CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Read It, Eat It, Beat It

Dog Day Reads For Hotdog Needs

by Rick Johnson _.

Summer has generally descended upon us by this time of year like a big, sticky Lawn Furniture Webbing Center, and you know whatthat means. The whole country turns into an iron foxhole, everybody is allowed a sanctioned vacation from Real Life and you're faced with the usual all-or-nothing nature of prickly-heat season. Either you're invited to ten or more cookouts/skinnydips/softball games/minnow bucket races, etc., allatonce, or else everybody's gone to the moon and you're? left minding the melon heap. It's also the time for "summer books," those

It's also the time for "summer books," those flimsy creatures of creative inattentive ness that help keep the boredom level below thepoint of flossing with a shotgun. A book must pass these simple tests before it's considered true summer reading material: 1) Can it crush most common insects? 2) Will the style adapt to brief, betweeninnings bursts of eye move ment? 3) Is it resistant.. to sand and the prying looks of dead fish? and 4)

If it has a plot, is it dumb enough to be followed during a heatstroke? If the answer is yes, you've got a genuine literary turbine vent to help dispell the convalescent murmurs of the dog months.

Some ambitious types, many of whom become air-conditioner repairmen later in life, are able to deal with fiction even when their brains have been fried into ocean frontage. While I refuse to advocate the reading of romantic/ -

Gothic steam tables like Dark Secretions or Mork And Mandingo, I'm not against trash in general. And a must for crap-write fans is Best Fiction From Easyriders, edited by Dirty Pete. Here you'll findall your favorite tales of bikers stomping, doping, raping, torturing and killing— all that fun stuff that makes bikers real summer guys! In a similar abscessed vein is Kampus, by James E. Gunn', a "mind-expandingtrip to the college of tomorrow" where a goofy student's idea of cutting class is to bring a chainsaw to

''AMERICATHON" FUCK PROVES THERE'S LIFEAFTER FUEL-LINE FREEZE-UP

Picture this: Uncle Sam's got trouble with a capital T. Fuel is running out. America is nearly bankrupt. Wayne Newton has to auction his coyote ranch. There's another crisis in the Middle East and John Ritter has gone from watching Chrissy jiggle to juggling Swiss bank accounts as President of the United States. But fear not! Vide Jerry Lewis, some greaseball decides to hold a telethon in a last-ditch effort to save baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Lite-Day pantyliners from the clutches of a jogging suit company holding the mortgage to the U.S. of A.

Biology 103, and Running Dog, DonDeLillo's actually excellent novel about a somewhat CREEM-like mag that constantly pursues the fishy area of knowledge that exists between lies and half-truths. OR, you mightjust wantto zone-out with a certified nut-chiller like John D. MacDonald's Empty Copper Sea or even Dallas In Wonderland, where Play girl photog Pat Dallas answers the burning question: can a Hawaiian stud cut the cane with a washed-up model

without goin' coconuts? Haw haw!

If such Earth-stu pitying questions leave your sun-eroded nodes feeling like so many bong-water soaked Cheetos, you may want to resort to reality. Facts don't have to be drastic, -though. TakeEdseis, Luckies andFrigidaires, a collection of magazine ads featuring celebrity endorsements by the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Charlie Chaplin and even J. Edgar Hoover. Not only do you get visual hijinx like airplanes with giant Hershey bars for wings or Humphrey "I'm a tough guy to please" Bogart going apeshit over a lighter ("What response!"), but also now-heavy conceptual clunks like Ronny Reagan accidentally revealing the firmness of his political platform ("You can twist it, bend it, curl it, twirl it...") in aVan Heusen shirt ad. Another goody is Made In America: Eight Great All-American Creations, by Murray Suid and Ron Harris. Although the authors somehow excluded rock 'n' roll and the Mr. Microphone, they do deliver the poop on Coca-Cola, Levi's, television, Superman, Monopoly, McDonald's, King Kong and theFrisbee. Great creations, mere fads or just a clumsy transition? I dunno, go look it up in Fads: A merica's Crazes, Fevers and Fancies by P. O. Skolnick, which covers the stuffed starfish craze of 1897, the talking-back-toOuija-boards fever of 1932 and that zany moment in 1949 when the entire American public flushed their toilets simultaneously and created the 50's.

Still not mindless enough, huh Mr. Sweatsmear? Well, here's what's on my summer reading list this year: Phone Calls From The Dead, where L. A. parapsychologists Scott Rogo and Raymond "where's my bay?" Bayless claim that spirits of the deceased are trying to communicate with us through telephones, telegraphs and amplifying equipment ("Mom! Mom! There's this guy on the phone singing about killing his car!"); Scot Morris' Book Of Strange Facts & Useless Information, a virtual encyclopedia for bores; The UFO Movie Quiz Book by Jeff Rovin (quick—where does the line "Our vast educational system—now rubble!" come from?) (what movie I mean); Jean Dixon's always helpful 1979Horoscopes For Dogs; The International Guide To Profanity (bite my wicked czavotny, chump); Fold A Banana And 177 OtherThings To Do, J. Erskine's invaluable guide to ideal summer activities such as peeling rocks and listening to sunspots; Schlossberg and Brockman's Pocket Calculator Game Book, for those who'd rather play Fast Eddie, Population Curve Wipe-Out or Dominance/Submission instead of power croquet; and my own personal favorite, Batting And Pitching Averages At A Glance. I mean, did you ever realize that 118-for-609 is. 194, but2-for-609 is .003?! Hegven-sent is the only description for this spine-tingler.

There's probably room here for a few morfe hot reads, but these little kids digging in the sand next to me—cuter 'n pony turds, they are!—have just uncovered this weird, barnacle-encrusted hynk of metal that I want to check out. You know, it's funny, but it looks exactly like a big bronze hand holding a torch!