THE BOOKWORM SEZ By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Name Drop: The Really Good Celebrity Stories
I Usually Only Tell at Happy Hour
by Ross Mathews Some people collect glassware. Others collect books or sweaters or Santa statues or fancy cars or any one of a million things there are more than two of. Scientists say that, as a species, we’re hardwired to do it, even if you just collect friends. And in “Name Drop” by Ross Mathews, some of them might even be famous. From the time he was a little boy growing up in a farm community in Washington state, Mathews wanted to
have friends that were celebrities. He imagined what it would be like to hang out with them and gossip… and then it actually happened. Now, he says he hates when people “name drop,” but “honey,” he has stories... His celebrity circle started when he was an intern on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which sent him to report on the Olympics three times, which led him to start a blog, and that’s how he became BFFs with Rosie O’Donnell. They’ve been fast friends ever since, though it was she who “made” him “sleep with a Republican.” He worked with Chelsea Handler on Chelsea Lately and because of where the show was filmed, he met and became friends with the Kardashians, who were filming
State of Play: The Old School Guide to New School Baseball
by Bill Ripken Grip the bat lightly. Elbows loose, feet comfortably apart, shoulders and hips perpendicular to the mound, hands by your shoulder, eyes on the pitcher. It’s a basic recipe for batting that every good player knows and knows how to change to fit a situation. And what else about baseball has changed? Find out in “State of Play” by Bill Ripken. There are two ways of looking at baseball: old school, and “new school.”
So says Ripken, and he thinks that while new school “things are different... they may not be as good as they once were.” We talk about baseball differently, for one, and we look at statistics that never used to exist. When Ripken’s father, Cal Sr., worked as a playermanager for the Orioles organization, he didn’t have a computer or stop-motion recall on a screen. He filled out nightly reports from memory, wrote his thoughts by hand, lived the game, played the game, even drove the bus when needed, and he knew that a win wasn’t a do-or-die goal, particularly when the season was young. He had four tenets that he called “The Ripken Way,” and the first one mandated simplicity. That, as Ripken suggests, doesn’t apply to baseball
Terri Schlichenmeyer is a book reviewer based just across the river from SoMinn in LaCrosse, WI. She can be contacted at bookwormsez@gmail.com
their reality show in the same building. The Chelsea gig also gave Mathews the opportunity to be on the sidelines when his beloved Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2013. That was the year he also got to play celebrity matchmaker. He had a chance to meet two of the Spice Girls. He got a quick-click photo op with Celine Dion. He met Omorosa and scooped every rabid reporter on TV; he met “Liza with an OMG” and spent all night talking with Christina Aguilera. But “not every celebrity story is going to end like a fairy tale where the famous person and I end up bonding...” says Mathews. Especially when it’s Barbara Walters, Faye Dunaway, or Elizabeth Taylor… No doubt about it, “Name Drop” sure is fun. It’s got the feel of a Friday night at your bestie’s house, where the snacks on the kitchen counter are bottomless and so are the Skinny ‘Ritas, and you scream yourself hoarse in mock horror and real laughter at
the stories you’re told. It’s got the kind of gossip you want about the stars you love (or love to hate), spilled with a little snark and a charming amount of awe. It’s got an absolute (and absolutely relieving) sense that being famous sometimes doesn’t make a person act famous – although sometimes, it does. And it’s got “Rossipes” (Rossipes!) you can make to go along with your reading. Like a red-carpet walk with a broken heel, though, “Name Drop” sometimes limps. Author Ross Mathews is funny and punny, but not both simultaneously: alas, the puns are too much, too overwhelming, so feel free to groan and ignore them. The dishy tales you get in this book are way more fun; in fact, if you love boymeets-girl-celebrity tales, you’ll find that “Name Drop” is a great collection.
anymore. Take, for example, pitch framing: Ripken says those stats are not important. Improving a launch angle is something he doesn’t completely understand. He imagines tunnelling in a way that makes it make sense (and he wishes he’d cashed in by naming it years ago). WAR (Wins Above Replacement) doesn’t, as he sees it, have one cohesive definition; and automated strike zones change, depending on the hitter, thus being not calibratable. Line ups, at least for the first five players, aren’t created like they used to be. RBIs are not even the same, and Ripken says there are other terms that he can’t quite clarify. And the big question is this: are the players even using these stats? So let’s say you’re the kind of baseball fan who casually likes to listen to the game while grilling, washing the car, gardening, cleaning house, as background noise. This is not really a book for you, just so you know.
Instead, author Bill Ripken speaks to those rabid fans who think that more stats equals more science to the game of baseball even though, as he believes, these additional game bullet-points don’t enhance the way the game’s always been played, and they might even leave a fan baffled. More bafflement: when Ripken seems to sometimes contradict himself, often in the same paragraph, leaving readers to wonder if they’ve actually caught what’s been pitched or if something’s out in left field. Readers who are dedicated fillers-out of statistic booklets won’t call that a strike, however, nor will those who’ve welcomed the changes that have been made to the game itself. If that’s you, this book by a “qualified, crusty baseball man” is perfect for argument-enders or debates. If you’re not so into all that, though, “State of Play” is likely a book you’ll just bat away.
Stop Telling Women to Smile:
women, harassment becomes a part of their daily lives. Says Fazlalizadeh, men who engage androgynous women in unwanted ways “are particularly likely to harass masculine women” out of a false sense of their own masculinity; they’re also likely to harass trans women because they feel “tricked” by a trans body. Women of color receive “markedly different” harassment from white men than from men of their wanting to be seen.” Catcalls, creepy comments, own races. Pregnant women receive unwelcome unwanted compliments about her young body followed touches, as though they’re good-luck charms; and her from street to sidewalk, coming from men who Muslim women are verbally attacked for their clothing. made her feel afraid, ashamed, and definitely harassed. And who can women “go to for protection” if the The “sheer quantity” of it struck her as she got older harasser is a police officer? and in 2012, Fazlalaizadeh, a street artist, started a What can be done? movement she calls Stop Telling Women to Smile. Fazlalizadeh says that she sees hope for today’s As part of her work, she invites women to her studio children, who are raised learning not to harass – but to tell their stories as she sketches their portraits. Some beyond that, the solution “is a large question that can have many answers.” of her results are in this book – and they’re powerful. Give yourself a minute to skim through “Stop Telling The most common response to street harassment, Women to Smile,” and it may seem like the book is little she says, is anxiety, a lingering dread of what could happen – physical violence, stalking, emotional terror – more than same-but-different which, after awhile, is too whether one interacts with a harasser or not. For many homogeneous and overgeneralizing. Dig a little deeper,
Stories of Street Harassment and How We’re Taking Back Our Power
by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh Heeeeey, look over here! You look fine today, Mama, Sugar, Honey, Baby, fill-in-theblank with names you’re called by men you don’t know. Just think, Sweetie, Pretty, you were minding your business before this monkey business started. And just know, by reading “Stop Telling Women to Smile” by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, that others deal with it, too. Like many women, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh spent her teen years in public “not
What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She
by Dennis Baron (He / Him / His) Words can never hurt you. Even as a child, that last half of the retort to playground taunts never made sense to you. Of course, sticks and stones broke bones but even then, you knew that there’s no sharper weapon than a word said in anger or misunderstanding. In the new book “What’s Your Pronoun?” by Dennis Baron, you’ll see that some of those weapons go way back. Language is a funny thing. Words hurt, they sooth, and in today’s world, a “pronoun without sex is...
30
sexy.” We ask ourselves, and others, which ones to use as “an invitation to declare, to honor, or to reject, not just a pronoun, but a gender identity.” Generally, though, and until relatively recently, “he” was the default pronoun used by many to indicate both masculine and undeclared gender. As far back as 1792, neutral “he” was thought to be confusing, however; one writer even suggested that “one” might work better than “he” to indicate gender neutral. “They” was brought up for consideration in 1794. A century later, and with mostly men controlling law and business, “he” was firmly the pronoun of choice, and it had become politicized; when women protested that “he” clearly didn’t include them, lawmakers stated that “he” also implied “she.” Women countered that if
A P R I L 2 0 2 0 | w w w. s o u t h e r N m I N n SCENE. c o m
“he” could hold office, then it was implied that “she” could, too, and, well, you can imagine the arguments – not to mention the injustice of three masculine pronouns (he, his, him) but just two for the feminine (she, her)! Oh, the scandal of it all! Through the decades, other words have been suggested (zie, hir, thon) to indicate gender neutral or unknown but none have seemed to stick. Many felt that there simply was no good way to signify neither male or female, or a separation of gender-neutral and nonbinary, and some bemoaned the lack of a “missing word” that was easily understandable. Says Baron, though, in sifting through the possibilities, we’ve had the word all along... Sometimes, as author Dennis Baron points out in his introduction, people today offer their preferred pronoun without being asked, so ubiquitous is the question. Still, we sometimes struggle with the right word, but in “What’s Your Pronoun?” he offers a solution of which readers may be skeptical.
Follow us on
Name Drop: The Really Good Celebrity Stories I Usually Only Tell at Happy Hour by Ross Mathews, c.2020, Atria Books, $26.00 / $29.99 in Canada, 225 pages.
State of Play: The Old School Guide to New School Baseball by Bill Ripken, c.2020, Diversion Books, $24.99 / Higher in Canada, 240 pages.
though, and this book opens like a flower with pages of emotion, outrageous tales, anger, unwarranted shame, and a chapter for feminist men that could spell welcome change. Dig a little deeper, though, and you might shudder. Author Tatyana Fazlalizadeh makes this book feel like a raw gallery performance, and it shouts with power but not a lot of caution. Some of the “What Women Want to Say to Street Harassers” sidebars come off as advice, and safety isn’t stressed nearly enough there. There’s strength in Fazlalizadeh’s words and they’re stand-up-and-scream inspiring, but they just need a hair more prudence. And yet: this is an invaluable book for any women’s group, it’s a great launching point for conversations with teens of any gender, and parents will absolutely want to read it. For that, for them, “Stop Telling Women to Smile” is worth a look-over. Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We’re Taking Back Our Power by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, c.2020, Seal Press, $28.00 / $35.00 in Canada, 226 pages. First, though, it’s true that this etymological history is a good read, especially for word nerds. It’s not collegelecture level; Baron writes with a lighter hand and doesn’t preach, and the occasional threads that spring from the stories here are explored appropriately and in an inviting way that displays no drudgery. It’s like sitting down at a workshop you’ve eagerly anticipated, and being more delighted than you hoped you’d be. And yet, there is such a thing as information overload, and the obvious solution isn’t so obvious. Proof is at the end of the book, in which we see more than two centuries of verbal wrangling. So: em, thon, zier, they? We haven’t heard the end of it, but maybe we’re close; certainly, reading “What’s Your Pronoun?” couldn’t hurt. What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She by Dennis Baron (He / Him / His), c.2020, Liverlight, $25.95 / $34.95 in Canada, 304 pages.
