Well, I might have to go back and re-think some of my NBA playoff picks, in light of Derrick Rose's season-ending ACL tear, and Indiana's sleepwalking showing against a Dwight Howard-less Magic.
Book Review
Carl Hiaasen's lightning-paced, funny romp Star Island comes on like gangbusters. Before the end of the first chapter, we're knee-deep in Hiaasen's satire. We know what he is sending up, ridiculing - scummy, amoral paparazzi; vacuous, no-talented pop artists; detestable, manipulative showbiz parents; soulless, conniving south Florida real estate folk; clueless, blissfully ill-equipped housing lenders. Indeed, Hiaasen's entire world has gone wicked mad. And if it's fun to read about, nothing cuts very deep, nothing sticks.
The plot basics: A highly-sexed, insipid Britney Spears-ish recording artist, Cherry Pie, is so often intoxicated and strung-out, that her greedy parents have hired a lookalike to pose as Cherry during the moments when Cherry is toxically indisposed. This lookalike, Ann, is kidnapped by a corpulent paparazzo who mistakes Ann, of course, for Cherry. And then...
Well, I could layout the plot shenanigans over the course of the next few hours, but why bother? I will say that Hiaasen's characters are one-of-a-kind: I especially was fond of Cherry's new bodyguard - a severely pockmarked, 'six-foot-nine ex-con with a weed whacker surgically enhanced to his arm. Skink, a character who has appeared before in Hiaasen's ouevre, returns - the one-eyed, alligator-eating ex-governor is still living deep in the Everglade's mangrove swamps, now stuffing sea urchins into shady developers' crotches.
Hiaasen almost never runs out of steam. but I think the reader just might. It's all so silly and because almost every character is uniquely revolting, there's no one really to root for, nothing emotionally at stake. Hiaasen's imagination is fertile, his narrative voice unique, but it all just becomes too much.
(***)
In honor of John Cusack's The Raven opening up this weekend, let's go ahead and list our (okay, my) favorite Cusack movies:
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| Hot Tub Time Machine |
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| High Fidelity |
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| Bullets Over Broadway |
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| Runaway Jury |
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| Say Anything |
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