You know: in a foolish, undiscriminating way, I've been happy these last few months. I don't know why. I just am. I love my friends; I love my pupils; I love what I read; I -- dammit -- love my thoughts. I love the taste of oranges.
Thornton Wilder in a letter to Gertrude Stein, Aug 14, 1936

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: IF YOU WON'T READ THEN WHY SHOULD I WRITE by Jarret Kobek


Vince Neil
This slender black paperback comes with no forward, preface, introduction, or author's note. There is a table of contents to let you know that what is on its way involves a panoply of America's most excruciating media whores, the actors, musicians, and TMZ regulars who trot their anything but private lives before the cameras of paparazzi, reality TV producers, and their friends iPhones. This is the leaked sex tape as burgeoning art form, the drug-fueled or drunken tirade as the spoken word art of the 21st century. Narrow black inserts list the featured celebrity's legal history, and in case you have trouble keeping up incident by incident a final section analyzes and graphs the sorry state of the American justice system when it comes handling those who drink and drug their way into the courtroom on charges ranging from street brawls to vehicular homicide.
Laurence Fishburne's Daughter

I am old enough not to know who some of these people are, but I was equally intrigued by the fact that I already knew so much about so many of them. They may sound like idiots, they probably are idiots, but similar transcriptions of You Tube tapes of solid middle class Americans watching their young children or pets play cute for the camera would probably be just as incoherent and inane. In such cases, however, I assume their would be fewer run ins with the law

Amy Fisher Today

Jason Shaw: A Model



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