Rant Zone: An All-Out Blitz Against Soul-Sucking Jobs, Twisted Child Stars, Holistic Loons, and People Who Eat Their Dogs!
In this fourth installment of his acclaimed Rants series, bestselling author, Emmy Award-winning talk-show host, and wisecracking analyst for ABC's Monday Night Football Dennis Miller makes hamburger meat out of society's most sacred cows as only he can, with the kinds of allusions that require high SAT scores — or at least a smart crib sheet.\ This time around, Miller takes on child stars with rap sheets, women with bigger muscles than his own, herbs you don't smoke, God, and football. As...
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In this fourth installment of his acclaimed Rants series, the bestselling author, Emmy Award-winning talk-show host, and wisecracking analyst for ABC's Monday Night Football makes hamburger meat out of society's most sacred cows as only he can, with the kinds of allusions that require high SAT scores -- or at least a smart crib sheet. For instance, in ranting against bureaucrats, Miller notes, "They may bestride the rest of us like some kind of Cubicle Colossus bellowing, 'I am Ozymandias, Clerk of Clerks! Look on my Files, ye Mighty, and despair!' All ye who enter here." Long before he became America's most-beloved, most-trusted, and most-heckled network football analyst, Miller was an expert commentator on another violent full-contact sport: American pop culture. His gridiron work is merely a sideline, a diversion from his life's mission: to flagellate the fat cats and to punish the puny-minded pundits. This time around, Miller takes on child stars with rap sheets, women with bigger muscles than his own, herbs you don't smoke, God, and, yes, football. As always, nothing is out of bounds. And don't feel guilty for laughing -- these rants are actually good for you. (They provide your daily irony supplement.) Hilarious, sometimes angry, always insightful, The Rant Zone is Miller's most provocative book to date. With Dennis Miller calling the signals, the comedy always goes deep. Publishers Weekly Part memoir, part history and part how-to, this entertaining volume takes readers on a tour of the poker subculture by one of the game's devotees. When Bellin was eight, he used minimarshmallows as poker chips; by high school, he "played to be bad"; at Vassar, his mathematical abilities (he majored in physics and astronomy) were put in service of the game. In 1992, while on a break from working on a masters degree in astrophysics, he went to Foxwoods Casino in New London, Conn.: "If I ever was a gambling addict, that year was it. I played poker to escape from school and mostly to forget that my mother had just passed away." At 22, he dropped out of grad school to play semipro poker for 10 years. An expansion of an earlier Esquire article, Bellin's energetic narrative flits from New York's underground clubs to Las Vegas's annual World Series of Poker, and ponders cheating, memory, sexism in poker, tournaments, probability and statistics, as well as the author's own obsession. The chapter "Tells," recently published in the Atlantic, details the unconscious "ticks and twitches" that give poker players away, while other sections detail the game's colorful characters and offer playing tips. Tiny cards within the text illustrate the hands, and the book includes a glossary for terms like "tilt" and "coffeehousing." It's a winning read for poker experts and newcomers alike. (Mar. 10) Forecast: Those with a gambling spirit will take note of this book during a broadcast, Internet and print media campaign, when Bellin will make appearances in D.C., Vegas and N.Y.C. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Chapter One\ \ \ Child Stars\ \ \ Mikey Hates It!\ \ \ If Mr. Blackwell has come out of his lover's hole and seen his shadow, it must be awards season, huh? I watched the People's Choice awards the other night, and I'm torn when I see that little kid from The Sixth Sense. On the one hand, you'd like to see him win, and on the other, for his own good, you wish he wasn't even in the business.\ Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but I'm reasonably sure that acting isn't a suitable profession for adults, let alone children. These days, every movie ends with the assurance that "no animals were injured in the making of this film." Yeah, but they never tell you about the kids, do they?\ Child actors are a tragedy waiting to happen. Look at the Little Rascals. They're all dead. Now, sure, they pretty much all died of old age, but does that make them any less dead? O-tay, then. Where was I? Oh, yeah, the harsh reality of a child star segueing into his or her most challenging role: adulthood. Life cereal is running a new series of commercials featuring a grownup Mikey. Remember Mikey? The "Mikey-likes-it" Mikey? Well, get this: Life cereal cast some other guy to play the adult Mikey! Nice, huh? So where is the real Mikey? No doubt he's sitting in a dimly lit bar in the Valley midafternoon, badgering the bartender to pour one more on the house for the real Mikey, goddammit! He'll drink it! Mikey'll drink anything.\ I speak from experience. Most of you don't know this, but I was a child star andI have kept it under wraps because I thought it might hurt my career as an adult. You probably don't recognize me with the goatee but, yes, I played the little redheaded girl Margaret on Dennis the Menace. Fuck you, Wilson!\ The most miraculous thing about children -- other than their uncanny ability to repeat verbatim in front of your boss every joke you've ever made about his speech impediment -- is their innocence, their sweetness, and their utter, total trustfulness. Children truly do believe in the goodness of mankind. Throw a child into show business, a world where the phrase "I'll call you" actually means "I will use every ounce of will that I possess to avoid coming into contact with you for as long as the sun shines in the heavens and I continue to draw breath," and, trust me, that childlike quality will be stripped faster than a fully loaded Lexus parked in front of a Detroit crack house.\ Christ, isn't it hard enough for a kid to have a normal childhood without being schlepped around to audition for every walleyed, halitosistic, bad-toupeed, spits-when-he's-talking casting director in town? Putting your kid in show business means taking him to meet the very people you should be doing everything in your power to protect him from. The only idiots who don't see that are frustrated stage parents who try to fill their career-void by being so demonically driven they make William Randolph Hearst look like Jeff Spicolli.\ Fortunately, you can tell when your kids are in danger of becoming child stars. There are some tea leaves you can read. Like if you tell them to go out and play, and they say, "Play how? Moody? Belligerent?" Or if your kid sees news coverage of another kid trapped in a well and says, "Hey, did I read for that?" Or if you call your kids in for dinner and they say, "Sorry, I don't eat with the crew." All of these are bad signs.\ No child really wants to be in show business. Ask little kids what they want to be, and they'll say a fireman or an astronaut. I guarantee you, not one will say: "I want to be on a set all day with a bunch of alcoholic, prescription drug-addicted, psychotically self-involved adult costars, waiting to say my completely unrealistic lines that illustrate how adorably wise and precocious I am."\ We all think our kids are adorable and say smart, funny things, and that the world would love them if it could just see them on the big screen. But that doesn't make them actors; it just makes us parents. If you honestly think any one kid is that much cuter than any other, you're missing the point. All kids are cute. They're designed that way. There is no such thing as a kid who isn't cute. The trick in parenting is to make sure your kids are still cute when they become adults. And the best way to guarantee that is to keep them the fuck out of Hollywood.\ Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.\ The Rant Zone. Copyright © by Dennis Miller. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
\ From Barnes & NobleDennis Miller returns with another scathing book of rants, aimed at everything from God to football. With a smart mouth and plenty of time on his hands -- when he's not hosting his talk show or commentating on Monday Night Football, that is -- Miller manages to dredge up scores of new pet peeves for his fans. It goes without saying that Miller always goes too far, but he's made his name that way, and he gets big laughs in the process.\ \ \ \ \ New York Daily News"Wickedly Funny…"\ \ \ Publishers Weekly"I don't care who you know, you never start out at the top, no matter what business you're in. First you're given oil wells, then you're given a baseball team, and then, and only then, are you given the White House." This Miller "rant," similar to the others that run five or six to a page in this new collection, his fourth, encapsulates all of his comic traits: biting, slashing, witty and ecumenically politically savage, targeting right, left and center. This persona honed on HBO's Dennis Miller Live and ABC's Monday Night Football is not a far throw from his kinder Saturday Night Live days, but his aggressive tone and often vicious ridicule make him this country's most notorious satirist, social agitator and malcontent. Whether he is going after George W. Bush or Gary Condit, Miller is rude and abrasive, taking on everyone and everything, from God (whose "name gets thrown around like the drunken dwarf at a biker rally") to the fat Elvis ("after the 50s, even Elvis couldn't do Elvis") although much of his anger is directed at stupidity in government and popular culture. Though funny, the pieces tend to suffer from sameness, and in the end, after he has demolished most everything in sight, readers have no idea of what Miller's politics or thoughts really are. Despite its political topics, Miller's work is really about great stand-up, not serious exploration of current events. Of course, that's just our opinion. We could be wrong. (On sale Oct. 23) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyPart memoir, part history and part how-to, this entertaining volume takes readers on a tour of the poker subculture by one of the game's devotees. When Bellin was eight, he used minimarshmallows as poker chips; by high school, he "played to be bad"; at Vassar, his mathematical abilities (he majored in physics and astronomy) were put in service of the game. In 1992, while on a break from working on a masters degree in astrophysics, he went to Foxwoods Casino in New London, Conn.: "If I ever was a gambling addict, that year was it. I played poker to escape from school and mostly to forget that my mother had just passed away." At 22, he dropped out of grad school to play semipro poker for 10 years. An expansion of an earlier Esquire article, Bellin's energetic narrative flits from New York's underground clubs to Las Vegas's annual World Series of Poker, and ponders cheating, memory, sexism in poker, tournaments, probability and statistics, as well as the author's own obsession. The chapter "Tells," recently published in the Atlantic, details the unconscious "ticks and twitches" that give poker players away, while other sections detail the game's colorful characters and offer playing tips. Tiny cards within the text illustrate the hands, and the book includes a glossary for terms like "tilt" and "coffeehousing." It's a winning read for poker experts and newcomers alike. (Mar. 10) Forecast: Those with a gambling spirit will take note of this book during a broadcast, Internet and print media campaign, when Bellin will make appearances in D.C., Vegas and N.Y.C. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalIn a partially autobiographical account of his unusual life, journalist Bellin, a lapsed astrophysics student who left science for his true calling of professional poker, introduces us to the world of legal and illegal poker games and the cast of strange characters who can be found therein. Along the way, he offers some very good advice on how to play "Texas-Hold 'Em," today's game of choice for big-money players. His breezy, easy-to-read style allows one to enjoy the thrill of the game vicariously (in clubs from New York to Las Vegas) as well as the company of some vivid if not entirely trustworthy companions. However, he does not glamorize this high-stakes game, and his accounts of the psychological toll it takes on addicts would hardly encourage one to want to try the life of a professional poker player. Recommended for public libraries. Harold D. Shane, CUNY, Baruch Coll. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.\ \
