Friday Book Blog Hop: Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss

 

Content warning: Suicide ideation, adult situations, profanity

Genre

Autobiography, Memoir, Music

Buy Link

https://amzn.to/3fOFofh

Disclosures: 

I will earn a small commission from Amazon for every book purchased through the above link.

Blurb:

LEGENDARY founding KISS drummer Peter “Catman” Criss has lived an incredible life in music, from the streets of Brooklyn to the social clubs of New York City to the ultimate heights of rock ’n’ roll success and excess.

KISS formed in 1973 and broke new ground with their elaborate makeup, live theatrics, and powerful sound. The band emerged as one of the most iconic hard rock acts in music history. Peter Criss, the Catman, was the heartbeat of the group. From an elevated perch on his pyrotechnic drum riser, he had a unique vantage point on the greatest rock show of all time, with the KISS Army looking back at him night after night.

Peter Criscuola had come a long way from the homemade drum set he pounded on nonstop as a kid growing up in Brooklyn in the fifties. He endured lean years, street violence, and the rollercoaster music scene of the sixties, but he always knew he’d make it. Makeup to Breakup is Peter Criss’s eye-opening journey from the pledge to his ma that he’d one day play Madison Square Garden to doing just that. He conquered the rock world—composing and singing his band’s all-time biggest hit, “Beth” (1976)—but he also faced the perils of stardom and his own mortality, including drug abuse, treatment in 1982, near-suicides, two broken marriages, and a hard-won battle with breast cancer.

Criss opens up with a level of honesty and emotion previously unseen in any musician’s memoir. Makeup to Breakup is the definitive and heartfelt account of one of rock’s most iconic figures, and the importance of faith and family. Rock ’n’ roll has been chronicled many times, but never quite like this.

Ornery Owl's Mini Review

Rating: Five out of five stars

The book is easy to read and, oddly enough, Peter is a very down-to-earth guy. It was interesting reading about his time with Kiss, but what I really enjoyed was learning about him as a person. I'm not a fast reader, but I tore through this book in three days.

The First Line/Book Beginnings

Have you ever tasted the barrel of a .357 Magnum that’s halfway down your throat?

https://www.rosecityreader.com/

https://readingismysuperpower.org/

The Friday 56

The three of them were probably fucking each other in Jamaica.

http://www.fredasvoice.com/

Book Blogger Hop

10th -16th - Do you consider yourself a bookworm or a reader? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

I used to be a definite bookworm. Oddly enough, I feel like doing book reviews and being a writer myself has turned me into more of a reader. 

https://www.coffeeaddictedwriter.com/p/blog-page.html

Monday Night Movie: The Virgin Suicides

 

Genre:

Drama, Romance

Content Warning:

Suicide

Rating: 

Four out of Five Stars

Buy Link:

https://amzn.to/3cycwGj

Disclosures:

The following is a copy of my review on Amazon for this movie with a few additional statements added.

I will receive a small commission from Amazon for any purchases made through the buy link.

This post contains discussions of suicide.

Ornery Review:

As someone who attempted suicide in my teens, I watched this movie with interest. I was raised Catholic like the female protagonists and became rebellious as a teenager. In fairness to my parents, they were not as ridiculously strict as the parents in this film, but we had a lot of arguments.

My heart broke for Lux, the character played by Kristin Dunst. The boy she trusted abandoned her. He was hell-bent on seducing her, and then when he got what he wanted he dumped her. The same thing happened to me and it was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as pushing me to attempt suicide. 

I really hated Trip for his behavior. When you have sex with someone and then your attitude is "after that it was weird and I didn't care how she got home," you don't have the right to say you loved that person again, ever. You don't treat people you love like that, period. 

Lux was in a vulnerable state. She had been drinking before she and Trip had sex, and then she fell asleep. He left her lying out on the football field alone. Anyone who treats another human being like that is trash. This character really made me angry.

After Trip dumped Lux, she began behaving in a hypersexual fashion, seducing as many willing guys as possible and having sex with them on the roof of the family's house. The film's narrator and his friends watch these liaisons through a telescope, making moronic comments.

What people don't understand is that girls who behave in a hypersexual fashion are reacting to trauma of some kind. Rather than showing compassion, these girls are called unkind names and exploited by men and boys willing to take advantage of them. The other boys were not as awful as Trip but still behaved deplorably acting like the Lisbon girls were prizes to be won rather than troubled human beings who needed a friend.

Girls and women are not objects to be ogled, prizes to be won, pets to be kept, or mysteries to be solved. We are human beings. The film does a decent job of expressing the sometimes extremely painful frustration of being a teenage girl. This is a commendable goal as teenage girls are the demographic whose troubles are least likely to be taken seriously.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

The Cheese Grates It: Me Too

Image copyright Andrea Arroyo

This is a response to a post by Juliet James on Medium

Honestly, Noah sounds like a horrible human being.

I have plenty of these stories myself. There was a guy named Shawn who I went to junior high and high school with. The girls all called him Scummy Shawn. He was always grabbing our breasts and buttocks. When we would go to an adult about it, we were brushed off as being overly sensitive. Boys will be boys. Just tell him to stop it.

One day Shawn was with a guy named Charlie. Charlie was a bit of a doofus, but he was harmless. Shawn grabbed my buttocks and told Charlie "grab her tits, dude." 

Charlie blushed and said no, he didn't think that would be cool.

Shawn grabbed my breast, and I wheeled around and kicked him in the marbles. He doubled over and groaned that I was being childish. I told him I'd become downright infantile if he ever touched me again. He never did.

I wish I hadn't had to resort to that, but I'm not sorry I did it.

A couple of years later, I ended up in the mental hospital after a half-assed suicide attempt. There were a lot of things that led to this. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had type 2 bipolar disorder, which didn't help. The factors leading to this incident were the fact that my aunt and my two cousins had moved in with me, and the cousin who was my age picked on me constantly. I was bullied at school, and my boyfriend, who was two years older than me, coerced me into letting him take my virginity. He then dumped me.

I was treated abominably at the mental hospital and promised myself that I would die before I ever ended up in one of those places again. I have kept that promise.

Looking back on it, the majority of sexual experiences in my life have been coercive. The guy who ended up raping me after I broke up with him used the come-on line "you don't want to be celibate for the rest of your life, do you?"

In fact, I would have been fine with being celibate for the rest of my life. I don't like sex very much. However, I have a very low self-esteem and still carried in my mind the idea that a woman without a man was somehow not a complete person. This is an extremely toxic idea and leads to women remaining in abusive relationships, but many of us have been fed this idea from a very young age.

It is distressing to me that there are enough people in this country who think a woman being assaulted matters so little that we now have "President" Pussy-Grabber in the highest office.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~