Review by Ida Vega-Landow

Oh boy, talk about Venus and Mars! This literary labor of love was written by a co-habiting couple in Hollywood, both writers of popular TV situation comedies, both divorced, both crazy about each other, but not so crazy about the little differences between men and women that keep popping up whenever they try to have a serious discussion.

You know, the way she keeps asking “Am I fat?” and getting mad whether he gives her an honest answer (which is insulting) or a flattering one (which is a lie, because people in love should be honest with each other). Or the way he tries to deal with her problems logically (telling her what she should have said or done), when all she really wants is for him to sympathize with her to prove he’s on her side. All the things that drive you crazy in a relationship, that make you swear the opposite sex is either from another planet or just evolved differently from your own sex.

I’ve been there, done that, gotten the tee shirts emblazoned with feminist slogans like “Men just don’t get it!” and “A Woman without a Man is like a Fish without a Bicycle”. I even acquired a man of my own, nine years ago on December 30th, who keeps moaning and groaning that I’m driving him crazy whenever we argue, and who seems too stupid to understand that I wouldn’t be driving him crazy if he hadn’t driven me crazy to begin with!

That’s what makes this book so much fun, yet so frustrating, because I get it, I really do. My problem is that I understand where both sides are coming from. I understand Jenny Lee’s gripes about her man because my man does so many of the same stupid things, as well as every other man I’ve ever met, yet I’m sure these same men will all swear with their hands on the Bible that I’m the crazy one.

I sympathize with Howard Morris because I’ve learned to control my emotions to the point where I can stand back and watch other women acting crazy, thinking “Stupid bitch! I would never say a thing like that in public to my husband.” But when these same women confide in me about the stupid things their men do, I find myself nodding sympathetically and agreeing with them that All Men Are Fools, and if it weren’t for us women, they wouldn’t be able to walk without tripping over their untied shoelaces.

This whole book is a study in “He Said, She Said”, where both sides give you their point of view and demand that you agree with them. And you either agree unconditionally with one of them, because you’re the same gender, or you disagree with both of them, because this kind of emotional upheaval is foreign to you–which means you’ve either never been in love, or your own relationship is so angst-free, O lucky man or woman!–and you don’t understand why these people, if they’re so in love with each other, just can’t get along. Or, you’re like me, able to see both sides of the coin, which makes it both funny and sad that two people in love can’t seem to understand each other.

Take flowers, for example. Jenny devotes a whole section of one chapter to flowers and how important they are to a woman as a token of her man’s affection. She even compares flowers to blowjobs in an effort to demonstrate to men how important they are, though she does replace the word “blowjobs” with the word “pizza” for the benefit of the squeamish, italicizing the word so we’ll know what she really means: “Men love pizza. Most men don’t feel they get as much pizza as they would like. Men would like to have pizza every day. I’m pretty sure if men got pizza every day there would be fewer wars and you could look out your window and see grown men skipping down the street and singing. As we women know, men rarely get pizza every day. In the beginning of a relationship men may get pizza a lot, and may even get pizza a few days in a row or even twice a day if they are lucky, but in general, I’m willing to climb out on a limb and wave to you from above and say that men don’t get pizza as often as they would like. Men in relationships want more pizza.”

You see, guys? We long for flowers the same way that you long for pizza! We both know that flowers and pizza are not essential for survival and are sometimes inconvenient and messy to give, but you still love getting them! As much as we women love to get flowers, unless we’re allergic, in which case we expect you to remember this little fact and shower us with some other lovely and colorful tokens of your affection, like candy or jewelry. And yes, I admit we women are guilty of expecting you to read our minds when it comes to love. Consider it a compliment that we love you so much we take it for granted that you are as sensitive as we are, so of course you would automatically know what we like.

But guys in love make a similar mistake, thinking that the women they love are so much more sensible than other women are. In other words, they expect us to think like men, be as logical, rational and hardheaded as they are. Sorry, guys, we’ve made many advances in the Women’s Liberation Movement, and we can do the businesslike thing when it comes to business. But when it comes to romance, or just plain day-to-day living under the same roof with someone of the opposite sex, we just can’t think like you. Howard laments about this in a section entitled “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?” after the song that Rex Harrison sings in the musical “My Fair Lady”. Howard claims that what Rex was really asking was “Why can’t a woman be consistent like a man?” In other words, he expects a gender that is ruled by our emotions and our hormones (yes, even those of us undergoing menopause are affected by hormones, mostly artificial, but still hormones!) to behave in the same boring, logical manner day after day. Why should we? Not all problems are simple enough to be resolved in an emotionless manner; if they were, then there’d be no point in making movies like “Old Yeller”, because nobody would cry at the thought of shooting your faithful family dog after he gets rabies, because it is the logical thing to do when your dog gets an incurable illness that threatens the rest of the livestock, as well as your family.

But I digress, another thing that Howard complains about in my fair sex. We women are capable of jumping from one seemingly unrelated subject to another during a conversation, because all topics are related from our point of view, while men narrow-mindedly insist upon sticking to the original topic. How stupid is that? I’m sorry, Howard and Jenny, but you’re both right, and I refuse to get in between you two. Fight it out in the final draft of your book, since this is only a review copy and you both have plenty of time to change your minds. And don’t remind me that changing one’s mind has always been a woman’s prerogative: men have the right to change their minds too, especially once they’ve realized how stupid–oops, I mean misinformed they’ve been. So long, guys, and good luck storming the castle!

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
16 CFR Part 255
Guides Concerning the Use of
Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

This so vague; all I can get out of it is that, after December 1, 2009:

a) we must disclose in every review of anything whether we got it for free or paid for it ourselves

b) no more links, affiliate or otherwise, to where to buy it.

I think there are fines for non-compliance, but I’d have to read it again to be sure. I hate reading this stuff. If anyone wants to take a crack at it and post in the comments what you think is important in this stupid document, be my guest.

I think the new review headers will look like this:

Title
Creator
Publisher
Copy supplied by publisher
or
Copy purchased by reviewer
ISBN

Grrrr.

Review by Kris

The law is a confusing thing. And more money that can be made, more laws are created to protect that information. In Bound By Law? we are introduced to documentary filmmaker Akiko. She wants to create a documentary about New York City. But with copyright protections, trademarks, and rights to the public domain can Akiko walk this field full of landmines unscathed?

I will be the first to admit I know very little about the public domain, copyright, and trademark law. Honestly it isn’t something that I’m terribly interested in learning a whole lot about, but me being the good citizen that I am (I vote, I stay abreast of the issues, etc.) I figured that I should take a looksie into this comic. It was created by several professors at Duke University to help bring fair use to the forefront. This creative look at something that could be so convoluted brings a relatively important law down from lawyer-speak to layman English. By introducing this topic through a comic not only makes it easy for someone like me, who happens to be a total dunce, but also makes it accessible for someone in middle school, high school, or of college age. Especially in this day and age of the internet where pointing and clicking, dragging and dropping, and right-click and saving are virtually everyday occurrences.

I must be clear on a couple points though. Even though I found this to be a great and quick overview of laws about the public domain it does get a little dry in spots. But it is about the law so it’s bound to boring in a couple spots. Another thing is I don’t read much in the way of comic books that have been created by western artists. I read mostly manga so in regards to the art I’m much more familiar, comfortable, and enjoy the manga format. This is definitely a western style. One thing I did enjoy about the art is some of the layouts that the artist created are a collage effect as opposed to being traditional comic art in boxed panels. I must say that even though I have a couple hang-ups I still feel that this is a worthy piece to pick up. By creating a fictional heroine determined to create her documentary and using this character along with the heroes of the public domain, Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has enlightened one dumb chic and by shining a light on this issue makes it one more thing about which I can carry on a knowledgeable discussion.

Up Till Now, The Autobiography

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

What can one say about Bill Shatner that hasn’t been said already by so many? Hero, ham, hack, has been, he’s been there, done that, and gotten the tee shirts. He was the first captain of the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE in the never ending story of Star Trek, whose five year mission was cut short by two years, yet who lives on in eternity through syndication. He was T.J. Hooker, a good cop who made Los Angeles a little safer every week and always managed to get in a chase scene, as well as a little gratuitous exposure of female flesh. He was the host of Rescue 911, true stories of people who survived disasters, who never dreamed that one dark night he’d have to live through one himself when he discovered his third wife had drowned herself. And most recently he was Denny Crane of Boston Legal, whose appetite for sex and guns could never equal his affection for his young protégé Alan Shore, who was his willing partner in legal mayhem every week, helping him to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Yes, Bill has been all that and more. From his beginnings as an aspiring actor in Montreal, Canada, who made his way to Hollywood, California via Broadway in New York City (he co-starred with France Nuyen in The World of Suzie Wong in 1958; a few years later she also appeared on an episode of Star Trek entitled Elaan of Troyius), to his latest role as the egomaniacal lawyer Denny Crane, he’s always done his best to be the most memorable actor you’ve ever seen.

Notice that I didn’t write “the best actor you’ve ever seen”. I think that every Shatner fan out there will agree with me that our Bill is no Lawrence Olivier. Sir Lawrence could act circles around him. Hell, Sir Lawrence could probably phone in his part and be nominated for an Oscar while Bill was still trying to get his lines out! Ever heard Bill trying to sing Mr. Tambourine Man on his first record album, The Transformed Man? He doesn’t sing the lyrics; he recites them, in a staccato fashion, with many pauses, as if he’s having trouble remembering the words. He used to say his lines on Star Trek the same way. Countless comedians and Shatner imitators have mimicked this rambling style of his whenever they wanted to “do” Shatner, and people always recognize it as a Shatner imitation. That’s what I mean by “memorable”; once you’ve seen his performance or heard his singing, you’ll never forget it. Like you’ll never forget the scream of anguish he emits at the end of Mr. Tambourine Man, which sounds like he’s being tortured by the Klingons.

How does a sensible woman like myself still feel affection for an actor who’s old enough to be my father, who wears more makeup than I do, along with a wig and a girdle (which I only wear to Star Trek conventions beneath my blue Original Series uniform dress), and who has an acting range from A to C? Believe me, I ask myself that every time I see him making a fool of himself in things like Third Rock From The Sun, where he played the Big Giant Head, as well as on second-rate game shows like Show Me The Money, where he demonstrated as much grace as a dancing bear as he danced alongside beautiful girls with scrolls bearing million-dollar questions. If he wasn’t so charming and gosh-darned lovable, I would have dismissed him as a no-talent boob years ago.

His co-stars on the original Star Trek certainly didn’t share my admiration for him. They weren’t fooled by his charm, either, especially Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura); while being interviewed by Bill for his book Star Trek Memories, she took advantage of the opportunity to tell him “I’m not finished yet. I have to tell you why I despise you.” It came as a big surprise to Bill that she and the rest of the supporting cast—Walter Koenig (Ensign Chekov), George Takei (Lieutenant Sulu), and James Doohan (Chief Engineer Montgomery Scot, aka “Scotty”)–considered him so self-absorbed that “not only hadn’t I been supportive of the other actors, at times I’d even been responsible for them losing time on screen and even took lines away from them”. In his own defense, Bill admits that “I was so intent on telling the story that I never focused on their needs or desires. The only thing I could say in my defense was that I never intentionally tried to hurt another actor. Perhaps I was ignorant, but I was never mean.”

Sounds generous enough, doesn’t it? Yet one paragraph later, he finds a way to turn it around and make his co-stars look at fault: “The fact is that Leonard (Nimoy) and Dee Kelly (Doctor McCoy) and I worked full days five days a week, while the other members of the cast came in as they were needed. When the show ended, as far as I knew, everybody was satisfied. Then the conventions started and the actors would go… and get standing ovations. Slowly…the supporting players began to consider themselves lead actors and no longer wanted to take a backseat. In some ways their perception of reality changed. But even after being criticized I do think of the cast with affection on some level.”

Which is more than what his former Star Trek co-stars can say about him, I’m afraid; none of them but Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) can say after all these years that he really likes Bill Shatner. That’s because Leonard is a total mensch, a true gentleman who never has a bad word to say about anybody. What a shame that Bill had to reveal in this book that he was also an alcoholic.

That came as a real shock to me, that Leonard Nimoy, the cool, pragmatic Mr. Spock, who was always so together and so in control of his emotions, would show up on the Star Trek set hung over from drinking all weekend, that when he would go to college lectures in small towns the first thing he’d ask when he checked into the motel was how late their bar was open, that he had to have a drink waiting for him in his dressing room whenever he was performing in a play, and that even while he was directing Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (which, in my unbiased opinion, is one of the better Star Trek films, being an odd number as well as directed by Leonard), he had to have a drink waiting for him offstage.

In Leonard’s defense, he admits that while he was making Star Trek “my marriage had fallen apart and at times I was very despondent. So I would go home every day and drink.” And “I never allowed it to affect my work. And as long as I never drank while I was working I had this illusion of control.” But it took his second wife Susan (to whom he is still married, fortunately) to point out to him that he didn’t really need to drink. In 1989, he was talking to her about how different his life was with her and how happy he felt and she asked him, “Then why do you drink so much?” That’s when he realized “You know, she’s right. I don’t have to do this anymore,” and finally called Alcoholics Anonymous. He went to his first meeting the next night and hasn’t had a drink since.

I’m happy that one of my favorite Star Trek actors, whom I love as much as Bill, was able to get his life together. But I still think it was mean of Bill to reveal his alcoholism in his autobiography; I mean, Leonard never even mentioned it in either of his own bios. It was the sort of thing I really didn’t want to know and would have been just as happy not to learn. It also makes me understand just why Bill’s other co-stars despised him so much; what right did he have to reveal somebody else’s secret like that? Did he even bother to ask Leonard first? Talk about self-absorbed! Bill, I still love you, but when you do things like that I don’t like you very much. And if you made a habit of doing things like that over the years, I can understand how the people who have to work with you on a daily basis came to despise you.

And yet, despite everything I’ve read in this book, I still feel genuine affection for Bill Shatner. Why, I don’t know; his boyish charm, his joie de vie, his brutal honesty about events like his third wife’s death by drowning, as well as his not-so-honest recollections of what happened on the Star Trek set in earlier volumes like the aforementioned Star Trek Memories. I can read between the lines to see the vanity and self-deception he used to edit some of his memories. I can also see his genuine pleasure in acting and pleasing his audiences, who, after all, have made him what he is today. Perhaps I should end this review with one last quote from “Up Till Now”, where Bill comments on what Star Trek means to him:

“Star Trek was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. I look back upon it as the miracle that changed my life. In fact, it has changed your life, too. All the extraordinary opportunities I’ve been given since that time can be traced directly to that series. So if I hadn’t done Star Trek none of the things that followed would have happened, therefore you wouldn’t be reading this book. To fill the time you’re spending reading it, you would have had to find other things to do. And your life would be different.”

Yes, Bill, you’re right. My life would be different without you. Duller, for one thing. Less joyful, for another. I wouldn’t be married to the same man (another Star Trek fan); I wouldn’t be a science geek or a writer of science fiction. In fact, to paraphase comedienne Sandra Bernhard, without you I would be nothing. So thanks, Bill, for everything.

Porn Nation: Conquering America’s #1 Addiction

Review by Chad Denton

As with my review of a left-wing anti-pornography book, Getting Off, I am somewhat conflicted about what I should write in this review. However, it’s not because of the difficulties of critiquing a heartfelt screed, but the fact that this book, “Porn Nation”, which offers an approach to pornography from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from “Getting Off”, carries the sincere testimony of a recovering porn addict, its author Michael Leahy. It’s not quite as in-depth or devestating as the film Auto Focus (or as it was known to me for a while, “that film about that ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ guy”), which could very well be the most disturbing and realistic exploration of sex addiction out there in American cinema, if not the entire Englsh-speaking world. While Auto Focus was, true to its title, unflinching and unapologetic, “Porn Nation” is very much written in a distinctly conservative fashion, attempting to achieve a friendly intimacy with the reader but avoiding any truly salacious details, which, maybe appropriately enough, sets a tone for the entire book.

In fact, the bulk of the book is Michael Leahy describing his childhood and trying to explain the origins of his addiction; how his marriage was ruined; the details of his decline and recovery; his near-suicide; and the rediscovery of his Christianity. Leahy’s writing is, to put it politely, “unstylized” – but for a book like this that’s not necessarily a detriment, since the tone of easy conversation, or perhaps in the context of the twenty-first century I should say the tone of a Livejournal post, does bring “Porn Nation” into the genre of the casual confessional. This really is for the best; as Leahy himself points out (pg 145-46), sex addiction is not exactly taken seriously or well understood even in our hyper-theraputic society of Oprah viewers, so the best approach is to avoid the clinical and detached language that still often burdens down books about sex and sexuality.

Despite the title and how the book has been advertised, even on the back cover, the book is mostly personal. There are sixteen chapters; the first seven are a mini-autobiography and a discussion of the development of his addiction while the last six round back to a discussion of sex addiction, rooted again in Leahy’s personal experiences, with a fairly standard Christian evangelical message stapled on. The “porn nation” of the title and of the back cover promotion is only really discussed for three chapters. Unless you crack open the book already nodding along, before you even really read about it, to Leahy’s vision of a completely sexually desensitized nation, a “Generation Sex” (pg 117-23), it is difficult not to get the impression of someone conflating his own struggles and experiences, traumatic and dangerous to himself and the people around them as they undoubtedly were (an impression that still comes across despite Leahy’s restraint), into a national crisis, a trait so common it may be almost universal to prophecies of moral apocalypses like these.

Without those three chapters and with a different title, this would have been a better book on at least several levels. However, Michael Leahy’s knowledge of sex really doesn’t extend far – well, really, not an inch – outside his own negative experiences. Admittedly he is upfront about his biases at a number of points in the book, but that hardly excuses the poor research that goes into the portion of “Porn Nation” that attempted to tie Leahy’s sex addiction to the social and cultural issues of contemporary American society. To be fair, Leahy does cite from respectable and neutral authorities like the Journal of Research in Personality, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and American Psychologist, but he also cites statistics and other information uncritically from organizations that have a tremendous ax to grind, like the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families and The Washington Times. As for the articles from USA Today and People he uses, well…I shouldn’t need to go into why those particular journals are problematic when they are used as sources for exploring any issue more complex than how many people in Indiana eat fast food. Neither should I have to go into why I have an issue with Leahy using Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons” as a jumping-off point for one of the chapters, even though some of you might be wondering why on earth anyone would not trust a novel purporting to be a young, naive heterosexual woman’s first-hand glimpse of college life but written by a 78-year old man.

Of the twelve statistical citations on the sex lives of teenagers and their views of sex and the exposure of pre-teens to sexual content, seven come from the heavily biased NCPCF, one comes from a People Magazine poll, and only one is taken from a a source subject to neither an overt political agenda or the need to raise ratings or readership through journalistic sensationalism, the academic journal Pediatrics. Also when discussing these results and his experiences talking with high schoolers and college students, it never occurs to Leahy, like so many would-be sexual reformers before and after him, to think why would adolescents and teenagers ever exaggerate their sexual experiences, especially to a middle-aged authority figure. You might think I’m being too harsh on Leahy, since, as I admitted myself, the socio-political isn’t the real focus of the book, but all bets were off after I caught him indulging in one of my own most hated historical myths: “As unrealistic as that may sound, we wouldn’t be the first great society to go down that path. The latter days of the Roman Empire are infamous for sexual depravity on a massive scale” (pg 131). Yes, the latter days of the Western Roman Empire, when male prostitutes were condemned to be burned alive by imperial edict, when women were sometimes executed for adultery, and when Christian sexual ethics were beginning to be enforced by society and law were “infamous”, but for fairly different reasons.

Now I should point out that “Porn Nation” is not as reactionary as you might think at a glance. Leahy does not discount the role psychology played in his recovery (although he does add the caveat that therapy is incomplete without religion – specifically Jesus) and even describes the findings of the Meese Commission, which were published in 1986 and described pornography as inherently additive, as a “bit alarmist” (pg 113). He also includes a strangely effective description of his experiences with Ron Jeremy, with whom he has had debates in colleges across the country (pg 187-191), although it does quickly turn into a conversion pitch directed right at the reader. Still, none of this mitigates the most frustrating aspect of the book, that Leahy comes so close to detailing the effects growing up in a sex-negative culture and with a traditional American Catholic upbringing had on shaping his porn addiction and his attitudes toward women (although Leahy is sympathetic to his wife and even quotes her diary entries detailing his downward spiral, he never gives voice to the woman he had an affair with, and instead holds her largely accountable for what were his own choices). Instead the culprit is pornography and himself, for turning his back on God and, by implication, the “values” he grew up with. For all his good intentions to helping sex addicts like himself, Leahy, by blaming if only in part exposure to pornography for his lifelong battle, perpetuates the very sort of atmosphere of shame, repression, and guilt conducive for a new generation of sex addicts.