Tag: 2006

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Bob Armstrong’s VANILLA SLIM: AN IMPROBABLE PIMP IN THE EMPIRE OF LUST

Bob Armstrong
Vanilla Slim: An Improbable Pimp in the Empire of Lust
2006, Carroll & Graf Publishers

Bob Armstrong’s brief career as a pimp is not the wildest story ever told. It’s crazier than what most people do, but Vanilla Slim was no Iceberg Slim. He didn’t see violence. He didn’t commit violence. He was nice to his girls. He didn’t confront some truly dark side of himself. He didn’t make enough money to roll around in a show-off car. He wasn’t dangerous. That’s all according to him in this first-person account, at least.

When the law eventually came down on him and Armstrong went to jail (he begins the book pondering his holding cell and all its glorious sights and scents), even that wasn’t too bad. He didn’t do serious time. Even the law could see that this Vietnam vet who was closing in on 60 merely misbehaved a little, even with drugs out in the open.

Or that’s how the wind blows in San Francisco, at least.

So why the hell did I blaze through this book in couple of days? Why did I get hooked? Why did I sit on the barstool next to this guy and take in every word he said?

I guess that’s because this is a bigger story than pimps and drugs and beautiful women and the men who pay $500 an hour for their company. This book is really about people who’ve missed the boat in life.

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Cody McFadyen’s SHADOW MAN

Cody McFadyen, Shadow Man (2006, Bantam)

I was looking for a good “summer book”. Something brisk and entertaining and who cares if it’s a little light on logical sense?

I picked this one and in my first few sittings I thought I’d made a mistake because it’s so damn bleak. After every chapter, I needed a hug just to feel better about being alive. 

As you keep going though, the silly things begin to pile up and up and then they start to come at you fast until the whole shebang takes the shape of an ultra-commercial thriller obviously intended to kick off a series (and if Hollywood is interested, it’s ready). Yes, it has harsh violence and grotesque crime scenes, but what’s more commercial than that these days? Who in the 21st century wants to read about someone getting beaned with a candlestick in a billiard room? No, we want serial killers raping and murdering as told in unsettling detail. 

THAT’S what we want to read on the beach–and I’m not kidding. 

I kept turning these pages, at least, though I’m not on a beach. 

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Will Clarke’s THE WORTHY

Will Clarke
The Worthy
2006, Simon & Schuster

Gotta admit, I am very NOT curious about what goes on behind the closed doors of college frat houses. It’s a bunch of rich young douchebags being the best douchebags they can be, right? And everyone’s too incomplete, immature and dedicated to being conformists to be interesting.

I’m prejudiced. I admit it. My knowledge of fraternities comes entirely from Animal House and having worked in two restaurants near colleges where the frat menace was real.

They weren’t more rude than any other group in particular; they were just more demanding and they always came in packs. They’d order cheap drinks and then guzzle them down in ten seconds. Every time you walk past them, they need another. They’re also more likely to do stupid shit, such as the time I worked in a place that had an all-you-can-eat special and a band of brothers of the toga showed up and ate and ate and ate until one of them vomited at the table.

Also, they were always seperate checks and you could barely tell them apart, as they tend to look, talk and behave alike.

So, I gave this novel, which is set entirely within the Louisiana State University frat bro world, very little time to win me over. I aimed to be strict and I aimed to be harsh.

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