A mildly diverting, modestly charming memoir from a surprisingly multifaceted showbiz survivor.
The straight dope from Cheech.
Marin, half of the storied stoner comedy team Cheech and Chong, recounts his life and career with this slight, genial memoir. The son of a hard-nosed cop, Richard “Cheech” Marin (b. 1946) spent his early life in East Los Angeles’ violent ghetto on the straight and narrow, earning good grades and serving as an altar boy. The Vietnam War changed everything, as Marin turned in his draft card and decamped for Canada, where he met local musician and scenester Tommy Chong and joined his improvisational comedy troupe. “I had turned in my draft card,” he writes, “philosophically denying the government’s authority over me and at the same time choosing to go to Canada to pursue my artistic calling as a potter. It was a philosophical two-fer.” Marin and Chong hit it off, and their loose, rambling, pot-inflected comedy bits quickly made them a sensation, leading to lucrative tours, albums, and movies before the buzz wore off and the pair split in the mid-1980s. Marin is diplomatic about his clashes with Chong, who comes off here as aggressive and insecure about credit, leavening all complaints with affirmations of Chong’s singular, charismatic talent. Mellow in his recollections to a fault, the author acknowledges his fondness for marijuana, but he does not offer salacious, drug-fueled anecdotes or other tales of wild, countercultural bad behavior. Instead, he focuses on the duo’s creative process, warm family memories, post–Cheech and Chong collaborations with Robert Rodriguez and Pixar, and the creation of his personal film Born in East LA (1987). Droll and affable rather than outrageous and subversive, Marin is pleasant company, but general readers may wish for less data on the author’s Chicano art collection and more hysterical, hairy tales of ’70s-era excess.
A mildly diverting, modestly charming memoir from a surprisingly multifaceted showbiz survivor.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-9234-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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