Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits [Paperback]

Celia Rivenbark (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 1, 2009

Hang on to your hats! We’re in for some fiercely funny weather and crackling-sharp observations from Celia Rivenbark, of whom USA Today has said, "Think Dave Barry with a female point of view." With her incomparable style and sassy southern wit, you’ll hear from Celia on:

• The joys of remodeling Tara
• How Harry Potter bitch-slaps Nancy Drew
• Britney’s To-Do list: pick okra, cover that thang up
• How rugby-playing lesbians torpedoed beach day
• Why French women suck at competitive eating
• The truth about nature deficit disorder
• The difference between cockroaches and water bugs
• The beauty of Bedazzlers
• And much, much more!

Whether she’s doing her taxes or extolling the virtues of Madonna’s mothering skills, Celia Rivenbark will keep you laughing until the very last page.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Rivenbark’s observations of modern life can be downright hilarious. Readers will laugh out loud over her commentary on status mothers and all the odd obsessions of modern life. Plus the South truly is a different country than the rest of the U.S., and Rivenbark is the perfect guide to the southern point of view in her descriptions of sweet tea and not-so-sweet bubbas. Home renovation is her main theme, and Rivenbark admits that she believed having your own personal dumpster was pure joy, especially after driving around to find someplace to dump her oversize bags of smelly garbage, until she discovered that they charge by the load. She also tells tales about dealing with overpriced repairmen, workmen who speak their own private form of English, and posh exterminators with attitude. Rivenbark treats life’s problems with refreshing disrespect and humor, so sit a spell and enjoy a rollicking, fun ride with the musings of one of the funniest of southern writers, one who appeals to the belle in all of us. --Patty Engelmann --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Rivenbark treats life’s problems with refreshing disrespect and humor, so sit a spell and enjoy a rollicking, fun ride with the musings of one of the funniest of southern writers, one who appeals to the 'belle' in all of us."

--Booklist

“No matter what side of the Mason-Dixon line you live on, Celia Rivenbark’s witty observations about Southern living are sure to bring a laugh.” – Southern Seasons

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312363001
• ISBN-13: 978-0312363000
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #245,422 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Celia Rivenbark was born and raised in Duplin County, NC, which had the distinction of being the nation's number 1 producer of hogs and turkeys during a brief, magical moment in the early 1980s.

Celia grew up in a small house in the country with a red barn out back that was populated by a couple of dozen lanky and unvaccinated cats. Her grandparents' house, just across the ditch, had the first indoor plumbing in Teachey, NC and family lore swears that people came from miles around just to watch the toilet flush.

Despite this proud plumbing tradition, Celia grew up without a washer and dryer. On every Sunday afternoon of her childhood, while her mama rested up from preparing a fried chicken and sweet potato casserole lunch, she, her sister and her daddy rode to the laundromat two miles away to do the weekly wash.

It was at this laundromat, where a carefully lettered sign reminded customers that management was "NOT RESONSIBLE" for lost items, that Celia shirked "resonsibility" her own self and snuck away to read the big, fat Sunday News & Observer out of Raleigh, NC. By age 7, she'd decided to be a newspaper reporter.

Late nights, she'd listen to the feed trucks rattle by on the highway and she'd go to sleep wondering what exotic cities those noisy trucks would be in by morning (Richmond? Atlanta? Charlotte?) Their headlights crawling across the walls of her little pink bedroom at the edge of a soybean field were like constellations pointing the way to a bigger life, a better place, a place where there wasn't so much turkey shit everywhere.

After a couple of years of college, Celia went to work for her hometown paper, the Wallace, NC Enterprise. The locals loved to say, as they renewed their "perscriptions," that "you can eat a pot of rice and read the Enterprise and go to bed with nothing on your stomach and nothing on your mind."

Mebbe. But Celia loved the Enterprise. Where else could you cover a dead body being hauled out of the river (alcohol was once again a contributing factor) in the morning and then write up weddings in the afternoon?

After eight years, however, taking front-page photos of the publisher shaking hands with other fez-wearing Shriners and tomatoes shaped like male "ginny-talia" was losing its appeal.

Celia went to work for the Wilmington, NC Morning Star after a savvy features editor was charmed by a lead paragraph in an Enterprise story about the rare birth of a mule: "Her mother was a nag and her father was a jackass."

The Morning Star was no News and Observer but it came out every day and Celia got to write weddings for 55,000 readers instead of 3,500, plus she got a paycheck every two weeks with that nifty New York Times logo on it.

After an unfortunate stint as a copy editor--her a*s expanded to a good six ax handles across--Celia started writing a weekly humor column that fulfilled her lifelong dream of being paid to be a smart a*s. Along the way, she won a bunch of press awards, including a national health journalism award--hilarious when you consider she's never met a steamed vegetable she could keep down.

Having met and married a cute guy in sports, Celia found herself happily knocked up at age 40 and, after 21 years, she quit newspapering to stay home with her new baby girl.

After a year or so, she started using Sophie's two-hour naps to write a humor column from the mommie front lines for the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The column continues to run weekly and is syndicated by the McClatchy-Tribune News Services.

In 2000, Coastal Carolina Press published a collection of Celia's columns. A Southeast Book Sellers Association best-seller, Bless Your Heart, Tramp was nominated for the James Thurber Prize in 2001. David Sedaris won. He wins everything.

Her second book, We're Just Like You, Only Prettier, published by St. Martin's Press, was the winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Nonfiction Book of the Year and was a finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor. Jon Stewart won. He and David Sedaris probably went out drinking afterwards. I'm sorry, did that sound bitter?

Celia lives in Wilmington, NC, with her husband, Scott, Director of Government Relations for New Hanover Health Network and author of the true-crime bestseller, Innocent Victims. Their daughter, Sophie, attends elementary school where she grudgingly wears a very uncool uniform. When she isn't writing books, magazine articles or speeches, Celia enjoys watching old episodes of "The Gilmore Girls" while eating anything from Taco Bell.

She reports that the proudest day of her life was the one in which the Sears truck showed up to deliver a matching washer and dryer and neither one of 'em had to go on the front porch.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars She's One Funny Lady September 12, 2008

By Stephanie DePue VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

About one of Celia Rivenbark's earlier books, "USA Today" cleverly said, "Think Dave Barry with a female point of view." It's a formulation that can't be beat, but I'd add "Southern point of view," in regard to "Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits," her latest. For Rivenbark, author of the award-winning best sellers Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: And Other Words of Delicate Southern Wisdom; We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle; and Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments, a newspaper humor columnist distributed by the Mc Clatchy Syndicate, is one funny lady. In fact, she's the natural successor to humor columnist Erma Bombach, only she's younger and prettier. And, to be sure, alive.

Belle Weather is a collection of Rivenbark's columns. Lucky me, I remember reading some of them in the local paper, "The Star News," of Wilmington, North Carolina; it's her home paper, as it is mine, these days. The paper's star feature writer/book reviewer/movie reviewer Ben Steelman, has just gone to the trouble of counting up Rivenbark's television references in this book: let's just say, among friends, that there are many. Also, many pop culture references. But hey, a girl's gotta refer to something to make her points. And make her points Rivenbark does. She's funny, y'all: and that comes from a woman who has lived here for only three years, is not a Southerner, and never will be. I defy you to get through "Britney's to-do list: pick okra, cover that thang up," without dissolving into fits of laughter. Or try "The difference between cockroaches and water bugs," that explains the southern viewpoint on this important consideration. You probably need to know, if you're a mother, "How Harry Potter bitch-slaps Nancy Drew." Furthermore, Rivenbark has one of the most important ingredients of Southern humor going for her: she can be pretty danged fierce when she's lighting out after those irritating, smug PTA type mothers.

And most female dieters -- that's all of us, isn't it?-- will want to know "Why French women suck at competitive eating:" we do, after all, get those dad-blamed women thrown up at us all the time in our struggles with the scale.

Rivenbark says, "I`d been inspired by the book "French Women Don't Get Fat," which stresses tiny portions of wonderful things. Inside my body, it was as if a real French woman had taken up residence. I imagined her petulant and puny, even trying desperately to get me to take up smoking again. When I was observing the French Women's Diet, I ate like Nicole Richie sans the Vicodin buffet." Well, evidently, if you've been living in a cave, and somehow don't know who Nicole Richie -- or Britney Spears is, for that matter --and aren't sure what Vicodin does, this book's not for you. "Tant pis,"in that case. That's French for "too bad for you," y'all.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars God bless Celia's pea pickin' heart! August 25, 2008

By S. J. Koblentz VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

My first encounter with a southern humorist was Florence King's book "Southern Ladies and Gentlemen" (availble here on Amazon), back in 1983. I was in school in Washington DC and the book was part of a course on The South Since the Civil War. Miss King (no Ms. for her as she'll tell you: spinsterhood is powerful) had me laughing on the Metro bus; not chuckling mind you, but laughing out loud with her biting observations of her kith and kin. Since then, other people have tried to turn me on to the Sweet Potato Queens and the Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, however Ms. King is still the Queen of Southern humor and the others are simply wanna-be's.

Belle Weather, Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits is my first encounter with Celia Rivenbark. Not as biting as Florence King, Rivenbark's book had me chuckling out loud at work, while I read it. What can I say, it was a slow day at the computer company.

Where as King's humor is based on Southerners and things that make southerners so idiosyncratic, Rivenbark's essays are a bit more universal, but told through a Southerner's sensibilities. These are situations that one could find themsleves in personally, but with a twinkle and wink they are infused with Rivenbark's southern hospitality without being as contrived or stereotypically slathered in southern syrupy sweetness that some writers will use.

And like King, who universally lowers her guns at everyone, so does Ravenbark, who does King one better by turning her keen eye on herself as well. Case in point, instead of making fun of homeowners on HG TV that go and and select the granite for their new countertops, Rivenbark (in the midst of remodelling her own kitchen) goes and "visits" her granite, she oogles the granite and almost begins to fawn over it. Ravenbark indriectly points out that unless you have redone a kitchen, you can't possibly understand this encounter, unless you watch a lot of HG TV and then it makes perfect sense.

Rivenbark takes on gay men (she loves them and is wondered why straight men are more prone to be afraid of them instead of focusing more time on their own cuticles), Super Mommies and school uniforms and the premise of a career as a competitive eater.

OK, so you have probably gathered that I liked the book. I do, a great deal. But I also have read that this book is getting lots-o-great press, and the author deserves every once of it.

My bottom line is that this is a book that you can pick up and read bits and parts of it, but you're going to have a hard time putting it back down to begin with. And having finished it, I plan on going back and rereading the passages that made me snort out loud.

Rivenbark is an enchanting writer, and a joy to read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Laughing all the way down the road, Y'all September 2, 2008

By Jimmy DeLoche VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I got this is audio book form. It's totally hilarious. The response to other drivers when they saw me laughing out loud in my car is great! I love humorists that can see the crazieness within themselves and others. I am a yankee that has been a southerner for almost 30 years. Belle Weather has a biting southern humor without getting too specific or personal. She describes many typical reactions of situations we all could encounter.
I love her writing and will buy older books too.