Another full-on blitz of 40-something white-male rage, lightened very little by the occasional potty-humor anecdote.
Former Man Show co-host and podcast phenomenon’s manly-man memoir about the awfulness of poverty and the crappiness of wealth and fame.
Carolla (In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks, 2010, etc.) supplements his income as a famous podcast-show guy by doubling as a writer—or more specifically “ranter,” as in this latest autobiographical harangue. Warming to the author’s sense of humor depends on how you relate to a 47-year-old male who still calls women “chicks” and uses junior high scatological terminology like “ass mud.” Here Carolla takes vengeful aim at all the human beings who’ve pissed him off over the years, which seems to be pretty much everyone he’s come in contact with except his stepgrandfather. He rags on his over-the-top hippie parents for their un-American voluntary poverty and humorless activist causes; he rebelled against them in high school by becoming an obnoxious jock. His early 20s were full of crappy jobs and gonzo hijinks with buddies whose existences appeared to center around getting wasted and peeing on stuff. Carolla admits his love for lighting farts and recreational flatulence in general, gaseous coming-of-age hobbies that, not surprisingly, proved useful in his first gig as a host on Loveline in the mid-’90s. He got his big TV showbiz break when he met established comic Jimmy Kimmel and created the Man Show; next thing he knew, he was making serious dough and living in a house in the Hollywood Hills. The first half of the book showcases Carolla’s unrelenting bitching about all the manual-labor jobs he toiled in; the next chronicles his firsthand discovery that Hollywood success pretty much sucks too—except now he can pay his bills and doesn’t have to share his apartment with someone who isn’t a hot chick.
Another full-on blitz of 40-something white-male rage, lightened very little by the occasional potty-humor anecdote.Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-88887-7
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Part tabloid-style tearjerker, part sophisticated corporate exposÇ, by a former People magazine crime writer and bestselling author (The Strawberry Statement, 1969). On May 14, 1988, just outside Carrollton, Ky., a drunk-driving ne'er-do-well named Larry Mahoney slammed his Toyota pickup into a schoolbus carrying 63 children. The impact set the bus's fuel tank on fire. Twenty-seven died and 16 were hospitalized with burns. Only two families opted not to settle with Mahoney's insurers and the bus manufacturers. The Fairs, parents of Shannon, 14 when she died, and the Nunnallees, parents of Patty, who was 10, hired John P. Coale, Esq., the self-styled ``master of disaster'' who had represented the city of Bhopal in the Union Carbide gas leak. Coale charged the Ford Motor Company (and Sheller-Globe, which assembled the schoolbus for Ford) with ``consciously disregarding'' the danger they were creating by placing an unshielded fuel tank next to the front door of a bus that had ``flammable seats, inadequate emergency exits and a too-narrow aisle.'' Kunen's lingering account of the crash and its aftermath makes for excruciating reading, especially when he abandons taste for cheap effect. For example, describing a videotape of Shannon and her friends forming a cheerleader's pyramid, he writes: ``Was that pyramid, in that room, in that house, in that moment, on a sort of raft, borne on a river of time toward a bus crash waiting downstream?'' Kunen is on firmer ground when he describes, in meticulous detail, Ford's long history of subverting national safety standards in the name of cost- effectiveness. The book's strongest section focuses on Ford's tawdry behavior during the trial (arguing, among other things, that a schoolbus is a ``truck,'' not a ``bus,'' and therefore not subject to the safety standards of passenger vehicles). You'll want to avert your eyes as Kunen recreates the accident in all its blood and tears, but hang on for some impressive corporate muckraking. (8 pages of b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-70533-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
An entertaining autopsy of a failed NBC TV drama/comedy. Don't worry if you never saw or even heard of a show called ``Smoldering Lust''—or ``A Black Tie Affair,'' as it was retitled. The program lasted only a few episodes. Though it had potential, with $9 million spent on production, the talent of award-winning writer/creator Jay Tarses (``The Carol Burnett Show,'' ``The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd'') and actress Kate Capshaw (also Mrs. Steven Spielberg), and themes like adultery and murder, the project quickly faced trouble. Shaky network support, quirky writing, and a confusing title soon gave way to larger problems: a seven-month delay before airing, bad test results from a sample audience, disputes with the network's top brass, a debut in a bad time slot on Saturday night at 10 p.m. over Memorial Day weekend, and many negative reviews. While he delivers a lot of bad news, former Life writer Muse makes it interesting, providing colorful chapters on everything from shopping for the characters' upscale wardrobes, building and decorating the sets, and scoring the show to basics like scripting, casting, and shooting. He populates the scene behind the scenes with comic episodes and likable, three- dimensional characters who really seem to love what they do, and he avoids easy stereotypes. For instance, Tarses is a seasoned and philosophical TV veteran with high standards and a desire to nurture young talent; Capshaw is an artist, not a pampered star; and the censor at Standards and Practices is laid back and accommodating. Muse remains fairly sympathetic to the doomed show until the book's final pages, when, with hindsight, the author becomes the expert. ``Might the series have succeeded if all thirteen episodes had aired, in a hot spot on a good night, and under the original title? No way...someone probably should have prevented this expensive disaster from happening.'' Overall, a small tale well told.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-62223-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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