adventures in disaster

Anderson

Anderson Cooper, he of the hot or cool blue eyes and the strangely attractive white hair..
So I read your "memoir" excerpt in Vanity Fair and I was sympathetic, a little bit. What stood out for me is damn, you are one repressed man. I guess some cracks are going to happen when you stuff one too many tragedies down. To get us all up to speed..Andersen's mom is Gloria Vanderbilt of "Little Gloria" fame. She was the rich little girl torn from the warm and loving arms of her really cool nanny. Gloria's mom was a party girl that may have forgotten she had a kid if it weren't for the money said kid had. Anderson's dad was a poor son of a failed farmer, a failed actor and semi successful screen writer. Gloria and Wyatt married and had two kids. Wyatt died when the kids were young and both kids never recovered. The eldest grew up, freaked out and jumped from his mothers balcony 14 stories to his death.
Anderson is the sole survivor . Reading his memories you realize he doesn't have many, or maybe he does but he sure as hell isn't sharing. He isn't sharing anything. He writes just as he speaks, facts, facts and then an exclamatory oh that is terrible. He never says why he feels it's all terrible, he slides into generics, the journalism of terrible. He does throw out little tidbits..the place his father worked..a grocery store. He doesn't talk about being the son of a guy who works in a store, or of being the son of a woman who signed her name to a line of jeans. He never talks about his own feelings really. It's as if he is commenting on the feelings of the personality Anderson Cooper..a guy he doesn't even know.
I finished the piece knowing absolutely nothing about Anderson Cooper. Maybe that was his design but then why bother writing a memoir? I still can't decide if the guy is gay or not. He is so closed off, so tight with control I don't expect he could really have a relationship with anyone, male or female. Maybe he is this really cool, open guy with his friends but you would never know it by reading his view of his own life .
It was Anderson Cooper reporting on...the life and times of Anderson Cooper...really weird.




I just finished Haunted by Chuck Palahiniuk. I like scary stories. This wasn't scary. This wasn't intense. This was gross. I was disappointed. Haunted is the story thirteen year old boys tell each other in the tree house during sleepovers. Thirteen year old boys tell the stories a lot better. They, at least have the innocence to express unabashed horror and disgust..grown ups don't get to tell fart stories and be all my friend? he heard about this kid? who got his butt stuck in the pool thing and it sucked out his guts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Every gross out story was too damn easy. It was a story we have all heard over ad over.
The whole book was masturbation. Chuck whacking off to something he remembered as a kid or read on the internet. I think Chuck needs to take a break.
I get the joke, I paid real money,the hard work kind to read a book I thought would be good and all the while you were laughing your ass off that anyone would pay money to let you whack off ..fuck you too Chuck..the joke ain't funny and you are an asshole and huge disappointment.





On to the next book..Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. This book is the second most annoying piece of dreck I have read in years. The winner was ofcourse Emma. Fifth Business is words, words, words. Blah, Blah, Blah..what? move the story along? hell no! blah blah blah. It is excruciating. Not as bad as Emma because there is nothing as bad as Emma. This makes me crazy. This is required reading for grade 12 english, I read it too so I can help my kid get through this awfulness. I am lost with this. It has no value as a story. I can reduce this crap to: asshole kid hit retarded woman in head with a snowball and other kid felt bad/guilty and then they all grew up and asshole stayed an asshole except now he is a really rich asshole and other kid still felt bad and kinda guilty but not so guilty that he minded getting paid hush money from asshole and retarded woman's kid ran away and joined the fucking circus , became a magician and killed asshole for hitting his mom in the head with a snowball. Karma's a bitch and we all die..who cares? This is literature? This shitty , unsatisfying little tale of revenge is so damned important you need it to graduate from highschool?
There are a million better books, hell Haunted is a better book.
No wonder my kid loves math.


In grade 12 I read Wuthering Heights. Now that is a revenge tale, a bitter, mean little story that should scare the crap out of anyone. I hated Cathy and Heathcliff and hell, everyone in that book but it was a good clean hate. The author worked damn hard to show you everything. She didn't tack a moral on..the whole damn thing was the moral. It was unrepentant, unvarnished and it let you sit in judgment and made you feel good about it. It was fucking scary for all the right reasons and it wasn't a cheap scare. The lessons you learn from Wuthering Heights are lessons every woman should learn early. If you had a good teacher you knew from the start this was the dark, black heart of every Harlequin Romance ever written.

It was a great book..Fifth Business is crap.

posted by adventures in disaster @ 10:55 PM