The Rants - Hardcover

Miller, Dennis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385478046 ISBN 13: 9780385478045

Publisher: Doubleday, 1996

Synopsis

There's good news for those that rage at the  evening news, shake their heads at Washington's  business-as-usual, or watch as politicians carom from  social crisis to political crisis to economic  crisis: Dennis Miller is back, and he means to shake the  nation by its lapels.

Miller respects no  boundaries. Whether the subject is dope-addled  baseball players who can no longer swing their bats,  do-nothing politicians who devote their careers to  creating meaningful sound bites, or the nation's  resigned acceptance of violence as a way of  American life, these thematically arranged monologues are  funny and angry. More significantly, they shatter  the conventions of comedy by simultaneously making  us laugh, think, and seethe.

About this title

About the Author:

Dennis Miller is a regular on the comedy circuit and was the host of the Emmy Award–winning talk show Dennis Miller Live. He's also known for his stand-up specials, Saturday Night Live, and numerous movie appearances. Miller is the author of several books, including The Rants and I Rant, Therefore I Am. He and his wife live in Southern California.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Talk show host Miller (as in HBO's Dennis Miller Live) reconnoiters the sorry state of the nation with a gathering of raving, raging monologues. ``Now,'' he usually starts, ``I don't want to get off on a rant here,'' whereupon the sage of cable TV walks the walk and talks the talk. Commenting on current events, Miller is a latter- day Will Rogers on speed. He's hot. He's cool. He's truly hip as he steers a course between laughs and logic. The editorial fustian covers everything from infomercials to schadenfreude, activism to parenthood, with a nod, inevitably, to the O.J. trial. He knows about men and women. ``Women don't like guys who are dangerous,'' he instructs. ``Women want us to think that because women are trying to kill us.'' There are references to multitudes who have achieved a few moments of fame and are scratching for the rest of their allotted 15 minutes. (Who will be able to identify Gary Busey, Dave Del Dotto, or Rico Suave a year from now? Who can identify them now?) The rap doesn't eschew all of the Seven Dirty Words, either, but, hey, ``it's a madhouse out there,'' says Miller. He feels ``like Heston waking up in the field and seeing the chimp on top of the pony.'' So don't expect Leno or Letterman (though there is an occasional decalogue not unlike a Letterman list). In Miller's Manichaean view everything is either Good or, more likely, Bad, and all is painted either black or blue. But as he admits in his standard tag line, ``that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.'' Much of the mockery is ephemeral hipster babble at a fever pitch, but there's also common sense and, okay, even a nugget of wisdom in what could be, if one stretches the point, a kind of self-helper for those simpletons whom Miller calls ``mooks.'' -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0385478046
• ISBN 13: 9780385478045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 207