Shout it, shout it, shout it out...very quietly....

This here is indeed a very low-voiced shout out to the hard working staff of the New York Public Library. Well, not too hard working to point out the fact I misspelled "weird" somewhere in the ever more entropic online miasma I inhabit. Now I can't find it, of course, and its driving me nuts, so do tell...(dw(at)donwoodonline.com).
(got the heads-up within a few hours, thanks and keep 'em coming!)

How wild is this piece on the Million Little Lies guy? What a surprise that what looked like a prison stripes-to-pinstripes story of an addict gone good ended up being the "tormented" story of a spoiled frat boy rich kid gazing at his own navel as it fills with money. (beat, twothreefour...) The only bummer for me is that I asked for and received this book as a Christmas present. Now what the hell am I supposed to do with it? I knew when I asked for the book that I had rubbed elbows with a lot of guys like this when I was younger, what I didn't know is that I was the harder case!

Hilarious.

Sure, I spent a few days in jail, got into a (very) few physical altercations, did most every drug known to man and fucked up a lot of relationships, but in my circle that made me just one more goofball in a very large jar. Perhaps if I had, like Frey, finished college and attended a 5 star rehab joint instead of just slowly cobbling my shit together (and belive me, if you saw my life, you'd appreciate, I hope, the...uh...rustic flair of the workmanship) I too would be a literary subject.

But the mf-er did write a book. And thats not easy. Just finding the time...well, maybe if you don't have to work...but still!

Hey, I don't know the guy, and I do seriously give anyone a whole lot of credit if they can sit down in front of a keyboard or notepad and just...keep...going...until they've finished a book. It looks, right now, as if he's made a big, hubristic mistake. One that started small, bullshitting a few literary types to get his book published, then just blew up in his face when the book became so big it's fame started to shine into corners he never really thought would be exposed. A mistake that will leave him, no matter what happens, even richer than he would have been without it. You've got to give him this...he sure picked the the right year. This is the year the Bullshitters of America grew tired of their lucrative anonymity and proclaimed themselves the New Celebrity Class of America! Huzzah!!!

Remember when the 80's were greedy and insubstantial? Amatuers!

Wow. Everyone who lived during the 80's in the small world dominated by the sounds of college radio knew a guy like this Frey character. A kid from the right side of the tracks who wanted to be the bastard son of Rimbaud, Bukowski, Waits, Reed, Miller, Bukowski, Morrison, Mailer and Vicious...and Bukowski. Always overcompensating. Always railing on about their "fucked up family," who they visited several times a year, usually somewhere warm for christmas, to keep the money flowing in. The sad thing is that these were, indeed, some of the kids who had the worst time with drugs. More money and time to do them, a safety net large enough to keep bouncing them back into the party. The first guy I knew who died of a heroin overdose was one of these guys. Full of shit. Impossible to take.

But whatever, at least this Frey dude is still alive and bullshitting, playing with his kid, all that...
Maybe not such a good story, but a happy ending nonetheless.