A spirited, engrossing, larger-than-life account of a career ticket scalper.
A man describes his life as a legendary ticket scalper in this debut memoir.
Before he was a notorious hustler in the secondary ticket market, Hatton was just a Kentucky Wildcats fan. The son of a Wildcats basketball hero, the author and his brothers grew up in a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints family only a few miles from the University of Kentucky campus. In fact, it was at a Wildcats football game that 14-year-old Hatton and his brother Jeff were introduced to the world of ticket scalping: “We’re walking into the stadium to watch the game when a man stops us and says, ‘Will you take fifty dollars each for those two tickets?’ Now, I’m in eighth grade. I don’t have any money. I’ve never had fifty dollars all to myself. We sell him the tickets….We’re freaking out—this is so much money!” A talented basketball player in his own right, the author saw his sports career at UK end when he tore his ACL. His basketball days over, the freshly married Hatton tried a number of jobs—racehorse salesman, car salesman, movie extra—before landing himself a gig as DJ Terry “the Hit Man” Hatton on Lexington’s WFMI radio. But once his son was born, the author knew he needed to start making some real money. He threw himself back into the ticket scalping game, learning quickly what to do and (after getting arrested for running from a cop) what not to do. With his brothers involved, the Hatton ticket scalping business soon branched out into non-UK events: Super Bowls, Bruce Springsteen concerts, the Summer Olympics, and even World Cups in Paris and Berlin. In this memoir, Hatton recounts his ups and downs in the international ticket scalping game, one of the most colorful, high-stakes hustles around.
The author is a natural storyteller, and each anecdote feels as though it has been spun many times over drinks at a bar or a pregame tailgate. He inflects his rise with all the drama and intrigue of a classic underworld tale: “We spent the rest of that season improving our craft. There were four main guys who controlled the market: Red, Ducksy, Irv, and Harold Duvall. They were the guys at Rupp Arena, and the cops left them alone. I got to know all of them pretty well, and we became their primary suppliers.” Hatton—who describes himself as an “innocent Mormon boy” —makes for an unlikely kingpin, and even though ticket scalping is a crime, many readers will still root for his success. He’s clearly delighted in his image as the “Kentucky Hustler,” and there’s a fair amount of myth polishing that goes on over the course of the book. Even so, Hatton makes the world of 1990s and 2000s sporting events feel like a far-off time and place: a milieu in which duffle bags of paper tickets and armoires full of cash were everyday items. It’s an episodic story, but it’s never boring. Readers will leave these pages with the urge to go score some tickets to a college basketball game.
A spirited, engrossing, larger-than-life account of a career ticket scalper.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-9862598-3-3
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Paisley Mountain Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
