Stand-up comic Rudner sits down to produce a collection of light little essays. Just as doctoral candidates have to present their theses, it appears that comedians must produce such works for full credentials, and, as this kind of ephemera goes, Rudner's effort goes reasonably well. She might have called her text ``If It's on Fire, Don't Lay Down on It,'' ``Guilty of Innocence,'' or any of more than a score of alternative titles she offers as runners-up, but perhaps ``I Think of These Things So You Don't Have To'' is as suitable as any. Aware of short attention spans, Rudner fires off the traditional self-deprecation and habitual bewilderment in quick bursts. Readers, she concludes, ``like short, funny essays where the subject changes every three pages. Just think of me as a literary Ed Sullivan.'' From the bits and pieces, a biography of sorts may be built: Rudner is the daughter of a mother who wore sturdy, orthopedic bathing suits and a father who ``watched football with the sound off because he lived in fear of hearing the voice of Howard Cosell.'' Teenaged Rita had a pair of tight jeans: ``When I zipped them up, my nose got bigger.'' At 15, she left for New York. Marriage provided more material (on map reading, cold feet, and so forth). Somewhere along the way, she learned comic timing so well that her writing has the tempo of George Burns's—and she's only about a third the age of the old master. An amusing entry that's as easy to digest, and about as nourishing, as a bottle of designer mineral water. (Illustrations.)
Pub Date: July 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84462-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
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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