Dangerous Dan Thoughts and musings on the world

Oprah finally did what she should have done two weeks ago on Larry King: she berated James Frey for his lying memoir. She said all the right things – that she was duped, that he had betrayed millions of readers, and she challenged him on numerous points. For his part, Frey kept clinging to the false but accurate defense. He also blamed his extremely exaggerated portrayal of himself as a rough-and-tough bad boy who’s angry at the world on his addiction and recovery:

“In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope,” Frey said Thursday on Winfrey’s show. “And when I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image.”

Right, so that explains it. If only he had been more introspective, he would have realized that he only spent a few hours in a jail instead of three months as he claimed or that he hadn’t been beaten by the cops. Only with a lot of soul-searching would he have seen the massive factual errors in his life story.

I know, James, I know. Just this morning, I was reminiscing about my time as President of Uganda. After some deep introspection, however, and after I really explored my psyche did it occur to me that not only have I never been President of Uganda, but I’m only vaguely aware it’s somewhere in Africa. I also discovered I have brown hair and that was a shock to me, James, let me tell ya. Introspection is the definitely the way to go for getting basic historical facts right.

This week, the comic strip Fox Trot has been having great fun with the whole Frey debacle. My favorite is the second one which hits on my primary gripe about Frey’s deceptions: his is supposed to be an inspirational story of overcoming addiction, hate, anger, and generally being a horrible person. Only he was never the horrible person he makes himself out to be and so his tale of redemption and how he did it are also false and so are not inspirational. It would be like Paris Hilton writing an inspirational memoir of how she escaped her life of grinding poverty while growing up in the ghetto. Anyway, here they are:

In late October of last year, Oprah featured James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces as the latest entry to her book club. The book is supposed to be a memoir of Frey’s life of booze, drugs, violence, hate, and general malcontentedness… and how he overcame it all. Naturally, it shot to the top of the New York Times best-seller list for paperback nonfiction, Frey has become a celebrity and millionaire, and people are talking about the life-changing experience of the book.

One problem… it seems that in the book, Frey lied about his life… a lot. The Smoking Gun, the investigatory site that loves to obtain court records and mug shots, started looking into the claims Frey makes and found they were embellished to the point of just being false.

A pivotal section of the book had Frey hitting a beat cop with his car while on an alcohol and crack bender, being belligerent to the officer, getting beat down by the cops, and then spending three months in a county jail. The actual police report, however, shows that he just ran his car up on the sidewalk while drunk (and not hitting anyone), was very cooperative with police, and spent maybe five hours in police custody before being bailed out. He also incorrectly describes the jail and the officers and attorneys who were involved don’t know what he’s talking about.

In another instance, he inserts himself as a crucial participant in the tragic train-accident deaths of three teens in his town even though police reports never mention him and the parents of one of the teens say he had no relationship to their daughter. Oh, and he shifted the time of the accident to about five years earlier.

Other parts are simply and utterly unbelievable. Take this bit featured on Oprah’s site:

I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something warm dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut. I open them and I look around and I’m in the back of a plane and there’s no one near me. I look at my clothes and my clothes are covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood. I reach for the call button and I find it and I push it and I wait and thirty seconds later an Attendant arrives.
How can I help you?
Where am I going?
You don’t know?
No.
You’re going to Chicago, Sir.
How did I get here?
A Doctor and two men brought you on.
They say anything?
They talked to the Captain, Sir. We were told to let you sleep.

Riiiight. If you’ve ever watched just one episode of Airline on A&E, you know there’s no way in hell a man “covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood” would ever be allowed to board a plane. It’s gross, it’s a health hazard, and the rest of the passengers would riot due to the smell alone. Not to mention that from his condition (later on, he also says he’s in so much pain he can’t even walk), he’s in dire need of medical attention. A doctor wouldn’t stick him on a plane, he’d stick him in a hospital. I mean, really… this passage doesn’t even pass the sniff test for believability and this is what’s on Oprah’s site. Her billions of dollars must be making her gullible.

There’s more to the falsification and it’s pretty dang interesting. Frey essentially wrote a work of fiction that he’s passing off as a true account of his life. He makes himself out to be this evildoer who was filled with hate and whom everybody hated when people who knew him said he was actually a nice and fairly popular well-liked guy.

TSG was apparently willing to be relatively nice until Frey threatened legal action. So it’s now lowering the boom on Frey by releasing all the info it’s uncovered and carefully laying out the inconsistencies between that of the documentary evidence and witness accounts and that of the book’s stories. It’s a long, but entertaining read.

What effect it will have on Frey remains to be seen. Oprah’s site has a page devoted to the book and is currently soliciting people whose lives have been changed by it to write in for a possible appearance on a future show. Frey has also written a screenplay for a movie based on his “life” that, he says, is being co-produced by Brad Pitt and has several big name actors vying the role of bad boy James Frey. I don’t like fabulists, so I don’t mind a bit if it all evaporates due to TSG’s thorough work.

More so because Frey advocates a method of detox and getting over addiction that is directly contrary to the successful methods of 12-step programs. He pushes a euphemism of Just Say No, called Hold On. Basically he says you just need willpower and you should purposely put yourself in situations in which you’ll be tempted by the addiction of your choice. Not only is this stupid, it’s downright dangerous for fragile people who don’t have the necessary willpower to resist. It’s all the more galling coming from somebody who apparently didn’t have the addictions he purports to have, or at least didn’t have them to the degree he claims.

Stylistically, looking at quotes and excerpts of the book, Frey is annoying and pretentious. He capitalizes things that shouldn’t be capitalized, like ‘Criminal’ and ‘Addict.’ It also has a staccato flow that’s like constantly tapping the brakes of a car. Just let it run.

The most entertaining part by far is this:

Three months after his Michigan arrest, Frey began his studies at Denison University, a 2100-student liberal arts school in the central Ohio town of Granville. It was here, according to “A Million Little Pieces,” that Frey majored in substance abuse. He blacked out and vomited daily, frequently bled from his nose due to cocaine ingestion, and even pissed in his bed for the first time. This abuse of alcohol and drugs exacerbated Frey’s rage, anger, and extreme pain, a self-destructive cocktail that he named “the Fury.”

That’s right, he named his anger “The Fury!” This can only make me think of Mystery Men‘s Mr. Furious, described here as a “Normal human with poor anger management. Mr.Furious claims to have superhuman strength when he loses his temper. Much of the time, he is lying, but on at least one occassion, he did demonstrate some level of increased potency when enraged.” Sounds like Mr. Frey to me.

James Frey in costume

If you haven’t checked out PETA’s anti-fishing site, then you haven’t seen real crazy in action. It’s the usual tripe you would expect from PETA and they try to use scare tactics to keep you away from fish (they’re filled with toxic radioactive bacteria that poop mercury!). The really entertaining part, though, is their leaflet “Your Daddy Kills Animals.” Here’s a look:

Take a moment to look at the maniacal look on the father’s face and laugh.

Here’s what the back of the leaflet says:

Imagine that a man dangles a piece of candy in front of you. You love candy so you reach for it. But, as you grab the candy, a huge metal hook stabs through your hand and you’re ripped off the ground. You fight to get away, but it doesn’t do any good… You’d feel really scared, wouldn’t you? That would be an awful trick to play on someone, wouldn’t it?

But guess what?

YOUR DADDY PLAYS THAT SAME WICKED TRICK ON FISH AND FISH GET SCARED TOO!
…
Your daddy waits until hungry little fish are tricked by what looks like a tasty lunch.
…
Since your daddy is teaching you the wrong lessons about right and wrong, you should teach him that fishing is killing and killing is wrong.

Until your daddy learns that it’s not “fun” to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He’s so hooked on killing defenseless animals THAT THEY COULD BE NEXT!

PETA… bringing families closer together.

I can just imagine a little kid coming home and hiding Muffin and Spot in the closet to keep them away from dad and then breaking out in tears when he asks where they are. Here’s how it would go:

Dad: “Where’s Spot? It’s suppertime”
Kid: “*sob* I… don’t… *snot choke*… want you… *snot choke*… to kill them! *sob , sob*”
Dad: “WHAT?!”

PETA clearly gets many donations from family therapists.

One of PETA’s other sites is JesusVeg, which tries to make a religious case for the vegan life. Given FishingHurts, though, this concerns me. Jesus was, after all, a fisher of men and several of his disciples were fishermen. He also went fishing and helped fishermen bring in enormous hauls of fish. And then there was that time when he separated the loaves and fishes, which everybody chowed down on.

Kid: “Jesus… is… *snot choke*… coming after… Muffin! *sob , sob*”
Minister: “WHAT?!”
Kid: “He already went after the fish! *snot choke, sob, sob, sob*”

PETA clearly gets many donations from atheists.

Don’t just stop your PETA tour with FishingHurts and JesusVeg, though. Check out their other fine sites!

There’s:

–Chris P. Carrot’s 2004 presidential site featuring the slogan “Eat me!”

–The Lettuce Ladies featuring chicks who tour the country wearing lettuce clothing, begging the pick-up line, “Why don’t we get some Ranch, go back to my place, and see where things go?” Most of the Lettuce Ladies are babes and you need to check out their turn-ons and turn-offs. Kayla (who is a non-babe and actually looks a little man-ish) says she’s turned off by “flesh-breath” and also “runs in her nylons.” It’s the important things, people! I wonder if eHarmony has “flesh-breath” as a preference option?

Lettuce Lady Brandi. Two-Island dressing anyone?

–MilkSucks. Its take-off on Garbage Pail Kids is not to be missed.

-Then, finally, there’s the anti-fast food sites, McCruelty, Murder King, Kentuckey Fried Cruelty, and the best, Wretch’s Old Fashioned Murderers featuring Wendy as Chucky.

For the record, I ate my first veggie hot dog this past weekend. Or rather, I ate my first half of a veggie dog as the second half went uneaten… it wasn’t very good. It would have been much better with some mysterious pork and beef parts in it. That’s the problem with vegetarianism – animals are so darn tasty!

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has set its sights (tee-he) on Florida’s new “shoot first” law. In case you’re not familiar with it, a law was passed that allows citizens to shoot people who are assaulting them before first attempting to run away in a desperate panic, scream in a desperate panic, and cower in a fetal position in a desperate panic. Naturally, gun control folks don’t like this law because it may increase the use of guns in killings. Granted, the increased use will be against violent assailants, but it’s with GUNS! Can’t have that. Thus, the group has launched a tourist awareness program to alert visitors to Florida of the increased risk of being shot.

So, pay attention! If you’re a prospective murderer, assailant, or rapist, you’re now more likely to get shot in Florida. The Brady Campaign is providing a valuable service in alerting violent felons to the potential danger to their safety. Everybody else can ignore it.