A zippy reminder of what we've all thankfully escaped.
The creator of the short-lived but highly praised TV series Freaks and Geeks takes us on an enjoyable tour through some of the more vivid scenes of tortured 1970s adolescence in the American suburban landscape.
Gifted with a remarkable ability to remember the specific and singular torments of youth, Feig presents a collection of essays about a smorgasbord of incidents that should be familiar to anyone who has experienced life before age 18. There is the botched first kiss, the alternating boredom and misery of a single little-league season, the inevitability of a derogatory nickname based on his last name (Feig got off easy with “Fignewton” in elementary school, but by middle school had been dubbed “Fag”). The author plays it all for laughs, whether he's detailing the challenges of getting his matter-of-fact parents to whip up an elf costume for the elementary-school play (all costume elements were gleaned from his father's Army-Navy surplus store), or taking a frighteningly “fast” girl to the Christmas dance (she drinks, vomits, and then expects a kiss). Feig spares himself no humiliation, relaying with great gusto his discovery of masturbation during rope-climbing day in gym class, and his brief fascination with cross-dressing, which ended abruptly when his mother was in a car accident and, with no time to change, he had to appear at the scene in full drag. Though not much of a stylist—“I've never been much for sports” is a typical opening line—the author has a dead-on sense of timing and detail. Delivering any sort of message is secondary to getting a laugh, but Feig does convey the absolute bewilderment of being a kid who cannot automatically accept the countless social conventions that seem unquestioned by his peers.
A zippy reminder of what we've all thankfully escaped.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-609-80943-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
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
© 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.
