The Joker

Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
Henry Miller

Comedy just ain't pretty.
Steve Martin

I always have considered myself a reader. I have my particular interests, nothing fiction really, some classics: Catcher in the Rye, Henry Miller books, Gonzo journalism, etc.

I like newspapers and design and art magazines, music magazines... I sometimes look at skateboard magazines, Esquire and the New Yorker while at the gym. I like biographies.

I have plowed through several rock and roll bios this year alone-- slammed through both Slash's book and ex-Face Ron Woods in about a week each. But how much excessive rock and roll lifestyles can you read about? Both Slash and Woody are luckily to be alive. I mean Slash details heroin addiction and drinking and though Ron glosses over his drugs, he describes light-heartedly troubles with booze, crack, coke and other consumables. And he is a close friend with Stones death defying Keef, for God's sake. Both books were a bit boring overall.

When I was in the bookstore I thought, maybe I need to read something more deep besides stories of Jim Morrison fantasies, Jimmy Hendrix, Walter Yetnicoff and other screaming maniacs... design magazines, the Buffalo Snooze, hockey stats...? I though, maybe I should read Infinite Jest? Now that looks like a reader's book, a writer's writer, eh?

I read the story about the genius-off-the-meds-suicide of writer David Foster Wallace in the 2nd last Rolling Stone magazine (which I gotta say, I am not sure about the new run-of-the-mill-paper-saving-tree-saving size it is at now, kinda average...). But 981 pages of tight type (with over 100 pages of Notes in the back)!! I am not sure I am that much of a reader-- maybe I should start with something just as deep, but smaller, with more pictures perhaps...?

Maybe I'll get the Steve Martin bio instead. Maybe I am not really such a reader after all.

BONUS BEATS: “Son,” Presley told Martin, “you have an ob-leek sense of humor.”