A hilarious and touching coming-of-age story that will strike a particular nerve among Generation Y.
The former MTV VJ waxes nostalgic on his life in pop culture.
Writer, comedian, and TV personality Holmes, a writer-at-large for Esquire.com, is probably best known as the runner-up of MTV’s first Wanna Be a VJ contest, a competition he lost to the dervish known as Jesse Camp. The loss to Camp, which the author hilariously recounts with candid remarks about the victor, was a pivotal moment in Holmes’ life. He still earned a spot on MTV as an on-air personality, and the new career eventually led to a greater sense of self-acceptance that had eluded him his whole life. As a self-proclaimed outsider, Holmes’ burgeoning homosexuality as a teenager didn’t help his self-image considering his conservative upbringing in the Catholic community of suburban St. Louis. To help him cope, Holmes turned to pop culture. A cultural omnivore, he devoured the music his older brothers brought home from college, sang Top 40 songs with his parents, and watched a lot of TV. It wasn’t until a chance meeting with Amy and Emily of the Indigo Girls in his final year of college that Holmes finally received the advice he’d been longing for to help him come out: just trust yourself. Though Holmes peppers his narrative with witty asides and pop-culture references, the nostalgia factor is ramped up in the interludes between chapters, in which he provides a soundtrack for the current moment, a list of hunks that defined his adolescence, and the top 10 videos that defined MTV’s Total Request Live. One such aside is an amusing run-down of gossipy anecdotes of millennium-era pop stars and celebrities, featuring Kid Rock, Tara Reid, Puff Daddy, and more. Holmes is all charm, and his self-deprecating style makes his story relatable and engaging without feeling self-involved.
A hilarious and touching coming-of-age story that will strike a particular nerve among Generation Y.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8041-8798-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
