Tag Archives: celebrity

The incompleteness of the soul: an insider’s non-review of Completeness of the Soul: The Life and Opinions of Jay Breeze, Rock Star

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I’ve been thinking about Completeness of the Soul: The Life and Opinions of Jay Breeze, Rock Star, the third novel from my friend and fellow scrogue Jim Booth. I finished reading it a few days ago, but for me it’s been a slightly disjointed experience because I’ve seen most of it in its pieces before: chapters like “Fins” and “The Balcony Scene” have been previously published as standalone short stories and there are sections (the “Rock Star Handbook”) that Jim originally developed as an offering for an SMS entertainment company in which I was a  partner. So I’ve been familiar for years with the component elements, but this was my first encounter with the unified book in context.

After several days of reflection, I find myself musing on things that many readers and reviewers might not have twigged on. Read more

Remembering Andy Rooney. Moving on.

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Andy Rooney is dead.

When Kurt Cobain died in 1994 Rooney launched perhaps his most infamous rant. From the Wikipedia summary:

“I’d love to relieve the pain you’re going through by switching my age for yours.” In addition, he asked “What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?” and commented that “If [Cobain] applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, it’s reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either.”

I swore then that on the day Rooney died there’d be a party at my house where we’d dance on the grave of the hateful bastard just as he had Cobain’s.

That Rooney apologized the following week doesn’t really matter to me. Read more

Andre Agassi: What a rich man’s discontent can teach us all about living an authentic life

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They say money can’t buy happiness. The same also goes for celebrity, and even the status that accompanies being among the best in the world at your profession. We’ve had ample demonstration of this in recent days.

Robert Enke, the goaltender for Hannover 96 (who currently hover in the middle of the German Bundesliga standings) and a potential member of next year’s German World Cup team, died the other day. His death was apparently a suicide.

“At 1825 (1725GMT) he was run over by a regional express train running between Hamburg and Bremen,” said police spokesman Stefan Wittke. “The train was travelling at the speed of 160-kph.”The player’s friend and consultant Joerg Neblung told reporters: “I can confirm this is a case of suicide. He took his own life just before six (pm).

Enke lost a child in 2006 and has left behind a wife and eight month-old daughter. Read more

Inauguration logistics: epic fail. General response: epic conniption.

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inauguration_hippiesYou may have heard that Inauguration Day was something of a mess in our nation’s capital. People with tickets who couldn’t get in to see the actual inauguration (which included everything from an all-around offend-o-rama of an “invocation” to a Supreme Court justice swallowing his tongue to an example of why people don’t like poetry to the longest goddamned rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” on record”) and other people with tickets couldn’t get into the youth ball (one of them was an actual Hollywood celebrity, I hear). There’s some argument as to whether the purple, blue or silver gate was the biggest clusterfuck (although it appears that things went well at the orange gate, at least). From all around the Web we’re hearing terms like “frustrated” and “heartbroken” and and “tunnel of doom” and “madder ‘n a bobcat in a piss storm” Read more