Witty and of the moment, yet presumably destined for a short shelf life.
Quirky theories on the rise of viral culture.
Harper’s senior editor Wasik is fascinated by how the Internet and handheld wireless devices are changing basic social relationships, particularly the speed with which individuals become famous and forgotten in the media arena. He should know. Wasik originated the evanescent MOB trend in May 2003, inviting 63 friends and acquaintances to join an “inexplicable mob of people in New York City for ten minutes or less.” His motivation? “I was bored,” he writes, “by which I mean the world at that moment seemed adequate for neither my entertainment nor my sense of self.” Boredom aside, he wished to create the sort of intentionally viral “nanostory” he perceived as central to online culture, as confirmed by the roundly mocked Time selection of “You” as 2006 Person of the Year. Wasik’s “Mob Project” attracted media and online attention followed by an equal amount of backlash, which the author suggests was inevitable: “After six mobs, even conceiving of new enough crowd permutations started to feel like a challenge.” For much of the book, Wasik sets similar challenges for himself, enlisting the help of online scenesters with similar interests, like Huffington Post technology director Jonah Peretti, a “high-status” individual responsible for the website BlackPeopleLoveUs.com and such pranks as ordering custom “sweatshop” sneakers from Nike. Wasik won Peretti’s competition for most popular website with a parodic “right wing” New York Times, and he invented “Bill Shiller,” a phony MySpace-based identity created to “cultivate proactive relationships with brands.” These experiments support his assertion that “the Internet is revolutionary in how it has democratized not just culture-making but culture monitoring,” but the effectiveness of the author’s argument is mixed. Though Wasik is well-informed and sharply addresses his slippery subject, he also exudes a pretentious, insider-ish vibe.
Witty and of the moment, yet presumably destined for a short shelf life.Pub Date: June 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02084-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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