How To Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star

The increasing girth of Kirstie Alley's rear end has figured prominently (pun intended) on many a tabloid cover in recent years. At the peak of her career ("Cheers"), of course, her butt was indeed at its smallest. It's no surprise that she therefore sums up her life philosophy this way: one's level of happiness tends to be inversely proportional to the size of one's posterior.

With extremely salty language on par with what you might hear in a 50 Cent song, Alley has penned a self-deprecating Hollywood tell-all in the disguise of "note-to-self"-style diary entries. With many apologies to Bridget Jones, we learn that Alley is a former cocaine addict who once participated in the snorting of a six-foot-long trail of powder at a party. (She's says she's currently a Scientologist and credits L. Ron Hubbard with curing her of her narcotic addiction, as well as her issues with food.) We also learn--for better or worse--that she has the hots for John Travolta, Kid Rock, and Ben Affleck, and that she blames her weight gain for a super-extended period of unplanned celibacy.

As crass as she is (she kisses and tells, even including the sordid details of her losing her virginity in the front seat of a Chevy Impala), it's hard not to feel sympathetic for Alley. She admits that following a miscarriage in her third month of pregnancy and subsequent diagnosis of infertility—which were also broadcast in the tabloids--her weight started ballooning. And as much as she dishes about Hollywood actors such as Tim Matheson (of Animal House fame), she has the decency to leave Parker Stevenson, her ex-husband and father of their two adopted children, out of the gossiping. Even so, overall, this feels like a strangely extended endorsement of Dianetics. --Erica Jorgensen