You Might Be a Zombie . . . Read Online Free PDF

Kennedy was in actually writing it. Although odds are good that Kennedy read the book, credible evidence indicates that Kennedy’s speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, wrote the majority of it. In 2008, Sorenson claimed in his autobiography that he “did a first draft of most chapters,” and “helped choose the words of many of its sentences.” In literary circles this is known as “writing the book.”
    Why didn’t you know that?
    People tend to assume you’ve written something after you’ve won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Also, Kennedy allegedly paid Sorenson more than half the book’s royalties from its first five years in print, which is probably why it took Sorenson fifty years to blow the whistle. And lastly, Kennedy was probably too busy dragging soldiers out of sinking ships with his teeth like a goddamned rescue dog and inventing a cure for headaches that nine out of ten doctors agree is a hell of a lot more fun than aspirin (see page 207).
    2. BARRY MANILOW DID NOT WRITE “I WRITE THE SONGS”
    Although he put together a string of pop hits in the 1970s, Barry Manilow is perhaps best known for his 1975 signature song “I Write the Songs,” which topped Billboard’s charts for two weeks and won Manilow a Grammy for Song of the Year. In it, Manilow sings: I write the songs that make the whole world sing.
    I write the songs, I write the songs.
    A little misleading since those words were written by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys. In fact, Manilow wasn’t even the first person to cover it.
    Manilow wrote a lot of his own songs, just none of the ones you’ve ever heard before. “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again,” “Weekend in New England,”
    “Looks Like We Made It,” “Can’t Smile Without You,” and “Ready to Take a Chance Again” were all written by other people. He did turn a cover of the UK hit “Brandy” into a U.S. hit called “Mandy,” a change that probably required some writing, or at least the use of a pen.
    It was legendary Arista Records exec Clive Davis who pushed Manilow to cover “I Write the Songs.” So a more accurate chorus would be, “I sing the song that Clive Davis tells me to.”
    Why didn’t you know that?
    Quite simply, he’s ugly. Most people assume Manilow was a hit-writing machine because in the looks department, he’s a passable girlfriend for your bookish aunt who wears Sal y Jessy Raphael glasses. At best.
    1. ORSON WELLES DID NOT WRITE CITIZEN KANE
    Citizen Kane , the fictionalized account of publisher William Randolph Hearst’s life, is often referred to as the greatest film ever made. To say it’s Orson Welles’s signature work is an understatement. It’s like the Citizen Kane of understatements. Film geeks speak of the film with biblical reverence, and non-film geeks know better than to question them. It’s one of the great achievements in American popular art, and most assume Wel es conceived and birthed it whole after a night of hermaphroditic self-love.

    Which is odd, since even according to the movie credits Welles is the secondary author to screenwriting veteran Herman Mankiewicz. In fact, the few people alive who still give a shit think that Welles’s contributions to the script were minimal. Rita Alexander, who took Mankiewicz’s dictation for the script, was quoted as saying that Wel es did not write or dictate one line of the script. Furthermore, film critic David Thomson, author of a book about the film, has said that “no one can now deny Herman Mankiewicz credit for the germ, shape, and pointed language of the screenplay.”
    Why didn’t you know that?
    Because it turns out that Wel es was kind of a dick. He wanted the world to think he was a one-stop, all -purpose, filmmaking wunderkind. The RKO-produced program handed out at the movie’s premiere read: “the one-man band, directing, acting, and writing.” Also, in an interview that occurred while writing credit disputes were ongoing, Welles was quoted as saying, “I wrote Citizen