Book-It '10! Book #53
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a special gift to me from imoldfashioned for my birthday, complete with a autograph to ME from the Pope of Trash himself!
Title: Role Models by John Waters
Details: Copyright 2010, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich- and happily horrify readers everywhere.
Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities- some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis-these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.
Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows why I wanted to read this.
How I Liked It: I was already fairly certain before having read the book that I would enjoy it immensely and my expectations were actually surpassed. While this is a more nostalgic and even almost calmer John than we've read in his previous books (particularly since this book devotes its most serious chapter to Leslie Van Houten, whose parole Waters has campaigned ardently for nearly twenty-five years), there's still plenty of the practically trademarked filth that aficionados such as myself have come to crave. Some of his stories you've heard before, if you, like I, have obsessively listened to every DVD commentary he's done as well as his stand-up special This Filthy World. But they're more than worth hearing again, particularly since he expands on many of them. While John rages and incites (tongue-in-cheek, of course) at various points of the book (helpfully outlining the demands he makes of his potential cult members after realizing "cult leader" sounds better than "cult film maker" on a tax form), he's so charmingly sincere in others that he'll surprise even longtime fans (his genuine admiration for Johnny Mathis, for one, is completely devoid of camp, shock value, or irony: he realizes he himself career-wise is the opposite of Mathis in terms of mass appeal, for one).
Not just a must-read for Waters fans (although it is) but a great introduction to the man himself and thus a gateway into geekery.
Notable: I've mentioned this before in this blog, but it's certainly to me the pinnacle of what I'm taking away from this book. It's highly personal to me and so to have one of my heroes (if you can call him that) namedrop and specifically namedrop is utter heaven.
In the chapter devoted to Rei Kawakubo, fashion designer and founder of Comme des Garçons, John discusses fashion in a manner that makes it accessible to anyone. Specifically, he has much praise for Baltimore's thrift shops, whose clothing departments helped outfit much of his early movies.
"As soon as I got out of the house and moved to downtown Baltimore I discovered thrift shops and, brother, did we have good ones. Still do. Where do you think all the vintage shops in New York get their stuff? It's just a three-and-a-half hour drive south to 'Charm City', and even though today the most mutant thrift shop worker in the deepest ghetto knows what a Bakelite bracelet is, Baltimore is still cheaper than anywhere else." (pg 97)
He later drops the name of the store most frequented by my father (and thusly, by myself and my brothers) which approximately 90% of the books in our house came from growing up. To say nothing of the clothes, jewelery, toys, and, well, "other" (electronics, some furniture that could be salvaged-- you get the idea) that we came home with over the years. Thanks to Baltimore thrift, I became a much better reader. Not that we didn't go to the library frequently, but it was just easier for my father to come home (he used to work in the inner city) with a handful of books he thought we'd like that he'd gotten for about a quarter.
And John Waters isn't lying nor exaggerating about Baltimore thrift when it comes to fashion. Even in the suburbs where I live, the influence is still strong. It's one of our best kept secrets. I didn't appreciate it until I was in middle school and thus had to be "creative" when it came to fashion. My purses throughout middle and high school were all courtesy of Baltimore's various secondhand. In my later years of high school when I got even more "creative", it was the secondhand shops that supplied (like a dealer) clothing for me to take to with my scissors, bizarre jewelery (also secondhand and apparently nearly all the real deal: we'd joke my father was a Rockefeller in a past life since he'd pick out a necklace or a ring he thought I or my mother would like and it'd turn out to be real diamonds/gold/silver/you name it), and the rest of the pastiche with which I created my "look". I somewhat wryly note that the same long-sleeved shirts I cut up (you cut about mid arm to around the shoulder hole, depending on the shirt, and push it back up the opposite way, so the wrist-elastic keeps it on/up: presto! A shirt with matching sleevelets!) now come pre-sewn that way at Hot Topic (among other places) and the long flowing skirts I'd either wear long or hack off to my knees (Tah-dah! Matching scarf/shawl/hunk of fabric!) which I'd pick up for about three dollars, tops, now go for about sixty to seventy at Macy's.
The recording artist Mary Prankster has noted that John Waters is primarily responsible for making Baltimore exotic to the rest of the world (or revealing the "charm" of Charm City, as it were). The target of his latest praise somehow hits as close to home as the movie (Polyester) with a scene shot in my hometown.
Title: Role Models by John Waters
Details: Copyright 2010, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich- and happily horrify readers everywhere.
Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities- some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis-these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.
Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows why I wanted to read this.
How I Liked It: I was already fairly certain before having read the book that I would enjoy it immensely and my expectations were actually surpassed. While this is a more nostalgic and even almost calmer John than we've read in his previous books (particularly since this book devotes its most serious chapter to Leslie Van Houten, whose parole Waters has campaigned ardently for nearly twenty-five years), there's still plenty of the practically trademarked filth that aficionados such as myself have come to crave. Some of his stories you've heard before, if you, like I, have obsessively listened to every DVD commentary he's done as well as his stand-up special This Filthy World. But they're more than worth hearing again, particularly since he expands on many of them. While John rages and incites (tongue-in-cheek, of course) at various points of the book (helpfully outlining the demands he makes of his potential cult members after realizing "cult leader" sounds better than "cult film maker" on a tax form), he's so charmingly sincere in others that he'll surprise even longtime fans (his genuine admiration for Johnny Mathis, for one, is completely devoid of camp, shock value, or irony: he realizes he himself career-wise is the opposite of Mathis in terms of mass appeal, for one).
Not just a must-read for Waters fans (although it is) but a great introduction to the man himself and thus a gateway into geekery.
Notable: I've mentioned this before in this blog, but it's certainly to me the pinnacle of what I'm taking away from this book. It's highly personal to me and so to have one of my heroes (if you can call him that) namedrop and specifically namedrop is utter heaven.
In the chapter devoted to Rei Kawakubo, fashion designer and founder of Comme des Garçons, John discusses fashion in a manner that makes it accessible to anyone. Specifically, he has much praise for Baltimore's thrift shops, whose clothing departments helped outfit much of his early movies.
"As soon as I got out of the house and moved to downtown Baltimore I discovered thrift shops and, brother, did we have good ones. Still do. Where do you think all the vintage shops in New York get their stuff? It's just a three-and-a-half hour drive south to 'Charm City', and even though today the most mutant thrift shop worker in the deepest ghetto knows what a Bakelite bracelet is, Baltimore is still cheaper than anywhere else." (pg 97)
He later drops the name of the store most frequented by my father (and thusly, by myself and my brothers) which approximately 90% of the books in our house came from growing up. To say nothing of the clothes, jewelery, toys, and, well, "other" (electronics, some furniture that could be salvaged-- you get the idea) that we came home with over the years. Thanks to Baltimore thrift, I became a much better reader. Not that we didn't go to the library frequently, but it was just easier for my father to come home (he used to work in the inner city) with a handful of books he thought we'd like that he'd gotten for about a quarter.
And John Waters isn't lying nor exaggerating about Baltimore thrift when it comes to fashion. Even in the suburbs where I live, the influence is still strong. It's one of our best kept secrets. I didn't appreciate it until I was in middle school and thus had to be "creative" when it came to fashion. My purses throughout middle and high school were all courtesy of Baltimore's various secondhand. In my later years of high school when I got even more "creative", it was the secondhand shops that supplied (like a dealer) clothing for me to take to with my scissors, bizarre jewelery (also secondhand and apparently nearly all the real deal: we'd joke my father was a Rockefeller in a past life since he'd pick out a necklace or a ring he thought I or my mother would like and it'd turn out to be real diamonds/gold/silver/you name it), and the rest of the pastiche with which I created my "look". I somewhat wryly note that the same long-sleeved shirts I cut up (you cut about mid arm to around the shoulder hole, depending on the shirt, and push it back up the opposite way, so the wrist-elastic keeps it on/up: presto! A shirt with matching sleevelets!) now come pre-sewn that way at Hot Topic (among other places) and the long flowing skirts I'd either wear long or hack off to my knees (Tah-dah! Matching scarf/shawl/hunk of fabric!) which I'd pick up for about three dollars, tops, now go for about sixty to seventy at Macy's.
The recording artist Mary Prankster has noted that John Waters is primarily responsible for making Baltimore exotic to the rest of the world (or revealing the "charm" of Charm City, as it were). The target of his latest praise somehow hits as close to home as the movie (Polyester) with a scene shot in my hometown.