Absolutely perfect. Would actually make a good coloring book, as well. Kudos as usual.
I saw the title of this blog and thought that the book title must have been paraphrased... but no. How great that this book even exists...
That is terrifying. and the truth.
thanks for the guffaws again. priceless.
this is a book that could have been written by Bobby Draper from Mad Men, only ten years later when he'd have a haircut like the kid from The Shining!
Danny Lloyd, that kid from the Shining, totally had a NYC accent. I saw him in this interview on the Shining DVD and he was speaking in Brooklynese like, "Yo, so I wuz talkin to Kubrick and I was like, 'Yo, Kubrick, let's have deez two twin gurls in da hallway lookin' at me all creepy an' stuff.'
It was mindblowing. That kid totally should have played Joey in the movie version of 'My Dad Lives in a Downtown Hotel.'
Good Lord, I'm depressed now. Stay tuned for Vol. II: My Dad Pays $50 for Me to Become a Man in a Downtown Hotel.
Oh it gets worse--this was turned into an after-school special in the 80s! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U...h?
v=UpnNAWE294o
I guess the picture book just wasn't scary enough!
My mother always used to say "crummy." What a great word.
Great... someone made money off of my childhood anguish...
Ha! This is awesome. And so wrong.
The amazingness that is that book is one thing, but it was made into an after school special is just perfect.
BWWWAAHAAAHAAAAHAAA!
oh my lord that's funny!
damn that dad for taking the telly!
what kind of 'crummy' hotel doesn't provide televisual stimulation though?
love that smarmy, over-the-shoulder look from the secretary!
gold.
I wonder if Beau Bridges regards that masterpiece as the pinnacle of his acting career. Hmm...probably not.
Man,even the illustrations ooze despair and crumminess.
Please, someone tell me who the actor is playing 'Dad' in the after school special is? It's going to drive me nuts!
Thanks Karen 
I can sleep well tonight.
Oh my Gawd. That is truly effed up. And I think I might have owned this book at one point. No wonder I'm such a mess.
Wow. My childhood looks like Ward and June Cleaver's house now. Wow.
I made the mistake of trying to drink hot tea while reading your latest entry. I burnt my tongue and almost choked at the same time. Too effin' funny!
Holy F--K, you have gone over the edge! Love it!
Now, really, Is this real? You made this up, you clever thing you - right?
Actually it looks like Dad probably was my next door neighbor in the East Village in 1973.
Take away the Porsche, and trade Mom's grass for a bottle of Jack, and this reads like a diary I could have written when I was this kid's age.
Yikes.
The illustrations are making me flash back to Peter Max, Nillson, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
the kinds of sounds mom and dad used to make before he moved out, that scary grunting and yelling sound they used to make at night
Scary grunting? Make-up sex?
They should rerelease this book.. with your commentary!
This is so twistedly fucked up that I think I love it.
I feel bad for anyone for whom this hits too close to home, but it still amuses me. Console yourself with the fact that I feel really guilty about it, please.
Akin, brilliantly, to a Soviet Ad I saw in which a Dad leaves the family behind, packs a case, kids are crying, the missus is in fits...then he comes back, smiles...and turns off the light...it was an ad for energy saving...
Divorce eh, fine, but leaving a light on, not so good...
Console yourself with the fact that I feel really guilty about it, please.
Don't worry about it. Shit happens, and some kind of shit or other happens to everyone.
This reminds me of the movie The Squid and the Whale.
This reminds me of the novel "Sport". In juvenile fiction of the time, the kids were always cleaning up after the drugged out, incompetent adults in their lives.
Peggy Mann, 1925-1990, was quite a prolific writer in the 50's to 80's. Go over to amazon.com and see her backlist available from third-party sellers.
She wrote biographies and many other screeds on the ills of society.
I wonder how large her readership was.
God, what is the sequel you wonder.
Scary to think about:
"I Spent $40,000 on Psychoanalysis"
"I Am Incapable of Having A Healthy Relationship"
"I Am 50 And Still Hate My Parents"
I still find myself wanting to defend the '70s, though. All this pretend normalcy of today is kind of boring. I love that people in the '70s suddenly realized that modern urban life and the white collar professional life was a horrible trap and thought they could do something about that. I mean, there's always the option for the mom to join the radical feminist movement, drop acid and live in a lesbian commune--at least for a while, until all the trippy lesbians start wearing suits with shoulder pads and going to law school. Or she could date a Black Panther. What groovy options do divorced moms of today have?
Sadly, everyone was wrong that they could escape their bourgeois existence, but it seems so sweet today. At least they tried.
It's sad that people today can't drink more, preferably during the day. And Peter Max was kind of cool.
i like the line drawings. totally beside your point, but hey.
Another awesome post, another awesome find. Yeah, at some point my dad moved into a downtown hotel, but then he came back - but that's another story. I love the line art, it's so exactly of a time. there's definitely some craft there, even if it's dated. Someone tried to tell a good story in pictures, working from some flawed material. Your alternative narrative made my day...
wow, just wow
that's just gross. you made it worse. =)
My parents got divorced in 1976 and my dad moved in with his secretary.
It was nice that he skipped the whole crummy motel thing. I'm sure sleeping on her couch was way better.
*Snort*
This isn't actually about this thread. It's about the new photo from today, the painted shed. The picture just jumped out of the screen and gave me a jolt. Please put it on Etsy. I would so much love to have this as a print.
By the way, it looks like a painting from Max Bill.
Interesting find. This reminds me of a book that I have that was in my late grandparents house that was a post World War II-Early '50's schoolbook.
Four years ago I started working at an elementary school library - my first real job. We actually owned this book, and it was on the shelf. I tossed it without reading it. I truly hope it was too old and ugly for any of the kids to actually pick it up and read it. Some other gems were "An American's View of Communism" from '69 or so, and "First Book of the American Negro" from '64. Chapter 8 was entitled, "Ghetto". I know I have the communism one somewhere, but I may have trashed the Negro book. I also happened upon a perfect book for this category. I don't remember the name but it was about shadow puppets. I am not sure how shadow puppets can be creepy, but this definitely was!
I never saw this book in the '70s, but I was and am a fan of the illustrator, Richard Cuffari. The style is clearly of its era, but his work is intricate and distinctive.
Here's a post about his work: http://
daughternumberthree.blogs...llustrator.html
Commenting by HaloScan
