Passable in Pink

by Mike Sacks
Passable in Pink
Author: Mike Sacks
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780578706290
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in Pink is the latest book from best-selling author Mike Sacks (And Here's the Kicker, Poking a Dead Frog, Stinker Lets Loose). Passable in Pink deftly sends up the 1980s and John Hughes movies while addressing the vital question: Will Addy Stevenson go to the senior prom? Addy is suffering through her sophomore year at suburban Chicago's Northridge High. She lives on the "wrong" side of the lake with her father, a struggling advertising copywriter ("Where the hell is the goddamn beef?") and her ever-boozy mom ("Get me another drink, baby, and really make it sing."). Addy's younger brother, Spaz, her soon-to-marry older sister, Princess, and a visiting international transfer student add to the mix. Her world is turned upside down when she meets Roland McDough, the "most beautiful Richie boy" at Northridge High. Is he actually interested in Addy, or is he just playing a game? Are you ready to jump back into the cool, neon-glazed, high-topped reality of the 1980s? Do you miss those kick-ass tubular synth-rockin' sounds and delicious phantasma-gaseous smells? When was the last time you put on your Members Only jacket and danced the Safety Dance? A loving send-up of a bygone era, this is one book in which Every Breath You Take will remind you of How You Used to Be.

Slouchers

by Mike Sacks
Slouchers
Author: Mike Sacks
Publisher:
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre:
ISBN: 9780578792057
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The novelization to the 1992 Gen X movie "Slouchers" It is the early 1990s in Seattle ... and the MTV video for Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has just premiered the previous week. Lethargy is in the air. Grunge fashion is all the logy rage. Something is brewing beneath these moist, overcast Seattle skies. Twenty-two-year-old Willow Montgomery has freshly arrived in town, having just graduated from an elite liberal arts college back east. Willow soon befriends a motley crew of twenty-somethings who live in the parking lot next to the alternative record store where she works for $5 an hour, a store run by a cantankerous, irritable, grouchy older man (he's 29) named Skip. Willow wants to desperately capture the brilliance of her generation on her Fuji DS-100 digicam with 3-power zoom (10-byte, digital flash-memory card, first of its kind), and to have her documentary ultimately broadcast on MTV. What a dream! In the meantime, she's dating Toody, part-time bike messenger, part-time lead singer of the grunge band That's Your Problem. But there's a new man in town, "Mr. Straight," an important businessman who works downtown and who also has eyes for Willow, after having met her while buying a Best Of Aerosmith CD at Skip's store. Whom will Willow choose? The Grunger or the Straight? The man who digs this new music called "grunge" or the one who still listens to classic rock? Will she achieve any semblance of happiness? Will she continue to work a minimum McJob for the rest of her life, or can she somehow achieve her artistic goals, as lofty as they might be? Will the Lost Boys and Girls, as they call themselves, ever leave the parking lot to achieve their own dreams? Moreover, will the famous inventor of the hacky sack ever arrive at the parking lot in a stretch limousine like he's promised? Lastly: Is it true that the world's most famous MTV VJ, Tabitha, is coming to Seattle to host the first Great MTV Grunge Off competition, to be filmed for live TV, for all the world to see?! It's 1992 in Seattle and the world is about to change forever. Or maybe not. Regardless: It's all about the look ... it's all about the collective alienation ... it's all about the deep-seated, delicious apathy ... It's all about ... Slouchers.

Rat Rule 79

by Rivka Galchen
Rat Rule 79
Author: Rivka Galchen
Publisher: Restless Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 163206099X
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From the New Yorker “20 Under 40” author of Atmospheric Disturbances comes a brain-twisting adventure story of a girl named Fred on a quest through a world of fantastical creatures, strange logic, and a powerful prejudice against growing up. Fred and her math-teacher mom are always on the move, and Fred is getting sick of it. She’s about to have yet another birthday in a new place without friends. On the eve of turning thirteen, Fred sees something strange in the living room: her mother, dressed for a party, standing in front of an enormous paper lantern—which she steps into and disappears. Fred follows her and finds herself in the Land of Impossibility—a loopily illogical place where time is outlawed, words carry dire consequences, and her unlikely allies are a depressed white elephant and a pugnacious mongoose mother of seventeen. With her new friends, Fred sets off in search of her mom, braving dungeons, Insult Fish, Fearsome Ferlings, and a mad Rat Queen. To succeed, the trio must find the solution to an ageless riddle. Gorgeously illustrated and reminiscent of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Rivka Galchen’s Rat Rule 79 is an instant classic for curious readers of all ages.

Stinker Lets Loose

by Mike Sacks
Stinker Lets Loose
Author: Mike Sacks
Publisher: Archway Editions
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781576879733
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“She may be an insane chimp, but she’s my insane chimp!” Two ingenious metanarratives that take comedy writing to surreal, uproarious new heights. Mike Sacks is writing the apotheosis of avant garde comedy—books written as found documents, trawling through the ephemera of suburban America, jokes low-brow, bizarre and visceral in a package more formally taut and wildly ambitious than nearly anything published as literary fiction today. Stinker Lets Loose is the deadly accurate novelization of a non-existent ’70s drive-in film, complete with images from the set; it explores the implications behind Eastwood and Reynolds vehicles while one-upping them in puerility and wildness.

Poking a Dead Frog

by Mike Sacks
Poking a Dead Frog
Author: Mike Sacks
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2014-06-24
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0143123785
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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR Amy Poehler, Mel Brooks, Adam McKay, George Saunders, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, and many more take us deep inside the mysterious world of comedy in this fascinating, laugh-out-loud-funny book. Packed with behind-the-scenes stories—from a day in the writers’ room at The Onion to why a sketch does or doesn’t make it onto Saturday Night Live to how the BBC nearly erased the entire first season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—Poking a Dead Frog is a must-read for comedy buffs, writers and pop culture junkies alike.

And Here's the Kicker

by Mike Sacks
And Here's the Kicker
Author: Mike Sacks
Publisher: Writers House
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2014-05-28
Genre: Comedy
ISBN: 9781630640118
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DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT ? Every great joke has a punch line, and every great humor writer has an arsenal of experiences, anecdotes, and obsessions that were the inspiration for that humor. In fact, those who make a career out of entertaining strangers with words are a notoriously intelligent and quirky lot. And boy, do they have some stories. In this entertaining and inspirational book, you'll hear from 21 top humor writers as they discuss the comedy-writing process, their influences, their likes and dislikes, and their experiences in the industry. You?ll also learn some less useful but equally amusing things, such as: How screenwriter Buck Henry came up with the famous "plastics" line for The Graduate. How many times the cops were called on co-writers Sacha Baron Cohen and Dan Mazer during the shooting of Borat. What David Sedaris thinks of his critics. What creator Paul Feig thinks would have happened to the Freaks & Geeks crew if the show had had another season. What Jack Handey considers his favorite Deep Thoughts.? How Todd Hanson and the staff of The Onion managed to face the aftermath of 9/11 with the perfect dose of humor. How Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais created the original version of The Office. What it's really like in the writers? room at SNL. Funny and informative, And Here's the Kicker is a must-have resource - whether you're an aspiring humor writer, a fan of the genre, or someone who just likes to laugh.

Jacob's New Dress

by Sarah Hoffman
Jacob's New Dress
Author: Sarah Hoffman
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2014-03-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0807563749
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One of 10 Best Indie Picture Books of 2014, ForeWord Reviews Runner-Up, 2014 New England Book Festival: Children's Books 2014 Distinguished List of the Association of Children's Librarians of Northern California CCBC Choices 2015 An affirming story about gender nonconformity. Jacob loves playing dress-up, when he can be anything he wants to be. Some kids at school say he can't wear "girl" clothes, but Jacob wants to wear a dress to school. Can he convince his parents to let him wear what he wants? This heartwarming story speaks to the unique challenges faced by children who don't identify with traditional gender roles.

Randy!

by Mike Sacks
Randy!
Author: Mike Sacks
Publisher: Archway Editions
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781576879726
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“This book is fucking awesome. It’s my life’s story. I’m thirty-four but look twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two at the most. I live in Maryland. Please read it. I’m a writer, a songwriter, an artist. I do it all. I’m an artist of life. I’m an adventurer, I’m the president of my development. Read the memoir. You won’t be disappointed.” The follow up to Stinker Lets Loose, Randy! takes it even further. Introduced by a version of Sacks who finds the document in a garage sale, it is written by the struggling poet and novelist Noah B., who is embedded in the mind and lifestyle of a perversely unexceptional American asshole—one from Maryland, no less. Like Pale Fire if it were about a Danny McBride-style fuckup, it is both unmoored from time and eerily prescient of our own—one so stupid and unbelievable that it requires a writer like Sacks.

The Girl Who Dared to Defy

by Jane Little Botkin
The Girl Who Dared to Defy
Author: Jane Little Botkin
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2021-02-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0806169915
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In the wake of the violent labor disputes in Colorado’s two-year Coalfield War, a young woman and single mother resolved in 1916 to change the status quo for “girls,” as well-to-do women in Denver referred to their hired help. Her name was Jane Street, and this compelling biography is the first to chronicle her defiant efforts—and devastating misfortunes—as a leader of the so-called housemaid rebellion. A native of Indiana, Jane Street (1887–1966) began her activist endeavors as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In riveting detail, author Jane Little Botkin recounts Street’s attempts to orchestrate a domestic mutiny against Denver’s elitist Capitol Hill women, including wives of the state’s national guard officers and Colorado Fuel and Iron operators. It did not take long for the housemaid rebellion to make local and national news. Despite the IWW’s initial support of the housemaids’ fight for fairness and better pay, Street soon found herself engaged in a gender war, the target of sexism within the very organization she worked so hard to support. The abuses she suffered ranged from sabotage and betrayal to arrests and abandonment. After the United States entered World War I and the first Red Scare arose, Street’s battle to balance motherhood and labor organizing began to take its toll. Legal troubles, broken relationships, and poverty threatened her very existence. In previous western labor and women’s studies accounts, Jane Street has figured only marginally, credited in passing as the founder of a housemaids’ union. To unearth the rich detail of her story, Botkin has combed through case histories, family archives, and—perhaps most significant—Street’s own writings, which express her greatest joys, her deepest sorrows, and her unfortunate dealings with systematic injustice. Setting Jane’s story within the wider context of early-twentieth-century class struggles and the women’s suffrage movement, The Girl Who Dared to Defy paints a fascinating—and ultimately heartbreaking—portrait of one woman’s courageous fight for equality.