Customer Reviews

Surfing Armageddon: Fishnets, Fascists, and Body Fluids in Florida

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I bought this book after discovering (from a google search) that George Tabb and I share many of the same life experiences - we both attended Leon High School in the late 70's, rode the same school bus (the "Nairobi Express" as George's brother called it), and were both "Rocky Horror" devotees @ the same theater on North Monroe st.

Like George, I also first saw the Ramones live when I was 16(in Atlanta) and later sat transfixed (and alone) through 5 screenings of "Rock and Roll High School" at the Tallahassee Mall and... we both attended the same Ramones show in Gainesville, FL in 1980.

I even wrecked my parents car at the same intersection as he did!

Surfing Armageddon contains so many untruths, distortions, and just plain hogwash that I have to go through them in a list.

1. I assume the sale price of his Fathers house in Greenwich, CT in 1977 was 1.4 million and not 14.1 as printed. 14.1 million for a single family house in Greenwich is high even by 2008's standards and would have been unheard of in 1977. Dunnellen Hall, which is now the most expensive property on the market in Greenwich @125 million (followed by Old Mill Farm @ 39.5), sold in 1976 for 3 million.

2. Tallahassee is within driving distance of, but not part of, the Redneck Riviera as Tabb frequently refers to it. This would be comparable to calling Yonkers "The Hamptons".

3. There were many Jewish students attending Leon High in 1978/79 including members of the football team. There were three synagogues in Tallahassee at that time and the idea that a Jewish kid would have caused such an uproar (or that a group of athletes chanting JEW JEW JEW would force him to pull his pants down to reveal the oddity of a circumcised penis) is preposterous.

And I can personally vouch for the fact that 99% of the boys in the locker room, whether Jewish or not, were circumcised. If anyone stood out it would be the one kid with foreskin!

4. The Killearn section of Tallahassee is a wealthy neighborhood populated by Doctors, Lawyers, Professors and high-ranking State Officials. Tabb's account of encountering barefoot, redneck children spouting off about niggers, jews, and jesus on the sidewalks of this manicured , country club enclave is highly improbable.

Tallahassee is very progressive politically and has voted Democratic in every national election since 1992. Tallahassee was also the first U.S. State Capitol to elect a Black Mayor - James Ford in 1972, 76, and 82 - who was followed by Penny Shaw-Herman (a JEWESS!)

5. Mad Dog contractors are a progressive, green oriented (since 1974), company of (basically) hippies who started a business as an outgrowth of their work with the Miccosukee Land Co-op and are now one of the leading contractors in Leon County. HIPPIES - NOT REDNECKS!

6. Tabb states that 11th grade in Tallahassee is like 6th grade any where else in the country. Because of the presence of three large universities in town, Tallahassee schools have always been top-rated. In fact, in 2006, Leon High was rated 109th in the U.S. by Newsweek Magazine's highly regarded "1000 Best Public High Schools in America" with Tallahassee's 3 other high schools coming in at 115, 153, and 157.

Maybe if he had left Greenwich High (which does not make Newsweek's List) a little earlier he would have learned the history of the Ku Klux Klan and where babies came from before starting college- (we had already covered those subjects in Middle School).

7. I was at Rocky Horror almost every weekend of it's first year's run on N. Monroe st. and never saw anyone who could be called the "Sal Piro" of Tallahassee.

8. I attended FSU so I can only say that his college dorm mate's being involved with the klan and keeping a klan robe in his dorm closet (as well as his racist remarks and violent behavior in the dorm) would have sparked a campus-wide protest and would have certainly resulted in his expulsion had it happened 100 miles away at the other large state university.

I'm just assuming that some of the characters in the book are composites of people Tabb COULD have met in Florida - but I doubt that this really was a student at U of F.

p.s. George - do some homework on the klan - who and what they were in 1980 in central FL. The Southern Law Poverty Center is a great starting place...

Finally, despite everything I've mentioned, and the fact that Tabb stoops to the use of a "Magical Negro" to free him from his conflicted family life in the last chapter of the book, by the end I had developed an affection for this lonely, searching , virgin and actually enjoyed the book.

Surfing Armageddon is easily George Tabb's best work so far,and if you've read his columns and last book,you know that's saying alot. It's got everything the reader expects from his stories and more. As George gets older, his style of writing somehow makes you feel like you're getting into your late teens along with him. The stories become more similar to your own experiences i.e. too much masturbating, only caring about losing your virginity, almost dying after smoking a joint laced with enough chemicals to give you the strangest hallucination imaginable, falling in love with the easter bunny at the mall, having a wanna be slave master father who you catch practing cracking the whip in a full white southern suit in the middle of the night, and so on. The book slowly becomes more dramatic towards the end that provides the most shocking and satisfying conclusion that one could ask for.

I've been addicted to George Tabb now for almost 6years. It started with MRR, then Playing Right Field, and now, here comes his biggest masterpiece Surfing Armageddon. This book in all it's hilarity is genuine, serious, and heart warming. It really is hard to put down cause his life is that amazing.

I first got turned onto George Tabb's writing many moons ago, I was about fifteen and had just discovoured Punk Rock, a friend who was a little older and wiser to the scene bought me my first copy of MRR and I was hooked, all these unknown bands that I had yet to listen to, in fact I only read the reviews the first time I picked it up... A few weeks later I found myself stuck with nothing to do between classes and set about the mammoth task of reading the columns, some I must admit were not to my taste, the trails of a punk rock mother(yuk kids are gross, and so are overweight green haired mothers wearing Rancid T Shirts), dull list's of which bands are in scene and which bands are out and then I found for the first time George Tabb's confesional, self depricating column, and it made me ache to move to the USA(I live in UK) and get more involved in this punk DIY scene...that first column I read, I think was telling the terrible tale of an experience with Viagra and how it all went wrong... this is the voice i want to write in I thought, I hope one day he releases a book because i find it so hard to wait a month to read the next piece! And some years later he did relase a book "A Jew Grows..." which I read in two hours this showed the best of his writing style, bittersweet, darkly funny and ironic but I had to wait some time for him to release the next instalment and I waited with baited breath... I read said book two days ago, again in two hours, I laughed and cried and now I wait again with baited breath to find out what happened next... hurry up George!!!!!

If you spent your high school years reading MRR, you know how utterly hilarious George Tabb is. Fans of his afforementioned columns, or his last book, Playing Right Field, should definately check Surfing Armaggedon out---but beware---this book, for me at least, was unlike anything he's ever written. Don't get me wrong, the majority of this book will have you doubled over, positively crippled in laughter, but the end was one of the more disturbing reading experiences I've ever had. When you invest faith in an author, there seems to be a tendancy to come to have steady expectations of what they'll produce. And without ruining it for anyone, the very last scene of this book left me glassy-eyed and chilled. Which is kind of leading me to believe that there is way more to this guy than we'll ever know. After reading this you'll see that this guy has more depth and range than you could believe.
Book of the year----10 million f-ing stars.

Hilarious, poignant and honest as ever. In "Surfing Armageddon," George picks up where he left off in "Playing Right Field." But now as a teenage Jewish "freak" in redneck Florida, he amazes and terrifies the school football team in the locker room with his circumcised [...] and bionic arm. His college roommate happens to be the son of the local KKK Imperial Wizard. And in an effort to make new friends, he nearly gets sucked into a creepy campus Jesus cult. A pivotal moment is when George gets his first black leather jacket and begins to find an identity. He convinces the local movie theatre management that weekend screenings of "Rocky Horror" will rake in the big bucks, and brings the cult phenomenon to Tallahassee, where he finds a lot of other like-minded fans to hang out with. All the while, he's desperately hoping to find the girl of his dreams or at least not die a virgin. Innocent and naive as ever, you find yourself rooting for him to succeed and triumph. And to keep from being killed by that rich, sadistic father of his, Lester, and the constant berating by Lester's evil trophy wife. Achingly sad at times, but always funny, in that conversational style George Tabb is such a genius at. You'll want to share this book with everyone you know.

Just like "Playing Right Field" before it, George Tabb narrates the story of his young life, which is at the same time sad and hilarious. Some of the same characters appear from "Playing Right Field", like Lester, George's abusive closet transvestite father and Cybill his twisted stepmother. But now that George has moved to the "Redneck Riviera", there are a whole cast of crazy characters, Rocky Horror Freaks, Ku Klux Klan, et al. Whether you're an avid reader or an occasional comic book reader, you'll love this book because it reads like a hilarious letter from an old friend.

George Tabb does it again. Surfing Armageddon is like the second Harry Potter book, in that it's just as cool as the first one, but the characters are a bit older and more complex. It's hilarious and terrifying and an amazing story of survival told in George's true voice. He writes the way he is, and to read him is to know him. Yes, he Really is that sweet. By the time I finished the book I had tears of mingled laughter and heartbreak streaming down my face. George has the gift of being able to make good things out of bad. If his horrific childhood and adolesence was the price he had to pay to write this book, then maybe it was worth it. He is my hero.

No one can tell a story like Mr. Tabb. If you've read his first book, Playing Right Field, or any of his MRR columns, you know that.

George's journey through first experiences with sex, drugs, punk rock and Rocky Horror are both hilarious and heart wrenching. The ups, the downs, the good, the bad - George makes it feel like you're experiencing it all right beside him. From his first leather jacket, to losing his virginity and back again... it is impossible to put down. The end leaves you with tears in your eyes, a smile on your face, and an intense curiosity about what happens next. This book, along with Playing Right Field, has skyrocketed to the top of my list of favorite reads, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.

If you thought George's dad was an asshole in Playing Right Field, wait till you get a load of him in Surfing Armageddon. Lester is such a flaming prick that you just want to find his grave, dig up his bones and drop a duce directly into his skull. The way George Tabb writes a story makes you feel like you're not just reading a story but like you're really there to love, laugh, and suffer the life and legend of George Tabb. And the icing on the cake..... it's all true. Buy this book. Read this book. Recommend this book to your friends and help preserve the legacy of one man who is an inspired musician, a great rock'n'roll journalist, and an altogether good human being.