rothbart and his crew items that they had found in their neck of the woods, including notes, photographs, drawings, etc.

At some point during all of this, the magazine branched out into a few and far between issue dubbed Dirty Found, which, as the title might suggest, exclusively includes photos, notes and drawings and so on that are for the 18 and up crowd. Rothbart also published a very thick anthology just called Found.

A lot of the charm of the book and magazine comes from the presentation. All of the finds are literally taped to a sheet of paper, photocopied, and sized to fit. Alongside all of the finds are the name of the person who sent it in, a brief title, and the city and state (or nation) in which the find was found. These notes are typed out and cut out of the paper and taped right next to the finds.

In the preface of Found II, Davy writes that he, and his brother Peter bought a van on E-bay and pursued an 8 month, 50 state , 136 city tour, in such venues as coffee houses (like Grounds For Thought, which I am sad to say I missed), bookstores, prisons, art galleries, bars and so on, presenting their all-time favorite finds and allowing faithful readers to present their own finds. He did this because, as he states, it was "pointed out that there finds in it from every single state."

The biggest thing to point out in Found II is that, although the majority of the finds sent in are hilariously out of context, such as a lousily drawn sign informing the reader that a Hot Pocket was lost that was only a few seconds old, and that there is a reward for its return, there are two heartbreaking sections of the book. The first section is a collection of items that Davy himself found on a trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He went down there with a friend who was a New Orleans native and wanted to return to his home. The second section is a small collection of suicide notes. This may seem insensitive, but the idea is that if one wanted to describe what it's like to live in America in these modern days, as an everyday normal person, what better way than to let these things speak for themselves? As comedian David Cross put it, "You can take everything ever written about America or Americans by natives or visitors whether fact or fiction since the first pilgrims landed here, and they will all pale as illustrations of the American psyche when held up to these genuine and perfect examples of pathos, anger, longing, and heart-break (and how stupid and inane we can be), located within these pages."

The other neat thing about Found II is that the scope of the finds has widened to the international. There are finds from the Virgin Islands, England, and Canada just to name a few.

The last thing I'd like to leave you with is the address of the magazine to which you can send your interesting and curious finds.

Found Magazine
3455 Charing Cross Road
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108

And, as Rothbart implores at the end of his preface, keep your eyes to the ground and send in your finds.




P.S. go to the magazine's website for more information, including subscription information, and a daily find.