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Arbitrary Stupid Goal
- Narrated by: Tamara Shopsin
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
In Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin takes the listener on a pointillist time-travel trip to the Greenwich Village of her bohemian 1970s childhood, a funky, tight-knit small town in the big city, long before Sex and the City tours and luxury condos. The center of Tamara's universe is Shopsin's, her family's legendary greasy spoon, aka "The Store", run by her inimitable dad, Kenny - a loquacious, contrary, huge-hearted man who, aside from dishing up New York's best egg salad on rye, is Village sheriff, philosopher, and fixer all at once. All comers find a place at Shopsin's table and feast on Kenny's tall tales and trenchant advice along with the incomparable chili con carne. Told in a sly, elliptical narrative that is both hilarious and endearing, Arbitrary Stupid Goal is an offbeat memory-book mosaic about the secrets of living an unconventional life, which is becoming a forgotten art.
This program is read by the author.
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- A Memoir
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jen Lancaster
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Jen Lancaster has lived a life based on re-invention and self-improvement. From Bitter Is the New Black to The Tao of Martha, she’s managed to document her (and her generation’s) attempts to shape up, grow up, and have it all - sometimes with disastrous results...Mistakes are one thing; regrets are another. After a girls’ weekend in Savannah makes her realize that she is - yikes! - middle-aged (binge watching is so the new binge drinking), Jen decides to make a bucket list and seize the day.
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The Smug Is Strong With This One
- By T. Filowitz on 05-24-15
By: Jen Lancaster
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Digging Up Mother
- A Love Story
- By: Johnny Depp - foreword, Doug Stanhope
- Narrated by: Doug Stanhope and Friends
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.
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Not my thing.
- By J. Harral on 01-27-18
By: Johnny Depp - foreword, and others
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Junkie Love
- By: Joe Clifford
- Narrated by: Timothy McKean
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the cow fields of Connecticut to the streets of San Francisco, Joe Clifford's Junkie Love traverses the lost highways of America, down the rocky roads of mental illness to the dead ends of addiction. Based on Clifford's own harrowing experience with drugs as a rock 'n' roll wannabe in the 1990s, the audiobook draws on the best of Kerouac and the Beats, injecting a heavy dose of pulp fiction as it threads a rollicking narrative through a doomed love triangle, lit up by the many strange characters he meets along the way.
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WOW! an inside look into an junkies mind
- By TinkerMel on 05-16-17
By: Joe Clifford
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The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club
- True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life
- By: Laurie Notaro
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Introducing Laurie Notaro, the leader of the Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club. Every day she fearlessly rises from bed to defeat the evil machinations of dolts, dimwits, and creepy boyfriends - and that's before she even puts on a bra. For the past 10 years, Notaro has been entertaining Phoenix newspaper readers with her wildly amusing autobiographical exploits and unique life experiences.
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Sweet and funny
- By Julia Valentin on 12-19-20
By: Laurie Notaro
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What Doesn't Kill You
- By: Virginia DeBerry, Donna Grant
- Narrated by: Virginia DeBerry, Donna Grant
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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What Doesn't Kill You is the story of how Thomasina Hodges, a.k.a. Tee, loses her job and finds herself. Tee's evolution after her sudden and unexpected outplacement, is loosely based on the stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, relinquishing, readjusting, and reinvesting. For Tee, losing her job is like a death, but with time, and some bumps, bruises and a new attitude, she comes out on the other side, having reassessed what's important in her life.
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Excellent story
- By Doris Greene on 04-11-24
By: Virginia DeBerry, and others
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My Planet
- Finding Humor in the Oddest Places
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Follow New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach - but be careful not to trip - as she weaves through personal anecdotes and everyday musings riddled with her uncanny wit and amazingly analytical eye. These essays, which found a well-deserved home within the pages of Reader's Digest as the column "My Planet," detail the inner workings of hypochondriacs, hoarders, and compulsive cheapskates. (Did we mention neurotic interior designers and professional list makers?) For Roach, humor is hidden in the most unlikely places, which means that nothing is off limits.
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Narrator drove me crazy
- By Ann on 04-23-14
By: Mary Roach
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Labor Day
- By: Joyce Maynard
- Narrated by: Wilson Bethel
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's Atonement and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, acclaimed author Joyce Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy - and the man he later becomes - looking back at an unexpected encounter that begins one single, long, hot, life-altering weekend.
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Good story but anti clamatic
- By Nana on 11-25-13
By: Joyce Maynard
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This Might Get a Little Heavy
- A Memoir
- By: Ralphie May, Nils Parker
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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There was a time when Ralphie May was one of the biggest stand-up comedians in the country, both by ticket sales and by tonnage. While some things changed - Ralphie lost half his body weight - others did not: He will be remembered as one of the most successful comics of his time. Completed just months before his untimely passing, in This Might Get a Little Heavy, Ralphie takes listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of his life and career, one that winds across the country, over obstacles, beyond heartbreak, and through the golden age of stand-up.
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brilliant and tragic
- By Timothy Trujillo on 08-12-18
By: Ralphie May, and others
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My Korean Deli
- Risking It All for a Convenience Store
- By: Ben Ryder Howe
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This sweet and funny tale of a preppy editor buying a Brooklyn deli with his Korean in-laws is about family, culture clash, and the quest for authentic experiences. It starts with a gift. When Ben Ryder Howe’s wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents’ self-sacrifice by buying them a store, Howe, an editor at the rarefied Paris Review, agrees to go along.
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Absolutely delightful!
- By Grace O'Malley on 03-19-11
By: Ben Ryder Howe
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Is This Anything?
- By: Jerry Seinfeld
- Narrated by: Jerry Seinfeld
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”
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Joke, joke, joke. Boring, boring, boring.
- By ECMILLER on 10-11-20
By: Jerry Seinfeld
What listeners say about Arbitrary Stupid Goal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-30-17
I loved it.
I loved it. It let me experience an incredible time and place that I would otherwise be unable to. It does (oddly enough) remind me of what life was like growing up in the outskirts of tel aviv in the 90's. The store is a great place to be, and I've loved every dish I've had. My favorite - mac n cheese waffle grilled cheese general tso duck sandwich - is sadly gone. Thank you for the wonderful stories.
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1 person found this helpful
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- elizabeth saloka
- 08-27-21
love the shopsins
The story of the Shopsins is one I never tire of. What a gift.
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- Dobbs
- 01-05-19
Such a joy
This is a terrific book -- I absolutely loved Shopsin's stories and her way of telling them. Rarely do I read a memoir that reminds me of my own childhood the way Arbitrary Stupid Goal did. Wonderful. So happy to have stumbled upon this title.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-19-18
Absolute Must Read
it's a fun, lighthearted book full of wisdom and little life lessons we all can forget.
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- Kevin Crumpton
- 10-20-20
Sound effects hard in the ears
I enjoyed this book and the very original story that she shared. I listen to several audio books per month and the horn sound effect every time there was a photo or illustration in the pdf was just awful. Terrible choice for marking the PDF during the audio.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Andrew Weymouth
- 09-16-17
Great writing, bad audiobook formatting
What did you love best about Arbitrary Stupid Goal?
This is another great book from Tamara Shopsin. Her performance narrating is nuanced, pitch perfect and drives an excellently written story.
That being said, the 'horn' which notes to the listener to reference the attached pdf for images from the book is really annoying and takes away from the audio experience. No one will be listening in front of a computer to reference the images anyway so it seems out of place
The listening experience would have been improved by telling the audience to download the images after reading the book as a post-listening supplemental material.
What did you like best about this story?
Perfect snapshot of a complicated institution in the middle of a complicated neighborhood. Really enjoyed the short tangents that Shopsin would take into history to make a patchwork of history and memoir.
Have you listened to any of Tamara Shopsin’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
This was my first time listening to her and I thought her performance was excellent!
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes-- and it just took two sittings.
Any additional comments?
A great artist that I hope keeps producing great work.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Eli
- 03-07-24
Not very interesting
Someone thought it was a good idea to have a LOUD siren go off every few minutes to let you know that there's a photo you need to look at in the PDF. That on top of a rather live-less performance and a dull story.
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