Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Chuck Klosterman SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS A Low Culture Manifesto

Sol-ip-sism (sol’ip siz’em), n. Philos. The theory that only the self exists or can be proved to exist.

—The Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition

“I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation.”

—Associated Press reporter Jack Sullivan, attempting to recount a 3 A.M. exchange we had at a dinner party and inadvertently describing the past ten years of my life.

There are two ways to look at life.

Actually, that’s not accurate; I suppose there are thousands of ways to look at life. But I tend to dwell on two of them. 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.

There are many mornings when I feel certain that the first perspective is irrefutably true: I wake up, I feel the inescapable oppression of the sunlight pouring through my bedroom window, and I am struck by the fact that I am alone. And that everyone is alone. And that everything I understood seven hours ago has already changed, and that I have to learn everything again.

I guess I am not a morning person.

However, that feeling always passes. In fact, it’s usually completely gone before lunch. Every new minute of every new day seems to vaguely improve. And I suspect that’s because the alternative view—that everything is ultimately like something else and that nothing and no one is autonomous—is probably the greater truth. The math does check out; the numbers do add up. The connections might not be hard-wired into the superstructure to the universe, but it feels like they are whenever I put money into a jukebox and everybody in the bar suddenly seems to be having the same conversation. And in that last moment before I fall asleep each night, I understand Everything. The world is one interlocked machine, throbbing and pulsing as a flawless organism.

This is why I will always hate falling asleep.

What you are about to read is an evening book. It was written in those fleeting evening moments just before I fall asleep, and it’s built on this ethos: Nothing can be appreciated in a vacuum. That’s what accelerated culture does; it doesn’t speed things up as much as it jams everything into the same wall of sound. But that’s not necessarily tragic. The goal of being alive is to figure out what it means to be alive, and there is a myriad of ways to deduce that answer; I just happen to prefer examining the question through the context of Pamela Anderson and The Real World and Frosted Flakes. It’s certainly no less plausible than trying to understand Kant or Wittgenstein. And while half of my brain worries that writing about Saved by the Bell and Memento will immediately seem as outdated as a 1983 book about Fantasy Island and Gerry Cooney, my mind’s better half knows that temporality is part of the truth. The subjects in this book are not the only ones that prove my point; they’re just the ones I happened to pick before I fell asleep.

In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever “in and of itself.”

Contents

1 This Is Emo 0:01

(carnivore interlude)

2 Billy Sim 0:12

(reality interlude)

3 What Happens When People Stop Being Polite 0:26

(Pat Benatar interlude)

4 Every Dog Must Have His Every Day, Every Drunk Must Have His Drink 0:42

(Monkees = Monkees interlude)

5 Appetite for Replication 0:56

(an interlude to be named later)

6 Ten Seconds to Love 0:71

(metaphorical fruit interlude)

7 George Will vs. Nick Hornby 0:86

(Ralph Nader interlude)

8 33 0:97

(Fonzie recalibration interlude)

9 Porn 1:09

(“kitty cat as terrorist” interlude)

10 The Lady or the Tiger 1:19

(hypothetical interlude)

11 Being Zack Morris 1:27

(50–50 interlude)

12 Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth 1:41

(anti-homeless interlude)

13 The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise’s Shattered, Troll-like Face 1:51

(punk interlude)

14 Toby over Moby 1:66

(Johnny Cash interlude)

15 This Is Zodiac Speaking 1:79

(Timothy McVeigh interlude)

16 All I Know Is What I Read in the Papers 1:95

(boom!)

17 I, Rock Chump 2:11

(waiting to die interlude)

18 How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found 2:20

All tracks by Chuck Klosterman and Crazy Horse, except “The Lady and the Tiger” (Lennon/McCartney) and “This Is Zodiac Speaking” (Klosterman /Desmond Child). Additional vocals by Shannon Hoon and Neko Case on “Being Zack Morris.” Produced by Bob Ezrin at Little Mountain Sound Studio LTD., Vancouver. No keyboards, synthesizers, or outboard gear were used in the typing of this manuscript.

1 This Is Emo 0:01

No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay,