Kirshenbaum submits a vibrant, educational look at his days as creative director of his New York City advertising company.
“Advertising people by nature tend to be quirky, fun, and loquacious,” which may only be half true, but the author certainly fits snuggly into that camp. He rose in the industry during the 1980s and cut a broad swath as an unconventional, inventive adman, tackling everything from Reynolds Wrap to cognac. In this jaunty memoir, he starts with a little familial background material before moving on to tales from the trade: encounters with the rich and famous and, better yet, the not-so rich and hardly famous; the crazy shoots; the whole milieu of high-stakes advertising. Yet there is plenty of hard business information in these pages, for Kirshenbaum appreciates discipline, old-school politesse and plain hard work. Much of his wisdom is reduced to aphorisms, and he knows the power of laughter as a business model as well as the fact “that unless you have a killer strategy, you might go down the wrong path creatively.” What stands out in particular is the author’s ability to convey the exigent art of the creative process at work. His outlook is part liberal and socially conscious—he came up with the Kenneth Cole campaign that featured characters du jour: Imelda Marcos and her 2,700 shoes, Dan Quayle and Oliver North (“Isn’t it time America focused less on arms and more on feet?”). Kirshenbaum’s bracing, often ribald humor carries right through the page and onto the sidewalk, where he stenciled such ads as that for Bamboo Lingerie: “From here it looks like you could use some new underwear.” A shimmering piece of work, in which the flash illuminates the creative act.
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1144-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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