Michael Largo

As the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti continues unfolding and the horrific, gut-wrenching reality of Death grimly stares everybody down, collectively, body after ruined body, from the detached safety of my/our computer monitors and TV sets, how can I not imagine (especially considering I live too close to The San Andreas Fault that's long overdue to destroy us Southern Californians in "The Big One"), that those poor Haitians, buried and crushed by the rubble of not just an show more earthquake, but by chronic poverty and an archaically constructed infrastructure both physical and political, could just as easily have been me? Or my loved ones? Someday that may be us bloodied or obliterated on the TV screen should an 8.0 strike anywhere on The San Andreas Fault between Wrightwood and Palm Springs, California, thus making the movie 2012 a veritable reality.

I'd just finished reading most of Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die, when the Haiti earthquake struck. I'd planned on writing what I'd hoped would amount to a really funny review, good for some good lowbrow giggles, poking fun at and mocking those chronicled in the morbid book who've died in some of the most unbelievably ridiculous and absurd scenarios ever. Like death by Vending Machine. Or death by Video Game. Death by Vegetarians and Vigilantes too. No joke. I'm flipping through the "V" section of the book, right now, obviously, as this encyclopedia is arranged alphabetically after all, as most encyclopedias are, beginning with, Death-by-Words-that-Start-with-"A," and ending, you guessed it, with, Death-by-Words-that-Start-with-"Z". Death by A-B-C-D-E-F-G.... The lone "Z" entry is "Zoofatalism". Zoofatalism is "a psychological disorder in which the afflicted get dangerously close to zoo animals or keep wild animals as pets against better judgment." Normally, at this point in the "review," I would mercilessly mock such Zoofatalists, but out of respect for my brothers and sisters in humanity mercilessly suffering and dying by the day in Haiti, I will refrain.

Final Exits also comes illustrated with drawings and photos of either outright-death, or of seemingly non-fatal activities that can nevertheless lead to death. Like Cheerleading. It's "Rah-rah," one second apparently; and the next second...ooops...you're dead, and no pom-pom can save you now! Damn, I indeed was trying really hard not to mock or poke fun at anybody, even cheerleaders. But I was a geek in high school, and cheerleaders ignored, if not outright rejected me. Stuck up pom-pom wenches. So, I guess they deserve to be mocked, cheerleaders, now that I consider it, no matter what natural disasters and untold deaths have just occurred in the world.

Most of the drawings and photographs in Final Exits are benign and tastefully crafted, like the doesn't-really-show-anything drawing (darn!) of the man being "Autocastrated" with a sword in the "A" section of the book. Equally as tasteful is the cute photograph of the huge-toothed hippopotamus Yawning in the "Y" section of the book. Death by hippopotamus Yawning? Read it to believe it:

"According to a story reported in the Melbourne Herald Sun in July 1999, one man died when a hippo yawned. A circus clown, a dwarf named Od...jumped off a trampoline just as a hippo, waiting to perform in the next act, yawned. The man landed square in the animal's mouth, which opened to a span of four feet. The hippo's involuntary gag reflex caused Od to be instantaneously swallowed whole. The one thousand-plus spectators who witnessed it continued to applaud wildly until common sense dictated that there had been a tragic mistake. Attempts to force the hippo to regurgitate the body were not successful."

Funny, right? Wrong!

Any other week it might've been funny and I'd of had a blast writing this "review," sharing such wacky, weird, and even erotic ways in which people die. Sometimes people die in wacky, weird, and erotic ways simultaneously, come to find out. But I just can't, right now, in good conscience, crack jokes about women who've died during cunnilingus, or died from "drowning in molasses;" I just can't, because, even though I know I stated at the outset I wouldn't try to be funny in this "review," and I've obviously failed in a very limited (arguably) perhaps unfunny-funny extent in that non-humor endeavor, because now is not an appropriate time for humor, right?, with so much inconceivable quantities of death - literally truckloads of death bound for mass graves - confronting us day after tragic day! I feel awkward "reviewing" a book like this at a time like this when so many are suffering beyond what the word "suffering" can even come close to adequately describe. How does one adequately describe complete decimation and despair without sounding glib or trivializing it in the process?

Know that whatever humor has been present here in this "review" isn't meant to make light of real pain and real grief and sorrow and all the other adjectives I could summon to my rescue (in case I have in fact, stepped in it); but that the humor is just a mask, a ruse, a psychological coping device, a weakness, a defense against the indiscriminate pain and horror hurled at this World from God-knows-where, that I can't understand or control or make go away; a distraction, if you will, the humor, to prevent me from really pondering how godawfully unhumorous it is, the Hell that is happening in Haiti, and the Hells abundant elsewhere on this sorrowful globe, that are conveniently, in rectilinear, sanitized and safe fashion, transmitted to us everyday on a screen for our ocular consumption. show less

I picked this up thinking it would be an easy-a for I Read Odd Books. But had to stop reading it when I reached the Cs in this compendium of religious oddness. In the section called "Cults, Copycats" I knew this was not worth my time.

With all apologies to The New Bohemians, though I'm not aware of too many things, I know what I know. Know what I mean? I know cults and I know the West Memphis Three. And this book screwed up both.

Largo has murder victims of the Jeffrey Lundgren Mormon offshoot show more cult digging their own graves before they were killed. Never happened. The graves were dug by other cult members in a barn before the family was lured out to the farm. The family was taken to the barn one by one and shot. I guess this isn't that important but it was a signal of things to come.

But as odd as the above was, the part about the "West Memphis Cult" was just outright insane. According to Largo, the "West Memphis Cult" was influenced by the "Kentucky Occult Teen Killers," who killed a family in 1998. Let me quote it.

Inspired by newspaper accounts of the Kentucky Cult, three bored Tennessee teenagers, dubbed "the West Memphis Cult," killed three children in a botched satanic ritual. They stripped, beat and mutilated their victims in the woods, and all cult members are now serving life terms.

Okay, at first glance, this sounds like a really shitty recount of the accusations against the West Memphis Three, one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in modern times in the USA. The West Memphis Three struck a deal to be released last year on an Alford plea, because it was the only way to get Damien Echols off death row.

While the WM3 were accused of killing three boys in the woods, Jessie Misskelley was not sentenced to life and Echols was sentence to death. So they don't fit the description of life sentences. And the WM3 crimes took place in 1993 so they clearly were not copy-cat crimes from something that happened in 1998. And they took place in Arkansas, not Tennessee. But then again, there is no West Memphis, TN, so who the hell knows what Largo was talking about in that regard.

So given all of those discrepancies, perhaps he was not discussing the West Memphis Three. Perhaps there was a "West Memphis Cult" from 1998 that committed virtually identical crimes to the crimes the WM3 were accused of and received life sentences and somehow I managed to overlook that the WM3 travesty had somehow spawned its own copy-cat crimes.

Except if you Google "West Memphis Cult" you come up with nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. NOTHING. There is no "West Memphis Cult." Actually, if you do Google, you get six results. Five entries that refer to the WM3 and one result that refers to this book. There is only the "West Memphis Three" - there is no "West Memphis Cult."

Clearly Largo managed to get complete wrong details of one of the most notorious crimes in the last two decades, a ridiculous miscarriage of justice that at the time this book was published had spawned three books, two documentaries, and benefit concerts. I mean, even if he didn't want to research it, just a quick perusal of Wiki would have cleared up the dates, the location and the actual sentences handed out.

So I know what I know, if you know what I mean, and Largo has shown he doesn't know what I know. And I'm not even the one writing a book about what I know.

And this leads me to the realization that if he can't get right the things that I do know, how can I trust that he got anything else right? I can't. So I stopped reading and wrote this. show less

I love the type of books that list all sorts of weird shit, so "Final Exits" is almost the perfect book for me. Turning to a random page, we see death by custard pie to the face, death by street sweeper and death by cockroach. and of course the infamous Enumclaw horse case gets a run.

Some of the stories you may wish to take with a grain of salt (although I'm sure you'll find a gruesome salt-related story in here) but overall an enjoyable if unsettling read.

This book arrived today, and while I haven't read it cover to cover, I feel justified in reviewing it since it isn't exactly the sort of book one reads cover to cover.

Basically an encyclopedia of historical persons whose genius was matched only by their addictions and bizarre personality quirks, Genius and Heroin chronicles the strange lives and even stranger deaths of these people.

Upon receiving it, I opened to a random page of the book and couldn't put it down. The blurbs on each show more individual are quite short, but extremely well-researched and written, ensuring that you get a vivid picture of each bizarre death. The illustrations add a perfect mood to the entries: rather than overly morbid, they imbue the book with a feeling of historical vaudeville.

The expected people are represented: River Phoenix, Hunter S. Thompson, James Dean; but the unexpected people are the ones that drew me in most completely. When Julien Offray, the grandfather of cognitive science, was given an entry for having eaten until he died, I knew this was a book I could sink my teeth into.

My ONLY complaint is that there is the occasional entry alphabetized by quirk instead of name - Julien Offray's entry was under C for "Creative Eating" instead of his name, so when I wanted to find it again I couldn't immediately locate it. Granted, I'm probably among the very small minority of people who would look Offray up by his name, but it's just enough to have broken the giddy glaze over my eyes as I enjoyed this book.

I probably wouldn't have picked this book up if I saw it on a shelf, but I can say without reservation that it would've been a mistake to ignore this book. Scholarly, fascinating, quirky, and well-written - I'm pretty sure this book accomplishes everything it set out to do. show less