Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Robin

By Dave Itzkoff.

I'm not going to go into whopping details with this very long, very good tome that covers pretty much everything you can (I think) about Robin Williams. It's his entire biography: his parents, moving around as a kid, his two older half-brothers, the naming conventions of his family that cracked me up*, his school career, his time at Julliard, his friendships with Billy Crystal, Christopher Reeve and others, his wives and how his issues seemed to have caused his divorces. It covers his TV and movie career and the reception of his various works. 

• Dad is named Robert, names his two sons Robert and Robin. Mom is named Laurie McLaurin, names her first son Laurin McLaurin and the second Robert McLaurin. Robin was the only one not going by his middle name so he could be told apart from everyone else. My eyes, they roll.

I tried to not do any Quote Corner/bookmarking-type stuff with this because it is long and I only have so much time, but it's good stuff. One gets the feeling that nobody liked his third wife very much because she sounds like rather the opposite of his helpmeet second wife, but in general everything is very nice here. I liked the part about how he mentions that he can turn off whether or not people see him, a la the same story you hear about Marilyn Monroe. 

You do hear the extremely sad details of how Robin's health was conspicuously going downhill to those who knew him and how really awful it was, and how what he got diagnosed with wasn't even as bad as what he really bad. It was his worst nightmare and well....I may get in trouble for saying this, but can you blame him for wanting out before it got really bad? It sounds bad enough as is. It's heartbreaking. The author covers the funeral, the misdiagnosis, the fighting over the will, etc. and since I was out in public reading this I had to not get all cry-y about it, though I wanted to. Poor guy. 

Anyway, four stars. 

Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story

By Chris Nashawaty. 

"With a script that still wasn't finished as late as two weeks before filming started, a studio that was famous for its hands-off approach, a first-time  director, and a less-than-detail-oriented first-time producer with a drug habit, what could possibly go wrong?"

This fellow was once assigned to write an article on the making of Caddyshack, and then he decided to write a book about it. I reasonably assumed that this was going to be a fun book, but it's more of a downer than one might have expected.

The book takes a long time to get going. After the prologue, the book takes around a hundred pages to get around to actually talking about the making of the movie. No, it starts with the creation of the National Lampoon and how they made that for awhile and introduces Doug Kenney, a guy we're told is brilliant but seems pretty well messed up from the getgo and sadly only gets worse as time goes on. (Don't get married if you have no idea why you're doing it, y'all.) And there's some about Animal House if you're interested in that. But very eventually we get to the movie.

Meet Jon Peters, who gets a special Quote Corner all of his own:

• "There he found a job in a beauty salon dying the pubic hair of prostitutes." 
• "After a failed marriage at sixteen..." SIXTEEN?!?!?
• "During one such flare-up, Peters was mouthing off to the film's line producer until the man couldn't take the abuse any more and turned around and cold-cocked Peters. Crew members applauded. Afterward, that line producer never had a problem finding a job on a film again--Peters's enemies were only too happy to threw work his way."
• "At one point, after Peters yelled at Kristofferson, the actor fired back: "If I need any more shit from you, I'll squeeze your head."

The original idea for the movie was to be based on Brian Doyle-Murray's memories of being a teenage caddy. Snobs vs. slobs again like Animal House. However, when you get Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, and Bill Murray (Brian's brother--sounds like on Wikipedia he had to come up with a different name for SAG or something) on a movie, who cares about the no-name teenage caddies? So the movie ended up focusing on the actual talent and being improvised a lot. They didn't even know what they'd do with Bill and he only had about a week to do anything on the movie. Ted, Chevy and Rodney couldn't play golf for shit and Rodney quit after one lesson. And every single person on the movie except for Ted Knight was constantly high on cocaine all. the. time. At one point Doug Kenney is straight up doing a line of coke in the background at a party scene, not trying to even hide it. 

"It's not like everyone went back to their rooms after the day wrapped and practiced their lines. Well, they practiced lines, but a different kind." -Trevor Albert, the guy who was forced to wake up everyone in the morning.

We're told that on most movie sets, various producers would have prevented this sort of thing, but Doug Kenney was probably the most wasted of all, Jon Peters wasn't around much, and nothing was stopping it. Doug straight up would run down the hallway of the motel yelling that the dealer was here. There was practically a competition between Caddyshack and The Blues Brothers as to who used more cocaine. Once Mike Medavoy finally hears about all the drugs, he called Jon Peters and Peters went down there to tell them to shape up. Then everyone had to hide the drugs when the media showed up. 

"Like all stories worth telling, this one begins with a stolen VW bug." --Bill Murray decided to borrow Lorne Michaels' bug to drive to the set of Caddyshack, and then he continued to wander the country apparently. I don't have much to add to this but I liked the line. Though speaking of Bill Murray, it sounds like they just made up his entire part on the spot and then just were going to fill him into the movie later. He and Chevy Chase got in a fight at SNL and Bill called Chevy "Medium talent!" They were avoiding each other on the movie until Jon Peters realized that Chevy and Bill needed to do a scene together. They got over their shit after that. 

 Being one of the two women on this movie sounds like it sucked.

• Cindy Morgan, playing "Lacey Underall" (that name) was supposed do do a high dive, except she couldn't wear her contacts in water and was blind without them, was afraid of heights, and could barely swim. And Doug Kenney razzed her for not being able to do it, so she ran off with Bill Murray and ended up on a nude beach the next day.
• Cindy got jerked around on the role because Brian Doyle-Murray's girlfriend, Sarah Holcomb, apparently had her pick of the roles and Cindy only got the job back because Sarah decided to play the caddy's girlfriend instead. Sarah was also forced to do the role in an Irish accent, which she was not good at. 
• Poor Cindy got surprised by finding out that they were going to put her in Playboy magazine, which she wasn't cool with. Jon Peters told her she'd never work again, but she still didn't do the photo shoot. Peters then took away her billing, her advertising, and "forgot" to invite her to the premiere. She called her agent and he told her to handle it, and she fired him when she got back to LA. 
• Oh yeah, and Cindy had to put up with Chevy Chase. "In virtually every single moment on-screen between Chase and Morgan, there's a battle of the sexes going on off-screen. You're witnessing a man using every trick he can think up to get the upper hand on a woman, and a woman trying to hold her ground and give it right back."
• Cindy did make it to the premiere because she started dating someone else in the movie (one of the caddies) and Doug Kenney bought them tickets. Jon Peters spilled his popcorn when he saw her. 

After the movie was done filming, it was coming out terrible and major work had to be done to reconfigure it into well, anything. The teenage caddy plot was chopped out, so what will connect the entire movie....THE GOPHER, which had one bad shot in it originally. Scott Colomby was all, "I was pissed. I was one of the stars replaced by a gopher." 

Doug Kenney got more and more miserable as this went on and was just pretty well wasted all the time and started heckling his own movie at the press screening and telling everyone to go fuck themselves before passing out cold on the table. At the premiere after-party Doug ran through the party begging his mother to let him suckle at her teat one last time. After that, Doug went to Kauai and fell off a cliff and died. Later on Michael O'Donoghue said that the biggest tragedy of this was that Doug wasn't holding hands with Chevy at the time. Doug never lived to see his movie actually become a hit, which is the note the book more or less ends on. So that's sad. Heck, we don't even really get to "how did this become a Cinderella story?" 

Anyway...this is pretty comprehensive, albeit a bummer in the end. Which isn't the author's fault, that's just how life went, I guess. Overall, I give it three and a half stars. I felt like the beginning was way too slow and the "Cinderella story" of the title just didn't really happen, so that was weird. 

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told: An Oral History

By Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman.

 "He’d written three books that were very successful, and at a certain point, I said, “Based on our social media, for some reason it seems like people like us together as a couple. Every time one of us posts a photo of the two of us, people like it.” I said, “Hey, maybe we should write a book together,” and he goes, “Well, what would it be?” I said, “I don’t know, just like a funny book about our relationship.” He said, “Eh, I don’t really get what it would be.” It went on for two years, and then finally, we were on the phone with his book editor, now my editor also, and I said, “Hey, what if Nick and I wrote a book together?” She said, “Oh my God, that would be amazing.”

I said, “What if it was just chapters and certain topics and we talked about stuff?” Originally, we were just tape recording it to send to her to transcribe, and then we were going to polish that up and put it into prose form. But when our editor got the recording, she said, “This is really good just like it is.” I said, “Why don’t we just leave it like that as a he-said she-said?” It really shows: This is just us talking to each other. We didn’t go back in and change it or rewrite it. Those are our actual conversations. If you want to get as close as possible to knowing what our dynamic is like together as a couple, there it is."

As per the above quote, this is literally a book created out of someone recording Nick and Megan's conversations about their families, life histories, past relationships, religious upbringing/lack thereof, fame and puzzle solving. Oh yeah, and some talk about boning, because they love that. Not to mention the story of how they met and got together, which is quite cute. And boy, did they have fun doing photo shoots for this. Megan used to do ballet and she is still rocking that ballet outfit in some photos. They also include a few essays separately here and there.

I find Nick and Megan to be delightful individuals and yes, I would like to hang out with them except that will never happen. This is pretty much about what it would be like if you could hang out with them but not talk, I think. You will of course be envious of their easy-peasy love connection and wish you could have the same and sadly, most of us never will. I do give Megan credit for talking about her family, since Nick's is freaking Mayberry and hers was...not, and her dad was apparently an alcoholic abusive ass who thought it was fun to fake his own death or claim her mother was dead. Oy fucking vey, dude. I enjoyed the aspirational aspects of their conversations about how they got into show business and other aspects of life. And they are cute, no question. 

Much as I admire the various studio photographs of Megan and Nick doing crazy shit, by far the best photos in the book are not those, but the photos of Nick and Megan after they finish doing puzzles. Because they are posing and/or dressing uh, "appropriately" to match said puzzles. Silly hats, dogs, dressing like they're in a motorcycle gang to match a puzzle of motorcycles, dressing like hippies to match a puzzle of horses running in the ocean, dressing in leopard print to pose with big African cats.. Nick using a giant bong while Megan tries to blend in the background (?) for a puzzle of a trippy owl. Then Nick starts putting on clothes to match the puzzles of graceful women in fancy clothing while Megan hides her face. Or Nick sticks out his ass while Megan slams her head on the table. At one point he dressed a la Carmen Miranda and she held up a sign saying "Divorce Decree." And then they get to the Sexy Times... 

So you get the drift. It's fun and even a bit inspirational.

Quote Corner:

• Megan: "I had dutifully scanned the entire circle of the cast to see who I was going to have my fling with, because of course that's what you do the first day of rehearsal, if you're single. I'm sorry to say that my lord and master Nick Offerman did not make the first cut. He did not register on the fling-o-meter."
• Nick: "The best way to find a mate who will stick is for them to see you doing something that you love." He recommends finding love at the theater. I keep trying, sir, I keep trying. 
• Nick: "I was literally living in my friend's unfinished dirt-and-stone basement in exchange for turning it into a habitable space so that it could be rented to civilized humans. I could flagrantly and flamboyantly urinate in the middle of the room and by the next day you couldn't tell where it occurred. Yes, I agree that is awesome, but that was really the only good thing about living there besides the price." 
• Megan comments on a home video of Nick trying to get attention as a kid: "He was trying to do showbiz, I think. But he didn't even know. It was like Helen Keller: W-A-T-E-R! But he didn't know what he was doing. He just knew that he desperately needed to express himself and be recognized." 
• Nick on Megan being asked to guest star on Parks and Recreation, and she says yes but she wants to take her top off: "I expired and fell to the floor, neatly murdered once again by the Sex Ninja." 
• Same topic: "When she made a 'sex face' at me and then proceeded to slap herself on the cheek of that face with a large plank of beef jerky, what was I do to but perish?" 
• Megan: "Things don't go from point A to point B in an unbroken straight line. You might have dreams or aspirations, but it might not happen in the timing you're expecting, and it also might take a circuitous route. But I really believe that if you really want something, and you hone your talents and skills and persevere and seize opportunities when they come your way, eventually it will happen in some way, shape, or form." 

Honestly? I enjoyed this, but about my one quibble at the moment is that it feels a bit much to charge for (even with the studio photo shoots) a book that's not all that long and literally mostly consists of transcribed conversations. I wanted more. I liked the meal at the fancy restaurant but still left a bit hungry, is the best way I can describe it. I kind of wish they had actually written/added more after their conversations were transcribed. I enjoyed reading it at the library, mind you, but I might wait to pay up until the paperback comes out. I am sure this has nothing whatsoever to do with any decisions made by Nick and Megan, that's on the publisher, etc. If you like these people, you will like this book, you will just wish there was a bit more to it somehow.

So, three and a half stars. 

Just The Funny Parts...And A Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys' Club

By Nell Scovell.

The author has written for a lot of TV shows over the years, and here's the kinds of stuff she's had to deal with. She sections the novel into the old Hollywood joke of the four stages of your career: Who is X, get me X, get me a younger/cheaper X, who is X? 

At the beginning of her career, she met with one of the first female writers on SNL, who basically told her that TV is horrible and run for your life. Nell left the meeting thinking that if she was ever in the position to speak with younger writers, she wouldn't be that discouraging, and aren't things better now in 1988? "Thirty years later, I want to thank Marilyn for trying to warn me. She was right." 

She once wrote an article for SPY called "How Rich Is That Doggie In The Limo?"

While working on The Smothers Brothers Show, Nell really enjoyed working with Tom Smothers. But there was a creepy sexist dude who ended up becoming head writer. She ends up being pressured into giving him a blow job and he still fires her anyway. UGHHHHHH. She mentions Gloria Steinem's quote of "If women could sleep their way to the top,t here would be a lot more women at the top." 

The author also refers to a quote by Alexandra Petri: "if you are the only girl in the room, it doesn't mean you're better. it means that something is wrong." Nell was usually the only woman in the room on most of her jobs and learned to dress like a guy. She was a rare woman working on Late Night with David Letterman, which sounds very unpleasant. Dave wasn't around much and was a bully when he was and nailed various assistants of his (though not Nell). She mentions one actress who complained to a producer "Why won't Dave fuck me?" Nell thinks up the following on this topic: "A woman who thinks it would be fun to date David Letterman is a woman who knows nothing about show business." At one point she mentions that Dave made a bunch of staff line up and hit him. "He's the bully who makes you bully him." Dave was nice to Nell, but once people got the idea that Dave might want to boink her, she had to shut down talking to him. She had to cut off her access to the king, which she calls both admirable and stupid. She compares the office to Versailles. She got her contract renewed but realized that she didn't like the place and quit--and said she missed LA when asked why. 

She mentions a showrunner who started off the weekly meeting by announcing that he had a wet dream. There's a legal ruling by the California Supreme Court about this that lewd talk in the writer's room isn't sexual harassment--but still there's a difference between choosing to share fun details like that and forcing everyone at the table to say when they lost their virginity. 

Nell is friends with Joel Hogdson and Penn Jillette, and I particularly enjoyed Joel's art and the stories about Penn, who introduced her to her husband (see below) and later married them.

Nell has managed to get directing jobs a few times, but they have been hard to come by and few and far between. Possibly the best section of the book is the last section, as she talks about sexism, Dave Letterman's little blackmail scandal, and teaming up with Sheryl Sandberg to write "Lean In." She writes an article called "Letterman and Me" and is repeatedly asked to go on "The Today Show" with Matt Lauer about it--Matt even calls personally-- but when she says something about it's okay if she doesn't discuss Dave's sleeping with interns and Matt is all "I couldn't be held to that high a standard," she says no again. 

Later on Nell gets hired to work on the Kennedy Center Honors show, specifically to work on the Lily Tomlin segment. That sounds like a lot of fun, but the show refused to let anyone sing "9 to 5." I concur that's terrible. Then she found out that Dave Letterman has been booked to be on the show. Is this going to be awkward? The advice she gets from a friend is "Just remember, his first thought about everyone is 'They hate me.' If you just smile and say hi and keep going, it will be a relief."  Turns out it's not since Dave never read her article and he seems fine and he doesn't worry about "that stuff." She later sends Dave a copy of "Lean In" but in Finnish since he'll never read it. He writes her a letter saying it's even better in Finnish. She does note that after he left his show, he started speaking up for having more women in comedy writing. Nell assumes this change has come because they now know what it's like to be pushed aside for a less-experienced man. 

At one point she meets Gloria Steinem, who mentions how many women are missing in India because they're not worth saving when they get sick. Nell feels guilty for being concerned about getting more women on television and Gloria was all, you worry about that and I'll worry about this. Good point. 

Quote Corner:

• After quoting Teri Garr about how she gets high on life. "Most Hollywood memoirs dish about celebs doing drugs. I'm going in a different direction."
• "Working on a TV show is simultaneously fun and not fun."
• She mentions the showrunner on Monk, Andy Breckman, coming up with the bright idea that the whole Third Reich is made up of time travelers who came back to kill Hitler and then decided to stay. 
• "Where romcom "meet cutes" had failed me, hardcore reality came through. Nothing in my past would have suggested that I'd fall in love in a strip club in Vegas, but that's what happened." 
• At one point she lost writing an X-Files episode because Stephen King decided to do one. "It occurred to me that the Stephen King monster in my life was Stephen King."
• Her kids are named after serial killers because (a) one of them is named Dexter and then the TV show came about, and (b) a former colleague of hers that was working on the show asked if they could name Dexter's brother after her other son. "I knew you'd be the one friend excited by this!" Daniel Cerone said. 
• Albert Brooks: "It's been my experience that a fairer sampling of humanity will always produce better comedy." Nell notes later that a writer's room that shuts out half the population, people of color and LGBTQ folks will have less material to work with. 
• "The Muppets was canceled after a partial season. It's a long story so let's just say there were too many Swedish Chefs in the kitchen."

Anyway...this is very interesting and pointed and true to life. I definitely don't want to be a TV writer after this even though I've enjoyed her work. I hope she can keep fighting the good fight and keep getting jobs. So, four stars. 

Born Trump: Inside America's First Family

By Emily Jane Fox.

This one's a biography of the Trump kids (minus Barron, who is mentioned as being born but that's about it--oh, and he's named after Donald's go-to alias). It starts out with the inauguration and well, the usual stuff I've kind of read before. I think I mostly just noticed that Tiffany wasn't noticed in a particular store like Chelsea had been when she went in, and also when she spilled coffee nobody (including her security detail) helped her get it. Her security detail was, guess what, playing a game on his phone. It doesn't really get to the past biographical details until about chapter 4, which is where I felt like I was getting into it.

The book covers Donald's various marriages and dramas, and features the memorable quote about how Donald didn't want to have a Don Jr. because "What if he's a loser?" HAH HAH. I did not know that Ivanka is really named Ivana and Ivanka is a nickname (see below). Life sounds like it was pretty good for the first three until Donald started having his affair with Marla. Marla and Ivana got into it in a restaurant in Aspen in front of the kids and everyone else. The kids were 11, 8, and 5. I kind of feel sorry for Don Jr. because his birthday is December 31 and it sounds like his parents were usually exploding around that time. The three became tabloid stars and hell, even poor Eric was hearing about it in kindergarten. Marla and Donald sounded incompatible other than boning pretty much the entire time and he kinda had to be dragged into getting married to her. He'd "run his socks under water" when he claimed to be golfing instead of screwing, so Marla knew darned well to go along every time he said he'd go golfing. She was a hippie, he was all about his steak. Donald was more into marrying Melania at the time, though their marital issues are given short shrift by comparison. 

The author dubs the Trump kids "mini-Voltrons" in chapter 5, and refers to them as such in the chapter headings. Donald wanted five kids "because with five, then I will know that one will be guaranteed to turn out like me." The reference to his kids as mini-Voltrons comes from Michael Cohen because as far as he's concerned, each kid got one of his traits. Ivanka works the meia, Don Jr. is the angry one, Eric builds. "Tiffany and Barron weren't initially categorized in the same way, though it is clear that both had Donald's guy-on-the-outside-looking-in passed down to them."

Ivanka--Voltron Number One: The Media Mastermind (along with Jared):

• Ivanka gets the most chapter time (along with Jared) and in general comes off the best of the lot, even now. About the worst anecdote about her is that when a Trump employee casually informs Ivanka that he saw a postcard for a country store named Ivanka's Country Barn, Ivanka got mad, said "I told my dad we needed to trademark my name. He never listens to me. He never listens, but I told him." I would like to point out at this point that her name is actually Ivana, and the country store owner sounds like she was actually named Ivanka, but no matter, because guess who filed a trademark application on the name Ivanka for oh, pretty much everything put onto the body (but not, I guess, the country store?). 
• At some point the kids found their nanny dead of a heart attack.
• Ivanka would love to be president.
• Ivanka's supposed friendship with Chelsea Clinton before the election is mentioned as "acquaintance" here. 
• Ivanka is all about how she presents her image and is a control freak about it and will trot out the same things over and over again. 
• Ivanka and Jared made a cameo on Gossip Girl and now the show's creator regrets not giving Jared more lines since he doesn't speak in public. 
• Ivanka got tricked by a homeless man she regularly gave money to.
• At one point Ivanka had a friend group that was all named Lindsey except for her. WHAAAAAAT? 
• Generally speaking she is polite and kind (and actually giving money to a homeless guy is above and beyond the rest of the relatives).
• Jared and Ivanka are deemed a good match for their similar parental issues. 
• Wedding guests got gifts of a little Hebrew book and flip-flops. 
• Jared's dad sounds like (not shocking given what he got convicted for) a total asshole. As for his mother, when introduced to someone, she said nothing, plucked a hair off the person's sweater and walked away. 
• The Kushner parents don't like Karlie Kloss compared to Ivanka. 
• I rolled my eyes very hard at how Charlie and Jared defended themselves about Charle's crimes. "All he did was put together the tape and send it.," says Jared. 

Don Jr--Voltron Number Two: The Attack Dog

• Don Jr. seemed to be caught between trying to be a "regular" guy by showing up in a dirty pickup truck at school, versus being a party boy. He earned the nickname "Diaper Don" for wetting other people's beds. 
• When the Three were coming back to work after lunch, Don Jr. got the bright idea to clothesline tackle Ivanka and then sit on her head, announcing to all that he used to do this to her all the time. Eric jumped in and started tickling her. "I'd say it was definitely not something you'd see in every office, but this wasn't every office," an observer said. 
• Most people wouldn't voluntarily do frat hazing after their first year. But Don Jr. loved it. To him, it just seemed like a good time. I mean to GET hazed, not to BE hazing. 
• He and Eric call themselves "the brutes." 
• Don Jr. has been dubbed "the Fifth Avenue Redneck" for his love of hunting and fishing.
• Don Jr. was the most troublesome of the kids to Donald.
• Don Jr. claims to have broken probably every major bone in his body, presumably due to all the fights he likes to get in.
• Donald would yell at the kids to trust nobody, himself included, when they were four. The author points out that if you're in a duck blind in the middle of nowhere and sliced your forehead open and you're way too far away from medical professionals (at one point Don. Jr. had to glue his own head back together in a situation like this), you have to trust who's around you. 
• Vanessa Trump thought Donald was ah, the r-word because he introduced himself to her twice like he hadn't met her at all earlier. 
• Don got a deal on Vanessa's engagement ring if he proposed to her in a mall in New Jersey with cameras rolling. (Vanessa later said he'd proposed privately two months earlier.) 
• Nobody wants Tiffany in their wedding party--Vanessa had ten bridesmaids, including Ivanka. 
• Don Jr. was too cheap to donate to his kids' school but totally offered free construction advice. 

Eric--Voltron Number Three: The Builder

• At age six, Eric called a teacher a bitch for asking him to put away his mat. He was "counseled out" of the school. This is a thing that happened to all of the Big Three at one point or another.
• It sounds more like Eric got parented by Don Jr. and Ivanka (and nannies and whatever). 
• Eric, as a grade schooler, demanded a table right away because he was a Trump in a crowded restaurant where even the celebrities wait.
• Apparently Eric is the better of the brothers at his job. At one point Donald was asking a friend what he'd do if one son was more talented than the other, and when Eric got a job over Don Jr., Don Jr. did not like it. I'm not sure if "better at the job" is really what the Trumps think it is since the authors point out that after Eric remodeled that Scotland golf course in 2016, the company lost $23 million due to the renovations. 
• He did like building Legos and working in the woodshop as a kid. He actually would do his homework EARLY. Donald did not approve. Eric just said he wanted to get things done early so he could have more time to read about things he cared about. In other hot news, a Trump reads! 
• Eric's parents didn't bother to visit him the entire time he was at boarding school and Ivana didn't even show up for his graduation. 
• Eric would claim to be "no relation" when people asked in college.
• Eric's high school nickname was "Choad" after he called someone else one. He was also voted biggest mooch on campus. People would torture him by making presumably nasty doctored photos of his mom and sister and leave them around for him to find. 
• Eric is described as being "fairly quiet, sometimes awkward, mostly uncommonly kind." He likes to tell people he'll give them huge noogies. He did not party as hard as Don Jr. did. 
• His wife Lara broke both wrists two weeks before the wedding, but was permitted to wear soft casts that she could remove during the ceremony, and then covered them with "fingerless, gathered and bejeweled gloves custom made for her and her casts." 
• Jared at the wedding: "You are not just gaining a family. You are getting 6 million Twitter followers." Eric said that what Jared had to say was "heartfelt and especially meaningful." 

Tiffany--The Voltron from Another Universe:

• Tiffany had a hard time coming up with a speech for the presidential campaign since "she didn't have many unique, intimate moments with her dad."
• The author (and probably anyone else with any sense) thinks Tiffany was very fortunate to be raised in California away from the other Trumps and had no idea what it was like to have her parents living together. She also didn't get chased by paparazzi all the time there. 
• Some anonymous friend said that Donald "gets that he screwed it up when it came to Tiffany, and this is a man who doesn't ever admit that he got it wrong on anything." 
• Marla had Tiffany record one song, which is apparently featuring "a voice hardly decipherable as a human as a result of all the autotune." 
• Marla likes to go on about how she was fortunate to have raised Tiffany as a single parent. 
• As Ivanka wrote about in a book of hers, she had to sweet talk her dad into giving Tiffany her own credit card, which apparently had a $500/month budget. Tiffany was notorious at college for only paying exactly what she had to because of her budget. 
• When Tiffany went to the East Coast for college, things changed. She got rejected from a campus women's group because "People in the group thought she was perfectly nice, but feared that having someone with her last name would turn off other girls looking to join the house." 
• Tiffany is a "rich kid of Instagram." 

Overall, I give this three and a half stars. I think it's probably a bit hard to be comprehensive in some ways on this situation, but there's good points made where she can find them. 

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

By James Comey.

I wasn't really planning to read this one given how it all went down, but my boss recommended it and he was right. This is a well written, very explanatory, bluntly honest where it can be, and snarky read. 

Comey was influenced to go into law enforcement after his home was broken into when he was sixteen and he was held at gunpoint. The guy wasn't caught but the "Ramsay Rapist" robbieries and rapes stopped after everyone went after them. He later went to college and got influenced by his favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr, who you probably haven't heard of except for Comey."Niebuhr saw the evil in the world, understood that human limitations make it impossible for any of us to really love another as ourselves, but still painted a compelling picture of our obligation to try to seek justice in a flawed world." 

First off, he starts talking about his career in going after the Italian mob. You find out all kinds of fun facts, like in 1957 the American Mafia "closed the books" and didn't admit new members for nearly twenty years. They reopened again in 1976 to admit ten new members and then closed them again. They're supposed to set pictures of Catholic saints on fire during the induction ceremony, but they didn't bother to get enough for Gravano's ceremony and he had to burn a bloody Kleenex instead. Also, the rules of American Cosa Nostra are: don't kill with explosives, don't kill law enforcement, don't kill other made men without permission, no sleeping with other made men's wives, and no narcotics deals. Unfortunately, they only bothered to follow the first two. Also, you're not supposed to lie to any other made men unless you're going to lure him to his death. "Men of honor may only lie about the most important things." He also mentions a well respected investigator named Kenny McCabe who the mobsters respected because he wouldn't embarrass them with an arrest in front of the family. "As a result, members considering betraying La Cosa Nostra would frequently contact McCabe first."

Comey used to work for Rudy Giuliani, which he found exciting for his star quality, but Giuliani didn't have much humility. Also, at one point he used to work with a former nun who later became a special agent. She sounds awesome. "She had retained from her prior career the ability to use guilt in powerful ways to make thugs melt." 

Comey is very anti-bullying. He got bullied in school, and went through a phase in college where he bullied other kids and doesn't get why he did that back in the day--probably just to belong/avoid being bullied himself. Comey's also against lying, saying that he's embarrassed that he used to say yes when people asked if he played basketball (he didn't due to knee injury but got tired of explaining this). He's also into explaining that there's a reservoir of trust and credibility and once one person breaks a hole in the dam, it destroys what took hundreds of years to build. YEAH. 

He also talks about deciding to prosecute Martha Stewart, which was something he wasn't that interested in doing at first--there were better priorities out there to go after, everyone pretends to be innocent in cases like this, etc. "Why did I want to have anything to do with Martha Stewart? It was a marginal case about a lie by a rich person who sold some stock because her friend did....Why go to the trouble? Who cared?" But when her best friend tattled on her--"Martha Stewart had told us a whopper, and now we could prove it well beyond any reasonable doubt. Ugh." Then he recalled a case he'd had in the past--an associate pastor who got roped into shenanigans that his senior pastor got up to. The senior pastor, Leonidas B. Young, was having all kinds of affairs and "To maintain those relationships in the face of some sexual performance issues, Young had undergone an expensive mechanical penile implant, which then catastrophically failed, leading to additional procedures and costs." I wasn't expecting penile implants in this book...He roped his associate pastor into getting more money and Comey tried to talk the associate pastor into being honest about the whole thing. The guy didn't crack, and went to jail for lying. After remembering that, he realized that he was considering letting Martha go because she was rich and famous and it would bring criticism. "What a miscarriage of justice. What a coward I was." So he did it. 

"The Stewart experience reminded me that the justice system is an honor system. We really can't always tell when people are lying or hiding documents, so when we are able to prove it, we simply must do so as a message to everyone. People must fear the consequences of lying in the justice system or the system can't work." 

Note: during this section he also mentions seeing the e-mails of some executives: "I just hope the SEC doesn't find out what we are doing here." "Forget the SEC, when the FBI comes, I'm going out the window." Comey is all, "Good stuff." 

Comey's wife Patrice sounds like a badass. Remember how he's six foot eight? When they were in West Africa and he nearly died from malaria, she hauled him out on her motorcycle and dragged him into a hospital. That had to have been hard! And after their son died of Group B strep, which could have been prevented, she campaigned to get universal testing and treatment for Group B strep. '

Later, Comey is hired to work as the deputy attorney general. Both Comey and his boss, John Ashcroft, are deeply uncomfortable with the "Stellar Wind" surveillance program, which they consider to be way unlawful. After Comey convinces Ashcroft that this program is bad, Ashcroft unfortunately comes down with acute pancreatitis and is hospitalized. It's super classy how the Bush administration was trying to manipulate Ashcroft when he's in a fucking hospital bed and leaving everything to Comey, to the point where Comey is running to Ashcroft's hospital bed and recruiting others there for safety. Comey nearly quit over this, but ended up winning in the end. 

Comey mentions that Dan Levin, the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, as so against torture that he had himself waterboarded and said itw was the worst experience of his life. Later, Ashcroft is dismissed and Alberto Gonzales becomes Comey's boss, but after the Stellar Wind incident Comey doesn't trust him. He was trying to get Gonzales on the anti-torture train, but no dice. Comey quits after that one. 

Comey used to work with Mueller and says that they weren't friends, but he respects him. When Comey replaced Mueller, Mueller would tell him "what's really going on" after each meeting. 

Obama posed for pictures with Comey, his family, and his daughter's boyfriends--and then tactfully suggested taking some shots without the boyfriends, just in case. (Comey reports that the guys have stuck so far.)  

Regarding Hillary's e-mails: "was classified information mishandled?--was obviously "yes." While everyone had security clearances, they shouldn't have been talking about what they were over an unclassified system. He discusses whether or not Hillary knew what she was doing or was just being sloppy. I think "sloppy" won the day because she wasn't good with technology, which he points out from her memoir. So overall, he didn't prove she was lying so this should have been done. Then when the Anthony Weiner laptop thing came up... he debated whether or not to speak up or hide things. He feared impacting the election if he spoke up, but he didn't want to lie to the country with concealing either. Both options sucked. In the end, he feared for the credibility of the institutions of justice and spoke. Someone brought up, "Should you consider that what you are about to do may help elect Donald Trump president?" and he said he couldn't consider it because that would lead to the death of the FBI as an independent force and if they based their decisions on that, they'd be lost.

I understand his logic, but that took place in a saner world and now I wonder if he's just made it worse and because of Trump if we've already lost the FBI in the end.

Comey mentions getting one last apple--they always had apples on hand in the Obama White House--for his daughter so she could have a presidential apple. "This was surely the last time the Oval Office, an apple, and I would ever be together. Now or never. Swipe an apple at the close of a meeting about Russian interference?" He did it. 

You've probably heard everything Comey had to say already about his fun encounters with Trump. Even though I'd heard them all before in the media before the book came out, I sure got the feeling of creeping menace and dread that hung over every encounter that made me feel like I was living it (oh god). 

"Fun" moments with that:

• Trump claimed he didn't even stay overnight in Moscow, he flew from New York, went to the hotel to change his clothes and then flew home the same night. Who does that?
• Comey really didn't want to hear about the peeing multiple times. And he tactfully did not point out that overnight staying or proximity was not a requirement for that activity. 
• Patrice was watching Comey during his infamous "trying to blend in with the curtains" moment on television and was saying, "That's Jim's 'oh shit' face." 
• "The whole world 'saw' Donald Trump kiss the man who some believe got him elected. Surely this couldn't get any worse." 
• When dining alone with Trump: "I was deeply uncomfortable, and not just because I did not love the idea of a third discussion of Russian hookers." 
• Naturally, the whole thing was reminding him of the mob. 

Anyway: he certainly does make his case for well, everything. Good luck to him in future endeavors, should there be any. Four stars.

Love Life

By Rob Lowe.

I can't find my review of his previous book, but Rob Lowe does an excellent job of telling stories from his life, and this book as good as the first one.

Notable moments and quotes:

• "You never forget the first time you find a woman's vibrator." Thanks for putting that one on the first page, Rob!
• Rob went to a fancy acting coach when he was gearing up to play a "deaf-mute" character in The Stand. The acting coach tells him to play the character as someone who can hear and speak but chooses not to, "because the actor playing the part is not a deaf-mute." When Rob asked about what the director thought about this sort of thing, "Oh, you must never tell anyone. Particularly the director!" That's what Rob did and it was a hit. 
• "But to see my old pal Tom Cruise in the scene where he goes from being "the master of the living room" to the naked vulnerability of "you complete me" makes me want to weep, not out of envy, but because he is a man fulfilling his potential. When someone is blessed with "their moment" and crushes it, it's deeply moving for me."
• While in rehab, Rob recounts a story about someone he knew there whose brother was murdered in front of him when he was four. Oh my god.
• Hunter S. Thompson came up with the idea for Nash Bridges. Whaaat?
• Rob is pretty blunt about his show failures, like The Lyon's Den. At one point he cast Jewel as his love interest and hoo boy, did she not want to do a kissing scene with him (and brought her boyfriend to set THAT day, which should have been a hint). 
• Also on The Lyon's Den: a wildfire was going on in the area. "The guys who make dildos may get to run for safety, but those who make television do not." 
• The Lyon's Den gets canceled but they are still supposed to film episodes that will never be shown. So they decide to go totally crazy with the finale and have Rob's character be the murderer. Once in a great while it airs in Slovakia or something and then he gets a fan letter about it. 
• Even Rob Lowe used to have troubles with women. 
• When on The West Wing, networks were handing out crazy presents, like cars, for doing well. The West Wing cast got a rented coffeemaker that broke after a week as a reward. 
• For another failure, Dr. Vegas, Rob talked the powers that be into hiring Tom Sizemore, who he apparently didn't quite deduce how crazy the guy was. He even gave up part of his salary to hire Tom. But....
• "Tom was, and is, capable of being very charming and always liked to tell stories, usually about Robert De Niro. There wasn't a conversation that Tom couldn't work "Bobby" De Niro into."
• One night at 3:45 a.m. Tom calls Rob, screaming that his girlfriend is dead, she's hacked up in a Dumpster, she's missing her torso and "I can't come in to shoot today 'cause I'm looking for her torso!" Rob's wife: "Who was that, honey?" "Oh, it was Tom Sizemore calling to say he won't be coming to work." Rob eventually tracks Tom down and hauls him to rehab. 
• During the stage run of A Few Good Men, Rob accidentally skipped ahead four pages in the script--then improvised and walked it back to cover the territory. He learned that from Phil Hartman. "The audience doesn't know you've screwed the pooch until you show them you have. So don't." 
• Also during that show, he discovered that yes, there is a couple that goes around having sex in the theaters. In the queen's box. 
• Rob becomes friends with David Foster, who wrote the theme to St. Elmo's Fire. At the same time he got the gig to write that song, he was also trying to write a song for a paraplegic that was going to circle the world in his wheelchair. "I don''t know which is harder, writing that kind of inspirational song or one that has to rhyme with the phrase 'St. Elmo's  Fire," he told me. In the end, he did both at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone, he took his song for Rick Hansen's "Man in Motion" wheelchair tour and merely added the phrase "St. Elmo's Fire" a few times. No one seemed to care that the film's number one hit song contained lyrics that had absolutely no connection to the movie whatsoever."
• Rob learned to fake how to play a sax for that role, and years later for a Bill Clinton fundraiser, David gets the bright idea to have Rob fake playing the song at the event. His wife advises him not to and he goes for it anyway. He plans on revealing that it's all fake, but everyone is so enthused that he just keeps going. Later, he gets a note from Clinton raving about his sax skills. Rob feels guilty and mentions this to David, who in turn is all oh, he knows you were faking, I told Barbra Streisand and she told him. "If you've ever wondered what the correct definition of "first-world problems" is, wonder no more. I was now in a full shame spiral involving Barbra Streisand and the president of the United States."  His wife is all, "Rob, honey, I don't think the president of the United States is spending a lot of time thinking about you or your sax playing." Rob writes a note of apology anyway. 
• Rob gets the bright idea to prank his sons and nephews by dressing up as Bigfoot, something else his wife advised him against doing. He gets kicked in the nuts by his son, saying, "Get out of here! You...you...college student!" After Rob gets out of costume, his son is all, "I did what I had to do." 
• "Why do we remember some events and forget others, even ones that are truly extraordinary when they happen?.... It seems to me that the the big memories, the ones that become sacred, all have two things in common. First, they were created. They were moments that, as a family, we had a hand in making. And also, it seems that the strongest memories all have an element of pain or discomfort that is worked through somewhere along the way. Whether it's a kick in the groin in the redwoods or the melancholy of that first kindergarten drop-off, a memory's potency seems to have a direct correlation to the amount of conflicting emotions it contains." 
• Rob's beloved manager Bernie Brillstein was quite a character. At one point Bernie, Rob, David Spade and a few others are about to get on a helicopter and they're told they have to give their proper weights to the pilot or else they will die. Bernie claims to weigh 215. Another heavy dude also obviously lies. David Spade then claims to weigh 285. Everybody lives. 
• "My wife loves her some casino. She is completely capable of sitting uninterrupted for eight or nine hours in front of a slot machine. She strokes it, talks to it and gazes upon it with a face that is usually reserved only for the handsome werewolf guy on True Blood."
• At one point Rob is accidentally given a mimosa on an airplane, ruining his sobriety. "If it's an accident and it's only one sip, don't count it," people who knew better told me." He's still freaked anyway. 
• "One of the things I love most about life is its surprising way of suddenly placing you in its exciting and mysterious narrative." 
• When hanging out with Madonna, she jumps onto a dance floor, saying "I'm just not going to let success fuck up my fun." 

If Rob Lowe ever wants to tell these at The Moth, he'd kick ass at it. He's intellectual, poetic, reflective, a bit snarky, it's all good. Four stars from me. 

The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness: A True Story

By Joel ben Izzy.

Disclaimer: I met the author recently while taking a workshop/going to a performance of his, I got the book from him.

Excerpt here.

When I took the author's storytelling workshop--he's a professional storyteller for a living--he liked to make a point about intriguing people, leaving them in suspense, and getting them to want more. Well, when he mentioned that at one point he lost his voice entirely--and clearly he was able to talk that day--well, I think that sold a good chunk of us wanting to know more.

The story: Joel has been a professional storyteller for many years, ever since he met a storyteller named Lenny and fell in love with the craft. He learned from Lenny until Lenny started acting like a jerk and drove him away. Joel comes down with a surprise case of thyroid cancer and in order to cure it, he comes out of the surgery unable to speak above a whisper. He's told that "eh, give it a few months," but when he does and he's still unable to talk like usual two months later, the doctors tell him "oh, in that case, your vocal cord must be paralyzed. If that happens, you'll never speak again. Sorry. Hope you didn't like, need to talk for your living or anything!" The two vocal cords have to be able to connect and vibrate, but one isn't speaking.

So Joel tries to adjust to this--tries to figure out if he can still perform by lip-syncing to himself, you can guess how that goes--and then runs into Lenny again. Lenny's not doing so great and he's still crabby and a bit jerky, but is willing to work with  Joel, of sorts, into figuring out how to live with bad shit happening to him like this* and how to come to terms with it and even be okay with it. Lenny has also been through some physical shit of his own, so he knows of what he speaks. The author tells this experience, interspersed with very short stories that relate to his own tale, such as King Solomon losing his kingdom and trying to find his way home. 

• I sort of wonder if things went exactly how the author says, but he's a fan of things being "true-ish," so uh...take it with a grain of salt.

I suspect Joel wouldn't want me to explain how he gets his voice back, so I won't. But overall, I enjoyed reading this a lot, it was pretty well inspiring, and if the movie ever gets made, we'll see what others think. So, four stars from me. 

I'll Scream Later

By Marlee Matlin with Betsy Sharkey.

I really like Marlee Matlin, so I enjoyed her autobiography of her acting career, her previous addiction issues, her romantic relationships, etc. She's fun and sassy.

Notable things:

• The reason Marlee went deaf as a child is that she has a malformed cochlea, which worked fine at first and then keeled over when she was a toddler--but she didn't find that out until she was an adult.
• Henry Winkler basically discovered her when she was 12 and really encouraged her acting career and she even lived with his family for a while and got married in his yard. He said she was born to act and had whatever made you a star. However, Henry and Marlee's mom (who sounds like a tough cookie to live with) have a "cold war" going on to this day because Henry wanted to encourage her acting and her mom was convinced that acting wasn't a viable option for a Deaf child. She wanted Henry to tell Marlee to lower her expectations and Henry said he couldn't do that "because what I saw was so big that I can't tell this human being not to do it." 
• Marlee's relationship with Bill Hurt was years of drama and abuse and complications and hoo boy, does that kind of put a buzzkill on "Children of a Lesser God" for me to know that, sigh. The director of that movie figured out that Bill just liked fighting when acting, more or less, so he'd pick fights all the time. He had some endearing moments and some brattastic ones about Marlee getting an Oscar--god, dude, just be happy for her and stop making it about YOUR issues. 
• The title of the book comes from Marlee's reaction to finding out she's nominated for an Oscar--while she's at the Betty Ford clinic.
• She highly recommends going to Disneyland after winning an Oscar to get your feet back on the ground.
• She feels like she can't do any outreach to the Deaf community anywhere without triggering backlash for everything she does or doesn't do. 
• She points out that before closed captioning, she "had no idea that Archie Bunker was a bigot." 
• I really liked "Reasonable Doubts," the show she starred in that nobody remembers now, and she prank warred with Mark Harmon on it.
• She played a hearing character in "Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story," a lady who got institutionalized for supposedly being "feebleminded" and "promiscuous" for being raped. She had to react in scenes as if she could hear. 
• She also dated Rob Lowe, Richard Dean Anderson and David Kelley, the latter put her in various shows.
• I never watched "Picket Fences,"  but her character(s?) sound fun--she was a Dancing Bandit who uh...later became town mayor? Wow. 

Anyway, she's awesome, I enjoyed it, four stars. 

 

Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump

By Dan Pfeiffer.

Here's another (sorta) Obama-employee memoir. Except Dan Pfeiffer, former communications director and now podcaster, takes some different takes on it, focusing on how the world has changed, what mistakes he and the administration made, how their win led us to this shithole situation, how Facebook and Twitter have ruined/changed everything, etc. Dan admits his flaws and faults and especially mistakes in this.

Notable moments:

• Quote from Obama: "I just banned torture. That's pretty cool, huh."
• Dan is besties with Alyssa Mastromonaco, who he cites as saving his behind frequently and presumably also getting the title of her book from moments like the ones he had. 
• The time when Dan split his pants at work and then had to do a walk and talk with Obama.
• "Did you know that historically White House communications directors get fired and go to jail more often than any position other than the White House counsel?" --this was pointed out to Dan, who ran to verify its truth. You'll note how many people have gone through the job since Trump took the office. 
• According to Dan, people in Silicon Valley have no idea how to deal with the monster they created either. 
• Even after the birth certificate was presented, "four in ten Republicans still believed that Barack Obama was not born in the United States....They couldn't hear what Obama was saying because Obama was saying it." 
• The Obama team couldn't work with the Republicans because "they were petrified of being tossed out in a primary challenge if they were photographed treating Barack Obama like a human being." 
• Every Obama win came at a long-term cost and the Republican base got worse and worse. 
• While on his very brief holiday break around the end of 2013, Dan read some books and realized that "at some point in every second term, a president and his team must learn to make an impact without Congress." 
• Dan started having some stress-related health issues that put him in the hospital a few times, at risk for having a stroke. He got the bright idea to keep on tweeting so no one would notice he was absent, started tweeting while going under anesthesia, and accidentally made a really bad sounding typo. "The fact that I couldn't put Twitter down long enough to get my liver biopsied is a sign of the times." 
• "I've never done meth, but I imagine the experience is much like using Twitter. You start it casually because you heard good things; next thing you know, you have  been up for ninety-six hours, have lost all your teeth, and are living in a shopping cart outside the local supermarket." 
• There is a page about the time when Kanye asked a question. And when I say asked a question, I mean "ranbled on about random shit until Obama politely broke in to stop him and then said "That shit cray" in the limo on the way home. 
• I'm amused that the "lucky" thing the Obama team did was eat chicken tenders. "My wife even sent me chicken tenders on our wedding day to make sure we got our marriage off to the right start." 
• He points out that whoever had the best message wins. Trump's was clear, Hillary's was not. "campaigns will always be decided by who tells a more compelling story about America." 
• Like me, Dan may very well be afraid that "we may never have another election again and because we will die in a nuclear attack or Trump will seize power in an authoritarian coup." Or at least he mentions that in a footnote.
• Also, Dan absolutely looooooooooooves footnotes. Should you choose to read this book, I imagine this would be a whopping pain in the ass to read in an ebook, so maybe make it paper, eh?
• Sample footnote: "[Bradley] Cooper was a few years ahead of me at Georgetown and was known around campus as Fabio, because he had long blond and hair and tended to wear flowy linen shirts unbuttoned to his navel. This is not super-relevant, but I had to tell someone." 
• Last quote from Obama in the book: "Maybe I am just looking for a silver lining, but I am hopeful that this will be the clarifying event that will show the public the two different versions for the country."