Sanders Memoir Uncovered, 11 Herbs & Spices Still At Large

So I tend to find a lot of "gems" during the course of my job at the public library, many of which I've noted here before. But nothing piques my interest so much as a mysterious, out-of-print book concerning controversial hometown spectres--especially those who have achieved ubiquitous, world-wide iconography. I'm talking, of course, about "Colonel" Harland Sanders and his lost autobiography: Life As I Have Known it Has Been Finger Lickin' Good. Score! I was even more excited about it than I was that time I found a copy of Dave's Way lying around. You see, early American entrepreneurial ventures--along with their accompanying origin stories, secret histories & hidden meanings--are a regular pop culture Da Vinci Code that I find absorbingly interesting. In the realm of iconic fast food empires I think we can all agree that the Colonel is an Illuminati. A really folksy, maddeningly rambly, poorly edited Illuminati (seriously, it's like he got absolute, unmonitored editorial carte blanche on this thing--the Citizen Kane of shitty, tell-all memoirs).

Anyway, this one is truly remarkable in that I hadn't heard about it, which seems really surprising. I mean, I went out of my way once to visit the Colonel's grave (not very far out of my way, but still). It was published in 1974 by Creation House in Carol Stream, Illinois. I was pretty excited to dig into this lost treasure, but wow, it is proving a real challenge. This, for instance, is the first paragraph:

"Dadgummit! Ever since I was seventy-four and got paid two million dollars for my fried-chicken franchising business--that I started when I was sixty-five and was thinking about settling down with my social security check--folks has been hounding me to write my life story."

You find yourself saying the words in your head in a Yosemite Sam voice, punctuated by pistol fire sound effects and an occasional "YEE-HAW!" interjected. He goes on to brag about being on talk shows, in parades & on set for his tv commercials (a regular hillbilly jet-setter), & then he bitches about how hard it is to write things (I strongly suspect that this is what Going Rogue must be like...). That's pretty much the entire first chapter, if you can hack it that far. But as far as I can tell, he isn't giving up any real information concerning the underbelly of the chicken biz: the secret of the "famous recipe" is still well-kept (it is common knowledge here in Louisville--home of KFC HQ--that the original, hand-written recipe of the notorious 11 herbs & spices is kept hermetically sealed in a high-security vault, the only existing hard copy. Access to the vault is restricted to a select group of upper-level Freemasons, each of which has memorized a specific part of the recipe. Before their deaths, each selects a successor to pass on their part of the secret to, thus preserving the recipe and its perfect, unbroken line of hush-hushy-ness). So of course, the intrigue does not abate.

One other point of interest: look how serious everybody is in the cover photo! What must the Colonel be reading to that (surprisingly diverse) group of children? Those kids are downright gloomy--like the cruel chicken man just informed them that the world is really a cold, unfeeling meat grinder of cutthroat business deals, complicated franchising logistics & extra-crispy backstabbery. Santa Claus cannot possibly exist in such a morally ambiguous place, children--the Colonel is here to tell you that.

Wrong Wrong Wrong

Yet another disturbing library find, readers--and this one uncovers an entire seedy underbelly of troubling, anti-social, cat-related behavior: How to Massage Your Cat by Jane Buckle. It's not that I am so naive that I didn't realize there was this thing called cat massage going on all across America--yeah, I've heard about it--no, it's that cover illustration: the look on the cartoon kitty as those not-so-gentle-looking, groping hands reach for his backside...gross! And what are those motion lines around the thumbs suggesting?? Run, Mr. kitty!

Best Book Ever

Readers, I'm always on the lookout for amazing literary gems at my library, and I really hit the mother load this time. Our newest entry comes to us from Timothy Welch and the good people at Prentice-Hall, circa 1984: Tape It Off! a guide to "lose weight quickly and enjoyably through self-hypnosis" (!) Check out that cover image: the Olivia Newton John Body Heat era-inspired outfit, the mall queen hair, the brick-sized Walkman...and then you have the promise of self-hypnosis...gosh, it's just a winning combination, isn't it?

Working in a library I come across hundreds of diet books, so it really takes a special contender to grab my attention like this one has. So the cover, title and premise alone was easily enough to win me over, but the real clencher? The first sentence in the first chapter (no joke): "You're too fat!"(!!) Wow, I guess that was the type of positive encouragement one could expect to get from the early eighties...really makes you realize how touchy-feely and PC we've gotten with our diet books here in the next century.

And lest you think this was just a one-off dabble for Prentice-Hall in the genre of self-improvement through DIY hypnosis, the back of the book jacket sets you straight--there is a whole series of this stuff to explore! Some of these titles sound pretty promising: Financial Well-Being Through Self-Hypnosos by Joseph Itiel, You Can Do It With Self-Hypnosos by Charles E. Henderson, and (you should've seen this one coming): Improve Your Sex Life Through Self-Hypnosos by John Kappas! I'm sure I can run up to my local Borders and snag these.

The book is full of scripts that you are supposed to read aloud in a calm, monotone voice into your gigantic tape recorder, then play it back to yourself just before mealtime. The theory is that you'll hypnotize yourself into a non-hungry stupor, thus ditching your thunder thighs and gaining the confidence you'll need to hang around in a candy-striped leotard and stirrup pants (pink and red?? Oh, girlfriend, no). So the book is chock full of odd little mantras to tell yourself, but it's also got random descriptions of stressful real-life situations that may contribute to overeating. Some of the weirder chapter titles include: chapter 3: Eye Fixation and Arm Levitation, ch 7: The Candy Lady and the Pie Guy, ch 12: Domestic Dissent, ch 13: My Enemies, The Children(!), and ch 15: I Wish I Were Pregnant(??).

Wacky. Just...wacky.

Wacky (Informative?) Library Books for Kids

Oh boy, readers--it's time for another look into the collection of our favorite local library to see what far-out reading materials are available for the education of our youths! Ready, children?

I found the above item, The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts by Shinto Cho, the other day. It's one of those kids' books that try to be informative, but really just come off as being unsettling and weird. I guess I can appreciate the effort, though--kids really do need to understand bodily processes and their reasons for being...but it freaked me out. The text went randomly back and forth between using actual medical terminology (e.g. "anus") and alarming, crude description ("that hole in your bottom"). I think that's probably what makes this book so...distressing: I'd rather just have the real, technical terms thrown at me than be given a creepy, Disney-rated version that makes it sounds like it is something Not-To-Be-Named. That kind of vague insinuation just sends the wrong message (the message being: "I don't want to hear about that hole in your bottom").

So, I don't know if I will ever be recommending this one, but really: what other childrens' non-fiction books about flatulence are really out there? I can't just hand a 5 year old Gray's Anatomy...(although that would be hilarious). I guess I'll have to keep this one in mind for just such an occasion.

(Oh, Also: the artwork is ATROCIOUS)