Columnist John Katsilometes: This club is not a drag

Monday, Sept. 11, 2000 | 9:11 a.m.

John Katsilometes is the Sun features editor. His column appears Mondays. Reach him at kats@lasvegassun.com or 259-2327.

It's inevitable. Whenever prepubescent boys are allowed to organize and mobilize, funny diversions can transpire.

Toppling garbage cans. Tossing eggs at passing cars. Discovering creative, destructive uses for bar soap and toilet paper. Smokin' in the boys' room.

Writing a book.

Huh?

That's the preferred practice of the Dragon Ball Z Club (name not trademarked -- yet) of Henderson. The crew is comprised of 10-year-olds Joey Lopez, Kris Thomas and Chris Tanaka and 6-year-old Bryce Taylor. The Our Gang of the new millennium had become bored with the limited entertainment opportunities afforded youngsters in the year 2000 -- mundane activities such as attending karate class, participating in youth sports leagues, playing high-tech video games, trolling 70-something cable channels and hacking away on the Web.

So the fun bunch, inspired by the "Dragon Ball Z" animated television show that airs weekdays at 5 p.m. and Saturday at noon on the Cartoon Network (Cox cable channel 65), became literary, literally, and wrote a book based on the latest kiddie media trend.

A quick synopsis of "Dragon Ball Z": The Dragon Balls are seven magical orbs protected (duh) by a mystical dragon. On the hunt for these great balls o' fire are assorted characters with various super powers, with such names as Goku, Piccolo, Krillin, Yamcha, Tien, Yajirobe, Mr. Popo and the Mighty Rodman (not really). They battle their way through the galaxy in a quest to gather up the Dragon's orbs, and once any character has collected seven he is granted infinite mastery of the universe (which includes a lifetime pass to all of The Wayner's shows and unlimited access to the Foundation Room at Mandalay Bay).

Their whimsy energized, the boys found a cozy haven in a Coleman tent Chris bought after saving up his allowance.

"We got the idea from TV, the television show, and from playing with the guys," Joey said.

"We started by writing a summary of how we were going to do it," Kris said, adhering to the Dragon Ball Z Club tradition of jumping in and finishing his pal's sentence.

"We like coming up with the ideas, and drawing," Joey said.

Joey would be the group's foremost literary consultant; he has the most legible printing and therefore "wrote" the book by hand. Chris is the graphic artist; he printed out color pictures of the 20 or so characters on the computer.

The result is a fascinating 15 pages of vibrant, action-filled prose, written with the intensity and grammatical uniqueness of a child.

"They're fighting their way through life, because everybody's trying to get them," said Bryce, whose Goku-like wisdom far exceeds his six years on this planet.

There are tentative plans for a sequel, but how long this goes on is not up to the Dragon Ball Z Club. Stephanie Magee-Tanaka, Chris' mother, has concerns.

"I like that they have balance in their lives, but I don't know about the tent," she said. "It's ruining the grass."

The true master of the universe has spoken.