Rating: 
Summary: Ow!!
Review: This is a subversive, revolutionary book.... It rips the mask off consumerism with out even mentioning the word. Thanks, Cintra, we need this slap up side the head. More! More bracing cold water, please! Kind regards, Lynne Findley
Rating:
Summary: One of the funniest, most biting books ever.
Review: This is pure comedy. And pure satire. Cintra Wilson's writing is at once warm and cutting. Her plunge into celebrity culture is illuminating, disturbing and highly entertaining. This is great reading, and you'll want to return to it over and over again. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: the written form of creme-filled snack cakes-light junky
Review: What this work is trying to be: hip, smart, funny. It's funny, anyway. Camile Paglia does this better, though I often disagree with her. Part social criticism, part stand-up, part satire, it spreads itself too thin, too brittle, and is too little on hard analysis.The tones mismatch...author goes from a logical manner, to a shrill angry manner, to a light manner all in the same piece so that it comes off more as a 'performance' than anything. The blurbs are a clue. One pro magician(?) who is apparently friends with her waxes on about her looks(?!), the book's value, and her moral rightness. He achieves a cloying, cockerspanielish mien. Then Francis Coppola weighs in-on a book about how celebrity is a freakish distortion of personality and spirit. She gets celebrity endorsements? Then a former peer of her writing instructor, the late Lester Bangs, opines. Examples of weak analysis...She says Malcolm McClaren wanted Sid Vicious in the Sex Pistols when on the very website she works for, Johnny Rotten says McClaren was against it in an article. Would it have been hard to do the research? Also, she seems to make the point that Naomi Wolf and Gloria Steinem are taken seriously because they're cute, but Andrea Dworkin isn't, because she is not! Also on the same website employing her, are articles detailing Dworkin's stands and even her alleged assault incident which even her fans have voiced caution about...Also, even a casual listener/reader of Dworkin can hear extremism in her rhetoric. I didn't know what she looked like for the longest time and found her on the other side of the solar system from Wolf & Steinem in politics before I saw her. What Wilson does, is she 'strawmans' or 'shoehorns' the argument. She tweaks the observation to make the joke or the argument work. She speaks of Sports Illustrated as if they always have a swimsuit issue when many know they only have an annual one. Her rhetorical devices of preference are hyperbole and metaphor. She uses it so often it becomes obvious after awhile and then ho-hum. Also the tone is often histrionic. Example: on beauty contests..."It has never been a terrific mystery that these contests are completely pornographically revolting and woman hating on the level of white slavery and foot binding." She assumes the truth she does not prove, albeit she does give interesting observation, then blasts this out over the reader with a Marshall Amp's volume. pg 118 the last paragraph first sentence, i won't even bother typing here...but read it and tell me if this is measured or even funny or even well written. I started out reading this because i like her online column a bit, but have found that she cannibalized most of this for the book. I read to pg 130 before quitting in disgust. The book begged for a red pen and i got mine out before i hit page 50. Buy if you want to, but prepare youself to ask questions. Why does she treat issues in black and white and generalize on the basis of few observations? Why does she speak of the world as 'lookist' yet treat her readers to a large stylized photo of herself...and she happens to be conventionally attractive? She spent a bit of time with stats on cosmetic surgery, identifies war victims and the vain as its only two consumers-no middle ground exists in wilson's arguments-yet herself has no obvious need of any? Just a last example on how this book aims for the cheap joke and standup comic's insight instead of something better. Camile Paglia does this much much better.
Rating:
Summary: Mark E. Smith and the Punky Bunch
Review: Why do I dig this book? It's because the names "Joey McIntyre" of the New Kids and "Mark E. Smith" of The Fall were but pages apart. I could only imagine the hapless aging New Kid (McIntyre) cowering in terror at the sight of a wizened Mancunian bloke (Smith) shambling towards him and murmuring some bollocks about co-optation by the media.
Seriously, Mark E. Smith as described by Ms. Wilson, is a sorry portrait. It reminded me of the day I fell out of love with a local hero celebrity of mine: Mark Ashwill of the Spitters. Ashwill and his band were so engergetic in their prime that I always went to a show just to be in their "halo." I expected every show to be an epiphanous "life-changing" experience. The last time I saw their flailing frames on stage, it was just that: life-changing. It just wasn't the epiphany I expected.
This last show I saw was at the Continental, on 3rd Av. and St. Mark's in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The other three original Spitters - besides Mark - were absent. Whether they were dismissed or they departed on their own, I'll never know. In thier place were a bassist and a drummer: Both young, skinny and nervous. They visibly reared away as Ashwill careened about: replicating his old physical shtick for the umpteenth time. They couldn't complete a single song. Ashwill would bark and rant, hurl his mic stand at the crowd (Punk RAWK, dude... ungh.) He slammed into the drum kit and bellowed, "EVERYTHING'S BREAKING! EVERYTHING'S BREAKING!" He continued howling that phrase even after he tore the XLR cable out of the mic. Towards the end, he met the crowds stare with a hang-dog expression that asked: This isn't even fun for you, is it? I looked to my left and my right and we all had the same sad mask, as if to say: Just end this.
The Spitters shambled off the stage with no applause, cheering, jeering or hisses. Only a wash of feedback to announce the show was over. Canned music came over the PA as some of the crowd wandered to the bar and others stepped out into the night. None of us had anything positive or negative to say about the show. None of us said a word, but it was clear we were heart broken.
That show was the last time I went down to the Village for pleasure or excitement. I'm not gonna be pretentioius and say rock died that day, but that was definitely the day I fell out of love with it.
Three years later, Mark Ashwill died of lung cancer. I was completely unaware of his condition until I read an obituary for him in the Village Voice. Rock music lost all its glamour for me long before his death, that night at the Continental. I still think it's fun, but I no longer wish to bask in any celebrity halo: Whether it's a Local Hero or an International Superstar.
Rating:
Summary: Mark E. Smith and the Punky Bunch
Review: Why do I dig this book? It's because the names "Joey McIntyre" of the New Kids and "Mark E. Smith" of The Fall were but pages apart. I could only imagine the hapless aging New Kid (McIntyre) cowering in terror at the sight of a wizened Mancunian bloke (Smith) shambling towards him and murmuring some bollocks about co-optation by the media.
Seriously, Mark E. Smith as described by Ms. Wilson, is a sorry portrait. It reminded me of the day I fell out of love with a local hero celebrity of mine: Mark Ashwill of the Spitters. Ashwill and his band were so engergetic in their prime that I always went to a show just to be in their "halo." I expected every show to be an epiphanous "life-changing" experience. The last time I saw their flailing frames on stage, it was just that: life-changing. It just wasn't the epiphany I expected.
This last show I saw was at the Continental, on 3rd Av. and St. Mark's in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The other three original Spitters - besides Mark - were absent. Whether they were dismissed or they departed on their own, I'll never know. In thier place were a bassist and a drummer: Both young, skinny and nervous. They visibly reared away as Ashwill careened about: replicating his old physical shtick for the umpteenth time. They couldn't complete a single song. Ashwill would bark and rant, hurl his mic stand at the crowd (Punk RAWK, dude... ungh.) He slammed into the drum kit and bellowed, "EVERYTHING'S BREAKING! EVERYTHING'S BREAKING!" He continued howling that phrase even after he tore the XLR cable out of the mic. Towards the end, he met the crowds stare with a hang-dog expression that asked: This isn't even fun for you, is it? I looked to my left and my right and we all had the same sad mask, as if to say: Just end this.
The Spitters shambled off the stage with no applause, cheering, jeering or hisses. Only a wash of feedback to announce the show was over. Canned music came over the PA as some of the crowd wandered to the bar and others stepped out into the night. None of us had anything positive or negative to say about the show. None of us said a word, but it was clear we were heart broken.
That show was the last time I went down to the Village for pleasure or excitement. I'm not gonna be pretentioius and say rock died that day, but that was definitely the day I fell out of love with it.
Three years later, Mark Ashwill died of lung cancer. I was completely unaware of his condition until I read an obituary for him in the Village Voice. Rock music lost all its glamour for me long before his death, that night at the Continental. I still think it's fun, but I no longer wish to bask in any celebrity halo: Whether it's a Local Hero or an International Superstar.
Rating:
Summary: Mark E. Smith and the Punky Bunch
Review: Why do I dig this book? It's because the names "Joey McIntyre" of the New Kids and "Mark E. Smith" of The Fall were but pages apart. I could only imagine the hapless aging New Kid (McIntyre) cowering in terror at the sight of a wizened Mancunian bloke (Smith) shambling towards him and murmuring some bollocks about co-optation by the media.
Seriously, Mark E. Smith as described by Ms. Wilson, is a sorry portrait. It reminded me of the day I fell out of love with a local hero celebrity of mine: Mark Ashwill of the Spitters. Ashwill and his band were so engergetic in their prime that I always went to a show just to be in their "halo." I expected every show to be an epiphanous "life-changing" experience. The last time I saw their flailing frames on stage, it was just that: life-changing. It just wasn't the epiphany I expected.
This last show I saw was at the Continental, on 3rd Av. and St. Mark's in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The other three original Spitters - besides Mark - were absent. Whether they were dismissed or they departed on their own, I'll never know. In thier place were a bassist and a drummer: Both young, skinny and nervous. They visibly reared away as Ashwill careened about: replicating his old physical shtick for the umpteenth time. They couldn't complete a single song. Ashwill would bark and rant, hurl his mic stand at the crowd (Punk RAWK, dude... ungh.) He slammed into the drum kit and bellowed, "EVERYTHING'S BREAKING! EVERYTHING'S BREAKING!" He continued howling that phrase even after he tore the XLR cable out of the mic. Towards the end, he met the crowds stare with a hang-dog expression that asked: This isn't even fun for you, is it? I looked to my left and my right and we all had the same sad mask, as if to say: Just end this.
The Spitters shambled off the stage with no applause, cheering, jeering or hisses. Only a wash of feedback to announce the show was over. Canned music came over the PA as some of the crowd wandered to the bar and others stepped out into the night. None of us had anything positive or negative to say about the show. None of us said a word, but it was clear we were heart broken.
That show was the last time I went down to the Village for pleasure or excitement. I'm not gonna be pretentioius and say rock died that day, but that was definitely the day I fell out of love with it.
Three years later, Mark Ashwill died of lung cancer. I was completely unaware of his condition until I read an obituary for him in the Village Voice. Rock music lost all its glamour for me long before his death, that night at the Continental. I still think it's fun, but I no longer wish to bask in any celebrity halo: Whether it's a Local Hero or an International Superstar.
Rating: 
Summary: Starts brilliantly, fades to black
Review: Wilson's razor-sharp commentary cuts apart why-celebs such as Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand, examining how they became famous at the expense of our culture. Wilson skins musicians, esp. Michael Jackson, as well as fashion models, wannabe film actors, authors, and the theater in her inimitable caustic tone. At times, Wilson is brilliant in carving new holes in the already-thin fabric of celebrity. Later in the book, however, you can tell that she and her editor have sewn together her columns from salon.com, which, though wonderful as columns, do not come together to form a cohesive argument. In a way, Wilson has become a victim of her own fame, toddling out used commentary and selling it as new, like a remake of a Hollywood favorite, starring Peter Scolari and Molly Ringwald. This book is mostly enjoyable, however. You'll flag sections of it to read later to your friends, or when you hear Dion's "eye-bleeding" rendition of that awful Titanic song and need your own little way to get back at her.
|
