Monday, September 17, 2012

37) I'm With the Band-Pamela Des Barres


Pamela Des Barres didn't want to lead an ordinary life. Luckily for her, she grew up in the freewheeling 1960s in Southern California. Once she realized that high school and obsessing over the Beatles was no longer fun after discovering oral sex with her first boyfriend, she decided it was time to change things up. So, what did she do? She headed straight to the Sunset Strip for the burgeoning rock n' roll scene. It wasn't just the music she was immersing herself in. No, it was the sex and the drugs that went along with it as well.

From inhaling weird substances with Jim Morrison to trysts with Mick Jagger to a tumultuous courtship with Jimmy Page to nights wrapped up in Waylon Jennings to being a caretaker to the Zappa children to becoming one of the most notorious groupies in rock music, Miss Pamela had a wild time between the late 60s and the entire decade of the 70s. The life you dreamed of having if you were alive at that time can be found between the pages of this book and you cannot believe that all of what she did is real. 

I liked this book. For the first 100 pages or so, I was out of this world bored. I was ready for a riotous romp through the legends of rock n' roll, but first you had to get through all of the boring stuff before Pamela Miller became Miss Pamela of the GTOs. However, once you got through that and landed at the drug soaked bandana sniffing naked time with Jim Morrison, you wanted to know more. Who else had she slept with? What other bands did she see rise from clubs with sticky, alcohol stained floors to ruling the arenas? Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Rolling Stones, all four of the Beatles, Alice Cooper...every big name from that time is here.

However, I didn't love this book. It's an entertaining read, but it was slow moving at times and the parts from her diaries could get hard to understand, but it was still interesting. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but some might enjoy it.

36) Bossypants-Tina Fey


Do your thing and don't care if they like it.

If you don't know who Tina Fey is, you've been living under a rock for quite some time now. She was the first female head writer at Saturday Night Live until Lorne Michaels suggested she be used in a sketch. She kills it as Liz Lemon on 30 Rock. She's one of the handful of women to win the Mark Twain award for American Humor.

The woman wrote Mean Girls. What else do you need to know?

But how did Tina Fey get to be the women who brings the humor and gave us Cady Heron? Was she always this funny? Did she always make the people around her keel over with laughter from awkward observations? That's what this book is about. She starts from the time she was born through her local theater days to her awkward adolescence to studying improv at Second City in Chicago while working at the local YMCA to getting the job at SNL to creating 30 Rock, all the way up to what she hopes for her daughter in the future and addressing all of the haters. 

It's hysterical.

I absolutely loved this book. She shows no mercy and proves that women aren't fragile, porcelain dolls that need to be rescued by a much more powerful man. Tina Fey proves that you can be feminine but be a powerhouse as well. That is what more women need to know. If you don't know that yet, read this damn book. It's hilarious and relatable and sweet and wonderful. I can't recommend this one enough.