My Booky Wook: A Memoir Of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up by Russell Brand
My rating: 2/5 cats
i have said it before and i will say it again: junkies are boring.
many people did not want me to read this book.they tried to save me. but this was my very last book for my reader’s advisory class: the memoir, and i was so hoping to go out on a good note, me in my post-winter’s bone rut. so i took a turn through the memoir section, and they seemed to fall into a couple of broad categories:
i’m drunk:
i can’t keep my legs together:
i’m drunk and i can’t keep my legs together:
i have overcome some awful illness:
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i have lived in an area of current geographical trendiness:
the above topics are kind of tedious, to me. and russell brand came to the store for a reading for this book, and he was funny and energetic and freakishly tall, and he blazed through the store like some sequined crazy-storm, grabbing and kissing every lady in his path.
but this? i was so bored with it that i spend much of mother’s day morning discovering and mockingly voting for greg’s early fossilized reviews. do join me!
while i am not as militantly anti-sex as others i have encountered, reading about other people’s sex lives is, ultimately, boring. and i am so desensitized to exploits, that nothing is shocking anymore. when i was in high school, i confess, i read both the led zeppelin book and the doors book. after you read about robert plant sticking a fish in some groupie’s…regions.. russell brand’s dropping trou atop a van is almost pedestrian as a “sexual” act. oh no, he got locked outside his apartment naked?? after spitting on a girl and forcing her out of his place?? i am barely awake at how hilarious that is…
allow me to relate a personal anecdote. many years ago, i was hanging out at the apartment of a straight but platonic male friend. we had hung out maybe twice before, but this night, he went into the bathroom and when he emerged, it was in full drag – wig, fishnets, corset, heels, and he said, “would you mind tying me up?” and i didn’t even pause – i processed it immediately as “okay, this is his thing.” so i did it and we just chatted the rest of the night, but he was trussed on his stomach on the floor. in less-platonic situations i have always amicably responded to requests that will go here unnamed, but i’m a pretty easygoing lady overall; i just don’t care enough to be shocked by people’s kinks. russell brand’s kink is that he likes girls with big boobs, which i don’t think is uncommon among men, if the magazine rack at “porn deli” tells me anything.
“yeah, but karen, he reeeeally likes girls with big boobs.” yeah, no, i get it, but that’s hardly shocking, innit? this book is basically “then i did some heroin and shagged a load of birds.” with about that much detail. not that i want a lot of detail of his techniques, but that is one of the big failings of this book – no closure, just gloss. there is a story in here about him having these two big african snails that he kept as pets until he got bored and left them in a hotel room. then he gets a call from the rspca. and then… that’s it. no end of story. he mentions having a mouse living in his hair for a time, but then just more about his naked ambition to be famous and some glossing over of “and then i took drugs and went to a prostitute. or ten.”
let me sum it up: russell brand wants attention – he wants to be famous, he lacks impulse control and behaves like a toddler most of the time, giving in to every temptation and throwing tantrums like refusing to put his feet down from the seat in front of him on an airplane, sex, drugs, “rebellion” that you would expect from any teenaged white frat boy from connecticut, except he’s grown and thinks he is being funny enough to warrant fame, heroin, wank wank, pot, sex, boobs, MTV, wank, entitlement, exploitation, the end.
sorry, darling, not this time.
edit: right, reading other reviews of this i was reminded of something else i wanted to bitch about. another big, subversive thing he did?? he introduced his drug dealer to kylie minogue (on september 12, 2001, while dressed as osama bin laden and on crack, so he gets points for overkill, sure) and DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?? THE BIG EXPLOSIVE THING THAT HAPPENED WHEN AUSTRALIA’S BRIGHTEST STAR WAS INTRODUCED TO A DRUG DEALER??
they had some awkward conversation. read all about it.
