Rob Lowe is a good writer and gossipy, so if you like celebrity memoirs, pick up this 2011 treat--no waiting at the library. A lot of stars don't give you the details of life on set or fully cop to their bad behavior, but Lowe, 20+ years sober lets it fly.
Good--or just weird writing:
It's eighty degrees in the middle of winter and the sky is the color of a baseball mitt. To my left, eight guys in a pickup truck are blasting accordion music, like what you might hear at a circus. To my right is a trailer hauling cars. One of them is the Batmobile. Welcome to Los Angeles, kid.
That's the scene when young Lowe arrives in Southern California after spending the first dozen or so years of his life in Ohio.
Name dropping--he meets gay muppeteer Richard Hunt at a Dodgers game and ends up in the audience when Kermit hosts The Tonight Show for Johnny Carson.
Woe is I--
I was (and still am) aware of the good fortune that hard work has brought me. I don't want to seem ungrateful.
I could buy good fortune and hard work, but he lost me at hard work being the sole reason for Lowe's success.
Bad behavior--
I'm also capable of pushing the boundaries of dating technology. I've taken to using MTV as a sort of home-shopping network, and it's not beneath me to call up to get the contacts on the sexy dancer in the latest Sting video. I find C-SPAN to be useful in this regard as well. Seeing Oliver North's secretary, Fawn Hall, being sworn in during Iran-Contra, I made a note to track her down.
and
Then, when I am almost out of earshot I hear my future Austin Powers costar Robert Wagner say [to Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, and Prince Rainier]: "Ya know, guys, I think that kid's banged every one of our daughters."
He also shares his disappointments (and sour grapes) over how things went, like when The Outsiders movie was a stripped-down version of the book (did you know there's a "complete novel" re-release?) and how he seemed to have been deliberately separated from the rest of the cast in Emmy promotion and pay, which is why he left halfway through.
It's a memoir, but there's a thread of "my boys are the age I was when" that's sweet and touches me because although I don't have kids, I'm about the age Lowe was when he wrote the book and have similar feelings of nostalgia for and distance from my youth.