I just finished Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir by Amanda Knox and much like everything about this girl I am deeply ambivalent. How can a book be so boring and fascinating at the same time? I believe she’s innocent, but that she’s also hiding something.
No doubt a healthy dose of sexism and anti-American sentiment played a major role in her demonization. I empathize with her because I could easily see how the same thing could happen to many of us while abroad. International travel. Risky behavior. Could you imagine the field-day they would have with this website? G-SUS, I’d be tarred and feathered.
The tale of the American in Perugia is lush with paradox.
Italians are almost as famous for their pasta as they are their anti-African sentiment. I’m disgusted that during a round of intense interrogation she falsely accused an African, her boss Patrick. Her accusations flamed the prejudicial racial hysteria. Yet in an ironic twist, another African, Rudy Guede confessed, was convicted, and is now serving time for Meredith’s murder.
The prison medical staff erroneously informed Knox that she had AIDS. She didn’t have AIDS, but she does describe contracting herpes from a makeout sesh with a hot dude she met on the train. (Check out the meticulous brows, someone was threading her in the big house.)
If Knox were a better writer, she would have included even more details of her incarceration, however seemingly mundane. She virtually glossed over the perversely interesting incidents of unwanted advances from different lecherous prison staff and fellow female prisoners.
Based on her own descriptions of her personality, I suspect she’s rather annoying and lacking in self-awareness. The constant Amélie comparisons make me want to heave.
Amanda’s memoir is dry and procedural with just a dusting of scandalous moments. Quite obviously the investigation and trial were complete clusterfux poorly executed by bumbling, small town, murder scene novices. The investigators blundered a high-profile international case and couldn’t admit the prosecution’s salacious and far-fetched theory was profoundly implausible. This girl paid over a thousand days of her life for law enforcement’s stubborn unwillingness to broaden the search beyond Knox and Raffaele. In all likelihood, the co-conspirator in Meredith’s murder walked away free because of it.
If nothing else, the memoir is a worthwhile cautionary tale which reminds us how sometimes shitty things happen to regular people for no good reason at all.
Don’t bother buying Brandi Glanville’s book Drinking and Tweeting: And Other Brandi Blunders because she really is as insipid and lacking in insight as one might predict. Think I am being harsh? It took her over a decade to figure out Eddie was cheating despite the following trail of philandering clues: 
1) All the bills were sent to his parents’ house.
Brandi claims Eddie gave her HPV. I think that means we can infer both LeAnn Rimes and that Scheana chick probably have the warts too. Brandi describes needing several multiple loop electrosurgical excision procedures to right her wart situation. (I would seriously shank a disease-spreading bitch, and the bitch in this situation is clearly Eddie.)
Brandi admits to obsessive face picking and actually went to hypnotherapy to cure her destructive habit. Paradoxically, she doesn’t perceive the Botox and fillers as self-mutilating.
Brandi was busted for a DUI and reports the Beverly Hills jail has celebrity weeklies in the cells! How posh.
The thing I like most about Brandi is that her Dad was (is?) a pot dealer.
Stymied by her toddler when he learned to free himself from his crib, Brandi locked Jake in his room from the outside in at night. 
If you want to know about Brandi’s body, credit Pilates (and good genes bitch!).
Brandi had her vagina surgically tightened and charged it to Eddie. 
Brandi hates anal, but isn’t above a little girl-on-girl above the waist action to keep things interesting – mostly interesting for the guys she lets watch.
Debra Jo Rupp
Kristin Davis
Judith Butler
Chad Hugo
Matt Skiba
Winslow Homer
This book Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality by Jacob Tomsky has been getting a lot of shine, so I Kindled it to see if it indeed included any salacious insider gossip. Let me save you the trouble – this tell-all doesn’t tell much about the hotel industry or human nature that you don’t already know.
Tomsky started in hospitality at the bottom of the valet pile in New Orleans, and eventually made his way up to third-in-command at a mid-to-high-end Manhattan hotel he calls “Bellevue” to protect its identity. 
Tomsky works primarily as a front desk clerk. The self-serving thesis of this book? Heavily tip the front desk clerk with “bricks” ($100s) or “baby bricks” ($20s) to score under-the-table upgrades. Throw some money around at the desk and you too can enjoy a $4 comped bottle of shitty pinot. How Fancy.
The inverse is also true. Mistreat your wife, make a racist comment to the cabbie, or fart downwind from the all powerful desk clerk and find yourself key bombed. Tomsky will stick you with a bunk key card, book you in the shittiest room, or one that gets all-night phone calls because the room number matches 1+ the local area code and every ninny in the hotel forgets to dial 9 for an outside line. Remember to be on your very best behavior or the desk despot will punish you!
Tomsky promises park views, late check outs, and express check-in if you slide him some cash. But I don’t really want or need any of that. Fuck the view. I’m sleeping here. Can you get me a clean room with that $20? Probably not. Even the finest hotels suffer from inconsistent housekeeping. 
I don’t care about stealing from the mini-bar. If you do, Tomsky says go wild; the hotel will comp the oft-disputed charges. 
What began as conspiratorial whispers has become semi-confirmed speculation that Anna Wintour will get her U.S. Ambassadorship. I’m sopping this rumor up like gravy on a biscuit. 
Forget The Devil Wears Prada, Jerry Oppenheimer’s Front Row: Anna Wintour: What Lies Beneath the Chic Exterior of Vogue’s Editor in Chief is the Anna Wintour biography. If you have read this book, then Wintour’s hunger for this high-profile political appointment won’t come as any surprise to you whatsoever. Bitch is hongray for prestige. 
No doubt Anna hustled for Obama this year. Wintour uncharacteristically humbled herself and curried favor with the President. She used her contacts and power to fill a room with generous political contributors. Anna allegedly tormented the shit out Sarah Jessica Parker until that $40,000 a plate fundraiser met her uncompromising standards. 
Why is this appointment so potentially exciting? It means someone will replace Anna at Vogue! Here’s hoping the new editor-in-chief can resuscitate a pulse to the lifeless, heartless, humorless, out-of-touch mag. 
Please Obama, send her to The U.K., or better yet – France. You owe us this one. 
Is it me, or did the Black Friday propaganda machine work overtime this year? The more hysterical and bombastic the marketing campaigns became, the more I dug into my commitment to buy absolutely nothing on the national day of accumulation. 
Here are a few more productive ways to spend your day then beating a bitch over a HDTV at Best Buy. 
Since you ate 3 days worth of food in one sitting yesterday, why don’t you move your ass? Hike, bike, skip, or strut in the opposite direction of the mall. Show visiting guests your neighborhood by foot. Walk the dog. Collect firewood. Rollerskate. 
Catch up on new music as you clean your house. Stow the remnants of fall and prepare for winter. Declutter and donate. Rotate the wardrobe.
Marathon a show you’ve been meaning to watch. Homeland. American Horror Story. Downton Abbey. Or my personal favorite as of late, Made in Chelsea. Many of you work hard and actually deserve several hours of lazying about without judgment. 
Enjoy a day making homemade gifts for the holidays as a healthy “fuck you” to consumerism. Rather than spending, can you repurpose and improve shit into something you want to keep or give? 
