Author: Mick Middles Publisher: Empire Publications (UK) ISBN: 9781909360242 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
There has never been an artist quite like Chris Sievey or his 'fantastic' comedic alter ego, Frank Sidebottom. Whether pushing for chart action while fronting his former band The Freshies or allowing the bombastic Sidebottom to wreak anarchy and chaos on television, radio or with the Oh Blimey Big Band, Sievey's mischievous muse seemed to obey no boundaries. Yet it was only after Chris's untimely demise in 2010 that the extent of his infl uence became fully apparent. The emergence of Jon Ronson's film, "Frank," Steve Sullivan's exhaustive documentary "Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story" and the bizarre erection of the Frank Sidebottom statue in his native Timperley last October -- before 2,000 devotees -- all combined to make this the most extraordinary stories of recent decades. Yet Chris found difficulty in being Frank. The people whose careers he helped begin or inspire: Chris Evans, Mark Radcliffe, Caroline Aherne, Steve Coogan, Jon Ronson to name a few -- all went on to a achieve a degree of fame and fortune that Chris never managed. That said, Frank was so successful, compared to his other projects, that Chris often seemed estranged from his own comic creation In this unorthodox biography, legendary journalist Mick Middles draws on his thirty year friendship with Sievey to gain further insight into this most charismatic of artists. Family members, fellow musicians, fans and acquaintances help trace Chris's career from Timperley to Hollywood.
Author: Jon Ronson Publisher: Picador ISBN: 1743531346 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
"Frank works as satire, as memoir, as comedy bromance, but it works mostly because it is just so weird" Guardian In the late 1980s Jon Ronson was the keyboard player in the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band. Frank wore a big fake head. Nobody outside his inner circle knew his true identity. This became the subject of feverish speculation during his zenith years. Together, they rode relatively high. Then it all went wrong. Twenty-five years later and Jon has co-written a movie, Frank, inspired by his time in this great and bizarre band. Frank is set for release in 2014, starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Lenny Abrahamson. Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie is a memoir of funny, sad times and a tribute to outsider artists too wonderfully strange to ever make it in the mainstream. It tells the true story behind the fictionalized movie.
Author: Elisabeth Basford Publisher: The History Press ISBN: 0750997001 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 317
Book Description
Princess Diana is seen as the first member of the British royal family to tear up the rulebook, and the Duchess of Cambridge is modernising the monarchy in strides. But before them was another who paved the way. Princess Mary was born in 1897. Despite her Victorian beginnings, she strove to make a princess's life meaningful, using her position to help those less fortunate and defying gender conventions in the process. As the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, she would live to see not only two of her brothers ascend the throne but also her niece Queen Elizabeth II. She was one of the hardest-working members of the royal family, known for her no-nonsense approach and her determination in the face of adversity. During the First World War she came into her own, launching an appeal to furnish every British troop and sailor with a Christmas gift, and training as a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital. From her dedication to the war effort, to her role as the family peacemaker during the Abdication Crisis, Mary was the princess who redefined the title for the modern age. In the first biography in decades, Elisabeth Basford offers a fresh appraisal of Mary's full and fascinating life.
Author: Jon Ronson Publisher: Pan Macmillan ISBN: 1447202503 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
What if society wasn't fundamentally rational, but was motivated by insanity? This thought sets Jon Ronson on an utterly compelling adventure into the world of madness. Along the way, Jon meets psychopaths, those whose lives have been touched by madness and those whose job it is to diagnose it, including the influential psychologist who developed the Psychopath Test, from whom Jon learns the art of psychopath-spotting. A skill which seemingly reveals that madness could indeed be at the heart of everything . . . Combining Jon Ronson's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is both entertaining and honest, unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges. 'The belly laughs come thick and fast – my God, he is funny . . . provocative and interesting' – Observer
Author: Jon Ronson Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0698155572 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 46
Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Psychopath Test comes a characteristically humorous story of a musician on the margins. In Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie, Jon Ronson reflects on his days playing keyboard for the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band. Frank Sidebottom, best known for performing with a big fake head with a cartoon face painted on it, was a cult favorite in the United Kingdom and is the subject of the new movie Frank, co-written by Ronson and starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson.
Author: Irvine Welsh Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393350983 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 418
Book Description
With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . . .In Bruce Robertson Welsh has created one of the most compellingly misanthropic characters in contemporary fiction, in a dark and disturbing and often scabrously funny novel about the abuse of everything and everybody. "Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing in decades."—Sunday Times [London] "[O]ne of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit, and force, and in a voice which those alienated by much current fiction clearly want to hear."—Times Literary Supplement "Welsh writes with such vile, relentless intensity that he makes Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the French master of defilement, look like Little Miss Muffet. "—Courtney Weaver, The New York Times Book Review "The corrupt Edinburgh cop-antihero of Irvine Welsh's best novel since Trainspotting is an addictive personality in another sense: so appallingly powerful is his character that it's hard to put the book down....[T]he rapid-fire rhythm and pungent dialect of the dialogue carry the reader relentlessly toward the literally filthy denouement. "—Village Voice Literary Supplement, "Our 25 Favorite Books of 1998" "Welsh excels at making his trash-spewing bluecoat peculiarly funny and vulnerable—and you will never think of the words 'Dame Judi Dench' in the same way ever again. [Grade:] A-. "—Charles Winecoff, Entertainment Weekly
Author: Jon Ronson Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0698172523 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
Now a New York Times bestseller and from the author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. 'It's about the terror, isn't it?' 'The terror of what?' I said. 'The terror of being found out.' For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job. A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control. Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws - and the very scary part we all play in it.
Author: Måns Mosesson Publisher: Hachette UK ISBN: 0751578991 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 380
Book Description
The intimate biography of the iconic DJ who was lost too soon. Tim Bergling was a musical visionary who, through his sense for melodies, came to define the era when Swedish and European house music took over the world. But Tim Bergling was also an introverted and fragile young man who was forced to grow up at an inhumanly fast pace. After a series of emergencies resulting in hospital stays, he stopped touring in the summer of 2016. Barely two years later, he took his own life. Tim - The Biography of Avicii is written by the award-winning journalist Måns Mosesson, who through interviews with Tim's family, friends and colleagues in the music business, has intimately gotten to know the star producer. The book paints an honest picture of Tim and his search in life, not shying from the difficulties that he struggled with.
Author: Jon Ronson Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451665970 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
Now a major film, starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, and Jeff Bridges, this New York Times bestseller is a disturbing and often hilarious look at the U.S. military's long flirtation with the paranormal—and the psy-op soldiers that are still fighting the battle. Bizarre military history: In 1979, a crack commando unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known laws of physics and accepted military practice, they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and—perhaps most chillingly—kill goats just by staring at them. They were the First Earth Battalion, entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back—and they’re fighting the War on Terror. An uproarious exploration of American military paranoia: With investigations ranging from the mysterious “Goat Lab,” to Uri Geller’s covert psychic work with the CIA, to the increasingly bizarre role played by a succession of U.S. presidents, this might just be the funniest, most unsettling book you will ever read—if only because it is all true and is still happening today.
Author: Richard Blum Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0470554053 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
One of the fastest ways to learn Linux is with this perennial favorite Eight previous top-selling editions of Linux For Dummies can't be wrong. If you've been wanting to migrate to Linux, this book is the best way to get there. Written in easy-to-follow, everyday terms, Linux For Dummies 9th Edition gets you started by concentrating on two distributions of Linux that beginners love: the Ubuntu LiveCD distribution and the gOS Linux distribution, which comes pre-installed on Everex computers. The book also covers the full Fedora distribution. Linux is an open-source operating system and a low-cost or free alternative to Microsoft Windows; of numerous distributions of Linux, this book covers Ubuntu Linux, Fedora Core Linux, and gOS Linux, and includes them on the DVD. Install new open source software via Synaptic or RPM package managers Use free software to browse the Web, listen to music, read e-mail, edit photos, and even run Windows in a virtualized environment Get acquainted with the Linux command line If you want to get a solid foundation in Linux, this popular, accessible book is for you. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
Author: Mick Middles
Author: Jon Ronson
Author: Elisabeth Basford
Author: Jon Ronson
Author: Jon Ronson
Author: Irvine Welsh
Author: Jon Ronson
Author: Måns Mosesson
Author: Jon Ronson
Author: Richard Blum