Los Angelino rap musician Ice-T unbuttons his shirt about ghetto life and the storm that hit when his song ``Cop Killer'' seemingly fueled a weak-minded kid to murder a cop. Ice-T defends his record label, which stood behind him, but admits that ``Warner Brothers cannot afford to be in the business of black rage.'' ``Who gives a fuck? is one of the first questions a kid will ask himself growing up in the ghetto. He'll look around at the broken-down buildings, the shabby projects, the cracked schoolyard playgrounds, and it doesn't look like anybody gives a fuck.'' Rap rolls off Ice-T's tongue like jive filled with ground glass. He affects street smarts, a this-is-the-way-it-is stance, and yet admits, ``Anything that comes out of my mouth could be totally wrong, but this is how I see the world around me.'' But isn't there something forced in his story of kids getting $250 tickets for jaywalking and parking offenses just so the cops can collect fingerprints? There are sex ploys with groupies who have a mission to score on him: ``If you are only out to fuck, do not be afraid to lie. Do not be afraid to lie.'' But this changes into T's guide to good manners: ``Men have to learn courting and mating skills. You help yourself by learning a few basics. If you can dance, that will help. Give a woman a reason to like you. Wash your ass. Do some sit-ups. And once you get your physical act together, read some books. Learn something. Be interesting. Get some flavor about yourself.'' Later: ``If you sat up around a nun long enough, she'd probably want to fuck you...You got to deal with them on a mental level, you got to deal with them on a spiritual level.'' You deal from a 150,000 first printing to even make 'em hear you.
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-10486-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1994
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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