From ‘You Idiot’ by Nate Gangelhoff

Man, have I

found some great bookslately. We’re talking about books that havegrammatical mistakes that literally make you wince, books that take a terrifying approachto parenting based on literal reading of thebible, crazy books that wail about seeing the devil everywhere, and plenty of otherliterary masterpieces that tackle subjects themainstream media is evidently too scared toexamine themselves.Here’s the deal, though—it’s pretty mind-numbing to actually wade all the way through a book called “Larson’s Book of Rock” or “e Truth About Power Rangers.” Not only is it arguably a waste of time, but the process involves trudging through 40 pages of inane, stilted writing to find the one goofy paragraph that makes you crack a smile.So in a nutshell, I want to review these absurd books I’ve scored over thelast few months but I don’t want to actually read them. e question is—is that wrong, to grade a book that you haven’t actually read? I say… no!To understand why, consider the case of 60 Second Previews. You’ve probablyheard it or seen it in connection with a move review before— “‘A rollicking rollercoaster ride for the whole family! Magical!’, says Jeff Craig of Sixty SecondPreviews”; that sort of thing. But guess what? Jeff Craig doesn’t even watch most of the movies he reviews! He watches a

preview

for them—hence the name—has some people help him out with research as needed, and then puts together a blurb thatthe studio can use for promotional purposes. According to Time, he “seem(s) toexist mainly to service the studios with glowing quotes to hype their latest releases.”Roger Ebert once used a column to ask his readers, “Has anyone ever actually seen Jeﬀ Craig of ‘Sixty Second Previews’ at a movie? For that matter, does anyoneknow what ‘Sixty Second Previews’ is? I ask in all sincerity,” and got the following response: “Jeﬀ Craig is the host of the thing, but since the program comes on CD,a month at a time, he apparently hasn’t actually seen most of the movies -- thus‘previews,’ not ‘reviews.’ Still, his gushing about an upcoming movie he hasn’t yetseen ends up being used as blurbs in movie ads.”Now, I don’t want to just give glowing reviews, but I do like the style. Less

Reviews of BooksI Sort OfSkimmed Through

From ‘You Idiot’ by Nate Gangelhoff

work, more rock! Or something of that nature. Anyway, that’s the format we’regoing with here: these book reviews are based not on a critical reading but on anuncritical skimming, coupled with internet research, studying the covers, reading other peoples’ reviews, and so on. Way easier for me!You’ll probably say, “wait, why should I trust your review when you’readmitting upfront that you didn’t even read the goddamn thing?” Well, to appease you, I will also include Amazon review excerpts (presumably written by people who actually devoured the entire book) so you will be getting a fair and balancedsummary that I am reporting and you are deciding on. Fair enough? I thought so.

Do Cats Have ESP? by Jeane Dixon

My Review:

Wow, I finally found a book that could be trimmed down to one word. In this case,that word is, “No.” I mean, c’mon— “Do Cats Have ESP”? at query wouldn’teven get you very far in a room full of drooling stoners. ese kinds of questions—this and, say, “Can Goats Teleport?”— aren’t even worthy of a thoughtful post-bong-rip pause. e answer is clearly No Goddamnit, so don’t bother asking in thefirst place.Ms. Dixon, however, thinks that the answer is Yes and she was furthermoreable to convince a book publisher to pay her a presumably decent sum to sort-of explain why over the course of a light 108 pages. Want to hear one example she uses to prove this feline ESP? Well, checkit out— she used to have a cat that she named Mike the Magicat, and one daythis Magicat brought home another cat. Jeane’s husband took a liking to thisnew cat. e logical conclusion to draw from this remarkable story is that Mikethe Magicat has extrasensory abilities. As Jeane puts it, “If Mike didn’t haveextrasensory perception, how could he have known that Jimmy had his heart on a pedigreed cat?” Ohhhh, burn—hopefully thatsilence you’re suffering through right now isn’ttoo painful, skeptics.e majority of the (short!) book isfilled with similarly inane (and unsourced, Imight add) mentions of supposedly psychiccats that fail to overwhelm the reader. eonly noteworthy passage I noticed in my skimregarded a time she was summoned to Japanto use her mighty psychic powers. A Japanesecompany wanted to know if there was a scandalon their horizon, so naturally they flew overa psychic from across the globe to give thema definitive answer. Much simpler and moreaccurate than doing an internal investigation or

From ‘You Idiot’ by Nate Gangelhoff

an audit of the books or what have you.Once there, Jeane went into a conference room to explain her psychic mumbo jumbo to the assembled businessmen. She was getting nervous when suddenly acat entered the room. Jeane “talked” to it. e cat responded by licking her, andthen made “sounds that included chirrups and gentle mews.” Jeane then toldthe group her verdict (a guy in the company is completely innocent but will godown in scandal if he doesn’t resign now). She ends the story by concluding, “aninternational incident was avoided thanks to the interception of a very wise andtalkative cat.”I re-read this passage twice and still have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. Hey… that’s actually a decent summary of the entire book!

Other Reviews:

Nothing on Amazon! But someone on Bookcrossing raved, “e Purrrrrfectcatch. e whole house is very happy about this one.” So there you go.

The Truth About Power Rangers &Saturday Morning Mind Control

My Review:

Phil Phillips is best known for his book Turmoil in the Toybox, a bizarre religiousscreed (reviewed in You Idiot #4) that attempted to draw the connection betweenthe devil and My Little Pony, along with a slew of other seemingly innocent andnon-hellish childrens toys.e book came out in the mid 80s, so the targets were all toys of the day:He-Man, Strawberry Shortcake, e Smurfs, and other relatively bland offerings.Aer finishing the book, my second thought (aer, “Jesus Christ I can’t believeI just read that”) was, “Whoa, I wonder if this guy is still around?” I mean, toysnowadays are way more—what’s the word?—X-treme than the ones found in the80s, so presumably Phillips would lose his mind, or at least write a kickass article,if he was still paying attention to them.Alas, I couldn’t find any truly contemporary Phil Phillips books, but I didstumble across a couple of post-Turmoil releases—e Truth About PowerRangers, from 1995, and Saturday Morning Mind control, from 1991.e books are pretty much exactly like Turmoil in tone; Phil did not exactly progress as a writer during the years in between the releases. He still strikes thereader as being a dough-faced, unsmiling prude who bores an audience andis screwy in the head from some kind of childhood trauma (indeed, Turmoiloutlined how Phil jumped into a hole full of sewage as young boy, an event thatin his mind served as the catalyst for his later battles with “spiritual sewage”). Buteven though he’s a searingly dull scold, he’s also one who will occasionally opine