IV!

Q: A genie shows up at your house one morning, and says that you have been chosen, Publisher's Clearing House style, to be granted one wish, if you want it. The catch is that the wish has to come in this form: You can exchange lives with one living person on the planet. Once you switch, you will have no memory of your current life, and you will never come back, you will BE this new person, memories, problems, spouses, income taxes and all. You have until noon to decide, and your decision is final. Do you take the genie up on his offer? And if so, whom do you choose?

I loved this book, but I have to say that with a caveat (strange for me, I know). Early on in my reading (I was going to say in the novel, but its not a novel, its a collection of interviews and columns Klosterman wrote for esteemed publications like Spin, Esquire and the Akron Beacon Journal) I was trying to figure out why I loved it so much, and I came to the following startling conclusion: more than perhaps anyone else in the world, I want to be Chuck Klosterman. Once I realized this, I of course tried to disprove it. Wouldn't I rather be George Clooney, or Barack Obama, or even Michael Rohd? But I kept coming back to Klosterman. He seems to have the greatest job I can imagine...He writes exclusively about pop culture, and can write about whatever he wants, talk to whomever he wants, and has essentially inserted himself into the pop culture canon that he started out covering. In the pages of this book, Klosterman hangs out on Val Kilmer's ranch, gets a ride from Bono, and discusses communism with Steve Nash over coffee. This is the life I want. He happens to be a strong writer as well, a sort of David Foster Wallace-lite...his essays and interviews end up revealing as much about himself as they do about the subject he is covering, and not in any sort of narcissistic way (also, he uses footnotes. maybe that's the main comparison) and I laughed out loud while reading this book more than any book in recent memory. But I really believe that its a wish-fulfillment thing for me...If a shlubby guy like Chuck Klosterman can make a living by having very specific opinions about metal bands and Gilbert Arenas, and sharing them with people, maybe there is hope for me yet.

If you are not me, and I suspect you are not, but you might be interested in a running diary of 24 hours of VH1 Classic or a persuasive essay comparing and contrasting Lost and Surivivor
or interviews with Thom Yorke, this book is undoubtedly for you. Klosterman's interviews are fairly short but always insightful, funny, and good-natured..people seem willing to answer questions for him others might be afraid to ask, but its never adversarial. Maybe its cause he's sort of funny looking...he looks like Brian Poshen's slightly more (but not much) attractive little brother. In spite of this, he always seems to have an off-screen girlfriend to reference in his interviews, or there's this particular passage..."if you are a weird looking dude (which I am) and you want to date exclusively beautiful women (which I did)" (he goes on to outline a strategy that involves pursuing women in relationships, which means he is not required to be better than every other single guy in Omaha, but only better than the particular man she is with. I dont necessarily condone this, but it has a certain j'ne sais quoi). Did I try to live vicariously through this funny looking dude who gets to hang out with my heroes and gets paid to write 3,000 words on why Barry Bonds is bad not just for baseball but society as a whole? Yes. Did I enjoy every sentence? Yes.