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Guidance from the wise ones

'Give yourself a hug' and other deep thoughts from advice books

By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer

Published on Sunday, Jan 18, 2009

We all know these are uncertain times, right? And when we face uncertainty, we have to turn to the wisdom of others.

Something like, ''The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.''

That's a line from the band Lizzy Borden, and part of a compilation called Time Flies When You're in a Coma: The Wisdom of the Metal Gods.

Time Flies is one of many, many books that land on my desk, all attempting to give me guidance. Workman Publishing in particular seems to specialize in guidance, and to have me very much on its radar.

I'm not sure how helpful all this information is. But I can't help but look and ponder.

 

For example, there's The Bro Code, a collection of the rules for men, attributed to Barney Stinson, the character played by Neil Patrick Harris on How I Met Your Mother.

Example: ''A Bro shall stop whatever he's doing and watch Die Hard if it's on TV.'' That even has corollaries: ''Ditto The Shawshank Redemption.'' ''Also Top Gun, The Big Lebowski and the first half of Full Metal Jacket.''

''And porn. Duh.''

Open Hearts, by actress Jane Seymour, does more than promote her heart design (which is also part of a line of jewelry, although to me it looks more anatomical than inspirational).

In an introduction to the book, Seymour urges, ''Keep it by your bed. Consult it when the going gets tough. Send it to a friend who is going through a bad time.''

Then you can soak up the quotations — ''mixing the thoughts of inspirational writers with those of ordinary people'' — like, ''Give yourself a hug/when you feel unloved/Give yourself a hug/when people put on airs/to make you feel a bug.''

You may especially need to look at Open Hearts after dipping into 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, an intermittently humorous answer to titles like 14,000 Things to Be Happy About.

More than one person has over the years given me the Happy About book. I have no
idea why. Maybe because, when I dipped into the Miserable About book, I kept muttering, ''Yeah, that one, too.''

From one page of misery: ''Graphing your bowel movements/Books you can't finish/Being trounced by a five-year-old at a board game . . . Not getting the joke . . . Urinal conversationalists . . . Being waitlisted for college/Beingwaitlisted for heaven.''

And I left out some of the really miserable ones.

Having been bummed by that book, you could console yourself with some music. But there's advice about that, too. Music critic Tom Moon has 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener's Life List, which boldly crosses musical genres, offers anecdotes about the artists and how the recordings were made and thinks that Jimi Hendrix's version of Hey Joe is better than ''the most superhuman superlative'' can describe.

I thought at first that it was great bathroom reading, or at least a way of comparing and contrasting my own music collection. Little did I know that it was much deeper.

''As January 2009 rolls along, many . . . are looking for easy ways to broaden their cultural experiences, change their lives, or connect with family,'' a publicist for the book declared. ''The self-help shelves are filled with ideas for facilitating that openness, but music is much more visceral and therefore more immediate. An NPR contributor, Tom Moon is an authority on music as well as someone who understands the desires of American people.''

Maybe I should keep it by my bed, right next to Jane Seymour's book.

Only I may have some other reading to do. Nancy MacDonell's In the Know: The Classic Guide to Being Cultured and Cool tells me that I should read Madame Bovary, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Kafka's Metamorphosis, Orlando, Tender Is the Night, The Portable Dorothy Parker, The Bell Jar, In Cold Blood, Lolita and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

And I may need 100 years to get all that reading done. Ba-dum.

In the Know also advises on 10 works of art to be familiar with, 10 films to know about, ''five designers' designers,'' five cocktails to order and 10 CDs to have in your collection.

I was hoping that all 10 would also be in 1,000 Recordings. Alas, no. So there's that much more work for me. I prefer simplicity and clarity.

Hence the attraction of The Order of Things: Hierarchies, Structures and Pecking Orders, by Barbara Ann Kipfer. It offers things like ''grades of lumber used in construction,'' champagne bottle sizes and a chronological listing of the monarchs in the United Kingdom.

I guess that doesn't quite qualify as advice, unless you're a monarch in waiting and trying to pick a cool name. (Indulf has already been used, by the way.) So I may be more likely to grab Rules of Thumb: A Life Manual, which consists of ''brilliant guesstimates, shortcuts and a few shots in the dark.''

It tells me how to swat a fly: ''Wait for the fly to land on a hard surface and moves its front two legs to its face in a feeding or cleaning action, then swat.'' Which assumes I am close enough to the fly to watch its two legs.

Or — getting back to Jane Seymour again — ''four hugs a day are the minimum needed to meet a person's 'skin hunger.' '' Or, on fashion, ''if it doesn't match anything you own, don't buy it. It will never match anything you own.''

Which at least opened up some closet space.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

 

We all know these are uncertain times, right? And when we face uncertainty, we have to turn to the wisdom of others.

Get the full article here.


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