Toonamint of Champions: How LaJuanita Mumps Got to Join Augusta National Golf Club Real Easy [Hardcover]

Todd Sentell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2007

An off-the-wall story with larger-than-life characters, this novel discusses the desire to gain membership to an exclusive golf club and the realization that the grass just may be greener on the other side. Waymon Poodle, a wall-eyed, squawky-voiced Bible thumper, obsesses about teeing off at the Augusta National Golf Club. Waymon’s quest to be granted access into the most famous golf club in the world sets him on an irreverent and hilarious course of enlightenment and adventure—from a loud-mouthed girlfriend, LaJuanita Mumps, who also wants into the exclusive club, to the affluent and influential buffoons who are already members. With comic vitality and southern spice, this hip and fresh novel will delight golf enthusiasts and fans of humor alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Golf inspires its share of mystical celebration, but it also provides fertile ground for low comedy (take Caddyshack, or the novels of Dan Jenkins and Rick Reilly). When it comes to over-the-top slapstick, though, golf journalist Sentell makes Jenkins and Reilly look like somber social realists out of the Emile Zola school. Summarizing the plot of a farce filled with fart jokes is treacherous, but here goes: Waymon Poodle, the best damn bank teller in Mullet Luv, Georgia, dreams of playing a round of golf at Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters. Sentell's novel purports to tell us how Waymon tries to achieve his goal, but its real purpose is to expose "what goes on behind the gates of ootsie-tootsie private clubs." Are we really expected to believe that the chairman of the ootsiest-tootsiest private club in America goes by the nickname of Huge Pecker? Well, not exactly, but thousands of otherwise sensible, workaday golf fans will jump at the chance to pretend it's so. There's no explaining why golf slapstick is funny, just as there's no reason why anybody should like licorice ice cream. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Hilarity for adults . . . perhaps the funniest novel of the year." --"Films and Books Magazine"

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Kunati Inc.; 1st edition (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1601640056
• ISBN-13: 978-1601640055
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,033,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hold on to your golf socks - here comes the funniest golf book ever!, April 11, 2007

By 

Ric Wasley "Ric - Author - Shadow of Innocen... (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toonamint of Champions: How LaJuanita Mumps Got to Join Augusta National Golf Club Real Easy (Hardcover)

I happen to have had the good fortune and unconscious sense of good timing, to have read Todd Sentell's hilarious new book, Toonamint of Champions during the recent Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, GA.

I say fortunate timing because the real Masters was taking place while I read about another Masters in a different Augusta and maybe even in a different parallel universe! A place where the solemn rituals of golf's most prestigious gathering are stretched out to a wildly hilarious romp across the fairways and greens of a totally outrageous and fun type of uninhibited game that we all wish we could see just once.

Think; Caddy Shack meets Woody Allen.

And anyone who thinks that golf can't be funny has obviously never played with author Todd Sentell's fanatically single-minded Masters 'wannabee', Waymon Poodle. I mean for starters, how could a book where the protagonist is named Waymon Poodle, not be absolutely hysterical? Well don't worry, because it is !!
Waymon is not only fixated on the rituals of golf's most prestigious tournament ... or as a the reigning monarch of the Augusta greens puts it 'The Toonamint'. But his life revolves around everything that golf has been, could be or may be if the sport of pars and birdies somehow collided with the Twilight Zone!

And if a hero named Waymon Poodle isn't enough, how about a heroine ( and we use the term loosely ... about as loose as Waymon's finance) named... LaJuanita Mumps.

Bump these zany characters up against the most staid, pompous and self-righteous character's that infinite self-righteousness and privilege ever set up to be punctured by protagonists that would make Bill Murray's Caddy Shack gang look tame by comparison, and you've got a book that will guarantee an uninterrupted straight-down-the-fairway, golf cart full of laughs.

So if you want tickle the funny-bone of your favorite golfer, give her or him a copy of Toonamint of Champions and then count the number of laughs you hear each time they turn the page. And if you know a golfer, live with a golfer or just golf with a golfer, forget about the golf socks or monogrammed tee's - this is the gift they'll love.
As a matter of fact, even if you don't golf at all - Toonamint of Champions, will make you wish that you did. Just to get in on the fun!

Ric Wasley
Author
Shadow of Innocence

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FOREWARD MAGAZINE LOVES THE TOONAMINT, May 29, 2007

By 

Todd Sentell (Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toonamint of Champions: How LaJuanita Mumps Got to Join Augusta National Golf Club Real Easy (Hardcover)

Review by Wayne Cunningham of ForeWard Magazine

If it's wacky you want, it's wacky you'll get with Toonamint of Champions, Georgia humorist Todd Sentell's spoof about a golf nut's lifelong dream to putt around the Augusta National Golf Course, and, as a bonus, have his non-golfing hairdresser girlfriend, LaJuanita Mumps, pinned as "the first ever" female member of the Club.

Where else but in Sentell's bubbly imagination could a kooky hero like Waymon Poodle from Mullet Luv, Georgia rise to the top? A constant daydreamer with one blue eye and one green, his office is located "right by the condom and genital lubricant counter" of a busy supermarket. He's so addicted to golf he rents only apartments numbered 1931 to commemorate the year Bobby Jones debuted at the Augusta Masters. His bedroom replicates the course, and, believe it or not, he prefers golfing to giving up his virginity to LaJuanita despite her come-ons.

To complicate the comedy, Waymon's duffer of a supervisor is also named Waymon, which leads to several convoluted conversations reminiscent of Abbott and Costello routines. Toss in Poodle's paranoia about Giant Cicada Killer Wasps and their impending take over of Augusta's famous twelfth hole ... despite the attempts of entomology professor, Jeevpil Biswapati, and his flamethrower ... and you end up with a "toonamint" even the Marx brothers would roll their eyes at.

Sentell's nine years as "the director of sales and marketing for an ootsie-tootsie private golf club" gives him the background material for carving up golf's sacred rituals and icons of the greens. His expertise as an established humorist has him operating with wit and polish. The problem with humor, though, is that what tickles one man's funny bone may aggravate another's. Some readers may find the raunchy fondling between Augusta's 79-year-old receptionist, Betty Simpson, and 42-year-old head accountant, Frank Johnson (a.k.a.: Emiglio Rafsooliwicki) not as hilarious as the author had hoped. Others may shy away from our hero's abortive attempts to cover up Betty's Bermuda grass when she hikes her skirt to give Chi Chi Rodriguez a peek at her private turf.

On the other hand, Waymon's volunteer position ... position number 1931, by the way ... as "Manager of the Rope at the Practice Facility Invitee Entrance and Exit," and his round of golf with The Golden Bear lead to moments of universal fun. His initial telephone conversation with Rafsooliwicki is true classic comedy, while the episode of his orange jacket among all the green jackets in the Augusta club's dining room is Mastersful satire.

Regardless of which way your funny bone swings, Sentell's Toonamint of Champions will give a brand new meaning to "par for the course."

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laughed my head off, April 8, 2007

By 

Art Tirrell - "The Vitaman Effect" (upstate ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toonamint of Champions: How LaJuanita Mumps Got to Join Augusta National Golf Club Real Easy (Hardcover)

Gonna make this real easy for you. If you love golf. If in your dreams you hit shots that about 200 yards down range begin to magically flare upward before ever so slowly floating back to earth where they perch atop the grass a pitching wedge from the green, you'll enjoy Toonamint of Champions. Delivered primarily in narrative form, author Sentell creates a bizarre world, a world inhabited by a 79-year-old lecherous secretary, a 29-year-old lecherous hairdresser named LaJuanita, a swarm of mutant super-whopper giant killer cicada wasps, and Waymon Poodle, the world's only truly friendly bank teller with really big hair who also happens to hit smoking golf shots. As is usually the case when there are 79-year-old lecherous secretaries and 29-year-old lecherous hairdressers around, Waymon, who's saving himself for his wedding night, is put in temptation's way. Fortunately for Waymon, he doesn't need to resort to evasive measures to preserve his virginity. He IS an evasive measure, totally fixated on Augusta National and his dream to not only play the course, but shoot a course record 62. He knows every inch of every hole, especially the 12th - of which he has an actual chunk of the green installed in the 18 hole scale layout he built in his spare bedroom. After Waymon distinguishes himself as a volunteer during the Masters, things come to a head when he's at long last invited to play the course. It'll be the first day of the fall season. The first tee time. The Golden Bear will be in the foursome. Except there's an eensy teensy problem. That just happens to be Waymon's wedding day. What carnal price will LaJuanita Mumps, Waymon's intended, extract for such a concession as moving her wedding day so Waymon can play golf? How will the swarm of mutant Super-whopper giant killer cicada wasps figure in the unfolding story? How will the Golden Bear react when he's told he's been elected to membership and the 10 million dollar bunker redesign he thinks he's come down to discuss is just a ruse to get him to the club where the announcement will of course be kept completely confidential? And most of all, why does the fan who threatens to show her Bermuda grass choose Chi Chi Rodriguez?
Golf is a grand and time-honored sport, filled with tradition and also sacred cows. In the case of Augusta National, read the sacred cow reference in the past tense. Somewhere in Augusta, there might be one Sentell doesn't rotisserate, but I can't think which. Get this book. Read it. You'll laugh your head off.