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| "Adult/High School -Punk-rock musician Tabb (of Furious George) writes about his early years. Each of the episodes is tightly plotted and paced, offering almost equal doses of pathos, growing rage, and laugh-out-loud humor. Tabb was bullied not only by his father, but also by thuggish, anti-Semitic classmates during his elementary and junior high years. He writes of taking beatings from an obnoxious group of suburban kids for several years before getting revenge. Another bully, incredibly, was a blind boy able to pulverize the sighted and physically fit Tabb who, credibly, was disbelieved by the adults to whom he turned for help. In spite of all this blood and hate, the story isn't relentlessly grim: he tried to protect his two younger brothers by working the three of them into a team; his mother was both affectionate and concerned for him; and several of his juvenile enemies have their own personal miseries exposed. Tabb portrays his own ignorance-and occasions of righteous innocence-and bypasses anything like self-pity and goes straight to irony, cultural parody, and black humor. The vulgar language and crude behavior (usually on the part of others) are fitting to the tale. Not only will teens find this easy to read in itself, but it's perfect to pair with K. L. Going's Fat Kid Rules the World (Putnam, 2003) and other novels that feature strong characterizations and give due respect to serious subjects without losing any opportunity for wisecracking in the process.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA" —� School Library Journal |
| �Fistfights, bodily functions and raucous comedy fill this thin, episodic childhood memoir from seminal New York City punk musician (Furious George)/journalist (The New York Press)�. Tabb�s wry recollections of growing up will be darkly funny and all-too-familiar to anyone who still smarts at memories of middle school.� —�Publishers Weekly |
| �Playing Right Field: A Jew Grows in Greenwich is a violence-filled, expletive-laced memoir about Tabb's apparently painful eight years here. It's brilliant.� —�The Greenwich Time |
| �George Tabb has mastered the ideal formula for writing and, by extension, for punk rock existence�. This book is so funny that while reading it in a coffee shop a week ago I started laughing out loud and immediately had to turn to my friends and read them the story of George watching a friend crucify a frog.... That may just be the most hysterical story ever written�. Reads more like a novel or autobiography than a collection of essays. You need to get this.� —�Maximum Rock N� Roll |
| �George Tabb�s strength springs from being one of the most unpretentious punk veterans of the last quarter century out there. Hell, he may be the only one�.From adventures in little league to routinely getting pummeled by kids in suburban Greenwich and his own father, Tabb draws readers into his own existence, allowing all who dare a peek into his isolated, disturbing, hilarious and rebellious moments.� —�Resonance | |
Surfing Armageddon: Fishnets, Fascists, and Body Fluids in Florida George Tabb
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| Paper | 5" x 7 1/2" | 280 pgs. | ISBN: 1-932360-99-9 | List: $14.95 | 05/1/2006 | Available on Powells.com, Amazon.com, from your local BookSense store, and bookstores everywhere!



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Featuring: Only the first ever streaming video trailer for a Soft Skull book...Now available for pre-order right here (you'll get a confirmation e-mail, but the book will ship as soon as we get it, about a month before it will be available in the stores!
About the book: Picking up where George Tabb�s critically acclaimed memoir Playing Right Field: A Jew Grows In Greenwich left off, we find George and his family of five brothers and sisters on their way to the south�s greatest cesspool, Tallahassee, Florida. The Tabb family is led by their father, Lester, a Brooklyn born, power hungry, bipolar lunatic. Also, by the boy�s evil stepmother, Cybill, who has more personalities than her namesake. They make their way to The Sunshine State from Greenwich Connecticut with pricesless antiques and many horses in tow. Also with two children driving the extreme milage, each having only been behind the wheel of a motor vehicle once. The story really gets going when George discovers why his father has decided to move his family from the richest suburb in The United States to a dumpy southern town. Because he purchased Water Oak Plantation. A run down reminder of why the south had lost the civil war. A place where land was so cheap that Lester�s 14 acres in Greenwich more than paid for the 146 acres he purchased in Tallahassee. As well as the Sunshine Children�s Home For The Mentally Retarded. A facility for children with problems only the state could handle. Of course the elder Tabb�s first plan, which he immediately put into action, was to evict what he called �The Retards�, and then to remodel the ancient Southern Mansion into the greatest dream he thought he ever had. The rebuilding of Tara, the mansion from �Gone WIth The Wind�. The property was perfect with its rolling green hills and mansion atop the land, with Lester able to see and control everything in sight from the balcony of his white column surrounded bedroom. Of course, George Tabb�s life went from worse to rock bottom. But with humor and fresh signs of puberty firmly in hand, George did what any other teenager from his bizarre background would do. He discovered The Punk Rock. After repeated viewings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which were followed by late night visits to New York City�s legendary punk clubs like CBGB and Max�s Kansas City, Tabb discovered the likes of The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Blondie, and of course, his future path. The fact that his father moved him to Floriduh after his real mother and stepfather turned him on to this stuff only led young Tabb to immediately purchase a black motorcycle jacket, and become the outsider�s outsider. Tabb began the 11th grade in a southern public school. Soon, the bus beatings and violent fighting between Tabb, his peers, and his father were back in full swing. But all wasn�t lost. While living on The Plantation with his father, young George learned the value of building wooden fences miles and miles long, and that gasoline, poured directly on a fire to illegally burn construction waste didn�t quite work like he had hoped. He also learned the term �Nigger,� and that his father believed they were put on God�s good earth to be his personal slaves. George�s father actually allowed his �employees� to live on his land in run down shacks with no running water, so they could perform such important tasks as paving his mile and a half driveway, pick vegetables, clear swamp land, and most importantly, call him �Sir.� Or as they would say, �Suh!� And sometimes even �Mas-Suh.� Helpless to do anything about this, George would watch his father would put on his white suit and white hat every morning, and cringe in horror as his father, The Cow Jew, would crack his bullwhip and tell his �employees� to work faster. Tabb, while away from home at school, or at his many part time jobs, got more and more involved in Rocky Horror and Punk Rock, and actually got to date the quarterback�s cheerleader girlfriend. Of course, things did NOT go as planned. When college arrived, and Tabb, not even bothering to graduate from High School, began his five year stint of a four year program that he never finished at The University Of Florida in Gainesville, things grew from crazy to almost normal. So what if his first dorm-mate�s father was an Imperial Wizard of The Ku Klux Klan? So what if the Born Again Christian�s convinced Tabb that masturbation was a sin he was going to hell for, and he believed them? So what if George was 19 years old, and still a virgin, because the only facts he knew about sex were from from a Time/Life children�s book of cutout figures where �the man plants a seed� inside a woman? So what if Tabb�s first time in the sack was such a disaster the he was told firmly that he had to take off his underwear? So what if Tabb began Florida's first original punk rock band that helped coin the phrase �hardcore� because he and his friends couldn�t play SLOW enough? So what if the fights with his father became so intense it ended with an ax, blood, and gore galore? This is the second in a series of books about George Tabb. �The Professor Of Punk,� according to the late and good friend of Tabb�s, Joey Ramone.
About the author: George Tabb grew up as one of the few Jews in Greenwich, CT, which became the subject of this first memoir, Playing Right Field: A Jew Grows in Greenwich. He moved to Florida as a teen where he went on to start one of Florida�s first hardcore bands, Roach Motel, who later toured with Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys. After quitting college, Tabb moved to New York where he continued to play in punk bands, such as The Gynecologists, Iron Prostate and Furious George. George Tabb wrote a humor column for Maximum Rock N� Roll and later the NY Press for more than a decade. He was in the direct vicinity during 9/11 in New York, and his resulting health problems were the subject of a People Magazine profile. George Tabb now lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Wendy, a jewelry designer. He currently writes a column for the Phoenix New Times.
Visit the official website:
From the book:
From chapter 1: Goin� South So there I was, just having finished the tenth grade at Greenwich High School, in New York City�s richest suburb, when I found myself driving a motor vehicle for the second time in my life. The first time had been about a week earlier, when I had driven my father�s brand new Suburban to a local supply store to pick up some moving materials. After my youngest brother Sam and I loaded up the mini-truck, the first thing I did was back the thing up into a stonewall fence. Probably built at least two hundred years earlier. We both hopped out of my father�s newest toy to survey the damage, and assess the beating I was bound to receive. But to our surprise, the only damage done was to the strewn about stones, and a tiny scratch on The Surburban�s trailer hitch. Now, eight days later, as Sam sang along to �Sweet Transvestite�, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and �Sonic Reducer� by The Dead Boys on a cassette my mom and stepfather, Nick, had made for us, I felt my father�s brown and tan vehicle pull back and forth and from side to side along I-95. South. It wasn�t like I hadn�t felt it do that before. The fact was, it had started doing that pulling thing about one minute after I had smashed down that rock wall. But I sure as shit wasn�t saying anything, and Sam never even knew. My father, Lester, upon driving The Suburban a couple of days after my �accident�, felt the problem and brought it to the shop. He was told the beast had a fractured A-Frame. Surprisingly, he blamed my stepmother, Cybill, who swore up and down it wasn�t her who did it. But the two black eyes she received made her look mighty guilty. In the Tabb family eyes, anyway. * As Sam, me, and The Suburban swung back and forth through the state of Delaware, so do did the horses we were towing. Every few seconds I could see one or two of them stick their heads out their tiny uncovered windows in the trailer behind us, and shoot me dirty looks. And Sassafras, our aging two hundred pound plus Great Dane, seated in the back seat, wasn�t very happy either. She kept throwing up the kibble and canned meat she�d eaten for breakfast. So the car smelled like rotten dog food. And piss. Because our father, who had installed Citizen Band (CB) radios in all the Tabb vehicles traveling south demanded we not stop for hundreds of miles at a time. So I found myself trying to pee into coke bottles. The first few times went okay, while peeing to Susan Sarandon singing �Toucha Toucha Touch Me�, I found myself getting excited, and my penis getting stuck in that tiny bottle opening. �Take the wheel, Sam,� I tell my brother, as we travel at seventy-five, at the slowest, trying to keep up with our stepmother the speed-queen. �I don�t know how to drive,� yells Sam, thirteen years old, and takes the wheel anyway. I try to pull the head of my penis out of the coke bottle, and the more I yank on it, the stiffer it becomes. �Holy fuck,� screams Sam, as a Semi almost hits us from the right side. I peer in the rear view mirror and now there are two horse heads, both with burning flames in their eyes, staring at me. After an almost second crash with another Semi, this time on the left, I grab the wheel back from Sam, and just let the coke bottle hang between my legs, hoping it will fall off soon, and not caring about the piss that�s going to spill all over the newly carpeted mini-truck. �Breaker one-nine,� I suddenly hear my father�s voice yell at Sam and I as I finally gain some control of his stupid car and horses. Sam picks up the CB radio handset and talks back to my father, �breaker one-nine, go ahead King Chief�. King Chief. My father�s chosen name for his CB �handle�. Ours was �Sweet Transvestite�, which, of course, drove the rest of the family nuts. But I wouldn�t answer to anything else. �Breaker one-nine,� my stepmother, Cybill, would say on Channel 19, to which we were all tuned into, �George, try and keep up, you little fuck.� Of course I�d ignore her and blast the tiny cassette player that was going through batteries we�d stolen from my dad�s desk faster than Sassy could eat her vomit back up on the back seat. �George,� my sister Diana says, from our orange Datsun 510 wagon, that would later become mine through a series of unfortunate occurrences, but had started with a hot girl in short-shorts licking an ice-cream cone, �It�s Diana, can you hear me?� Sam picks up the handset and tells her of course we do. I, of course, hit Sam. We only answer to Sweet Transvestite. In tribute to our newest hero, Dr. Frank-n-Furter, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a movie my mom and Nick had taken us to see in the city�s West Village, where it had started running at midnight only shows. Of course we didn�t understand much about the movie, but the one thing we did get was the naked girls. All over the place. On the screen, and in the aisles of the theater. Changing from one outfit to another. At first it felt like my mom and Nick had taken us to some porno show, where they were finally going to sell us into a child-sex ring, like my stepmother and father had always promised they�d do. But soon we began to really like the movie, and now, as we sang along with the Ampex cassette, we dreamed of wearing leather underwear and fishnets, never mind the high heels. Yup. Healthy American boys. �This is King Chief,� we hear my father yell at us again, as we turn over the tape and listen to �Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth� by The Dead boys, which is midway through the first album. A record Nick had found at the New York public library on Tenth Street and Sixth Avenue, that he thought we�d like. He was wrong. We loved it. It was Sam�s idea to turn the tape over. He figured if I stopped hearing Ms. Sarandon�s voice, maybe the bottle would fall off from between my legs.
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