Synopses & Reviews
Much of the slang popularly associated with the hippie generation of the 1960s actually dates back before World War II, hijacked in the main from jazz and blues street expressions, mostly relating to drugs, sex, and drinking. Why talk when you can beat your chops, why eat when you can line your flue, and why snore when you can call some hogs? You're not drunk—you're just plumb full of stagger-juice and your skin isn't pasty, it's just cafe sunburn. Need a black coffee? That's a shot of java, nix on the moo juice. Containing thousands of examples of hipster slang drawn from pulp novels; classic noir and exploitation films; blues, country, and rock'n'roll lyrics; and other related sources from the 1920s to the 1960s, Straight From the Fridge, Dad lays down the righteous jive.
Review
"You'll surely be interested in having a new way to irritate your friends with obnoxious and obscure ways of saying 'to have sex' or to 'get drunk' (give 'burn rubber' and 'burning with a low blue flame' a whirl). Décharné has done a lot of homework here, but reading his book doesn't feel like school." Philadelphia Weekly News
Review
"Fun and appealing . . . draws heavily on American slang . . . Highly recommended for reference collections serving writers, historians, hipsters, and anyone who enjoys language." Library Journal
Review
"An afternoon spent poring through a vocabulary-building guide for your inner hipster is time well spent . . . Décharné has compiled the most righteous slang from film noir, blues, country, jazz and pulp fiction; with annotations and examples galore, it's guaranteed to turn a rube into a real wild child." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"There's no question that in the pages of Straight from the Fridge, Dad, everyday speech is put through some hilarious and convoluted permutations. But you don't have to take that on faith. Just cop a squat, cast your lamps on the book's leaves and dig its mellow kicks." Chicago Tribune
Review
"If you are the kind of hep cat who harbours a burning urge to gas the slobs, then the righteous Max is the man. He shoots the works to fascinating and often hilarious effect." Esquire
Review
"If you enjoy watching noir films, listening to blues or jazz, reading pulp novels or poring over certain song lyrics, this "dictionary of hipster slang", a guide to hep as it was spoken through the first half of the last century, will prove indispensable." Independent
About the Author
Max Décharné is a musician—a former member of Gallon Drunk, now the singer with The Flaming Stars—and the author of Hardboiled Hollywood and King's Road. He lives in hope that the world will pay closer attention to the theories of the anonymous British newspaper writer in 1919 who claimed to have discovered the origins of jazz, and put it all down to "grotesque and indecent movements invented by drunken cowboys in the Argentine."