Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark by Cassandra Peterson

(hb; 2021: memoir)

From the inside flap

“On Good Friday in 1953, at only eighteen months old, Casandra Peterson reached for a pot on the stove and doused herself in boiling water, resulting in third degrees burns over 35 percent of her body. She miraculously survived, but burned and scarred, the impact would stay with her and become an obstacle she was determined to overcome. Feeling like a misfit led to her love of horror. While her sisters played with Barbie dolls, Cassandra built model kits of Frankenstein and Dracula, and idolized Vincent Price.

“Casandra left home at fourteen and supported herself as a go-go dancer. By age seventeen, she was performing as the youngest showgirl in Las Vegas, where run-ins with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tom Jones helped her grow up fast. A chance encounter with the ‘King’ himself, Elvis Presley, inspired her to travel to Europe where she worked in film and toured Italy as lead singer of a band. She eventually made her way to Los Angeles, joining the famed improv group, The Groundlings, honing her comedic skills alongside Phil Hartman and Paul ‘Pee-wee’ Reubens.

In 1981, as a struggling actress considered past her prime, Cassandra auditioned for a local LA station as a hostess for their late-night horror movies. She got the job as ‘Elvira,’ never imagining it would lead to fame and a forty-year career.. .”

 

Review

Yours is a burn-through, smart, timely and entertaining read, sometime humorous, often serious, and charmingly feminist in its subject matter─as far as seriousness goes, Peterson was raped, something that only the darkest-hearted people joke about, and Peterson isn’t that sort of entertainer. The telling of that horror is balanced with practicality, maturity, and balance, one that doesn't tank the levity of much of the rest of the work.

Yours is one of the best, waste-no-words memoirs I’ve read in a long while, one worth owning.

I Know I Am, But What Are You?, by Samantha Bee

(hb; 2010: nonfiction/humor book)

From the inside flap:

"Critics have called her 'sweet, adorable and vicious.' But there is so much more to be said about Samantha Bee. For one, she's Canadian. Whatever that means. And now, she opens up for the very first time about her checkered Canadian past. With charming candor, she admits to her Lennie from Of Mice and Men-style love of baby animals, her teenage crime spree as one half of a car-thieving couple (Bonnie and Clyde in Bermuda shorts and braces), and the fact that strangers seem compelled to show her their genitals. She also details her intriguing career history, which includes stints working in a frame store, at a penis clinic, and as a Japanese anime character in a touring children's show.

"Samantha delves into all these topics and many more, in this. . . unabashedly frank collection of personal essays. Whether detailing the creepiness that ensues when your mom is your lesbian lover, or recalling her girlhood crush on Jesus (who looked like Kris Kristofferson and sang like Kenny Loggins), Samantha turns the spotlight on her own imperfect yet highly entertaining life as relentlessly as she skewers hapless interview subjects on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. . ."


Review:

I laughed often and loud at her astute, warm observations and spot-on, quirky wisecracks, as well as her as relatable but strange life.

Excellent, comedic, n0-filler book - I Know is worth checking out, and blasting through in a sitting or three.

It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me, by Rodney Dangerfield

(hb; 2004: autobiography)

Review:

Lightweight but inspirational read, heavily peppered with many of Dangerfield’s trademark, self-deprecating jokes.

Born in Babylon, New York, in 1921, Jacob Cohen (who later changed his name to Jack Roy, then to Rodney Dangerfield) had a crappy childhood. At fifteen, he started writing jokes – to quote Dangerfield: “I was always depressed, but I could tell a joke and my jokes were funny.”

Later, when he became an adult, he spent many working the club circuit, often broke, honing his act, until, later in his life, he became a star.

Dangerfield includes a notable number of non-explicit drug and sex experiences in his real-life narrative, some of them funny, some of them superfluous -- and brief.

Dangerfield also mentions people he worked with, gave a break to, or whose shows he was on: Ed Sullivan, Redd Foxx, Johnny Carson, Lenny Bruce, Jim Carrey, Ron Jeremy, Dean Martin, Andy Kaufman, Flip Wilson, Jerry Seinfeld, Robert Townsend, Jeff Foxworthy, Oliver Stone, Roseanna Barr, Andrew Dice Clay, Rita Rudner, Tim Allen, and Sam Kinison (to whom Dangerfield gives a heartfelt memoriam).

Dangerfield died on October 5, 2004, following a heart surgery complication and brief coma.

Dangerfield's comedic sense of timing makes It's Not Easy a smart, show business-informative, funny, inspiring and streamlined book.

Check it out.