Copacabana

Klosterman: king of professional appreciators

Chuck Klosterman has a new book out. If it's anything like Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto there's gonna be many funny hours this Christmas...

Here's a tidbit thanks to Amazon's genius marketing scheme that allows potential buyers to read several pages of select books. (I'm just saying that their sales probably skyrocketed after they implemented that little gem and they could have easily lost their shirts. Just goes to show that the public wants to trust their vendors, but I digress...)

Here's the truth as translated by the pop-culture uber-nerd Klosterman:

Two days before I finally packed up my shit and left Akron, I had a phone conversation with the man who would be my immediate supervisor at Spin magazine, and I expressed my relocation insecurities. He tried to explain what my life here would be like; at the time, the only details I could remember about my two trips to New York were that (a) the bars didn't close until 4 A.M., and (b) there seemed to be an inordinate number of attractive women skulking about the street. "Don't let that fool you," my editor said as he (theoretically) stroked his Clapton-like beard. "I grew up in Minnesota, and I initially thought all the women in New York were beautiful, too. But here's the thing -- a lot of them are just cute girls from the Midwest who get expensive haircuts and spend too much time at the gym." This confused me, because that seems to be the definition of what a beautiful woman is. However, I have slowly come to understand my bearded editor's pretzel logic: Sexuality is 15 percent real and 85 percent illusion. The first time I was here, it was February. I kept seeing thin women waiting for taxicabs, and they were all wearing black turtlenecks, black mittens, black scarves, and black stocking caps...but no jackets. None of them wore jackets. It was 28 degrees. That attire (particularly within the context of such climatic conditions) can make any woman electrifying. Most of them were holding cigarettes, too. That always helps. I don't care what C. Everett Koop thinks. Smoking is usually a good decision.

posted by Lola @ 12:12 PM