Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality

by Mike Sager

Overview

 From ground zero of the deadliest wildfire in California history to the cozy living room of super-spokesmodel Brooke Burke; from the recording studio with gangsta-rap pioneer Ice Cube to the tour bus with the Satanic metal band Slayer; this tough but lyrical collection of seventeen stories, by award-winning Esquire and Rolling Stone writer Mike Sager, brings into sharp focus the rich but confusing state of modern American life– its values, virtues, obsessions, and hypocrisies. A second edition of the author's bestselling collection, with updated material and author's note.  

Domestic Goddess Roseanne Barr battles Multiple Personality Disorder… Swingers attend a “fantasy weekend” in Pensacola… Twelve-year-olds joyride in stolen cars through the ruins of the Newark ghetto… Desmond the butler services the hoi polloi on Park Avenue… Football Hall-of-Famer Mike Ditka enjoys his summer vacation of golf, cigars, and private jets… Newly minted dot.com billionaire Mark Cuban buys himself an NBA basketball team…

Deeply focused long-form narrative journalism from the writer who has been called “the Beat poet of American journalism– that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality.”

Product Details

BN ID:	2940155131670
Publisher:	The Sager Group
Publication date:	02/09/2018
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Mike Sager is a best-selling author and award-winning reporter. A former Washington Post staff writer under Watergate investigator Bob Woodward, he worked closely, during his years as a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Sager is the author of more than a dozen books, including anthologies, novels, e-singles, a biography, and university textbooks. He has served for more than three decades as a writer for Esquire. In 2010 he won the National Magazine Award for profile writing. Several of his stories have inspired films and documentaries, including Boogie Nights, with Mark Wahlberg, Wonderland with Val Kilmer and Lisa Kudrow, and Veronica Guerin, with Cate Blanchette. He is the founder and CEO of The Sager Group LLC, which publishes books, makes films and videos, and provides modest grants to creatives. For more information, please see www.mikesager.com. [Show Less]

Table of Contents

Author's Note for Second Edition

Foreward by Walt Harrington

3. The Multitudes of Roseanne Barr. She’s TV’s loudmouth Domestic Goddess, desecrater of our national anthem and most of our notions of good taste. And she has a secret. An adventure in Multiple Personality Disorder.

21. Is Something Burning? Irene Hurst woke herself coughing at 3:00 a.m. The air was gritty and hot. “Is something burning?” Inside the largest and deadliest wildfire in California History.

41. The Secret Life of a Beautiful Woman.She’s cute as a button, pretty as a picture, eminently do-able, totally unavailable. The Prime of Ms. Brooke Burke.

59.The Man of Tomorrow Goes to the Prom. Not long ago, he was playing with Hot Wheels on the carpet. Now he’s a high school junior.

77. “Yeaahhh Baaaaby! The Mark Cuban Story. Mark Cuban is the controversial owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres and HD Net. Ride along as he makes his first impulse purchases with his newly-minted $2.5 billion fortune: A 24,000 square foot mansion; a Gulfstream V jet; and the Mavs basketball team.

97. Revenge of the Donut Boys. America’s third-oldest major city has the highest rate of car theft in the nation, sixty-five percent of which are perpetrated by teens and pre-teens. Sometimes it takes two to drive–one works the pedals, the other the wheel.

107. Fact: Five out of Five Kids Who Kill Love Slayer Kids who listen to Slayer are “violent and heavy drug users,” says one expert. All of which has had a predictable effect on the band’s popularity. Perception meets reality.

125. Almost Famous. Meet Lynn Clark and Steve Bean, struggling actors. Welcome to the San Fernando Valley, just over the mountain from Hollywood, where hope springs eternal.

143.The Marine.Three months after 9/11, Lt. Colonel Bob Sinclair and his marine batallion are headed to Afghanistan. “You realize that your country has been attacked,” he says. “That’s a deep wound. A slap to the face. You wanna strike back.”

165. The World According to Amerikkka’s Most-Wanted Rapper. O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson is tha Nigga Ya Love to Hate. At home and on the road with author of the landmark song “Fuck Tha Police.”

197. My Man Desmond. One of the last living descendants of a distinguished Anglo-Irish family, which traces its history back eleven centuries, Desmond Patrick Hamilton Gorges has come to America to seek his fortune–as a butler.

209. Fifty Grand in San Diego. Shun Ducksworth lives with his wife and two kids in a duplex condo close to the beach. And not far from the edge.

233. Volleyball Gods. Hov, Dodd, Karch, and Sinjin are the founding studs of two-man, pro beach volleyball, all of them making six figures a year to play a game on the sand. There is only one little problem: They’ve voted to go out on strike.

255. Deviates in Love. Swingers like to say that when you enter the door of the orgy room, you leave your clothes and your labels behind you. Welcome to the Elite International Couples’ Fantasy weekend in Pensacola, Florida, where anyone can be a swan

277. Is Ditka Nuts. Iron Mike Ditka, a football man on his annual summer vacation. “A lot of people say I’m nuts,” he says.

289. Old. Glenn Sanberg is 92 and lives in Sun City, Arizona. All of his friends are dead, people talk to him like he’s four years old, he sometimes wets his pants, his girlfriend has Alzheimer’s. But it sure beats the alternative.

307. Mike Sager by Mike Sager. Ever met a stranger who shares your name? How about 39 of them?

Editorial Reviews

Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality. But compared with the new journalists, who celebrated the subjectivity of the narrator, Sager is a relatively self-effacing observer. He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity. In the articles collected here…the famous, almost famous and not famous all get the same Sager treatment. He is teasingly affectionate…and meticulous… He defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism.
—The New York Times

Mick Sussman

The pieces . . . [will] move and entertain you.

Esquire

Sager writes in convincingly novelistic detail and supple, pinpoint prose about the inner lives of a high school junior, a 92-year-old man, Slayer fans, swingers, struggling actors, Mike Ditka, and wildfire victims. The title piece is one of his best . . . A-.

Entertainment Weekly

The book . . . provides incisive looks into a range of subjects, from music to crime to the swinger lifestyle, with the deft precision that more than twenty years of experience provides.

Flaunt

Multi-layered storytelling is what makes Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality so absorbing. Sager is expert in catching glimpses of the humanity in all of his subjects . . . This collection of stories is a case study for anyone interested in learning the art of literary journalism. But more importantly, it's a masterfully curated collection of that most exquisite of all curios, the human personality. Grade: A-.

Cincinnati City Beat

Esquirewriter-at-large Sager (Scary Monsters and Super Freaks) demonstrates a lively curiosity about other people's lives, hopes, fears and disappointments in these 17 previously published articles. Sager's nimble celebrity profiles include Emmy winner Roseanne Barr, who attributes her multiple-personality disorder to an abusive mother, but more affecting are the everyday struggles of "almost famous" actors Steve Bean and Lynn Clark, who stay sane in the face of numerous professional rejections. Sager's best pieces showcase people battling nature: aging hippie and sandal-maker Lee Risler cuts off his own arm to free himself from a wrecked van and wears his stump as a badge of honor. Despite some forgetfulness and frailty, 92-year-old widower Glenn Brown Sanberg has a girlfriend with Alzheimer's and writes a weekly newspaper column. In a whimsical yet satisfying search for other Mike Sagers the author finds instant kinship with a police captain, a politician and a preacher. These are savvy, deftly written highlights from a talented career. (Aug.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Sager plays Virgil in the modern American Inferno. William Carlos Williams wrote "the pure products of America go crazy;" journalist Sager (Esquire, Rolling Stone, GQ) collects an astonishing range of profiles that support the poet's assertion. Quite literally, in some cases: The opening piece on comedienne Roseanne focuses on her oft-proclaimed personality disorder, to alternately amusing and chilling effect. Sager also vividly limns the inner lives (in a manner strongly reminiscent of Tom Wolfe's landmark works of "The New Journalism") of neighbors trapped in a horrific California wildfire; professional beautiful woman Brooke Burke; a man trapped for days in a wrecked van, plumbing the depths of the survival instinct; young and nihilistic Newark teens and pre-teens who have made a sport of stealing cars to wreck them at high speeds (the "Donut Boys" of the title); an aristocratic Renaissance man who finds his skills best suited to butlering; and a host of other American men named Sager, tracked down on a cross-country drive. A few of the articles, such as the heartbreakingly empathic portrait of an accomplished and vital 92-year-old man living out his last days in a bland retirement community, make indelible impressions. The lighter fare, including mordant looks at the world of professional volleyball players and sagging swingers adrift in Florida, is funny and engaging. A profile of erstwhile rapper and current family-film star Ice Cube bristles with the excitement of the then-burgeoning hip-hop community, and is a surprising reminder of what a fierce and focused talent Cube once was-though Sager's earnest explanations of the basic tenets of rap culture are, at this late date,unintentionally funny. Compelling and stylish magazine journalism, rich in novelistic detail. A reminder of what can make sifting through all of those glossy advertisements and subscription cards worthwhile. Agent: Mollie Glick/Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews

“Sager plays Virgil in the modern American Inferno.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality. He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity. He defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism… a Whitmanesque ode to teeming humanity’s mystical unity.”–The New York Times Book Review

“Sager writes in convincingly novelistic detail and supple, pinpoint prose about the inner lives of a high school junior, a 92-year-old man, Slayer fans, swingers, struggling actors, Mike Ditka, and wildfire victims. The title piece is one of his best…A-.” – Entertainment Weekly

“Esquire writer-at-large Sager (Scary Monsters and Super Freaks) demonstrates a lively curiosity about other people’s lives, hopes, fears and disappointments in these 17 previously published articles. Sager’s nimble celebrity profiles include Emmy winner Roseanne Barr, who attributes her multiple-personality disorder to an abusive mother, but more affecting are the everyday struggles of “almost famous” actors Steve Bean and Lynn Clark, who stay sane in the face of numerous professional rejections. Sager’s best pieces showcase people battling nature: aging hippie and sandal-maker Lee Risler cuts off his own arm to free himself from a wrecked van and wears his stump as a badge of honor. Despite some forgetfulness and frailty, 92-year-old widower Glenn Brown Sanberg has a girlfriend with Alzheimer’s and writes a weekly newspaper column. In a whimsical yet satisfying search for other Mike Sagers the author finds instant kinship with a police captain, a politician and a preacher. These are savvy, deftly written highlights from a talented career.” –Publisher’s Weekly

From the Publisher