The Making of a Stand-Up Guy

By Charlie Murphy with Chris Millis

Simon Spotlight Entertainment

When I picked up Stand-Up Guy to read, I thought it would be a fun read filled with many stories a la the True Hollywood Stories on the Chapelle Show, but what I got was the true story of Charlie Murphy. Charlie and I come from two very different worlds. Although we both come from Long Island, I am from an über suburban town of Smithtown, while he is from the violent town of Roosevelt (ask Howard Stern about it). The closest I ever came to Roosevelt was seeing NKOTB at Nassau Coliseum in nearby Uniondale. I never had a gun put to my head, joined a gang, or went to jail, yet, I totally identified with his story. I know what it is like not to know what you want out of life. When I was in college, everyone seemed to know what they were going to be…they took the right classes and got to work after graduation. I used to joke that I just want to be a Jeopardy champion, because all my classes, although educational, were very random. I chose my major by looking at my credits to see what I had the most classes in at the time to declare. I was aimless and wandering. Making me feel even more lost, like Charlie, I also had that sibling who always knew what they wanted to do. My sister, Kara, had known she wanted to be a fashion designer since she first got Fashion Plates as a child. She had a natural talent, but she worked her ass off to make it happen. She is hugely successful now while I am unemployed. So I now find myself asking the same questions Charlie Murphy was asking himself when he realized he didn’t just want to be looked at as a hanger on. Who am I? I have been saying for years that I want to write, yet do not have the cajones to declare “I am a writer!” Instead, I am afraid of what I have to say. I choose to write cheesy cover letters begging for a shitty job that I really don’t want all to avoid it.
Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unlikely source; for me, that source is Charlie Murphy. I was inspired from the moment I read the opening words of The Making of a Stand Up Guy, “Anyone who has given up will never know just how close they came to winning…” So today, prepared to do all the work involved, I am ready to declare that I am a writer.

You Better Not Cry

By Augusten Burroughs

St. Martin's Press

Hi, my name is Jill and I am addicted to Augusten Burroughs. I have been eagerly awaiting the release of You Better Not Cry since June 20. That is when I had the opportunity, thanks to the best library system in the world (Clark County Library District), to attend an evening with Augusten Burroughs. They may have called it a reading, but I will not, as there was no reading, just Augusten talking off the cuff. It was amazing…he is hilarious and also a lot thinner than I thought. Anyway, it was there that he shared the idea behind this new work. And now, after waiting all that time plus waiting my turn in the library hold system, I finally got to read it. I was not disappointed. Now, I admit, I may lack objectivity when it comes to Burroughs, but I do thoroughly enjoy all he has written. After Running With Scissors, Dry, and A Wolf At The Dinner Table, you feel as you know Burroughs intimately. The additional books of essays and stories are just like kicking back with a friend and sharing the embarrassing stories from our past (or yesterday!). Cry was no different. It is something I think we all can relate to, as Christmas can often fall below our expectations of the holiday. Now, I never ate a plastic Santa or slept with one either, but, it is always something. One thing Augusten does offer in all of his Christmas from hell stories is hope. Maybe, we can just appreciate the day and the season for what it is, a comedy of errors…and the birth of Jesus-Santa!

The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship

By Charles Bukowski

Black Sparrow Press

When I noticed, at my wedding reception, that someone was about to step on my dress, I said something bridely like “Oh, my dress!” to which my Grandmother replied “You’re never gonna wear it again.” (God, I love and miss her!) It is this kind of wisdom that I found in The Captain; the words of someone who has seen enough of life to know what is important and certainly what is not. I think people can read as many self-help books as they would like, but I do not believe it would help as much as an aging cynic’s views to truly see how silly they are. Some may say there was a morbid tone, but I don’t believe this to be true. It was honest and fearless. Bukowski was 71-72 years old in the period of these journal entries, wise in the knowledge he should have been dead years ago but also knowing death was not far away. It had been eleven or twelve years since I last read Bukowski, and then it was his writings from his earlier years. The stories and poems were wild and untamed, as was I. The Captain was still Bukowski, just in the calm of his life, as am I.

The Great Gatsby

by F Scott Fitzgerald

Scribner

The Great Gatsby was not read in any of my high school English classes. To be honest, even if it was, I probably would not have read it. I never read any of the assigned books; I just paid attention in class and got the gist of what I needed to know to pass the test. It is probably just as well we did not “read” Gatsby in high school, because I would have lied to myself and said I read it and never would have re-read it as an adult. I would have really missed out. There is a reason this book is a classic. This is how great novels should be written. I am not a novel reading type of gal. My general opinion is that authors of novels tend to throw in a lot of extra words to show you how smart they are and then the story is lost, if there was a story at all. In Gatsby, this simply is not the case. The story is told in a way that captivates you from the first page through the last. The characters are fascinating. Obviously, the rich have and always will be of particular interest and curiosity (hello, how else can we explain Paris Hilton?). It was just so beautifully written…I sound sappy, I know it. All aspiring novelists should read/ re-read The Great Gatsby, then read what they have written and start editing!! Less is truly more.

The First Third & Other Writings

Neal Cassady

City Lights

Oye! I thought I was down with the hipster beatnik generation, but I'm afraid Cassady lost me somewhere on the streets of Denver. To say this was a difficult read would be an understatement. I struggled, managing only two or three pages at a time. I started the book on January 3 and just finished Friday night, January 15...and it is only 222 pages!(just to prove I am not an idiot, I picked up The Great Gatsby Saturday and finished Sunday morning...and Saturday is "chore" day!)Anyway, when I got to the After-Word by Carolyn Cassady, Neal's wife and also a writer, I realized I was not alone. She explained he was influenced by Proust when writing The First Third which made reading it an "uphill battle". (note to self: don't read Proust, it is beyond your reading comprehension level and you will not like it.) Because the "Other Writings" were from an un-Proust-influenced period, I decided to read the remainder of the book. These stories and letters, even when left unfinished, were very enjoyable. I would have like to have read more. So, it wasn't so much content of The First Third that didn't agree with me, but the style of writing. Anyway, I finished it. On to the next...The Great Gatsby will be reviewed tomorrow.

The Rest of the Great Reads of 2009

I read a lot of great books in 2009, but I did say I was only going to spend a week discussing these books. Alas, the week has come and gone and I must move on. But not without giving you this; a list of books worth reading:

Memoirs:

1. A Wolf at the Dinner Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs (I am a huge Augusten fan. I am currently waiting for You Better Not Cry to come in to my library. After reading it, I will probably dedicate a week of blogs to his books!!)
   
2. I am not myself these days: A Memoir
   by Josh Kilmer-Purcell (Perfect combination of crazy, addiction, and love!! A must read!)
   
3. Too Fat Too Fish by Artie Lange with Anthony Bozza (I love Artie and wish him the best.)
   
4. Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin by Kathy Griffin (Not only funny but very honest.)
   
5. Why is My Mother Getting a Tattoo by Jancee Dunn (such a fun read. I definitely will be reading more of her this year)
   

Non-Fiction:

1. Chemical Cowboys by Lisa Sweetingham (I loved this book about the investigation of the Ecstasy trade.)
   
2. The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and The World of Immigrant America by Thomas Buk-Swienty (I am a history buff!)
   
3. Clark Clifford: The Wise Man of Washington by John Acacia (very interesting on the power and influence in Washington DC)
   
4. The Road Out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders by Anthony Flacco with Jerry Clark (horrifying!)
   
5. The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw by Michael Sokolove (As a lover of baseball, I found this book to be incredibly interesting)
   

Fiction(I am not a huge fiction reader, but I did like these):

1. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
   
2. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
   

Ernest Hemingway:

Every year I try to read authors I probably should have read a long time ago. This year, I read three books by Ernest Hemingway. Needless to say, I now want to move to Europe and drink wine all day; unfortunately, I should have read these books in my twenties when there was still time.

1. A Moveable Feast
   
2. A Farewell to Arms
   
3. The Sun Also Rises

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

By Barton Gellman

The Penguin Press

Dick Cheney has been very vocal lately criticizing the policies of the Obama administration. Well, as we all know, Cheney IS smarter than everyone and regardless of the legality of his policies, he did always know what is best for the American people (for those of you from Canada, that is what we Americans like to call sarcasm). Oh, I'm sorry, wasn't it your foreign policy that got us into a BS war in Iraq, sacrificing the lives of many young men and women for your own glory? That was you, right? Jerk. But I digress. Let's get to the task at hand, my review of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, one of the best reads I had in 2009.

Angler gave great insight to Cheney's manipulation of the Bush Administration. Cheney's abuse of his office was astounding. He used "creative" interpretation of law to expand the role and the power of the vice-presidency, circumventing the checks and balances that would normally prevent such a thing, all to push his agenda through. Cheney's plan was clear and no dissenter would be allowed to stand in his way. Anyone in the administration not conforming to Cheney's point of view was subject to intimidation or being undercut by Cheney, as the gatekeeper to the President (the story about Christy Todd Whitman was a great example of this). It is unbelievable to me the actions of Cheney were not stopped; which really speaks to his power and control over things.

I will say I was schooled a little bit on my opinion of Cheney when it came to social issues. I have always lumped Cheney in with Bush when it came to the whole Christian Right crazy talk and it never made sense to me. I mean how, for example, could Cheney support anti-Gay rights when his own daughter is a lesbian? In Angler, I came to understand that Cheney did not necessarily support or share those opinions with Bush. Social issues were not a priority for Cheney so any policies/ positions from the White House regarding social issues were Bush's.

My only issue with Angler is the chapter where Gellman put in a letter from Cheney to his grandkids. It humanized Cheney. I am very easily swayed to see the good in people. I did not want to see the loving, caring side of Cheney…I prefer seeing him as the devil. Darn you Gellman!!! Great book, though!