Now, back in print, the original sports humor book that put the target on the backs of every player who showed too much pride. SEX, DRUGS, SPORTS & WHIMSY takes aim at the Boston sports scene in particular where players often meet the cruel fate of fandom.LONG TIME AGO BOOKS is happy to present the return of SEX, DRUGS, SPORTS & WHIMSY. Be sure to read Volume 2 as well as LIES, STATS & WHIMSY or DEATH, TAXES, & SPORTS WHIMSY.
The second collection of humorous sports essays by William Russo continues his assault on Boston sports figures from baseball, basketball, and football. With scathing wit and irony, no sports vanity or deadly sin is spared.
Whether sports shall turn out to be heroic in our lives, or whether that station will be held by any other endeavor, these pages must show. To begin our sports fanaticism with the beginning of 2012, we record that we can hardly wait for the fetid events of 2011 to fade away. At twelve o'clock on January 1st, we may remark that a new clock will start on the Sports Circus Maximus. In consideration of the near pleasantries we have catalogued in this volume, we may cry over spilled milk, or we could notice the smell coming from the fireplace indicates a rally squirrel fell down the chimney after Santa Claus departed. None of these is as pungent as the aroma that remains from the ending of 2011. A few unlucky fans in Boston sports still smell the stench of fried chicken and spilled beer. Sports fans are generally destined to be unlucky in life. One's favorite team rarely wins the championship. And second, we have been privileged and cursed to see the hobgoblins and ghosts attached to the venal and vain athletes in all sports. Our sports fanaticism is instructive at worst. We are taught by drop-outs of high culture. This year provided more rot and garbage than usual, ranging from lockouts in two major sports, sex abuse scandals at two major universities, and endless examples of venal sin from major athletes, including an NFL player doubling as a drug kingpin in Chicago, and the Antichrist seemed to be everywhere on the playing field. We have been reduced to the pathetic cry of, "Wait till next year!" No one could have predicted how eventful the year has been. Our values may have been verified by the result, but our sports heroes have been falsified by history. We have been exposed to exposing athletes, more than can be found after an oil spill or last call at the saloon. Monta Ellis, Michael Vick, and Shaun White have taken 'l' out with their pubic hairs. As we wait for the New Year and the clock to strike twelve, providing us with new hope, we may also wonder if a Houston Asteroid could be in our American League future.
Now you can follow the entire season, month by month, through humorous essays, written as events unfolded, which reveal the root causes as the 2011 Red Sox folded. The 2011 season for the Boston Red Sox began with great optimism, peaked with confidence, and collapsed with a great thud. The Red Sox pieces could never be put together again once Theo Epstein's Humpty Dumpty team fell off its perch. These essays about the hullabaloo over the eggshell catastrophe serve as a whimsical autopsy. William Russo traces the team from its spring training, through the rough start, to midseason recovery, to the inevitable final game loss, hanging by the thinnest thread, only to lose and to watch Tampa Bay come back from a 7 run deficit to win their game. This book does NOT discuss games to analyze the Sox, but looks at the stars to determine the truth. Red Sox stars did not shine in 2011, with one or two exceptions. Collecting his essays from MTR Media and Bleacher Report websites, Russo humorously follows the chronology of the decline and fall as it happens off the field. Starting with optimistic spring training where some thought the team would end up with 100 victories, each month of the season is concurrent to the events. Each of the major and minor events of the season is delineated with surgical wit, from visits in Anaheim with Tom Brady to the glorious success of Jacoby Ellsbury, and the vainglorious collapse in September. Yet, the seeds of destruction were there, and this author-cum-coroner saw them unfolding. The events are presented with the humor that draws between baseball and classic literature. Tales of the season may live as part of the folklore of Sox stories for generations to come. Long time professor of sports literature and writing at a college outside Boston, Dr. William Russo provides readers over 100 anecdotal essays, month-by-month, tongue-in-cheek, and with bilious humor. If you enjoyed Russo's scathing humor in his works like Sex, Drugs, Sports and Whimsy, volume 1 and 2 as well as Rajon Rondo Superstar, you will enjoy reading and re-reading his take on tales, like Norse sagas, that become instant additions to the pantheon of Red Sox legends. This coroner's report is filled with bloody cynicism, brain-dead corpses, and the always-entertaining Red Sox players finding out that being a zombie isn't any fun.
Confessions of a Transylvanian is a one-of-a-kind, backstage look at the greatest cult movie phenomenon of all time - the live Rocky Horror Picture Show - told by those who lived it. The highest-rated Rocky Horror book on the market, Confessions is a moving snapshot of life in a Rocky Horror cast that captures the grit, language and teenage angst of a group of fishnet-clad performers as they explore a world where the only rule was: Don't dream it. Be it.
First published in 1987 with the aim of deepening understanding of the place of women in the cultural heritage of modern society, this collection of essays brings together the previously discrete perspectives of women's studies and the social history of sport. Using feminist ideas to explore the role of sport in women's lives, From Fair Sex to Feminism is a central text in the study of sport, gender and the body.
