Chuck Klosterman is a clever guy. That much I can say unequivocally, everything else is up in the air.

Here is the thing. Mr. Klosterman is willing to take on some weird questions    How is Pamela Anderson a reflection of our changing attitudes about sex? How has The Real World changed how Americans view themselves? Can you write 6,000 words about Saved By the Bell?     and it is mostly fun to watch him consider these things. But if I sound underwhelmed it is probably because my expectations were high. This looked like a perfect match, the idea of Mr. Klosterman seemed directly in my wheelhouse. I have been told I look like the guy and I probably write like him a little too . I read an essay he wrote about an unofficial goth day at Disneyland and laughed, but Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs felt just a little flat to me.

Mr. Klosterman worries in the introduction that all the work will become immediately dated by the pop culture references, which will probably happen unless Saved By the Bell enjoys a major comeback, but what looms most now is the rise of the think piece. He may have been groundbreaking at the time, admitting how he watches the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape    but not that he derives anything but intellectual stimulation from it     and writing about TV shows through a strange and personal lens, but everyone is doing that now. Kanye West doesn't change T-shirts without a dozen blogs ruminating on what it means that a rap atrist wears $120 cotton tees. It is hard to come at Mr. Klosterman with fresh eyes after 10 years of the 24-hour churn cycle.

What got me, however, is that the questions were generally the most interesting parts of the essays. As he got into the weeds he either digressed or stopped making sense. In fact, here is the one most interesting passage in the book:

...When discussing any given issue, always do three things. First make an intellectual concession (this makes the listener fell comfortable ). Next make a completely incomprehensible — but remarkably specific— "cultural accusation" (this makes you insightful). Finally, end the dialogue by interjecting slang lexicon that does not necessarily exist (this makes you contemporary). 

 

He follows with some examples. These are his tips for being — or at least projecting yourself as — interesting in conversation, but they might be his tips for writing too. While I probably can't find a statement that exactly fits the formula, it is definitely the recipe for this whole book, a swirl of unexpected conclusions from very specific pop references, self-deprecation and a fresh turn of phrase for garnish.

That realization might have been fatal if I didn't think he realized that himself. Like how Mr. Klosterman enjoys tweaking the very people he knows are his probable readers. He is clever enough to see these features in himself but being meta isn't the same as being good. At parts Cocoa Puffs felt like that first day at college where some professor blows your mind by suggesting there is no such thing as truth, or that porn makes no sense because there is nothing pleasurable to a woman about licking her own tit, but he doesn't want to really get at the answers. The answers are boring and technical and we were having a lot of fun just watching Tommy Lee steer a boat with his dick together and all the ways that is weird. So maybe it is just me, maybe I ruined Chuck Klosterman. 

Wow, all I can do is shake my head, at this book. I don't even know where to start on this one, so I'm just going to do bullets.

• This book is all over the place. There is no consistency. Unpolished at best. Could of used a lot more editing.
• All the characters were one dimensional card board cut outs, which made Star look flakey, naive, lacking in common sense, no moral compass, and no follow through or thinking about the outcomes of any of her actions.
• The dialogue was stilted and unnatural.
• I didn't like the message of the book.
• Worse than a lot of other Romances I have read in the past.
• Note to Pamela Anderson: If I were you, I'd hire better people. Your team is supposed to make your writing more interesting, not less.
• Glad I borrowed this book from the library. They can have it back.
• Finally, I think Star could use a good psychologist and a healthy dose of Self-Love, maybe even some time on the yoga mat, would help her mental and physical balance. Just saying.

Star is the story of a lovely and optimistic ingénu from Florida with not much to her name but her smile, her dreams, and her... assets.  Her dreams are modest; save up enough from her two jobs to afford cosmetology school.  That all changes when she comes along as make-up artist to a friend's photoshoot, and connects instantly with the staff MUAs.  A few Polaroids taken while goofing around bring her to the attention of the search agents and they decide that she's exactly what they're looking for.  Paired with an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response to Star on a stadium jumbo-tron while she happened to be wearing a shirt emblazoned with a beer brand, her face (and body) become very much in demand.  Soon it's off to L.A., where her face, her breasts, and her naivete take celebrity culture like a storm.


I picked up Star as part of a buddy read.  None of us expected a huge amount from this, more of a "hey, why not?" with the bonus of if it's horrible, we had a support network.

For me, during the entire read I kept thinking "I really wish Carl Hiaasen wrote this."  Maybe it's the start in Florida, maybe it's his book Strip Tease, but I think that if everything in this book had been fed to him the result would be amazing.  As it was, I wasn't particularly bowled over by Star, but I've also read far worse.  There was a lot of what struck me as rather uninspired sex that varied from just something on the page to something that detracted from the story.  Some of the wording emphases annoyed me, like the repetition of referring to how many falls Star could take someone down, just general hammering of character details.  Probably my favorite characters were the make-up artists, though the dog was something of a sweetie.

Names and locations have been changed, but by and large this is the story of Pamela's start in show business.  Most of the obfuscation is so thin that it's impossible to not know who/what she's talking about.  Some times I know that out of a group one of them must refer to a specific person, but I'm just not sure (specifically, I wasn't sure which actor on "Lifeguards, Inc." was supposed to be Hasselhoff, then I pulled up his IMDB page and realized he was on "The Young and the Restless"... so that answers that one).  By and large, one could grasp most of the contents of the story simply by reading her Wikipedia and IMDB pages, pretty much everything that happens before she marries Tommie Lee.

Star herself is unbelievably naive.  I've met people as innocent of the world around them as she is, but generally that's paired with an incredibly sheltered upbringing.  With the explicit inclusion and revealing of sexual abuse and arguable physical abuse (as well as emotional), I really can't imagine that she's reached adulthood retaining such innocence.  The surrounding environments she finds herself in, and that she willingly enters, argues strongly that the only way she could stay such an ingénu is willful ignorance.  I don't particularly like using the label "Mary Sue," but considering this is a thinly-veiled memoir, Pamela is literally inserting herself into the story, I feel like it's fitting.

So, this book is both annoying and angering me right now.  I was going to try for the BR.   You know, just to push through.  

I was enjoying it, then bam.   Maybe I'm still sore of RiD and that whole show?   Either way, I can't do it.   Right now, reading this makes me feel violently ill, so, yeah.   I know I was at least enjoying it a little before, so I'm gonna give it 24 hours, then come back.  

Sorry about that!

Seriously, "hammer time" and "Allen Thames"?

I probably could figure out who most of these people are supposed to be just by looking at her imdb page.  But this one is particularly amusing to me for summer reason.