When Pacino’s Hot, I’m Hot: A Miscellany of Stories & Commentary

by: Robert Levin

Published by: Drill Press

Reviewed by C. L. Rossman

This book is a little oddity—half what the writer call “stories” and half what he calls “commentary,” something like essays and editorials.

Most of the stories relate hilarious encounters in sex, from his contention that when some male movie stars are considered “hot,” he is mistaken for them and gets lucky, to things like “Peggie: (or Sex with a Very Large Woman;”) and did we mention impotence and bestiality? (Yup, more sex.)

The commentary essays run the gamut from “Stupidity: Its Uses and Abuses,” quite funny, to a serious and weighty piece on “Free Jazz” and the death of the Sixties.
Levin writes in a nervous and chatty style, albeit a very funny one. But underneath his hip humor he has a very dark outlook on life: we’re all going to die, anyway, and culture is our coping mechanism. (Check out “Everything’s All Eight in the Middle East” and “Get Your Face out of My Cigarette!”) My favorites were “Arena” and “Redefining Insurance Fraud,” which are written the way a smart, savvy columnist would write them, to get his point across.

He is the author and coauthor of a couple of serious books: Music & Politics and Giants of Black Music, with numerous published pieces in magazines—from which some of these are drawn.

Although the book comes across as something which has been just slapped together, it is funny, and that’s its saving grace.

Armchair Interviews says: Fun and funny read.