Alan ScherstuhlEach Monday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets around Los Angeles.
Spread Some Love: Relationships 101
Author: John A. Andrews
Date: 2008
Publisher: Books That Will Enhance Your Life, Sherman Oaks
Discovered at: Circus of Books, West Hollywood
The Back Cover Quotes: Lincoln, Disraeli, and “Mark Burg, Producer SAW motion picture franchise.”
Representative Quote: “Abraham Lincoln who failed over and over again had this to say: 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.'” (page 29)
John A. Andrews seems like a great guy.
He bursts with love and optimism. In addition to writing eight books in one year, including How I Wrote 8 Books in One Year, this Sherman Oaks author/actor/filmmaker/ driver/motivational speaker runs Andrews Leadership International, a motivational company; manages the online Teen Success Magazine and its many subsidiaries; and coined the slogan “Leadership for E.V.E.R.,” where E.V.E.R. breaks down like this:
Empowerment
Vision
Entertainment
Relationship
But great guy or not, he's victim to a flaw common to start-up self-help writers: a failure to recognize the gulf between “You can do it” and “You should do it.”
For example, even if you think it might help you to write eight books in one year, but it is certainly not helping books. When so quickly dashed off, they tend to come out like my copy of Spread Some Love, a signed edition selling for $3 at Circus of Books and packed with inscrutabilities like these:
“We live in a society where women complain that a good man is hard to find. And men choose to stay single or form homogenous relationships.”
“In a non-fence-sitting situation love flows from the heart like a bonfire, setting another's heart on fire and when the blaze is concentrated it becomes difficult to contain love's flame.”
“Women want to be loved and cherished with a king to rule over them.”
“Because of Dr. King's sacrificial love for his 'cause' today black kids and white kids not only hold hands together, but Blacks and Whites are able to unite on several different agendas.”
This amazing video captures the book's essence.
To make sure your sex is “very enjoyable,” sharpen your axe!
Andrews is a helpless quoter. He includes thoughts from Emerson, Twain, George Washington, “the German philosopher Goethe,” Zig Ziglar and dozens of likeminded self-help writers.
A typical passages begins with, “Love will cause one to go to other limits as in the case of Romeo and Juliet, according to Shakespeare.”
That's followed by a five-line quote from Dr. Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages, 20 lines from Corinthians, and then, with no transition, this:
“The famous Vince Lombardi, late coach of the Green Bay Packers, echoed: 'Winning is not a sometimes thing; it's an all time thing.'”
The next page gives us three confounding similes in a row, comparing love first to a fire “engulfing the possessor and recipient in flames of brilliance,” then to a light switch flipped on and off by “false pretenders or people possessing hypocritical love,” and then, from nowhere, this:
“We all know that a stream is unable to deliver to the ocean if its supply is aborted by a deficiency such as a drought or a dam. Cure the drought of love and it flows, release the dam and it gushes out.”
(Maybe he's suggesting you wear a condom?)
And immediately following that, without even a paragraph break:
“I like looking at a cloudless sky but also like to see the clouds so full that they cannot produce anymore rain. Those clouds cannot provide rain if they are empty and the more laden they are the more showers they deposit. As my mom used to say, 'something can't come from nothing.'”
In short, love is like a Vince Lombardi raindance on fire.
Andrea failed to do as she was asked.
Anyway, here's a few more Andrews-isms:
“Most of the time what she is saying is 'pay me some attention, even if what I'm saying doesn't make sense.' Women, unlike most men tend to say anything to ignite a conversation.”
“Romance in a marriage is like gasoline in a gas tank of an automobile and it's imperative to keep that love thank full. [sic]”
“Most women tend to let themselves go after they get the ring, they come to bed with rollers in their hair and holes under the armpit of their night attire. Men like to inspect what they expect and are therefore turned off rather than turned on fully by what they see.”
Shocking Detail:
Highlight:
“Most young women are raised in homes where the dad is not respected by mom, so they tend to adopt the same philosophy and bring it into their marriage – disrespect for their husband.”
Andrews pursues this thought for several paragraphs. He concludes:
“Women find it hard to respect men if they feel he has not done enough to make her happy. They do not realize that happiness, like success, is a journey. It is like saying 'fireplace give me some heat and then I'll give you wood.'”
Wait, it's the women saying that?
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