Life as a Zappa entails both heartbreak and triumph. Interesting reading for fans.
A memoir of a nonconformist life raised by rock-world icons Frank and Gail Zappa.
In her introduction, Moon Unit Zappa facetiously promises that her autobiography will remind readers of their own life story—that is, if they had an iconoclastic rock star for a father and grew up in a "chaotic full-throttle household." It's not just the "misfits, sycophants and freeloaders" who hung out at the Zappa home in Laurel Canyon, California, she writes. “It seems like the whole world wants my daddy." She finally got Frank's undivided attention when, at 13, she unveiled her satirical "lazy, lyrical Valley accent,” which Frank recorded in a memorable song. "Valley Girl," studded with Zappa's hilarious impersonations of vapid airheads, was a big radio hit, which garnered his daughter hate mail from Valley girls but also jump-started her performing career. The author recounts how she earned small roles in TV and movies and worked as a VJ for MTV and VH1. She describes attempting to supplant her father's eternal dominance with other charismatic leaders, acting coaches, and spiritual gurus, and she details her vital role in dealing with both parents' deaths from cancer. Other traumatic life experiences include her infant daughter's brush with death, an early divorce, unequal inheritances among the author and her siblings, and eventual family estrangement, with “family friend Steve Vai kindly acting as self-appointed mediator.” Throughout, Zappa is candid about her dysfunctional upbringing, personal insecurities, parents' idiosyncrasies, and the foibles and insanities of the music business world, and she exhaustively catalogs her plentiful experiments with consumer spirituality and popular culture. In her adult life in Taos, New Mexico, Zappa pursues work as a writer and podcaster, and she has learned, as a chapter title reads, "How To Heal in a Hundred Steps."
Life as a Zappa entails both heartbreak and triumph. Interesting reading for fans.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780063113343
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer opens up about filmmaking, sex, drugs, and escaping his father’s shadow.
Despite its casual, just-shooting-the-breeze title, Douglas’ memoir is detailed and precision-engineered to entertain; as a filmmaker who won his first Oscar as a producer (for 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), he knows a successful story needs clarity and conflict to work. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas, he was well-acquainted with celebrity at an early age; witnessing his parents’ divorce, he spent much of his youth acting out. (He paid for college by selling weed by the suitcase-load.) After years of stalls and failures, he broke through on TV with the ’70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco. But small-screen work (along with his nepo-baby status) made breaking into big-screen roles harder until 1984’s Romancing the Stone made him a star and 1987’s Wall Street earned him a second Oscar. Douglas is candid about his industry struggles—like endless budget fights and betraying his father, who was promised the lead in Cuckoo’s Nest—and his reputation as a lothario. (Though married, he had an on-set affair with Kathleen Turner during Stone.) He’s also open about his alcohol and cocaine abuse, leading to a rehab stint, echoed in his son Cameron’s own struggles with addiction and recovery. He’s comfortable discussing controversies—the LGBTQ+ community’s protests of 1992’s Basic Instinct, his proto-MAGA character in 1993’s Falling Down—and plainly keeps an enemies list. But this story arc leaves him triumphant, with a loving wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his family, his health (after a cancer scare), and a late-career Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781538782224
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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