Ever insightful pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman waxes poetic on everything that would have affected the life of a thirty-something. Funny and poinant. This is Klosterman at his very best.

"There are two ways to look at life. The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherently connected, and that the only driving force in anyone's life is entropy. The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected, even if we don't realize it."

"In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever 'in and of itself'".

"There's not a lot to say during breakfast. I mean, you just woke up, you know? Nothing has happened. If neither person had an especially weird dream and nobody burned the toast, breakfast is just the time for chewing Cocoa Puffs and/or wishing you were still asleep. But we've been convinced not to think like that."

"If you define your personality as creative, it only means you understand what is perceivedto be creative by the world at large, so you're really just following a rote creative template. That's the opposite of creativity. Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time."

"If cool was a color, it would be black - and Billy Joel would be sort of burnt orange."

"If given the choice between hearing a great band and seeing a cool band, I'll take the latter every time; this is why the Eagles suck."

"Every one of Joel's important songs - including the happy ones - are ultimately about loneliness...like the way it feels when you're being hugged by someone and it somehow makes you sadder."

"I hate that those letters still exist. But I don't hate them because what I said was false; I hate them because what I said was completely true. My convictions could not have been stronger when I wrote those words, and - for whatever reason - they still faded into nothingness."

"The truth is that most children don't love soccer; they simply hate the alternatives more."

"An inordinate number of cereal commercials are based on the premise that a given cereal is so delicious that a fictional creature would want to steal it."

"Teenagers dream they want to be cool, but mostly they just want to avoid being uncool."

"We pursue that which retreats from us, and coolness is always a bear market. Coolness is always what others seem to have naturally - an unspecific, delicious, chocolately paradigm we must pilfer through subterfuge."

"Being cool is mostly ridiculous, and so is sugared cereal. That's why we like it."

"Math is the antireligion, because it splinters the gravity of life's only imperative equation: Either something is true, or it isn't. Do or do not; there is no try."

"Most people consider forgetting stuff to be a normal part of living. However, I see it as a huge problem; in a way, there's nothing I fear more. The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality. And since objective reality is fixed, all we can do is try to experience - to consume - as much of that fixed reality as possible. This can be done only by living in the moment (which I never do) or by exhaustively filing away former moments for later recall (which I do all the time)...Taoists constantly tell me to embrace the present, but I only live in the past and the future; my existence is solely devoted to a) thinking about what will happen next and b) thinking back to what's happened before. The present seems useless, because it has no extension beyond my senses."

"Lots of people (in fact, most people) do not dream about morphing their current life into something dramatic and cool and metaphoric. Most people see their life as a job they have to finish; if anything, they want their life to be less complicated than it already is."

How I Came To Read This Book: My friend Sarah lent it to me. I feel like I've been writing that a lot lately.

The Plot: Chuck Klosterman's second book is, in my opinion, his best. A collection of essays on everything imaginable related to pop culture, the stories here range from contemplative to side-splittingly hilarious. The topics are on everything from Saved By The Bell to Billy Joel and MTV's The Real World to amateur porn (wait, aren't they the...never mind), all imbued with Klosterman's trademark wit, cynicism, and earnest mid-western roots.

The Good & The Bad: Okay, so Klosterman is writing for a specific generation, and I'm actually a bit young for it. If you don't fall within the cache of people he's writing for (or on the fringes as I am), then you won't appreciate this book - not in the way it's written, nor in the topics it covers. As much as I like Klosterman's razor-edged wit, I also imagine him to be quite the pretentious d-bag in real life, based on his skewering of society when he himself is no holy grail. If you can look past that and get into his style though, you will wholly enjoy this. Again, I tend to be tougher on nonfiction books, but this one managed to entertain and be a (did you know these exist?) non-fiction page-turner.

The Bottom Line: Definitely meant for a small pool of the population, but if you get it, you'll LOVE it.

Anything Memorable?: I borrowed this book a few more times after reading it. The first was to complete a writing assignment on different author's styles - I used Klosterman's interlude on Mr. Smokey, the sock-stealing cat, and got reprimanded for not choosing a more literal work of fiction (are you kidding me?). The second was to lend to a friend, who also lurved it.

50-Book Challenge?: Nope.

When I was in college, one of my professors assigned a book that used bridge, a card game he apparently loved, to illustrate the principles of sociology. I found the book, which he had written, to be a waste of time and was annoyed that he made us buy and read it. At the end of the semester, we had to write a paper that applied sociological theories to something in American culture we were interested in. So, in an attempt to mock the professor, I focused my paper on several children's cartoons including, if I remember correctly, "The Smurfs" and "Scooby Doo."

This is not much different than what Chuck Klosterman is doing in "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," in which he uses television shows like "Saved By the Bell" and "The Real World" to analyze our culture. Except, as far as I can tell, he means for us to take him seriously. For much of the book, I felt like I was stuck in a dorm room listening to the ramblings of a sociology major who has devoted far too much time to analyzing crappy TV shows, breakfast-cereal commercials, and basketball-team rivalries. (Sure, he admits that the subjects of his essays aren't always deserving of his analysis, but that doesn't make them any easier to take.) This analysis is interspersed with sweeping generalizations of American society that, in fact, are more like sweeping generalizations of Klosterman's white, middle-class, Generation X friends and colleagues. His fans might stop me here and suggest I'm too old to truly appreciate his ideas. The problem is I'm actually a year younger than Klosterman.

I would have given "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" just one star, but I allowed it an extra one partly because of Klosterman's entertaining story about Paradise City, a Guns 'n' Roses tribute band. The piece shows that Klosterman is much better when doing actual reporting instead of sitting in a room, watching Pamela Anderson's famous sex tape, and comparing the video vixen's legacy to Marilyn Monroe's. Also, I liked his analysis of Billy Joel's career. Klosterman may be the first person to accurately describe how good Joel was in his prime without ever actually being, unlike most rock stars at their best, cool.

The book feels choppy, the chapters are written like one might write for Spin Magazine. It does not seem like a writer for Spin would want his book to read like his magazine, but I guess when you're stuck in a rut. I liked some of the development of his ideas. Klosterman uses the F-word on about every 3rd page, and when he does he uses it like a 7th grader with Tourette's syndrome. His analysis hinges on B-sides of musical artists and like most rock critics he chooses to annotate his work, not with real resources, just his additional rantings on specific topics, which otherwise act as tangents. I read all of them. If you read this book, you don't have to. Billy Joel's hits are really good - Klosterman prefers the B-sides.

If not for the incessant use of curse words to share his tone, I would have thought about 3 stars, but like he says in one of his footnotes - "this essay... tends to be philosophy for shallow people". I must admit I did laugh out loud several times while reading this book. At times in the first chapters the music came alive, especially when he talks about GNR and Billy Joel, but this fact may reflect more on me than on the author.

Less a serious deconstruction of pop culture than a melange of disjointed references by a writer who seems to care more about showing off his lame rock-fan credentials than offering thoughtful analysis and cultural critique. Alas, there's no new ground covered, no obscure music discoveries to be made. Why the hell am I reading about Moby? The thing about commercial radio is that it's full of music not worth writing about. I don't want to read about Saved By the Bell either. I watched it every day after school, and that's where our relationship ends. I realize he thinks he's elevating the banal to the sublime, but some things really are mindless, and even a more capable wordsmith would have difficulty transcending the poor choice of generational touchstones. His half-assed, armchair philosopher chin-scratching is almost embarrassing to witness, like listening to a barfly extoll the intellectual virtues of playing KENO. It feels like a literary impression of Jonathan Lethem's 'The Disappointment Artist' but without any of the rich personal history. As it turns out, the title is apt: most of us already know as much as we need to about sex, drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Someone should have loaned Klosterman a copy of 'Please Kill Me' decades ago; maybe if he'd really had his mind blown back then he mighf have more to say now.

My 5-star rating validates a point Klosterman makes in his essay on the significance of the Lakers and the Celtics in the '80s: "This is why men need to become obsessed with things: It's an extroverted way to pursue solipsism. We are able to study something that defines who we are; therefore, we are able to study ourselves." Not only did this make me laugh more than anything I've read in quite some time, I constantly felt like I was reading my thoughts written in a much more clever fashion than I could accomplish (case in point: "Life is chock-full of lies, but the biggest lie is math. That's particularly clear in the discipline of probability, a field of study that's completely and wholly fake. When push comes to shove--when you truly get down to the core essence of existence--there is only one mathematical possibility: Everything is 50-50. Either something will happen, or something will not." I'm quite sure I have friends who will validate me having communicated this [probably incorrect] thought). Sure, there were a couple of essays that I didn't completely love, and there were many times I thought Klosterman was just dead wrong ("Lucinda Williams does not matter" Editor's note: This sentence is taken out of context, but only slightly), but I thoroughly enjoyed his cantankerousness throughout. It truly is a "Low Culture Manifesto", making topics such as Say Anything, Saved By the Bell, and Pamela Anderson catalysts for thoughtful, often irreverent, analyses of quasi-contemporary U.S. society.

[http://www.belle-aurore.com/mike/webl...]
I'm once again up against limited writing time, so in reviewing the oddly titled Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, I'm forced to go for a serialization. Klosterman would want it that way -- he jumps from subject to subject in each chapter in a way that either defies logic or convinces you that Larry Bird created the world in seven days, not a minute more.

It's a hilarious book but an old one, published not only before Paris Hilton went to prison, but before she even became everyone-knows-her famous. That's how long ago 2004 was, folks. Now I fear that we, like Bogey and Bergman, will always have Paris. But I'll come back to her in a future post. Right now I want to talk sports, because it's something on which Klosterman spent two consecutive chapters, a true rarity.

First, I'll just toss out that he hates soccer. He spends an entire chapter hating on it. I feel that I need to choose just one sentence to represent it, so this is it: "To say you love soccer is to say you believe in enforced equality more than you believe in the value of competition and the capacity of the human spirit." Sounds deep. But in the remainder of the breathless paragraph containing this deep thought, he invokes Mussolini, the Khmer Rouge and crystal meth.

"That said," he writes, "I don't feel my thoughts on soccer are radical."

Next icon to topple: Magic Johnson, in a chapter devoted to the racist undertones... or not... of the epic Lakers-Celtics smackdown back in the 80's. In a previous post, back before Concrete was really public, I lauded Magic Johnson for building decent stuff in neighborhoods that only liquor stores would touch.

"Magic Johnson is one of my favorite players of all time," Klosterman writes, "but I hate him." Klosterman calls his movie-theater building "stupid" and says he struggled with "the desire to punch him in the face" upon meeting him.

Poor Chuck. You see, he was a Celtics fan during those Laker-Celtic hating days, and he spends a chapter telling you why. I was obviously on the Laker side of that one... but I can relate to his feelings about Magic.

[http://www.belle-aurore.com/mike/webl...]

Weeks later...

I'd given up. I'd kicked the book out of my reading queue, both in the real world and offline. I had reviewed the first bit and then put it away. But one day, I needed something light to read, and it was back.

What I did not expect was a chapter that, if it were a web page, might have gotten the "futureofjournalism" tag in my social-bookmarking pile. There it was, though, Chapter 16: "All I Know Is What I Read in the Papers."

In his snarky way, Klosterman uses this chapter to debunk the various theses that the media are biased:

"Are media outlets controlled by massive, conservative corporations? Well, of course they are. Massive conservative corporations own everything. Are most individual members of the media politically liberal? Absolutely. If talented writers honestly thought the world didn't need to be changed, they'd take jobs in advertising that are half as difficult and three times as lucrative."

How strange to find such a serious essay here, hiding among the music and pop-culture critiques.

If I thought there was any chance that he'd read this, I'd use this review space as an open love letter to Chuck Klosterman. It's mostly coincidental (or says something deeper about me that I'm not interested in examining) that my boyfriend looks like him.

Oh hell. I'll just write some version of a letter anyway.

Blame John Cusack if you'd like Chuck, but after reading your book, I closed the hardcover of my copy of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs wanting MORE. You tease me with this effortless weaving of pop culture through your (mostly true) personal stories, and then what? The book ends? No more thoughts? Like you, I blame Coldplay too; Gwenyth Paltrow seemed a little less self-righteous before she gave birth to fruit and created Goop, and somebody has to take the blame, so I'm blaming Coldplay.

No, but really though, Chuck, I miss you. I watched the late night madness bubble up like Bobby Brown's crack on the stove and wondered, "What would Chuck say about this? Is Leno the Judas of late night?" Is Lady Gaga a sign of a musical apocalypse, or did that begin with the entrance of Limp Bizkit onto TRL a decade or so ago? Do you ever miss Klaus Nomi or Freddie Mercury, too? I know at least one inquiring mind who wants to know. Chuck, I need more from you.

I guess it's a good thing that you've written more than just one book. Looks like I'll be in touch more, in the future.

Yours,

Kat

I think many of the people reading and reviewing this book went into the process all wrong. Yes, this is one of *those* books- written by a too-cool-for-school hipster who sees everything in the most apathetically disdainful way possible (but weaves that mood into a witty, intelligent commentary on a variety of low-culture (Pamela Anderson, Saved by the Bell, the Dixie Chicks) topics).

I lucked out by picking up this book at the library. As I was checking out, the desk clerk nodded appreciatively and said man, this is a Great Book. A quick look-over told me all I needed to know about the book- if this kid, a bit of a tcfs hipster himself in dark-rimmed glasses and perfectly messed-up hair, enjoyed the book, there was no way I could take it seriously.

Going into the book knowing it was going to be a pretentious read actually made me appreciate it for what it was. The book itself is essentially a collection of essays that Klosterman probably sat down and wrote sporadically whenever he felt particularly strong about something. Don't go into this read thinking it's going to change your life or give you a new philosophy (unless you're like the clerk at my library). Accept it instead for what it is: a few laugh out loud moments, sentences laced with intellectual snark, and the occasional cultural insight.

My more caustic teenage or condescending college self would have been much more into this book than my current self. Does not age well, not even as well as one might expect for a book first published in 2003, but in part I think that is because there is an active attempt at being "politically incorrect" which I mean... I don't think I used to cringe at Bill Maher either, but now I find that I often do. Klosterman is a funny guy, but very much reminds me of a specific type, one I would come into contact with from time-to-time during my twenties in particular, you know the type, certain they are smarter than every other person in the room because they have trained themselves to be contrarian and pontificate on obscure topics to the nth degree, extrapolating and deconstructing every which way and expounding to anyone that will listen (or those that can't find a way to break off the man-splaining and make an escape). Much like I actually enjoyed those acquaintances in a limited social setting, I enjoyed many of the essays - dude is indeed wicked clever and encourages one to think a little differently - but also like those acquaintances, I could only handle small doses.

Probably should have held out for The Nineties in audio, or maybe Klosterman should be read not listened to? I generally don't like to judge an author's voice, but Klosterman sounds a bit like "comic book guy" from The Simpsons, and once that connection was made in my mind I COULD NOT unhear the resemblance.

'Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs' by Chuck Klosterman Chuck Klosterman is a clever guy. That much I can say unequivocally, everything else is up in the air.
 
Here is the thing. Mr. Klosterman is willing to take on some weird questions    How is Pamela Anderson a reflection of our changing attitudes about sex? How has The Real World changed how Americans view themselves? Can you write 6,000 words about Saved By the Bell?     and it is mostly fun to watch him consider these things. But if I sound underwhelmed it is probably because my expectations were high. This looked like a perfect match, the idea of Mr. Klosterman seemed directly in my wheelhouse. I have been told I look like the guy and I probably write like him a little too . I read an essay he wrote about an unofficial goth day at Disneyland and laughed, but Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs felt just a little flat to me.
 
 
Mr. Klosterman worries in the introduction that all the work will become immediately dated by the pop culture references, which will probably happen unless Saved By the Bell enjoys a major comeback, but what looms most now is the rise of the think piece. He may have been groundbreaking at the time, admitting how he watches the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape    but not that he derives anything but intellectual stimulation from it     and writing about TV shows through a strange and personal lens, but everyone is doing that now. Kanye West doesn't change T-shirts without a dozen blogs ruminating on what it means that a rap atrist wears $120 cotton tees. It is hard to come at Mr. Klosterman with fresh eyes after 10 years of the 24-hour churn cycle.
 
What got me, however, is that the questions were generally the most interesting parts of the essays. As he got into the weeds he either digressed or stopped making sense. In fact, here is the one most interesting passage in the book:

...When discussing any given issue, always do three things. First make an intellectual concession (this makes the listener fell comfortable ). Next make a completely incomprehensible — but remarkably specific— "cultural accusation" (this makes you insightful). Finally, end the dialogue by interjecting slang lexicon that does not necessarily exist (this makes you contemporary). 
 

He follows with some examples. These are his tips for being — or at least projecting yourself as — interesting in conversation, but they might be his tips for writing too. While I probably can't find a statement that exactly fits the formula, it is definitely the recipe for this whole book, a swirl of unexpected conclusions from very specific pop references, self-deprecation and a fresh turn of phrase for garnish.
 
That realization might have been fatal if I didn't think he realized that himself. Like how Mr. Klosterman enjoys tweaking the very people he knows are his probable readers. He is clever enough to see these features in himself but being meta isn't the same as being good. At parts Cocoa Puffs felt like that first day at college where some professor blows your mind by suggesting there is no such thing as truth, or that porn makes no sense because there is nothing pleasurable to a woman about licking her own tit, but he doesn't want to really get at the answers. The answers are boring and technical and we were having a lot of fun just watching Tommy Lee steer a boat with his dick together and all the ways that is weird. So maybe it is just me, maybe I ruined Chuck Klosterman.