Dibs

This just in:

Victim’s dad gets rights to O.J. Simpson’s book

“MIAMI, Florida (CNN) — A Miami bankruptcy judge on Friday gave the father of Ron Goldman the rights to a book by O.J. Simpson that speaks in hypothetical terms about the 1994 murders of Goldman and Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole.

The book, which the former football star titled ‘If I Did It,’ may hit stores soon — but under a new title: ‘Confessions of a Double Murderer,’ according to the attorney for Fred Goldman, Ron Goldman’s father.”

Could this be the start of a trend? Could the subjects of upcoming books sue to get rights to manuscripts and entirely “reframe the debate” with a new title?

What about reissues?

Will the estate of Ol’ Blue Eyes acquire the rights to His Way: An Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra and reissue the exact same manuscript under the new title Kitty Kelley is a Big Fat Poopy Pants?

Will a disgruntled former JT LeRoy fan sue Bloomsbury claiming fraud, gain the rights to The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and reissue it as I Hate You JT! You’re Nothing but a Chick With Big Glasses and a Lot of Chutzpah! ?

t.A.T.u.

Russia’s most successful recording act ever, t.A.T.u., comprises two young Muscovites, Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova, who were selected at ages 15 and 14, respectively, after massive auditions in 1999 by a producer who thought he could become rich by creating and marketing a teen-girl duo. He was correct. The pair’s astounding success was fueled by award-winning dance-beat singles (the one best-known to English-speakers might be “All the Things She Said”) and CDs and videos that shocked the Russian public by showing Katina and Volkova kissing.

Now Mischa Barton, best-known from TV’s The O.C., will star in a film, Finding t.A.T.u, based on a novel authored by State Duma Deputy Alexei Mitrofanov of the Liberal Democratic Party, according to the Moscow Times. In the film, Barton “will play a Russian girl called Lana, from the provincial city of Yaroslavl, who befriends a lonely American girl living in Moscow, played by Danielle Panabaker. The two girls bond over their shared love” for the duo — then fall in love with each other.

Mitrofanov’s novel, t.A.T.u Come Back, published in 2006, was “written in the form of short text messages.” Producer Leonid Minkovski told the Moscow Times that, when he first heard about the book, “I got excited because I really like t.A.T.u.’s music.” Then he read it: “Minkovski was convinced. ‘I felt there was depth and a feeling of new Russia in this, so we decided to say yes.’ The film’s screenplay … has a different ending from his book, which includes the murder of one of the girls’ mothers, and also changes one of his Russian heroines into an American. The book aimed to show the lives of teenagers born at the end of or after the fall of the Soviet regime….

“The book’s plot hinges around t.A.T.u. because ‘all their songs are about freedom,’ Mitrofanov said. ‘People talk about t.A.T.u. being so depraved, but that is a form of natural self-defense from those who want everyone to toe the line.’”

A shipment of books bound for the pointedly named Montreal bookshop Priape was seized by the Canada Border Services Agency which declared them obscene, according to xtra.ca.

The books included two volumes of Dads & Boys by British artist Josman. In this explicit tale of a hot youth who “seduces” (that’s the word the artist prefers) his hot father, 35-year-old Jack regards 18-year-old Justin with awe: “My son was telling me he too was gay, and to complicate things even more, he was also flaunting his incredible ERECT MANHOOD at me…. In no time I became ROCK HARD behind my towel…. I just stood there admiring the size and beauty of my boys penis. I was filled with pride — and LUST! … A father is not supposed to do things like this with his own son! … I guess it would be a real shame to let these big ol’ BONERS go to waste, huh? … As a proud father, I felt it was my duty and pleasure to give my own son the best blow job he ever had…. If only his mother could see us now. The poor bitch would have a heart attack!” After a golden-showers session, Justin suggests: “Dad … sit on my face while I eat your delicious butt. Mmm, yummy!” In this interview, Josman muses: “Well, I’m fascinated and turned on by incest. I realise that some people may be disgusted…. Alas, I haven’t experienced twins, brothers or father/sons yet, but I live in hope.”

According to xtra.ca, the books “were determined to be obscene” based on certain factors specified by CBSA spokesperson Chris Williams: “The indicators ranged from depictions of incest to sex with pain and sexual mutilation, defecation and vomiting,” Williams explained. Priape purchaser Denis Leblanc “didn’t know the storylines of the books when the store ordered them,” xtra.ca continues. “CBSA says that if a shipment arrives at a border that arouses a border agent’s suspicion … the agent inspects it and checks any titles against a database of previously examined materials…. If the agent finds anything that might be obscene, it is sent to Prohibited Importations Unit (PIU) in Ottawa, where CBSA says specially trained agents examine the material more closely and make a decision.”

In other news, an author who is also a Washington State University professor sued by a student alleging sexual harassment has resigned his post. “Bernardo Gallegos, a professor of multicultural education … is accused of making advances toward a married graduate student in his home in February 2005,” according to the Seattle Times. “In exchange for his resignation, he will be paid more than $87,000 to buy out his tenure, though he will lose some benefits. His salary was more than $132,000 a year.” Heyyyy, even accused criminals hafta eat. Gallegos is the editor of Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity and author of two forthcoming books: Indigenous Narratives, Postcolonial Performances, and the Politics of Identity in Education and An Indian, But a Peon: Criados, Genizaros, and Coyotes in New Mexico.

If you prefer reading about real-world mayhem to reading about made-up mayhem, check out In Cold Blog. It’s brand-new, with international true-crime commentary contributed by celebrated authors including Gregg Olsen, Aphrodite Jones, Katherine Ramsland, Simon Read, Carol Anne Davis, Fred Rosen, Suzy Spencer, Andrea Campbell, Kathryn Casey, Sam Adams, and many more, along with crimeblogger extraordinaire Steve Huff. Hollywood Death Scenes author Corey Mitchell edits the site.

Terry Chimes was a worldwide punk phenomenon as the original drummer for The Clash. After leaving the band, he was replaced by Topper Headon, who was presently kicked out for drug problems, at which point Chimes was asked to rejoin. He toured the US and UK in that capacity. He also drummed in other bands including Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers briefly in 1977, Generation X from 1979 to 1980, Hanoi Rocks in 1985, The Cherry Bombz in 1986 and Black Sabbath on their Eternal Idol Tour in 1987/88. In 1994, he became a chiropractor. As Contactmusic.com reports, Chimes “has started working on a new health book. The rocker … turned his back on music to set up a chiropractic office in Essex, England and now wants to share his health tips with readers. Chimes says, ‘If you can get someone healthy, there’s a satisfaction in that which is profound.’”

Dibs! has received a press release from Cleis Press in San Francisco about an upcoming reading in the city featuring successful West Coast writer Stephen Elliott, author of five books including 2004’s Happy Baby (a novel about a down-and-out masochist which some said was autobiographical). Elliott’s father started contacting the media after Happy Baby came out, claiming that the representations of the creepy father in that book were fictional and not based on him, as Elliott remarked on his own blog: “Here’s something weird. My father, who was an awful and abusive father, is leaving bad reviews of my books on Amazon.com. The most recent one being for Happy Baby, posted under the name Blum732, blum being his last name before he changed it and 732 being the last three digits of his email address. If there’s a lesson here I guess it’s that abusive parents don’t stop being abusive just because they get older. Abusive relationships are psychological in nature and if you know an abuser, someone who lashes out and can’t control their emotions, get away from that person. Cut the cord and never look back.” Raising James Frey’s specter, the press release from Cleis muses: “Fiction or memoir? Stephen Elliott’s blistering new collection inhabits a mysterious area in between. As with all his work, these stories have the raw ring of truth filtered through Elliott’s poetic sensibility.” Ahhh, the raw ring of truth. But filtered, mind you! Filtered!!! Elliott has a new short-story collection called My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up. Its eleven linked stories are mostly told by a masochist who goes from being down-and-out to being a successful West Coast writer. According to Publishers Weekly, the narrator “gets a black eye from Ambellina, who also smothers him by sitting on his face and puts a ball gag in his mouth while they watch Casablanca. In ‘I’ll Love You Back,’ Theo writes with the butt plug that girlfriend Eden has ordered him to wear firmly in place. Between Theo’s granular descriptions of being hurt and the generic, robo-dom quality of the gals who hurt him (distinguished mostly by thickness of thigh and color of hair), the stories all tend to blur together in a sexual vacuum, with funny descriptions of Theo’s improving quotidian in between—which is the point: torture, repetition and teasing are the focus of Theo’s life and his work.” Maybe soon we’ll all inhabit that “mysterious area in between.”

Turkmenistan is the source of our book-news today, as its president Saparmurat Niyazov inaugurates a massive building shaped like an open book, dedicated to democracy in the media. It’s a very attractive building in that old Iron Curtain style: pale and huge, with a door at the top of steps, above which a massive concrete open book is backed by the pale desert sky. It’s ironic because there is no privately owned media in the Central Asian nation, and all four state TV channels broadcast only poems and statements written by Niyazov. “The House of Free Creativity aims to create a comfortable environment for journalists, the government says,” according to the BBC. “But a building devoted to press freedom is an irony in a country where journalism is state-controlled. Turkmenistan has no private or foreign media, and the internet is inaccessible for most people.” Niyazov’s other recent extravagant projects include the building of an ice palace and a ski resort in a desert and the planting of a cypress forest designed to change the country’s climate. “The new building, which glitters in the dark, features high-tech libraries and archives, fountains and state-of-the-art air conditioning and heating systems … to create a comfortable environment for the journalists who work for the state controlled press.” Last month in Turkmenistan, a dissident reporter died in a high-security prison. According to the BBC, 58-year-old Ogulsapar Muradova had been jailed for “anti-state activities.” Her official cause of death was natural causes, “but eyewitnesses said her body bore clear marks of torture.” Read and write on, you poor Turkmenistanites. Someday maybe you will be free.

A huge case involving millions of dollars’ worth of books, stolen from libraries by various thieves including a trained antique-books expert over several years, is rocking New Zealand. Called Operation Pukapuka (the latter is the Maori word for “book”), the case centers around 44-year-old Lee Simpson, who over ten years stole some 2,500 books from libraries at the universities of Canturbury, Lincoln and Christchurch, as well as from the Canterbury Museum, and resold them to shops and collectors. “Simpson gained his knowledge of rare books and manuscripts through his late father, who collected them and worked as a volunteer at the Canterbury Museum,” reports Stuff.co.nz. “Simpson began offending in the early 1990s. Another prolific offender was Lionel Barry Quill, 64, who was jailed after admitting eight charges of receiving stolen goods. Quill often used a series of false identities to sell the goods. The Christchurch District Court was told that between April 1998 and September 2004, Quill made a total of 112 transactions, with sales totalling $37,966. Another family group of thieves admitted charges relating to theft of 660 books, with a face value of $34,000, from Christchurch libraries… The thieves’ modus operandi was almost ridiculously simple. They breached the system of trust by enrolling at libraries using a variety of false identities to borrow books, and once at home, removed any marks identifying them as belonging to a library.” About 1,500 of the stolen books have been recovered, but untold numbers “were sold to overseas collectors on the internet, to be lost forever,” Stuff reports.

You’ve always wondered whom to blame for nurse romances. Well, we’ve got the culprit right here: Lucilla Matthew Andrews Crichton, who using several different bylines including Lucilla Andrews, Joanna Marcus and Diana Gordon wrote 35 novels such as Quiet Wards, The Young Doctors Downstairs, Hospital Summer, Flowers From the Doctor, Healing Time, Nurse Errant, Ring O’ Roses, The Weekend in the Garden, Edinburgh Excursion and The Crystal Gull. But she died last week, and thus you aren’t allowed to say anything bad about her. She was a military nurse herself and joined the British Red Cross at the outbreak of WWII. She wrote much about nursing in London during the Blitz — Ian McEwan drew on Andrews’ work in his Booker-shortlisted novel Atonement. According to the Guardian, her doctor-husband was a drug addict and Matthews had to support their daughter: “She had torn up and burnt her first novel on the night before her wedding – ‘it was dull pompous rubbish and I knew it’ – but she was determined to establish herself,” so she tried again. “The first version of The Print Petticoat, based on her experiences as a wartime nurse, had been rejected by six publishers, one of whom suggested that it was too harrowing a reminder of the grim years of the second world war. She rewrote the book with a lighter touch and introduced a romantic love affair, and it was published in 1954. It was the year her husband died… She wrote vividly about nursing the injured from the Battle of Britain, delivering babies while bombs fell… When her nurses home was hit by a V2 bomb in 1945, she grabbed two things from her room: her eyelash curlers and her file of notes for the books she wanted to write.” Andrews “was fond of both whisky and cigarettes (having been encouraged to take up smoking by her doctor husband) and was famed for her elegance and enthusiasm for hats.”

Dressing up as Stuart Little or the Cat in the Hat is paltry compensation for not being allowed to dress up as a witch, bat or ghost for Halloween — but that’s what a North Carolina school is forcing students to do. At Stokesdale Elementary, holiday parties that include references to actual holidays as traditionally celebrated by actual human beings have been banned. Now, students must “enjoy” themselves at “seasonal” parties. As part of a growing move in public schools not to offend anyone, the “fall” party will have autumn-leaf decorations, replacing the Halloween fests of yore, according to the Northwest Observer. Decorations depicting snow are permitted at the “winter” party, but none depicting holly, reindeer, ornaments, or which feature a red-and-green color scheme. (Nor menorahs or anything associated with Chanukah, for that matter.) Nor will the children be permitted to make gifts for their parents. Parents of Stokesdale students are protesting a letter dated Oct. 2 “from Principal Mary Williams saying that classroom parties would now have seasonal themes. The letter asked parents to … choose items such as plates and napkins that reflect the season as opposed to specific holidays such as Halloween, Christmas and Easter… The change was being made, the letter said, ‘in an effort to honor and respect the values of all families in our community.’ The letter also suggests more scholastic celebrations be held for successes such as perfect attendance or good grades.” Ack, attendance-award ceremonies replacing Halloween fun? What is this, the USSR? Parents are protesting the new policy, which has been adopted at all but one of the other schools in the district. Following the first wave of the parents’ protest, school officials amended the original plan and now children will be allowed to wear costumes to the “fall” party, but only if they portray “favorite book characters.” That is, favorite book characters who don’t happen to be witches, bats or ghosts.

Even celebrity tell-alls have their sell-by dates. Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, is now trying to publicize his second memoir about life with the late royal. But at his latest signing, at a bookstore in the English town of Wrexham, Burrell attracted an audience of — count ‘em — five. “You may have been a royal’s butler but that doesn’t mean you can wear your high and almighty crown,” snickers AllHeadlineNews. His new book The Way We Were follows his 2003 title A Royal Duty. Burrell is clearly no genius when it comes to choosing titles. One belongs to a Barbra Streisand film and the other sounds vaguely associated with toilets. At the sparsely attended Wrexham event, “one of the five, a cheeky law student, then admitted he’d arrived at the signing as a dare and didn’t want the book,” according to The Sun. Who gets the last laugh? Burrell went from servant to millionaire with the publication of his first book. That was after being tried for theft in 2002 (case dismissed). In 2004, he aroused more attention (and loathing) by appearing on the British TV show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Early this year, Burrell appeared on another British TV show, Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes, in which he portrayed … Richard Gere.