God bless the Free Press. Sometimes when life is getting tough, I have to ask myself why I haven’t read more celebrity memoirs.
I would say thank you for reading all this drivel so that I don’t have to, but I have sticks in my yard that have contributed more to my outlook on life than these “authors,” so I’m not sure I was going to rush off to the bookstore in the first place. I have a hunch that 99% of the subscribers to this substack would have more interesting and fulfilling life stories to tell. While I’m waiting for those to drop, I’m going to go read the model tag on my refrigerator-which by the way I also find more interesting than this cringe fest.
“While Spears lay bleeding and in pain, Timberlake “thought music would help, so he got his guitar and he lay there with me, strumming it. I kept crying and sobbing until it was over.””
—————————————————-
Why was she crying? Abortions are good and they reduce your suffering according to MSNBC.
(the acoustic guitar is the *real* abortion in this story)
nope, never read celebrity stuff, & certainly not anything about Barbra... your comments about her worship of Clinton confirms my distaste for celebrities believing themselves to be so smart just because they might be very talented, which she is.
Funnily enough, the fact that most of these books haven't sold very many copies gives me hope. Maybe people are not as interested in celebrity culture as celebrity culture would have us believe.
"Starting off the year was Prince Harry . . . with his explosively cringey memoir, Spare—also known as 'WAAAH' -- in which he sold out his family, aired one-sided petty grievances, and bemoaned the loss of his mother."
And, evidently, told "his truths," which in many instances turned out to be lies, absolute humdingers. The boy is addled and has been made more so by his marriage to the ambitious, unscrupulous Markle.
As for the rest of these autobiographies: Can't their authors wait until they're at least 70 years old and have proven themselves worthy of our reading about their extraordinary lives? (At least Barbra Streisand, whether we like her politics or not, has had a long, varied, successful career.)
It sounds as though most of them have run out of friends to whom to tell their sad-sack, minor experiences. Who are these people?
I can't think of a worse job in the world than having to read these books; this is a time she will never return. I can see myself in solitary confinement, and the guard says as punishment, you must read these books. But what is impressive is that people buy tens of thousands of them. When calculating the impact on swing voters, one must understand that a lot of their intellectual diet consists of gossip of tidbits of Prince Harry, Brittney, and Morsels from a woman who dated Kanye. I guess this is why so many like Trump? Sadly, as a personality, he is more like the authors than he is like the great men in our history, Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt. That is a clue of cultural decay when that happens. Wow, am I more depressed ending this post than when I started. Merry Christmas, all.
Gonna order the Maria Bamford for my daughter right now. %-)
On a purely pet-peevish note, I so wish John Stamos had not codified in his title the grammatical error that most puts my teeth on edge. Whatever happened to the past perfect? Instead, everyone illiterately substitutes the conditional tense in almost every context.
So the title should be "If You Had Told Me." Not "If You Would Have Told Me." (Well, I actually would have, but I don't know you.)
I've heard people misuse the conditional instead of the past perfect in so many iterations that their sentences end up totally devoid of content. "If I would have known she could have been there, I would have gone and we could have met."
So what you're saying then is... nothing happened. At all.
If I would have bought this book and then would have read it, it would have made me very unhappy every time I would have looked at it.
I am feeling more and more clearly every day how most of us live in a dream world that is filled with lives that are not our own. We live in TV, and movies, and video games, and managed political conflicts, where we are given scripts like combatants are given clubs, and told to go out in the managed wild and bang the heads of the People Who Are Not Like Us, while wealthy psychopaths watch and giggle from their yachts or penthouses, and continue to be astonished that people are buying their BS.
I didn't care enough about any of this to even make it to the bottom of the reviews. All of these people remind me of Joanne Rowlings excellent satirization of these types in her second book. I can still see Kenneth Branagh playing Gilderoy Lockhart, and saying, if memory serves, the gloriously vapid lines "Fame is as Fame Does."
I'll say it--i love this stuff. Even if I haven't read any of these. Celebrity narcissism bullshit makes me feel better about myself. I'll take anything for that--not picky! And--I used to be friends with Kerry Washington. We did a summer acting conservatory together in 1996. She was nice, vanilla, gossipy and flirty. She didn't risk her ego to wow teachers while the rest of us fell over ourselves for validation. and so she sailed straight to stardom saying that her marketable type was "black Meg Ryan." We lost touch early on and I still contend with jealousy all these years later. I am happy to hear her memoir is meh. Safe is her jam. Not mine! Merry Christmas comment comrades! 💚❤️💚❤️
“Sometimes you just have to say fuck it and throw your life down the drain just to see where you’ll come out on the other side. The most profound beauty emerges from the ashes of destruction”
—————————————————
This reminds me of my plan, which I call ‘Operation Rock Bottom’, to vote for Democrats in 2024.
“Arnie’s memoir offers his guide to life, which I’ll summarize like so: have a clear vision; never think small; work your ass off……”
————————————
And don’t don’t forget to aggressively bully people into taking an experimental gene therapy in an accent that sounds German.
They should do a remake of ‘Twins’ with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Fauci, who would play the stumpy Danny Devito character this time, where they are both tried for war crimes and sentenced to death.
A good reminder why I do not read books by celebrities/ghost writers.
My favorite book review title this year: 'Spare Us'...The Economist's review of the Prince harry memoir.
God bless the Free Press. Sometimes when life is getting tough, I have to ask myself why I haven’t read more celebrity memoirs.
I would say thank you for reading all this drivel so that I don’t have to, but I have sticks in my yard that have contributed more to my outlook on life than these “authors,” so I’m not sure I was going to rush off to the bookstore in the first place. I have a hunch that 99% of the subscribers to this substack would have more interesting and fulfilling life stories to tell. While I’m waiting for those to drop, I’m going to go read the model tag on my refrigerator-which by the way I also find more interesting than this cringe fest.
“While Spears lay bleeding and in pain, Timberlake “thought music would help, so he got his guitar and he lay there with me, strumming it. I kept crying and sobbing until it was over.””
—————————————————-
Why was she crying? Abortions are good and they reduce your suffering according to MSNBC.
(the acoustic guitar is the *real* abortion in this story)
nope, never read celebrity stuff, & certainly not anything about Barbra... your comments about her worship of Clinton confirms my distaste for celebrities believing themselves to be so smart just because they might be very talented, which she is.
Funnily enough, the fact that most of these books haven't sold very many copies gives me hope. Maybe people are not as interested in celebrity culture as celebrity culture would have us believe.
"Starting off the year was Prince Harry . . . with his explosively cringey memoir, Spare—also known as 'WAAAH' -- in which he sold out his family, aired one-sided petty grievances, and bemoaned the loss of his mother."
And, evidently, told "his truths," which in many instances turned out to be lies, absolute humdingers. The boy is addled and has been made more so by his marriage to the ambitious, unscrupulous Markle.
As for the rest of these autobiographies: Can't their authors wait until they're at least 70 years old and have proven themselves worthy of our reading about their extraordinary lives? (At least Barbra Streisand, whether we like her politics or not, has had a long, varied, successful career.)
It sounds as though most of them have run out of friends to whom to tell their sad-sack, minor experiences. Who are these people?
I can't think of a worse job in the world than having to read these books; this is a time she will never return. I can see myself in solitary confinement, and the guard says as punishment, you must read these books. But what is impressive is that people buy tens of thousands of them. When calculating the impact on swing voters, one must understand that a lot of their intellectual diet consists of gossip of tidbits of Prince Harry, Brittney, and Morsels from a woman who dated Kanye. I guess this is why so many like Trump? Sadly, as a personality, he is more like the authors than he is like the great men in our history, Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt. That is a clue of cultural decay when that happens. Wow, am I more depressed ending this post than when I started. Merry Christmas, all.
Thanks for this article, (it reminds me why I like The Free Press). Very entertaining and oddly thought provoking.
You are an incredible reader to plow thru all that pablum. But saved the rest of us a lot of time.
She read the narcissism so we don’t have to.
Gonna order the Maria Bamford for my daughter right now. %-)
On a purely pet-peevish note, I so wish John Stamos had not codified in his title the grammatical error that most puts my teeth on edge. Whatever happened to the past perfect? Instead, everyone illiterately substitutes the conditional tense in almost every context.
So the title should be "If You Had Told Me." Not "If You Would Have Told Me." (Well, I actually would have, but I don't know you.)
I've heard people misuse the conditional instead of the past perfect in so many iterations that their sentences end up totally devoid of content. "If I would have known she could have been there, I would have gone and we could have met."
So what you're saying then is... nothing happened. At all.
If I would have bought this book and then would have read it, it would have made me very unhappy every time I would have looked at it.
I laughed, I cried, I cringed. I need a shower.
I am feeling more and more clearly every day how most of us live in a dream world that is filled with lives that are not our own. We live in TV, and movies, and video games, and managed political conflicts, where we are given scripts like combatants are given clubs, and told to go out in the managed wild and bang the heads of the People Who Are Not Like Us, while wealthy psychopaths watch and giggle from their yachts or penthouses, and continue to be astonished that people are buying their BS.
I didn't care enough about any of this to even make it to the bottom of the reviews. All of these people remind me of Joanne Rowlings excellent satirization of these types in her second book. I can still see Kenneth Branagh playing Gilderoy Lockhart, and saying, if memory serves, the gloriously vapid lines "Fame is as Fame Does."
I'll say it--i love this stuff. Even if I haven't read any of these. Celebrity narcissism bullshit makes me feel better about myself. I'll take anything for that--not picky! And--I used to be friends with Kerry Washington. We did a summer acting conservatory together in 1996. She was nice, vanilla, gossipy and flirty. She didn't risk her ego to wow teachers while the rest of us fell over ourselves for validation. and so she sailed straight to stardom saying that her marketable type was "black Meg Ryan." We lost touch early on and I still contend with jealousy all these years later. I am happy to hear her memoir is meh. Safe is her jam. Not mine! Merry Christmas comment comrades! 💚❤️💚❤️
“Sometimes you just have to say fuck it and throw your life down the drain just to see where you’ll come out on the other side. The most profound beauty emerges from the ashes of destruction”
—————————————————
This reminds me of my plan, which I call ‘Operation Rock Bottom’, to vote for Democrats in 2024.
“Arnie’s memoir offers his guide to life, which I’ll summarize like so: have a clear vision; never think small; work your ass off……”
————————————
And don’t don’t forget to aggressively bully people into taking an experimental gene therapy in an accent that sounds German.
They should do a remake of ‘Twins’ with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Fauci, who would play the stumpy Danny Devito character this time, where they are both tried for war crimes and sentenced to death.