Dave Barry is usually good for a laugh or two, and his latest, "Best.State.Ever", an ode to Florida, was one of his best that I've read in a long time. I laughed out loud through most of it and it actually made me want to visit the state of Florida, not something I've ever felt compelled to do before. He talked about quirky roadside attractions, he waxed poetic about Key West and the Everglades and Disney World. Even though there was a lot of snark, it was loving snark, if that makes sense.
I wasn't terribly impressed with Christine Woodside's "Libertarians on the Prairie". First of all, does anyone
not know by now that Rose Wilder Lane had a huge hand in writing her mother's "Little House" books? I read "Ghost in the Little House" back when I was in my late teens, and that was a very, very long time ago. And of course not every single word of every single book was true! Even as a kid I knew that. It didn't spoil the books for me at all to find out that Rose wrote quite a bit of them and that they weren't 100% true. They're still wonderful stories I reread all the time and enjoy. I also found her argument that Rose deliberately left out or put in certain things to further her Libertarian beliefs rather thin. She gives as one example how they left out the fact that during the Long Winter, the Ingalls family had a couple living with them. Rose left them out of the story, Woodside claims, because they didn't embody the pioneer spirit of individualism that Rose wanted to promote. Honestly, I don't think having the couple in the book would have added any to the story, and Rose was a very canny author of both fiction and nonfiction. She would have realized that. Maybe she did leave them out for political reasons and maybe she didn't. At the end of the day I don't think it really matters. I feel sorry for people who read too much into books. Sometimes a story is just a story.
I also wasn't too fond of John Henry Browne's "Devil's Defender", but at least it was a very quick read (big font, 200 pages). He became a defense attorney and has defended some very bad people, like Ted Bundy, because he believes everyone is entitled to a good defense in court. I absolutely agree with him on that point. Where we differ is on the death penalty. He doesn't think it's right for the state to kill people, and I disagree. I mean, look at how long Charles Manson's been in prison living off the taxpayer's dime. And for what? He's a complete waste of a human being. I remember being so outraged when I found out that the state of California, us taxpayers, were paying to fix the Night Stalker's teeth. *I* needed braces, and my parents couldn't afford to pay for them, but this murdering piece of scum who was on death row got free orthodontic care whereas I had to wait until I had a job and could pay for my own damn teeth to get fixed. Not that I minded, I was proud of myself for paying for them on my own, but it really irritated me that he got his teeth fixed when he was just going to be put to death anyway. I mean, really, what's the point? He didn't show his victims any mercy, so why should we show him any? I don't know. It just angers me, and Browne's holier than thou attitude was grating.
And finally, a fun one! Matt Pinfield grew up loving music and learning everything he could about the bands he liked listening to. He DJ'ed in clubs and worked on college and local radio stations in New Jersey. He was always on the cutting edge, he had his ear to the ground and heard about breakthrough bands before they happened, so he was the first to play a lot of groups and ended up building a good rapport with a lot of them, since they could tell he wasn't full of shit when he interviewed them. He ended up working on MTV in the mid-nineties, which is of course how I knew him. I didn't care for
120 Minutes at first, but after awhile it grew on me, and I liked Matt, he seemed so much less annoying than a lot of VJs on MTV at the time. He was just like this cool, laid back normal guy you could see yourself hanging out with. He did some crazy things, and had issues with drugs and alcohol (I honestly never would have guessed, he always seemed sober on TV) but he seems to be in a good place right now. It was a fun book, nostalgic, and reminded me of how much fun it was to discover a new band for the first time and fall in love with their music. It's been a really long time since that happened for me. It's such a great feeling.
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