Kimley read and liked Ceridwen's review of The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight (First Time Books):

"Warning: this review contains a lot of swearing, for a children's book review. It can't be helped. Sorry.







I've always joked about having a home-wide ban on the Berenstain Bears, by which I mean I'm dead...more Warning: this review contains a lot of swearing, for a children's book review. It can't be helped. Sorry.







I've always joked about having a home-wide ban on the Berenstain Bears, by which I mean I'm deadly fucking serious. However, I've never actually told the kids about this ban, not wanting to give these books the dangerous sparkly allure of the forbidden, layering transgressive delight onto all the nose-picking, goody-goody bullshit nestled in their pages. So it probably shouldn't have come as a huge shock when the boy trundled home from school the other day with this book in his library bag. “What did you get from the media center today?” I ask. “Look!” he says, pulling out a book about my hirsute nemeses from his bag. Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.

There's a couple of ways this could have gone. I could have had an all-out Mommy Dearest style attack, tearing the book from his hands and raving about unrealistic depictions of parents and children while I stomped up and down on the book, its pages squishing and tearing as they ground into the wet leaves littering the alley behind our house. I could have called and made an appointment for counseling, as this is clearly what I need. I could have pretended not to see the book, feigning blindness to the whole thing. Thankfully, I try to walk the freaking path of the Buddha, so I took the middle road, which is saying, “Oh that's nice,” surreptitiously reading the book, and then freaking out on the Internets in a profanity-laden book review. Maturity, I have not. Fine, whatever.

When two small bears
Don't get along,
The grownups worry -
What went wrong?

Arg! Kill me now! Kill.me.now. I have two kids, coincidentally a boy and a girl, and they fight all the fucking time. Not in a particularly nasty way, just in the regular Bickersons kids way, where the girl touches the boy's Legos, and the boy loses his mind, and it's like the Legos have a big red button on them that says “Push this to make the boy freak out.” It's satisfying in a Levi-Strauss kind of way, and I can see why she does it. (But for heaven's sake, don't touch the fucking Legos.) So when Mama Bear whistles to get their attention and asks them all Socratic-like what the Bear kids are fighting about, and the Bear kids can't remember, and then they all have a sit-com style laugh about how foolish it was, it makes me want to kill. Kill, I say.

This is not helping. This is not something I can use. This is utopian garbage, where useless perfect people – er, bears – have non-problems and then work them out using the magic of rationalism. Childhood is irrational. Parenting is irrational. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all hold hands and sing? Yes, it would, and we will, and that will be fun for a while. But it doesn't change the fact that there is still a red button on the Legos, a button that is just begging to get pushed, and the answer lies somewhere in the murky territory of “don't push that” and “don't freak out so much.”

I wish, oh man I wish, this had been some sort of distopian reimagining of the Berenstain Bears, where Stephen King dropped a dome over their godamn tree house, and they had to decide who to eat next. Four bears enter, no bears leave. Now that's a book I could get behind.

P.S. When girl bear goes into the bathroom to – and I quote – brush her fur, that's when I freaked the fuck right out. No fur brushing! Or fine, fur brushing, but no fur brushing where I can see. Fur brushing is a special, private thing for girl bears to explore in the privacy of their own rooms. (less) "

Kimley read and liked dk®'s review of Behind Pinstripes Poems for Executives and Other Addicts:

"What a fucking rip-off! So someone (not mentioning any names*) sends me this book for my birthday, and as a consequence I practically skip from my mailbox to my domicile, chanting at my elderly friendless neighbor (w/walker), 'Somebody loves me, som...more What a fucking rip-off! So someone (not mentioning any names*) sends me this book for my birthday, and as a consequence I practically skip from my mailbox to my domicile, chanting at my elderly friendless neighbor (w/walker), 'Somebody loves me, somebody loves me, somebody loves me!' And then I followed it up with a little tired-ass Pacino 'boo-yah' while I thwacked her right on the forehead with my hardcover edition of Behind Pinstripes by Harry Newman Jr. (I was gonna post a picture of Harry Newman Jr, but even the far-reaching, suction-cupped tentacles of Google Image Search cannot locate him. To put this obscurity in its proper perspective, keep in mind that Google locates pages and pages of images of Ilene Graff, the actress who played the mother on Mr. Belvedere. At any rate, in the case of Mr. Newman, picture a late 1970s guidance counselor -- or, better yet, the vice president of sales of a major vegetable distribution company. This is a man who knows all about the finer points of rutabagas and will wear a pin-striped three-piece suit to tell you about them.)

Okay, okay. Moving along... Here's where I get to the 'fucking rip-off' part. So I think I'm all, like, special (in the non-derisive, non-euphemistic sense of the word) because I received this book, and I read through it as if it were some kind of ancient sacred text unearthed in a desert by archeologists and their paid-in-fruit slave labor wearing keffiyehs... Next step: Review the motherfucker, naturally, because I want to share my profound, not entirely hygienic joy with the greater world because (boo-yah) 'somebody loves me,' you lazy bedridden neighbors! I'm readin' this book and soakin' in the love, and in this metaphor, I am the quicker picker upper.

But... then when I go to add the book, I see that only two people (who shall remain nameless**) have read and rated it. And... and... and... one of them is the one who sent me the book! In other words, this is a CAST-OFF. It has passed from hand to hand to self-pleasuring hand in an orgiastic daisy chain of literary tawdriness.

Okay, so forget what one of the two people (who shall remain nameless***) said in his review. This poetry is not that bad. In fact, it's surprisingly serviceable at times. It's poetry about the experience of BUSINESS PEOPLE, for Chrissake. No one's expecting e.e. cummings or T.S. Eliot (that stupid bastard) here. So when Mr. Newman graces us with the following stanza in the poem 'Motels,' we should rightly feel our diminished expectations being goosed like nobody's business:

My imagination flies
On erotic wings
Into warm engulfing flesh
Before my sleeping pill
Converts the glittering stucco sky
To contrails
To numbing sleep

Now this poem is about a traveling businessman staying in some crappy motel, feeling all kinds of lonely, and overhearing some chick presumable bein' boned (or murdered?) in the next room. That's where the 'erotic wings' and 'engulfing flesh' come in (heh).

You cannot tell me that Rod McKuen could do any better with the material. And if you did, I'd thwack you on the forehead with this book.

The poem works even better if, after you read it, you stare at the photo of Harry Newman Jr on the back cover. Maybe sixty years old. Wearing a suit. Holding a pen, caught writing something in a (no doubt) green ledger book. Ashtray and fancy ivory letter opener on his desk. (Fuck elephants. Newman is gonna open his subpoenas in style.) He looks a little bit like the elder brother of the man who played Bosley on Charlie's Angels.

The very fact that this man (1) writes poetry, (2) writes poetry about the business world, for fuck's sake, and (3) looks the way he looks is one of a decreasing number of reasons to continue to live, to endure on this strange, miserable planet we call home.

In closing -- and in order to obscure the intense pain of not being the first person to read this 'gift' on the crapper -- I'd like to leave you with Bard Newman's poem 'Sexual Fantasy.' (Oh, come on. It's not that bad. You should just be happy it doesn't fucking rhyme!)

I must feed
The tapeworm
Of my sexual fantasy
Endless words
Images
Sounds
But never real flesh
Or it will die

* Michelle Weinman
** Michelle Weinman and Jon Bruenning
*** Jon Bruenning(less) "

Kimley read and liked brian's review of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories:

"you meet someone and they tell you that The Beatles are their favorite band and you kinda hate 'em, yeah? The Beatles are the most popular pop/rock band of all time, wildly innovative, and wrote, probably, more great songs than any other band... but ...more you meet someone and they tell you that The Beatles are their favorite band and you kinda hate 'em, yeah? The Beatles are the most popular pop/rock band of all time, wildly innovative, and wrote, probably, more great songs than any other band... but to be your all-time favorite band? kinda dull. i think i'd take someone who champions Rush or The Eagl- (no, not the Eagles. any other band but The Eagles, Steve Miller, or Aerosmith) over The Beatles just because it's more interesting.


this is why i'm so so hesitant to call out tolstoy as my favorite writer. same kinda shit, y'know? but he just might be. at the very least he's sitting at the (head of the?) table with genet borges orwell and the other usual suspects. yes. and i know it because when i popped into the book store and saw this gorgeous new hardback of tolstoy short stories by badass russian translators Peavar & Volokhonsky, well... i felt it move. took all i had not to rub against this book in the store -- waited till i got in the car and dry-humped the shit outta this beautiful bitch.


so listen: this book is a must buy. great writer. great translators. great looking edition (during masturbation i find my eye wandering away from my television freeze-framed on a naked rosario dawson or marisa tomei and to the tolstoy section of my bookshelf where - next to all my penguin softback tolstoy short story collections - my hardback P & V translated editions of war & peace, anna karenina, & ivan ilyich and other stories sit. of course, in order to prolong the experience i've gotta think back to when kowalski exposed himself in my car -- the visual equivalent of a cold shower). and a great selection of stories.


A GREAT selection of stories. i hate when they release a newly translated collection of a great writer's stories and they leave out the greatest hits. well, they're all here, kids: ivan ilyich (love me do) is terrific if slightly overrated. the kreutzer sonata (happiness is a warm gun)? fucking great! master and man (blackbird)? i cry. the devil (i'm a loser)? amazing! hadji murat (a day in the life)? fucking genius! they're ALL great.

trust me, booknerds.(less) "

Kimley read and liked Jon Bruenning's review of Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist:

"Disclaimer: There is nothing review-like about the following paragraphs

Chalk this one up to important life lessons. Let me explain. I went to graduate school for architecture. For those not familiar, it is a fairly intensive and rigorous ...more Disclaimer: There is nothing review-like about the following paragraphs

Chalk this one up to important life lessons. Let me explain. I went to graduate school for architecture. For those not familiar, it is a fairly intensive and rigorous process that is organized around a studio culture. Architecture studios are notorious. End sentence. As a design studio it is in this halfway land between the free-wheeling nature of artistic endeavors and the type of intellectual rigor that requires hours of dedication on tedious manual and intellectual efforts that go largely unnoticed and unappreciated. So it attracts strange people; myself being one of them. A part of my education was spent immersed in a studio environment in Helsinki, Finland. The way these studios work is this: a program (building typology and site) is given at the beginning of the semester; the rest of the semester is spent designing and presenting your ideas to be bandied about by your peers, professors, and local and international professionals. Needless to say, you develop tough skin and an ability to communicate ideas through various means and methods. Or you sink rapidly.

Halfway through this semester in Helsinki (the project I was working on was a Tove Jansson library) I took a break and traveled around Northern Europe by train. Part of this trip consisted of my first visit to Amsterdam. At the time of this trip, I was a 25 year old man that had a good amount of experience with a wide variety of drugs in all manners of quantity and quality. These are all experiences I have never regretted. At that point in my life, however, I was mostly done with this “experimentation” and settled into my own preferential cocktail of mind-altering substances mostly consisting of grain alcohols with the occasional amphetamine for those nights that call for it. Unsurprisingly this personal choice went a long way to helping me fit in with these frozen faced vodka acolytes in the land of one thousand lakes.

Back to Amsterdam. I was traveling with my girlfriend at the time; a Finnish woman that had never smoked pot before. So we had to partake of the coffee shops and all they had to offer. At the bar we were shown a cd case that contained little 5-gram samples of all of the different varieties of pot they had there, with descriptions of the type of high, so you knew exactly what you were getting. I picked out this crazy looking purple nug named Purple Haze whose written description fails me, but from my own experience I can only describe as some kind of weird hybrid of pot and Adderall. By that I mean that it feels like you stepped in a hole, but while you are in that hole you feel like you can concentrate so hard that you can levitate yourself out of that hole. And it would be fucking beautiful, man. Fucking Beautiful. This is pertinent information for later.

Anyway. I liked it. It made my girlfriend loopy and all she did was (literally) bounce around Amsterdam. So she never smoked again. And I had enough left over that I brought some back to Helsinki with me.

Upon returning to Helsinki, the work resumed. One night while working in the studio alone with one of my closest friends, and probably the only person in that particular studio with me that would partake, we decided to smoke the Purple Haze and enjoy the early spring night. Our studio had a huge balcony overlooking the harbor near market square. So we smoked a joint and went back inside to continue working on our projects. For the rest of the night I was working my way through that Purple Haze/Adderall hole of supreme concentration. I thought I was doing ground-breaking shit. Trace paper and graphite was flying…meanwhile, my buddy did not get shit done. I am not really sure what he was doing, but if I ever managed to look up it did seem he was busy. Maybe the hole he was in made him think he needed to re arrange his life in groundbreaking ways and this manifested itself with a perpetual physical motion that was an outward representation of whatever internal processes his Purple Haze rattled brain was working through. But I had clarity, man. I worked through the night and into the morning. Eventually ending up alone in the studio after my friend organized his way back into chaos and decided sleep was the remedy. Although he did look at me askew as he left. This was after my explanation of what I was doing with my library. The connection was not made because that motherfucker was high and did not know what the fuck he was talking about. At the end of that session, my project had completely changed. I thought it was amazing. Nobody had ever seen shit like this before. And then I walked home in the electric blue light of the typical Finnish early spring morning. The water in the bay was so still it was a mirror. I still remember it as being one of the most peaceful and beautiful walks I have ever taken in my life.

The next afternoon I walked back to the studio with the excitement still alive from the previous night’s accomplishments. I was the last to arrive and I felt like my peers were looking at me funny. They had already looked over my project, and had apparently been made aware of the extracurricular activities that accompanied this new scheme. I had not seen my project again yet. We looked it over together and I realized I had no explanation for any of the decisions I made except for “I was high and thought it was fuckin’ bad-ass.” I knew this would not fly when presenting to my professors and local professionals so I decided to think up some other rationalizations in order to cover myself. Already the slow creep of post Purple Haze lucidity was descending over my own understanding of the previous night’s happenings. But still. I had to move forward with this or else lose face; because I already had a pretty great project before this misstep.

My professor was Finnish. That day I sat there and tried to explain away these new lines and forms and ideas on my paper with the typical archi-babble that exists in all academic institutions. It is important to note that Finnish nuance happens to be a completely different animal than the average run-of-the-mill American nuance that is mostly just our underlying cynicism masked with a false sincerity. Finnish nuance can only be communicated with a straight face and wide ranging tones of non-verbal responses -- mmMMM’s that go up in register at the end, and the occasional jooOOO (yes) that means neither yes in the affirmative, nor yes as an acknowledgment of understanding, but was rather a yes infused with much more judgment and was to be read as a verbal “sizing-up.” It is somewhat akin to the American “I see” but is much more nuanced…in the way Eskimos have 30 words (or something like that) for snow. I had become finely attuned to these nuanced non-verbal reactions to the point I could write a thesis on them. So over the course of my describing this new overnight sensation in Finnish library design, I kept hearing these non-verbal responses slowly creeping up the register until one of his mmMMMM’s tailed off at the end damn near the register of one of Satchmo’s high C’s, I realized I needed to back pedal and return to the normalcy of my pre Purple Haze design iteration. So I bowed out with the old “let me think about this for a bit.”

And then I returned things to normal.

That night I went to sleep stone cold sober (giving away the reserves of my Dutch delights earlier that evening) and reading this book by HST. It is at this point that I came to a realization that an unfortunately large percentage of people never seem to reach – most people are way less interesting under the influence of drugs. And. I happen to be one of those people much more interesting when I am not on drugs. It is a good life lesson to learn, I think. Which is the point of the story. And is in no small way related to HST.
(less) "