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Although many may consider it a less important symbol than the dollar sign, never underestimate the power of the asterisk. Jon Glaser certainly doesn’t.
 After being estranged for years, Glaser was going through his father’s belongings following his death when he stumbled across rock and roll history.* He learned his father was a member of an early incarnation of ZZ Top.* The senior Glaser didn’t make a mark on the music world, though, because he was the keyboard player who urged the band abandon the name ZZ Top and to become “Houston’s biggest soul fusion quartet.”* Yet the revelation his father was in ZZ Top led Glaser on a mission to uncover the hidden history of rock and roll, culminating in My Dead Dad Was in ZZ Top: 100% Real,* Never Before Seen Documents from the World of Rock and Roll.
But why is the asterisk important enough to end up in the subtitle? Because the bottom right hand corner of the book’s cover bears the legend “(*100% Fake)”. That’s right. Glaser wasn’t estranged from his father, his father isn’t dead and his father was never a member of ZZ Top (although I can’t vouch for whether he played keyboards in a soul-fusion band). The material in the book is all the product of Glaser’s imagination, one tinged with an attention to detail that may border on minutiae. Yet it’s the detail that lends the artifice a layer of authenticity. And some of the humor has a biting edge. Given how the music of rock icons such as Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers now seem omnipresent in television commercials, Glaser’s section on songs these artists wrote to advertise local establishments is more biting than blasphemous. Likewise, his chapter on Jay Leno’s efforts to replace Kevin Eubanks as The Tonight Show band leader has far more edge when you take into account Glaser wrote for and played various characters on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
A lot of the humor is more basic. Did you know Van Halen was the second choice for the band’s name, once Eddie found out his real family name, Bran Fralen, was the name of a two-man jazz combo in St. Paul? There’s Mick Fleetwood’s suggestion McDonald’s create a Fleetwood Mac Big Mac with “several slices of Lindsey Bucking-ham, white cheddar cheese that represents the cocaine Stevie Nicks is addicted to, Mick Fleet-wood smoked bacon, and John and Christine McVie-al (veal).” Glaser does all this through documentary evidence. There’s a copy of Ringo Starr’s letter to the other Beatles — on Apple letterhead no less — about his plans to start a Beatles tribute band. Glaser uncovered the classified documents showing the Butthole Surfers got their name from a classified Navy SEALs program. He also explains the truth behind a nasty Rod Stewart rumor and reveals a secret Keith Richards and Mick Jagger have kept since before The Rolling Stones did their first show.
As imaginative and as detail-oriented as the contents may be, the problem Glaser can’t quite overcome is that the concept isn’t deep enough to sustain itself for long. It isn’t so much a flaw in execution as much as the book is a one trick pony where the pony shows up for each show in different tack. It more likely reflects the fact that it is spun off from a stand-up routine Glaser did a number of years ago. Both explain whey the book is short enough that it can be read in an hour or so. This also is not knee-slapping humor. At times it is obvious and perhaps smirk-inducing. Other times it is a bit more subtle. Then there’s some material that just doesn’t pan out, something that may be influenced by the reader’s familiarity with the particular artist.
As far as spoofs go, My Dead Dad Was in ZZ Top succeeds a couple times. Ultimately, though, it may be as good at pointing out the significance of the asterisk as it is earning a place on the music or humor fan’s bookshelf.
Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull played me a flute solo in his living room that was so beautiful and moving that I dry-heaved pure emotion for about an hour afterward.
Jon Glaser, My Dead Dad Was in ZZ Top
The length of this month’s list may be a bit deceptive. Actually, some of this month’s lust is already in my hands while more a bit down the road or somewhat nonspecific. Melville House’s announcement of The Neversink Library has me drooling but none of those books come out until summer. The longlist for the 2010 Best Translated Book Award provides plenty more for me to consider and one on this list. In non-translated works, the National Book Critics Circle Award finalists led to at least one book on this month’s list and the list once again demonstrates my reliance on our wonderful library. (In fact, half the books I’ve read this year came from the library.)
Blindness of the Heart, Julia Franck — This German novel is one of the books on the longlist for the Best Translated Novel Award. It is one of the few held by the local library but I was surprised to see there was a waiting list for it. Therefore, I am now on it.
Crime: Stories, Ferdinand von Schirach — The only work in translation on this month’s list, a favorable NYTBR review placed in on the list. The book is a collection of short stories based on von Schirach’s years spent as a criminal defense attorney in Berlin.
Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness, Frank Brady — Unquestionably because of my age, I’ve always found Bobby Fischer an intriguing individual. From the 1972 Cold War-suffused chess championship with Boris Spassky to his seeming disappearance and descent into mental health issues, I only hope this doesn’t fall in the category of a “tell-all”-type bio.
Half a Life, Darin Strauss — I’d read of this book when it was released but, for whatever reason, it didn’t really entice me. Now that the book, a memoir stemming from Strauss striking and killing a classmate with his car nearly two decades ago, is among the finalists for the NBCC Autobiography Award, I got on the reserve list for it at the library.
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, Stanley Fish — Various blawgs and litblogs have been somewhat abuzz about this newly released work so it is another of the books for which I am on the reserve list at the library. (And, I must admit, I was somewhat surprised it had it already.)
To a Mountain in Tibet, Colin Thurbon — This book is proof of how general interest in a topic and reading one book can lead you to others. Like many others, Tibet intrigues me so after I finished Escape from the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama’s Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero in January, I looked for some additional new books on Tibet, leading me to Thurbon’s travel memoir about a spiritual trek in Tibet following his mother’s death. Although the book doesn’t come out until next month, I’m first in line at the library.
Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, Karen Armstrong — I am a fan of Karen Armstrong and found her second memoir, The Spiral Staircase, particularly impressive. This book is a bit out of the norm for her but that perhaps makes it a bit more intriguing. My hold at the library came through quicker than I thought and, like another book on the list, it currently resides on the TBR shelves at home.
Report Card:
January 2011
- Total Bibliolust books: 4
- Number read: 2 (50%)
- Started but did not finish: 0
Cumulative (September 2008-January 2011)
- Total Bibliolust books: 154
- Number read: 114 (74%)
- Started but did not finish: 9 (5.8%)
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.
André Maurois, An Art Of Living
Worthwhile Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.
Milan Kundera
I’m guessing being convicted of “tampering with a judicial officer” while a law student probably doesn’t bode well for gaining admission to the bar.
Almost straight out of the Steve Bosell archive: A Taiwanese man accused five neighbors of teaching their mynah bird to call him a “clueless big-mouthed idiot,” causing him emotional distress.
One in five American divorces now involve Facebook (via)
A Pennsylvania father is suing a now-closed state mental hospital alleging a nurse’s aide convinced his daughter to swallow four one-inch nails, telling her it “would assist in her feeling better.”
The Texas disciplinary board is, rightfully going after an attorney whose office made 1,009 telephone calls to various patient rooms at a local hospital over a 90-day period.
Court: No Cause of Action for Gun-Safety Instructor Who Shot Himself
The courtroom energy level in a custody/access dispute spikes quickly where there is evidence that one of the parents has a Hells Angels branch in her family tree.
Bruni v. Bruni, 2010 ONSC 6568 (Nov. 29, 2010)
Just shy of two years older than me, a symbol I’ve known all my life is disappearing. It’s the little thing on the cover of all the comic books I bought in my life, the stamp that read, “Approved by the Comics Code Authority.”
 The Comics Code Authority stemmed in large part from Congressional hearings on how comic books were corrupting the youth of America. The background is marvelously detailed in David Hadju’s The Ten-Cent Plague and in short form in a post by Glen Weldon over at the NPR blogs. Essentially, the attention and heat generated by those hearings and other complaints about the lurid comic book industry led to the October 1954 adoption of the Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America. Serving as “the basis for the comic magazine industry’s program of self-regulation,” it was enforced by the Comics Code Authority. As Weldon notes in his post, “publishers would submit their comics to the CCMA prior to publication and the CCMA would make recommendations for changes. The CCMA had no legal authority, but it could decide not to put its seal of approval on a book — and many distributors and stores would not stock a comic book without that seal[.]”
Self-regulation, of course, was simply a newspeak way of saying self-censorship. The code sought to regulate the depiction of crime, horror and sex in the comic books, as well as the advertising that was acceptable. During most of my comics-buying days, of course, I was unaware the stamp meant the comics industry was so generously looking out for my interests. If anything, I thought it akin to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and an affirmation of the excellence of the product.
Regardless of my understanding, here’s some of the code’s principles and goals in trying to protect me:
- If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
- In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
- Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
- Although slang and colloquialisms are acceptable, excessive use should be discouraged and wherever possible good grammar shall be employed.
- Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered.
No doubt, my parents, like most others of the time, probably would have questioned whether comic books actually met that last item. Modern parents, though, will no longer have that assistance. The two last major comic book publishers — DC and Archie — say they will no longer carry the seal on their comics. (Archie, how could you?!?!)
Thank goodness this comes after both I and my kids are grown. Who knows how we might have been corrupted had it not been for that seal of approval?
The comic book medium, having come of age on the American cultural scene, must measure up to its responsibilities.
Preamble, Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America
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