Dog trainers Kilcommons and Wilson continue a pattern they established in Good Owners, Great Dogs (not reviewed): a self-professed tactful handling of the charges in their care and a supercilious treatment of the owners. In these pages are found dozens of short stories of dogs with problems: the flatulent Rottweiler; the bored, butt-chomping whippet cross; the submissive poodle whose Howdy Doody grin is mistaken for savagery; dogs mean and reckless and sexually dysfunctional. As Kilcommons and Wilson tell it, the canine troubles are remedied in a nonce—as soon as their jughead owners see the light, that is. There is the mistress who worries that her dog doesn't poop as much as she does, and the dog has three bowel movements daily. Ha, ha. Another woman who feels her dog is oversexed, yet plays with him with her rump in the air. Ho! Each vignette is signed—Kilcommons comes across all superior and disdainful (``People frequently tell us their dogs are dumb. We usually correct them''), Wilson the purveyor of cautionary and morality tales. After a story of abuse, Wilson intones, ``say a prayer for little dogs and children everywhere''; and while out walking her dogs, she outwits an exhibitionist, not by sicking the mutts on him, but by laughing, ``loudly and long, and that laugh was the only long thing in the vicinity.'' What this has to do with dogs is anyone's guess. It may be that the authors are striving for Barbara Woodhouse's gruff and impatient bluntness; unfortunately, their attitude comes across as plain smug. Perhaps Kilcommons and Wilson's work with dogs is magical, though thoughtful trainers will say that's half the equation; the admittedly more troublesome half, their handling of the owners, could use a fair amount of polishing. (b&w photos) (Radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52150-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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
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
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