Everyone knows, when you’re at the airport, you’re allowed to buy any trashy book you want.
Because it’s “for the plane.”
I always have a book in my bag that I brought from home. The one I’ve been meaning to read. But once I get to the airport I admit to myself that that book isn’t going to be any more inviting once I’m crammed into seat 22F than it would be in my living room.
So, even though there’s no chance I’ll read them all — or maybe even any — once I finish with Elle, Allure, Marie Claire, US, Life & Style, whatever else I haven’t read at the nail salon, and (ha ha, as if) the Wall Street Journal, I load up on options. Usually:
- one non-fiction book about forming new habits, changing your brain, or becoming a business titan;
- some novel that’s been on top of the bestseller list for 4 years and now has the “soon to be a major motion picture” cover — which depresses my husband so I have to rip it off; and,
- if I spot one, please God, a celebrity-on-drugs biography.
Enter Mackenzie Phillips.
As part of my new goof-off-offline agenda, I just started reading her recently published autobiography, “High on Arrival,” which I bought about 4 airplane trips ago. It’s been sitting in the “meaning to read because I paid for it” pile ever since.
The book is a shocker.
The big scandal that made news when it hit the shelves was that Mackenzie had sex with her father, Papa John Phillips. But that’s not so shocking. Come on, he was from the 60s. What do you expect from a guy who wears caftans and shoots up entire poppy fields in a day?
To me, the shut-yo-mouth get-outta-town surprise is that Mackenzie Phillips was hot.
Now THAT is news to me. I watched every episode of One Day at a Time and always thought of her character, Julie, as the homely sister. Barbara, played by Valerie Bertinelli, was the pretty one.
Believe me, I’m a lifelong fan of skinny. Skinny I get. But I did not get her look. She was all gums and bad bowl haircut and terrible dance moves, which you saw every episode in the show open.
It confused me to no end that Julie was constantly juggling dates and phone calls from boys, and had fights with her mother over whether she could move in with them. How was she in a position to move in with a boy, much less go for a soda with one? There was an episode called “Julie Goes All The Way.” I thought, come on:
Who would want to go all the way with her? I mean, other than Schneider?
I figured the show had an all-blind writing staff or something. But it turns out Mackenzie Phillips was hot and I just couldn’t tell. She had a zillion boyfriends in real life, and slept with Mick Jagger. He didn’t need to have sex with any fuglies. Even when he was stoned out of his gourd.
I’m still trying to parse this information. I keep flipping open to the smooth photo pages in the middle of the book and looking at the pics from her teenage years, squinting to see the pretty. No, all I see are the gums. I still don’t get it. Maybe it’s like a Shelly Duvall kind of thing.
I’m not being catty. It’s just screwing with my understanding of traditional beauty standards.
Now, see, this book has given me a lot to think about. So is it really that trashy?
Seriously: no, it ain’t Tolstoy. But although I’m prone to book shame — especially when I’m toting around a read like this, or something with Tori Spelling on the cover, or, worse, the stock chick-lit illustration of high heels and cocktail glass — I don’t consider a book true trash as long as it gives good story.
If the writing is truly awful and cliche and contains sentences like, “she was mad as a hornet when she found him cheating on her,” then it’s trash. In which case, I can’t get through it. I keep it with the receipt to return it until the 31-day window has expired, and then I put it down in the basement for a neighbor to poke through while they’re doing laundry.
But if it’s a page-turner, then for me, as a writer, there’s a real takeaway.
Writing doesn’t have to be provocative and “literary” to be worthwhile. You’d be surprised how many books that scream “beach read for dummies on Dummy Beach” can teach you something about smart storytelling.
Got any other good, would-only-buy-it-at-the-airport reads to recommend? Please. Comment away.
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I have the guy equivalent of your reading list. Just replace #2 with a trashy detective novel.
I choose the longest line at the market so I have time to read the trash-papers before I get to check out.
She is exquisitely homely, but then so is Jagger.
Love the blog and thanks for the 5 secrets!
If trash means easy, anti-intellectual reads, then I’m in, but not in the same genre as your generation. I’m sad that Robert Parker has died. He wrote well, but his books didn’t exactly tax the brain, even with the literary allusions. Same with James Patterson, David Balducci and others like them. I have to confess I didn’t even know who Mackenzie Phillips is/was. And Danielle Steele turns me off after one page. I guess I’ll take violence over gooey, but only if it’s well done.
I haven’t read any James Patterson, but after reading that article about him in the NYT I now bow down to him as a god of prolificacy.
I’ve been dying to read that book–although I will not pay money to buy it. Luckily, I saw her on Oprah, so I’m probably not missing much. The Tatum O’Neal book is my all-time fave of the celebs-on-drugs genre.
I can’t believe I haven’t read Tatum’s book yet. They should sell the two together as a “recently relapsed and arrested” set.
There was the “Young Woman in the Media Business Trilogy” (comprised of On The Verge, Up & Out and Bundle of Joy?) that I found to be quite compelling.
They contain no references to Papa John but were written by Papa, Ariella.
Now that trilogy isn’t even a pass-it-on-when-you’re-done kind of read. It’s way higher: a keep-forever-on-the-shelf collectible. Cannot be mentioned in the same post with a ghostwritten celebrity bio.
Your airport reading list is EXACTLY like mine. Airport and the pool–my two excuses for buying US Weekly and reading about Heidi’s surgeries. I’ll admit, I’m kind of a trashy novel slacker, so I’ll look to you for some recommendations!
I read this aloud to my husband, laughing out loud with tears in my eyes. He wasn’t reacting, so I stopped to check in with him and he said he couldn’t picture Mackenzie Phillips, so I turned the computer screen so he could she. His response, “Yeah, she ain’t all that good looking.”
.-= Alma´s last blog ..I’m Dissing my List and Playing BIG =-.
Laura – so so funny! I know – when I found out Mackenzie slept with Mick Jagger, I was, like, WTF?
Boy, did I love Thornbirds — way back in another lifetime!
Does the Twilight Saga count? (Anything that has the word “saga” in it just count, right?) Because I read all 4 books in less than 2 weeks – thousands of pages that flew by – and I didn’t even feel like I had to hide the covers!
You don’t have to hide Twilight, because youpre “checking it out for your kid.”
I do love me a saga.
I like that Schneider is included in the “family photo” at the end of the show open.
A couple years ago “House of Hilton” gave me some great examples for how true prosperity is not always about the amount of money you are throwing around (the family didn’t feel they could help support an uncle’s chemo treatment, due to their own expenses with Paris and NIcky)
Oh Laura — this was true brilliant funniness…
and maybe McKenzie’s hot boy dating life is a good reminder that the “beauty trap” has a lot less to do with what men think than women. Just ask Heidi Spencer — according to her, the 10 surgeries were for her inner self (as she already had Spencer)
Oh, those Hilton bitches. I think the lesson there is, true prosperity is not about how rich your family is — it’s about how closely related you are and whether you’re in the will.
I think I just had an “aha moment” about Heidi: she had 10 surgeries not for her inner self, and not for her outer self, but for her book deal self! She wants to write a tell-all about being a surgery addict. Duh.
Oh how I love a multigenerational epic. Or “intersecting lives.” Thorn Birds? Awesome. Erich Segal? Doctors? The Class?
I could never do Danielle Steele – even with the bar set at its lowest, I couldn’t get past her writing. Every heroine’s hazel-green eyes shone with excitement.
You may or may not enjoy High on Arrival – it’s not badly written. Pretty OK, really. But I have a particular interest in it because of the sordid drug theme, which is my favorite of all themes. The part where she sleeps with Papa John is only one page.
I love trash too. Reading Roses right now – People called it a Multigenerational Epic and that gets me every time. LOL. Tori Spelling another fave. LOVED Agassi’s Open. Would that be considered Trash? Probably not because he’s a guy and an athlete. And now I’ll have to DL “High on Arrival” on the Kindle thanks to your review. I kind of figured once I knew she slept with her dad, I’d be bored by the actual book. But, perhaps not. 🙂
I grew up reading Danielle Steele & Nora Roberts novels (thanks mom for ruining my perspective on relationships) and I just can’t go there anymore. But memoirs and epics I can still do.
.-= alexis martin neely´s last blog ..And now I see =-.
Now that’s a truly great point. Crazy to think it would’ve been on the same table with “Nanny Diaries” and the “Shopaholic” series.
Here’s something I like to think about. When Pride & Prejudice first came out, it was just chicklit.
.-= Elizabeth Potts Weinstein´s last blog ..Why I’m Letting Go of Things That Make Money =-.