BOOKS THREAD

I want to find that. Not a fan of Playboy, but radio is one of my hobbyhorses.

 

Swingline, if you've never read "Baby BeeBee Bird," consider yourself spared.

 

I'm a fan of Playboy. For the articles! I swear!

And Bigfoot porn.

Weekend Update: Denver Riggleman Addresses Bigfoot Erotica

 

January 1982 issue

 

Thank you! I have a friend who collects Playboy. I'll see if he has it.

Sidebar: Back in the Cretaceous, there was a CD-Rom of all the interviews up to the mid-80s. Unfortunately, it only worked up to WIN95, IIRC.

 

I just read Edie, by Jean Stein. It's the oral biography of Edie Sedgwick, one of the acclaimed superstars of Andy Warhol's factory.

I was born in 1970. She died about a year later. Not only was the book a great read, I now understand why 1968 found her such a fascinating figure.

 

This is the third comedian bio I've read this year; the other two were about Groucho Marx and Robin Williams. All three had difficult childhoods and were not well-adjusted adults. But Jerry Lewis was just a complete prick (as was Dean Martin), and late in life, he didn't hide that. He told his sons that all the work he did -- and he worked a lot -- was strictly for him, not for his family.

In the afterword, the author talks about the two times he met with Lewis about the book, and the two meetings pretty much sums up the man.

I stumbled across this at the library's book sale this year. It was published in 1997, before Lewis was pushed out of the MDA and faced health problems that caused him to put on a lot of weight. I've been a Lewis fan for years, so I enjoyed it.

Joe Bob says check it out.

 

Not sure who wrote it, but there was a very popular bio of Edie released in the mid/late eighties. She was fascinating, as was the whole Factory scene.

 

George Plimpton was involved in the Stein book as editor - he had some interesting ties to that whole scene.

Christmas book from my mom, who was at a loss to find a gift for me: "Tough Luck," by R.D. Rosen (I've read his mystery "Strike Three You're Dead"), about Sid Luckman and his dad, a hit man who was involved in Murder Inc. and went up the river for a murder early in Sid's career. Looks promising.

 

This was fun to read. It's not really a bio of Houdini, but more of a look at why he's still famous, nearly 100 years after his death. Posnanski did tons of research for this. In the afterword, he said he read 212 books about Houdini and thousands of articles, and that research shows in the writing. He also said that while doing research, he went down many Houdini rabbit holes; I did the same thing while reading. I would come across a minor character who sounded interesting and go read about him for a while. I enjoyed this a lot.

Joe Bob says definitely check it out.

 

Plimpton sometimes seemed to be everywhere during the 60s. He also helped tackle Sirhan Sirhan when he shot Bobby Kennedy after the 1968 California primary.

Just finished another book by Jean Stein (and edited by Plimpton.) American Journey, an oral biography of RFK that centers around the funeral train that took his body from New York to Washington.

It's just packed with amazing details. Two of which, from a journalistic standpoint, are:

Kennedy got on really well with the reporters who covered him. Once, during the final days of his life, he got drunk with the whole lot of them on the bus and they sang traditional Christian hymns together until dawn.

At the funeral, campaign aides made sure a press bus full of his favorite reporters was in the cortege heading out to Arlington. Behind the limos with the family but ahead of those with folks like President Johnson and Eugene McCarthy.