Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.230973
EAN: 9780812975185
ISBN: 0812975189
Label: Villard
Manufacturer: Villard
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: November 22, 2005
Publisher: Villard
Release Date: November 22, 2005
Sales Rank: 969654
Studio: Villard
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
CONFESSIONS OF A TABLOID WRITER WHO DOVE INTO THE CESSPOOL OF HIS OWN MIND AND CAME UP WITH INCREDIBLE TABLOID STORIES
“Some people aspire to greatness. A combination of bad parenting and coming of age in Baltimore, Maryland, at the same time as John Waters pushed me in a different direction,” writes Tom D’Antoni. After fifteen years as a journalist and broadcaster–fifteen years of going after sources and double- and triple-checking facts–D’Antoni was seduced by the dark side: a national supermarket tabloid. When he realized he could entirely make up stories and then quote people he’d just invented–and get paid (poorly) for it–he was hooked.
In Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent, D’Antoni resurrects his favorite stories and reveals the (often sick) thoughts that inspired them. From the mild “Newborn Baby Sings Like Elvis” and “Denture Bandit Steals False Teeth from the Mouths of Victims” to the truly twisted, such as “Grandma Turns Pet Dog Inside Out Looking for Lost Lottery Ticket,” “Bag Lady’s B.O. Kills Five People on Bus,” and “Cult Uses Human Heads for Bowling Balls,” they all came straight from D’Antoni’s imagination.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Not as Good as I had hoped.
I recently bought Bay Boy Lives, and enjoyed every detail of this humor packed book, an oversize book, with each page laid out just like The World Weekly News, photos and inserts included. I bought Rabid Nun because it was suggested by Amazon, and the reviews seemed pretty good, and I needed a good laugh. I was very disappointed, when I read it last night. The stories seemed very mean spirited, not funny and certainly not clever. There are very few stories, and lots of blank pages to take up space. The author seems angry at his lot in life and spends more than half of the book compaining and bashing people. I don't recommend this book, buy Bat Boy instead, and buy an extra to give as a Christmas present, too.
Rating:  - I Laughed and Laughed and Laughed!
Rabid Nun was one of the funniest books I've ever read! I heard about it in MAD magazine, and decided to buy it. I'm so glad I did. It was a hysterically funny compilation of the most twisted and bizarre tabloid stories ever to come from Tom D'Antoni's mind. Sure, the writing's not great and the autobiography snippits are dry...but what do you expect? It's a book of tabloid stories written by a tabloid writer! Anyways, this book was hysterically funny and worth your money! Go buy it now!
Rating:  - What took so long for someone to write this book?
Supermarket tabloid covers fall into two types -- (1) the ones with stories about people you see on television and in the movies, and (2) the covers that are interesting.
Be honest -- you KNOW you always suspected that Dubya, with ears like he has, was REALLY fathered by an escapee from the Roswell alien prison: probably by Jar-Jar Binks himself. But it's always good to have a "legitimate" journalist confirm your suspicion in print.
Tom D'Antoni did more than just HAVE these suspicions -- he ACTED on them. Which is to say, when he had one, he made up a story to go along with the suspicion and traded the story for money.
God bless America. I say again, GOD BLESS AMERICA! I take back some of the things I've said about it.
Isn't this the greatest country in the world; a country where your sickest fantasy can be put into print (as long as it happened overseas and can't be fact-checked), and people will pay you money for having it?
BUY THIS BOOK. HEAR? HEAR?
Rating: - great humor writing
i enjoyed this book mostly because of the irrevrence of the author. in this country, where the religious right and the republicans are in our bedrooms, phones, emails and wombs, it is really refreshing to read something that breaks through all those barriers. i bought a lot of them for christmas gifts and all my friends i gave them to, called to thank me and tell me how much they laughed. i enjoyed the commentary before each story. i mean don't we all stand in line at the check out counter and pick these up while we're waiting? haven't you ever wondered what kind of a mind could spew out such insanity? of course you have. so i say pick up a copy and take a break from the real insanity in the world. which causes me to think about how the tabloids have to get more outrageous because reality could have been an avant garde novel 20 years ago.
Rating:  - Not much of a confession
I love tabloids and their wacky stories, and I have always been fascinated by the strange universe their writers must inhabit. That's why I ended up purchasing this book, on the promise of its revelations on the little-known world of make-believe faux journalism.
Unfortunately, this book is not an autobiography, but rather a collection of rewritten/expanded stories originally published in The Sun. These 20-something stories are strewn together with what amounts to a very flat retelling of an interview the author gaves to Oprah. It would have fitted, overall, in a page and a half, and amounts to "My mind is twisted, how do I come up with this stuff, and hey, it's fiction, but it got me some good success with the girls!" That's it.
The stories themselves are mildly amusing, fairly standard tabloid gross-out, tongue-in-cheek stories. As is often the case, the byline itself is the whole punchline, so it's not much worth reading past the table of contents. A few are memorable, but your money would be better invested in this week's Weekly World News.
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