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Emporium
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THE OAKS A Town, A Boy, and The Sixties Rip Rense’s lyrical, moving epic of an oppressed boy growing up in Beatles-echoing, 1960's bedroom community America. REVIEWS, READER COMMENTS, SUMMARY, SAMPLE CHAPTER There was something oppressive, malignant in Charlie Bogle's idyllic world. Something he did not understand. Something that left him feeling loathed, exploited, worthless. Something that he was instructed to introduce as. . .his mother. Well, at least there were the oaks. They were outside his window at night, and in the fields he walked through on his way to school, in ratty old tennis shoes with cardboard in the soles. They were his pillars, his bulwark, his friends, his family, and it crushed the boy when he finally had to leave them. “The Oaks” is the story of Charlie's sad and heroic struggle as he grows up in Beatles-echoing, 1960’s California bedroom-community America. A miraculous, almost magical country town where lions roar like morning roosters, rockets break the late night sky, and the gigantic summer days are made of nothin'-to-do. Rense writes with grace and poignancy in this lyrical, touching novel. |
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OUT OF PRINT. REVISED EDITION COMING
IN 2009
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THE LAST BYLINE "One of Los Angeles's Top 40 works of fiction." ---California Writer. REVIEWS, SUMMARY, PREVIEW NOTE: OUT OF PRINT. REVISED EDITION COMING Murder, maniac editors, union wars, drug overdoses, heart attacks, even sex---they all figure into reporter Charles Bogle's life at the Los Angeles Chronicle. Who killed Elmer Cruickshank, Ruler of the Cosmos? Who keeps trying to kill Bogle? Who or what is killing the Chronicle, and newspapers in general? Byline charts a calamitous year in reporter Bogle's life---part Raymond Chandler and maybe part Bugs Bunny. The Chronicle is co-star, a broke and broken-down paper where ghosts of damned reporters are trapped inside lobby gargoyles, and mechanical typewriters, smoke, and swearing fill the city room. Bogle treads a line between reluctance and valiance---when all he wants to do is write dog and cat stories. The reader is taken on a grand tour of 1980 L.A., meeting the likes of Jumping Jimmy the street saxophonist, rumpled old newsman sage, Shag Hanson, and The Back Row. This rambunctious book is a grand tale of what newspapers used to be, and will never be again. |
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NEW!
"A more blistering evisceration of culturally bankrupt pop culture does not
exist."---Horace Frobischer, San Francisco. |
BAD WORDS: THE LINGO CZAR DICTIONARY! THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION--- Measured by its language. . . Here it is---210 acid-dripping pages exposing rigidly conformist slang, pin-headed outbursts, 'cool' patois, abominable cliches, infantile drivel, smug rejoinders, mandatory peer-enforced buzzwords and idiot-speak that Americans are spewing from their 500-word vocabularies as their knuckles hang ever closer to the sidewalk. Rip Rense, who has lone access to the mysterious Lingo Czar, relays The Czar's rulings with customary wit, insight, and mildly dyspeptic analysis. AT LAST! . . .YOU'VE READ THE "LINGO CZAR" COLUMNS IN THE L.A. TIMES AND RIPRENSE.COM. . .NOW 210 PAGES OF THE CZAR'S RULINGS. . .IN A BLOOMIN' BOOOOOK. |
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ROTFL!
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LESS THAN SATISFYING
ENCOUNTERS WITH HUMANITY! THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION--- aka Less Than Satisfying Encounters with Humanity! At last, for the first time, Rense's ROTFLOL long-running column is a fully illustrated book! You read it in the L.A. Times, and for the past seven years in The Rip Post and Rense.com. Now comes LTSEWH, the book! With absolutely deranged illustrations by the great JAMES FERRIGNO. . . Maybe it was the Starbucks guy who asked me if I wanted any water in my coffee. Maybe it was the gorgeous mother who lifted her blouse in a Whole Foods Market to allow her three-year-old to play squeezey-slappy with her opulent breasts. Maybe it was the guy talking loudly about circumcision at the next table, over spaghetti marinara. Maybe it was the caffeinated doofus who yelled, "Daughters? Daughters are cool!" In the end, Rense was left with no choice but to write about these. . . YOU'VE READ LTSEWH COLUMNS IN THE L.A. TIMES AND RIPRENSE.COM. . .NOW 230 PAGES OF 'EM. . .IN A BLOOMIN' BOOOOOK. LESS THAN SATISFYING ENCOUNTERS WITH HUMANITY. LOL OR YOUR MONEY BACK! |
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GET THROUGH 2009 IN CYNICAL STYLE The Rip Post OUTPOST! Persevere Gear! All your "Persevering Through Relentless Absurdity" product needs! T-shirts, hats, tote bags, coffee mugs, mouse pads! ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Click any pic to visit The Rip Post OUTPOST! Amaze your friends! Baffle your enemies! Amuse your pets! BACK TO PAGE ONE |
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