A Wall Street trader exercises a rich man’s prerogative and offers financial advice and his life story. “See how much money I made!” is the message. “I’m pretty smart and damned tough, too.” To be sure, Schwartz (“Buzzy” to his pals) is the prototypical hard driver, a truly successful day trader, buying and selling in lightning strokes for his own account. His is a talent for exquisite market timing, a tricky game for even the most proficient professionals. His specialty is S&P futures, a technique using the marvel of leverage to greatly multiply the chances for gain—or loss—on each tick. It requires an inordinate amount of research as well as stamina, acumen, and nerve, but it can be worth millions every year. The alternative, as Buzzy frets, is “going tapioca.” Buzzy dearly wanted his kids to say, “ ‘My daddy’s the Champion Trader!’ That was all I cared about,” he admits. With success came Lutäce lunches, expensive artworks, Armani suits, Bally alligator shoes, and other trophies. Schwartz essays a little false humility, but the book’s evasive charm is based on chutzpah. In an effort to leverage with OPM (other people’s money), the author established his own hedge funds until investors (the bastards) pestered him about their money. Don’t be surprised to learn the result was heart disease. Now in Florida, trading again for himself, the quondam Champion Trader reveals, with some repetition, his story. It moves nicely, though, with a certain egomaniacal verve. An appendix gives the author’s daily schedule (e.g, “7:20-7:30 Clean out the plumbing”). His investment methodology is also appended, but only the most devoted professional will utilize this rigorous lesson. An archetypal text, true to life on the Street, destined to be discussed over drinks at trader hangouts after the market closes—and better than going tapioca. (Author tour; radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-88-730876-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
Funny, perceptive and surprisingly open-hearted under the cynicism.
A delightful, Plimptonesque exercise in immersive journalism exploring the strange world of “self-help.”
Lisick (Everybody into the Pool: True Tales, 2005, etc.) devoted a year to various gurus in an attempt to self-actualize. She endeavored to become a Highly Effective Person under the auspices of Stephen Covey, to fortify her soul with Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup, to get fit with Richard Simmons on a cruise ship, to straighten out her perilous finances with Suze Orman, to consistently discipline her young son with Thomas Phelan’s 1-2-3 Magic method, to figure out John Gray’s Mars/Venus gender dichotomy, and generally to live a better, happier life. It is to the reader’s great benefit that Lisick is: 1) a mess, 2) cynical and horrified of cheesiness, and C) effortlessly funny. Her visualizations didn’t go right, she didn’t have the right clothes for the ghastly seminars and on Simmons’s cruise she got high and made inappropriate advances to a surly young musician accompanying his mother. Lisick makes keen use of comic detail, as when she charts the deflation of Simmons’s hair over the course of the cruise. She is tough on the well-paid experts, but fair, sincerely laboring to suspend her skepticism and game to put their advice into action. Some of it works: A home-organization expert helps Lisick’s family emerge from their chaotic clutter, and Phelan’s discipline strategy tames her truculent toddler. But of course the book is funniest when things don’t go so well. The author’s revulsion over Gray’s retrograde sexual stereotypes (and disturbingly smooth, buffed appearance) is palpable and highly amusing. Her articulate hatred of the anodyne platitudes in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way provides a tonic for anyone dismayed by fuzzy New Age smugness. None of that from Lisick, who is sharp, irreverent and endearingly screwed-up. Her experiment may not have solved all of her problems, but she got an enjoyable book out of it.
Funny, perceptive and surprisingly open-hearted under the cynicism.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-114396-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable tour of a unique musical subculture, limited only by its narrow scope—readers may wish for more information...
A journalist explores the offbeat world of tribute bands.
Following close on the heels of the Rolling Stones 2005-06 tour, journalist Kurutz traveled with two Stones tribute bands, Sticky Fingers and the Blushing Brides. The bulk of the narrative focuses on the former, especially their energetic frontman, Glen Carroll, who looks the part of Mick Jagger more than he embodies it with his voice. The owner of hundreds of Stones recordings and pieces of memorabilia, Carroll has served for more than two decades as the de facto leader and business manager for Sticky Fingers, booking the gigs and coordinating an endless rotation of musicians on tours across the country and abroad. The band has performed at a wide variety of events, including bars, small clubs, fairs and corporate parties, but their biggest draw is among fraternities at Southern universities. “At a frat party,” writes Kurutz, “where hundreds of coeds are stuffed into a room, chugging cheap beer, the songs of the Stones, loose and sexual, celebrate a lifestyle.” The Blushing Brides—who bill themselves as “The World’s Most Dangerous Tribute to the Music of the Rolling Stones”—play many of the same venues, and a spirited rivalry has developed, provoked mainly by the Brides’s Jagger, Mitch Raymond, who maintains a near-endless well of vitriol for Carroll. The author traces the origins of tribute bands to Beatlemania, the hit 1977 Broadway musical based on the music of the Beatles, and he offers a trenchant evaluation of how and why that production ultimately failed. Readers will appreciate the author’s light touch and warm-hearted portrayal of the musicians who toil in the tribute trenches, and Kurutz provides enough behind-the-scenes anecdotes to keep the pace moving. In a particularly amusing section, the author points to tributecity.com for numerous examples of tribute bands: Lez Zeppelin, AC/Dshe, Red Hot Chili Bastards, Kounterfeit Kinks, Pretend Pretenders, Hendrix Rockprophecy and Zoo Zoo Mud (“Missouri’s tribute to ZZ Top”)—as well as “not one but two KISS tribute bands peopled by dwarves—Mini Kiss and Tiny Kiss.”
An enjoyable tour of a unique musical subculture, limited only by its narrow scope—readers may wish for more information about non-Stones tribute bands.Pub Date: April 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-51890-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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