You Can Get Arrested for That: 2 Guys, 25 Dumb Laws, 1 Absurd American Crime Spree

by Rich Smith

Book Overview

Two Englishmen on a crime spree break American laws Stupid, unreasonable, and long-forgotten laws but laws just the same. In 1787 the wise framers of the U.S. Constitution laid out the laws of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307339424
• ISBN13: 9780307339423
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Shows the silly side of the world!

Ever since I heard about this book I wanted to get it. Two guys from England coming and showing us how silly our laws are? Yes please. Sounds like something I would do, and so I got the book and read it through and was very satisfied with it, only to find that many reviews of it are negative. Most negative reviews complain about how Rich and Luke have a very unsuccessful crime spree and, since that is what the book is supposed to be about, it failed to deliver any substance to them at all. However, they came here on their own cash on their own time to prove just how silly this country is, and I think THAT is what the book was about. I don't care if they failed to break ALL of the laws, it would still be about a funny, memorable journey through a foreign country with the sole purpose to poke fun and to have fun. The book was very humo(u)rous and I did rather enjoy Smith's style of writing. It was a very fun read and I cannot wait to read his second book.

25 Laws in 8 weeks. That's less than half a law per day!

Perhaps it's just me, but I think that the law-per-day ratio is a little on the weak side.

Anglophilia in Reverse

This wonderfully original and very funny book is a quick and enjoyable read. Rich Smith and his companion in crime, Luke Bateman, are a couple of young English guys who travel all over the U.S. to break a series of anachronistic or just plain silly laws, like fishing in pajamas (pyjamas to Smith) or giving cigarettes to zoo monkeys. What I found most disarming about their escapades is the clear affection these two bear America and Americans. They ridicule silly laws by breaking them; but they treat the people they meet, for the most part, with good humor (humour). I think most Americans would thoroughly enjoy reading this hilarious travel tale.

A Unique Way of Looking at America

Foreigners have come to America for the deliberate purpose of breaking our laws. It isn't that they hate our freedom or that they wish to imperil us or to enrich themselves at our expense. They just want to break laws for the fun of it. At least, that's the motivation for Englishman Rich Smith, who with his chum Luke Bateman, came to our shores for the express purpose of breaking 25 of our silliest laws, all for a lark. And also, one assumes, for a book deal. In _You Can Get Arrested for That: 2 Guys, 25 Dumb Laws, 1 Absurd American Crime Spree_ (Three Rivers Press), Smith has detailed his life of crime. Actually, it was only a summer of crime, for Smith confesses, "I am not a man with a criminal history and, by nature, am a law-abiding citizen... before the journey I made to write this book, the only criminal act I had ever committed was a speeding offense on the 18th of December, 2001." For this, he was convicted and fined 60 pounds in Plymouth. Otherwise, he has been conviction-free, although he admits that he could be accused of less criminal offenses such as silliness. And before any Americans could catch him and convict him of, say, kissing for longer than five minutes (illegal in Iowa), he had fled home, only to write this taunt of a book to make us feel foolish. There is bound to be a story behind the law of Atlanta, Georgia, that says you must never tie your giraffe to a street lamp or telephone pole (this is not one of the laws he attempts to break), but the story is not here. Smith tries to find explanations for some of the laws, but never succeeds. The pair failed in their attempt to ride a bike in a swimming pool, which is illegal in Baldwin Park, a suburb of Los Angeles. Hiring a bike would have been easy, but Baldwin Park had no hotel swimming pools, only a public one, with staff that would have prevented any unauthorized pool toys. In Tennessee, it will not do just to try to catch fish with a lasso, which is not illegal; you actually have to catch one, which is illegal. It is also impossible, without the hook attachment Smith designed for his lasso fishing tackle; impossible, also, it turns out, with such an attachment. He was, however, able illegally to fish in his pajamas in Chicago. In South Dakota, he was unable to find any cheese factory that would allow him to sleep in it, but he successfully broke the law in Pittsburgh that prohibits anyone from sleeping on top of a refrigerator. Smith aims to be a primary teacher one day, and before resorting to crime, he had worked at a school whose students he had promised to keep up to date of his exploits by e-mail. The questions came back to him: "How are you going to get a giraffe?" "Do you know where the cheese factory you're going to fall asleep in is?" or "Have you found a bike and a swimming pool yet?" But the most important question of the lot was: "When are you going to stop being silly?" Smith says, "I've yet to get back to them on that one." It's a good

Hilarious

We all know a few, or maybe even just one, but bizarre laws which govern some American states commonly feature in many dinner party conversations. But when Rich Smith discovered that it is illegal for a divorced woman to parachute on Sundays throughout Florida, whilst playing a board game on an otherwise uneventful Christmas evening, he was intrigued to such a degree that his mild interest spawned an obsession which was to be pursued on the grandest of scales. Cue the madness. Over the months that followed, Rich researched more laws and, after mass media interest when he appeared within the pages of numerous international newspapers ranging from The Daily Telegraph to Taiwan's Taipei Times, (even speaking live to the world on the BBC World Service), found himself and his friend Luke Bateman at San Francisco airport to begin what turned out to be a daring eight-week cross-continental crime spree, breaking a selection of America's most bizarre and archaic decrees. As you would have guessed from the cover and origin of the book, the prose is light hearted and is as funny as it is well written, and you tend to find yourself urging the partners in crime along, even when they are held at gunpoint by the Chicago police and less frantic times when the two are found in landlocked Utah hunting for a whale! Even the absence of pictures doesn't diminish the flow of the text as Rich has an uncanny knack of describing the scenery and his surroundings in a way which, to the reader, is as fresh and intense as opening a window and gulping in the air. The book is more of a travel journal than a tale of crime, but as the book progresses, you find that whether the law breaking results in failure or not, is more-or-less irrelevant. You Can Get Arrested For That is amusing, often informative, and truly inspiring; which after reading, you feel as if you want to experience the thrill for yourself. Just make sure that put some money to the side for bail.