crack

Crack the Sky: All Access
$19.95
This was my first DVD concert, and what a performance! I've admired this band since the mid-70's, and didn't realize they were still around after all these years. The band's musicianship is still razor-sharp, and it was so nice to see that guitarist Rick Witkowski is as vibrant and animated as ever,in addition to being a superb musician. CTS demonstrated its musical prowess by a few extended instrumental breaks, like they showed on live albums in the past; they haven't lost a step. The video portion of the DVD was quite well done, and the extended interview after the two shows was a very interesting and enlightening bonus; it was heartening to see that these guys, despite being together for so long, still actually like each other, a quality that's sadly lacking in so many bands today. This DVD deserves another 2 stars, IT'S THAT GOOD!!

Crack
$5.99
Secretly wonder if your ass crack is normal? Thanks to Cabell Harris's picture book, you no longer have to sneak peeks in the locker room. Pictured are asses of every shape and style, from the fabled baby butt to an adult riding a ten-speed. Each two-page spread is cleverly positioned so the crack lands where the pages come together. As brash as it is brilliant.

Crack
$17.98
You know i've had this cd for awhile but i listen to a bunch of music so i just wrote it off as another go Ro album. But i was just looking at the tracklisting and realized there's only 2-3 songs that i dont jam that much. I believe that if Z-Ro was a mainstream artist, tracks like "Tired" and "If That's How U Feel" would definitely be 106 & Park material. My favorites are "Here We Go" (arguably the hardest track on the cd in my opinion), "Mo City Don" and "You". "25 Lighters" is another favorite too. But for anyone who's a fan of our TX culture or just open minded and lookin for something new....I recommend this cd and a few other Z-Ro releases

Cracks
$13.95
This is, hands down, among the worst books I have ever read. I have no idea what other people see in it. My gripes are many, but I'll try to limit them to things that people might find useful:

1) The narrative style -- it's written in first-person plural, which means the voice is always a "we", with no concrete sense of whom that includes. This makes is extremely difficult to conjure any sympathy for the narrator, which I imagine the reader should feel.

2) Lack of characterization -- This book is 165 pages, with 20 characters (not including the semi-omniscient "we"), which means that you get one personality trait or moment for each character. Consequently, it's difficult to care about any of them.

3) Missing the historical mark - Based on some vague clues, this book seems to take place in South Africa in the 1940s/50s at an all-white, all-girls school. Not a single mention of apartheid? Really?

4) Gratuitous homoeroticism -- other reviewers note the "honesty" about the girls' sexuality. Have any of these people ever BEEN 14-year-old girls? Did you really all strip naked around each other just for giggles -- repeatedly? Of course not. You were as self-conscious as the rest of us.

5) Insipid chapter titles: "Why Miss G Called Us to Her Room"; "Who Was Invited to the Feast and Why?" "What Miss G Said About Fiamma". If I can't deduce these points from the chapter, you haven't written a very good book.

I could go on about the laughably bad ending, the snippets of the worst and most useless poetry I have ever encountered, etc. Suffice it to say: the only reason I finished this book was because I was reading it for a book club. I threw it across the room in disgust no fewer than three times.