Stories I Only Tell My Friends, by Rob Lowe

For the past year he has played the role of Chris Traeger on NBC’s ‘Parks and Recreation’.  He’s also spent 4 years in the ‘White House’ as Sam Seaborn. But he started out as Sodapop Curtis in S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders”.  The movie that launched his career, along with the career of one Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez.

And now, along with husband, father, producer, director he is a writer.

And a damn good one.

I don’t usually do reviews on my website.  I tried, I tried to write for Buy-her.  It just wasn’t my writing style.

But for this I’ll make the exception.

Rob Lowe’s career took off just as I was entering high school.  He was the Rob Pattison of my day.  I mean really who didn’t fall in love with him in “St. Elmo’s Fire” and then again in “About Last Night”?

In his book, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob (is it ok to just call him Rob?) tells the story of his first brush with celebrity (meeting Liza Minnelli in a hotel in Ohio) to the day he finally realized it was time to say good bye to ‘The West Wing’ with an easy conversational style that makes you, the reader, feel as if you truly are one of the friends he’s telling these stories to.

Rob’s mother was trying to live with depression and not doing a very good job at it.  His father was left behind in Ohio, and Rob was left to chase his dream on his own.  It was a different world he lived in, traveling 30 miles by bus alone for auditions.  He was not always alone, he lived close enough to the Sheen’s (yes, Charlie, Martin and Emilio, who professionally took the family’s original name Estevez) he spent as much time with them as he did at home.

Because he was basically chasing his dream on his own, he had little to no guidance or adult supervision.   Alcohol was a constant companion.  In school Rob was far from popular and rarely if ever caught a girls eye. (How the hell is that possible? Do they grow them dumb and blind in Cali?) but he made up for it after “The Outsiders”  The press made no secret of any of Rob’s romantic encounters and relationships.  In his book, Rob mentions the women he dated, but does it with respect and kindness.  This is not a kiss and tell kind of book.  This is a book that tells his story in a way his sons can read and not be embarrassed.  The drugs, the parties, the drinking, the women, are there but the ugly details are not as they are not necessary to the story he tells.

Rob does drop names throughout the book.  Virtually every story told is a brush with a celebrity.  What I really liked about his stories is he doesn’t start with ‘The night I met Sarah Jessica Parker….”  He tells about how his agent asked him to have lunch with Sarah, who has been playing Annie on Broadway.  Rob brings his high school girlfriend to lunch (Because he’s an idiot and doesn’t know the ways of Hollywood apparently)  Rob and Sarah hit it off, talking about their hopes and dreams of acting in the future.  They enjoy lunch and then she leaves.  Years later, at an award ceremony Rob does not win the award he was nominated for, but he was quite happy for his friend Sarah, when she accepted her award for her role of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City.

The stories he tells are not about the celebrities he meets, they are about the people he’s met in his life.  Yes, at times he’s in awe of the person’s career and achievements, but the story is always about the person underneath it all.

He’s honest, he doesn’t gloss over his failures, his short comings.  He doesn’t go into great detail, but he tells the story in such a way the nitty gritty isn’t needed to make the point.  The emotions are real, and you can read them, feel them.  All throughout the book you’re rooting for him.  He tells you about his trip to Fiji with his now wife Sheryl, and how he knew they would be together.  He also tells about how he goes out with the guys the night they return, and gets drunk and takes a girl home with him and ‘gets caught’ when Sheryl calls him later that night and hears the girl in the background.

When he talks about his family you can feel the love and pride and joy radiate from the page.  When he tells the story of meeting his son Matthew for the first time in the delivery room, when he calls him My Son, My Matthew your heart swells with the love you know he felt at becoming a father for the first time.  When he talks about life with his wife Sheryl you can feel the love he still feels for her 20 years after she married him.  (and maybe you’re a little bit jealous b/c that lucky bitch gets to spend the rest of her life with Rob Fucking Lowe)

From the nerd who couldn’t get a date to save his life in high school, to the leader of the Brat Pack, from the sex symbol of the 80’s to the West Wing, Rob Lowe has traveled an amazing road and has the stories to prove it.

P.S.  The pictures he included?  um, yes please. No matter what age he is he’s just gorgeous.

John Stamos, just like wine, ages well, very very well.

Last night, the girls and I were watching television, and Meredith was looking through old People magazines because she is a pop culture junkie, just like her mama.  She makes me so proud.

She’s flipping through pages, I’m watching Two and a Half Men, and out of nowhere she squees John Stamos!  Instantly I laughed out loud because it was almost 30 years ago, that I would squee John Stamos! at the television. 

The difference is,

This is Meredith’s John Stamos:

And he’s a good looking guy to be sure. 

But this is my John Stamos:

It struck me as funny, that my daughter, my 14 year old daughter, was all twitterpated over John Stamos, just like I had been twitterpated over John Stamos at the same age (or close).