Not Drugs – Art, Graffiti, Music and Culture for the Almost Grown-Up

This is Junot Diaz.  He owns your favorite author.

Diaz. Genius.

So, about two years ago, I was kicking it with my friend Sarah in a class called Writing From Cultural Experience.  We were just messing around, cooling, the usual, when our erratic, sporadic, ecstatic teacher(who’s name I cannot remember, but she was quite ill) hands us all of these papers to read before we have our big class discussion.  The papers turn out to be a short story from this writer I’ve never heard of, Junot Diaz.  The piece was called “Fiesta, 1980“. The short came from a book of shorts Diaz composed in the mid-90s called “Drown“.

I-L-L

It may have not changed me completely, but it altered the way I write anything in my life now.(Same thing happened to me the first time I read F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Bret Easton Ellis, and a few others.)  The realism with which Diaz narrates his tales is like a beautiful, dirty rap at times, and melodic poetry at others.  I read “Drown”(and I mean every story in it) at least 3 or 4 times and thought there was no way I could find better.

Until today…when I finished “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao“, Diaz’s follow-up that took him TEN YEARS  to write.

Ten years well worth it.

The Shit.

If you are a reader, and I hope you are, this book would be great for you or as a gift to someone else.  If you are a writer, this book is a must read.  Repeatedly.  It takes a bit to get me inspired, but when it comes, it’s usually feels like a smack in the face.

This book was a bullet to the head.

On a side note, I heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs killed it at the All Points West Music Festival in New Jersey.  Here’s some dope footage I found.  Stay up.

The Best Writer Alive

It all started in December of 2008. I turned 22, my ex-girlfriend and I had recently broken up–again, and I was stuck with my brother in the geriatric little Israel that is Boca Raton, FL.

The country club is always a relaxing time, Atlantic Beaches are nice, my grandmother’s banana trees were keeping me…regular, but there comes a point after being there for a while when a dangerous level of boredom sets in and the sun gets you thinking crazy shit like:

“Damn, sans the loose skin and her inability to walk without a constant supply of O2, that chick would be hot!”

..mmmm yeeaahh.......

To curb the monotony, I started reading  this book that a friend let me borrow.

This friend is also crazy and used the margins of nearly every page to write some sort of nonsense manifesto about the ‘cloth industry’ and other random ‘bright ideas’ like the “tooth staple.” (?)

It was the Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and it was the best book I’ve ever read in my life.  I finished it in a couple days and since December I’ve read:

Kafka On the Shore

Norwegian Wood

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World

A Wild Sheep Chase

The Elephant Vanishes

South of the Border, West of the Sun

After the Quake

After Dark

Dance Dance Dance

Vintage Murakami

Murakami’s words and ideas are congruent with most of our experiences.  The mundane protagonist leads his mundane life: makes spaghetti, feeds the cat, meets strange women — and then out of nowhere a giant talking frog bursts into a thousand tiny pieces that morph into insects and crawl up the protagonist’s anus inside of a downtown-Tokyo hospital room.

I just finished Dance Dance Dance.  It was great; I beyond suggest it.  The protagonist has a crazy sexual/psychic/artistic journey that takes him all over Japan and Honolulu.  It all starts when he sees a movie in which a girl (his ex-girlfriend whom he hadn’t seen for 4 years) is naked in bed with a former classmate, a successful Japanese actor.  Lots of cool locales, great sex scenes, food, beer, wine, women, it got it all!

He is wildly popular in Japan and his writing has gained some US acclaim in the past few years.  Mental floss included WUBC among the 25 most influential books of our generation, and he regularly speaks at UC Berkeley (definitely checking one of those out!)

A new book is due out this year. Its called “1Q84″ (ichi-kew-hachi-yon). It was very recently released in Japan where it was an instant best-seller. Its not due out in English for some time. I’m gonna learn Japanese.

The writing’s sexy, the story’s fun, and the author’s message rings true: “Live your life, you steady chasin’ that paper, just live your life. Ain’t got no time for haters, just live your life.”

Trivia tidbit: Haruki Murakami is actually international hip-hop sensation T.I. and he carries a gilded pistol which he keeps locked to his diamond-encrusted jock strap.

Thief.

Just look at these guys:

They’re not even real thieves. They just pretend to be thieves. Their swagger, big collars, gah, it’s seeping smooth testosterone.

But what’s sexier than pretend thieves?

REAL diamond thieves!

The story ran in the latest WIRED:

Handful of specialized and seasoned thieves were hired to take down a vault two floor below ground, protected by locks with six-figure combination possibilities; heat, motion, light sensors, two-foot thick steel walls; you know, the routine.

An estimated 100million Euro is gone. It’s not accounted for. Diamonds, millions in a dozen currencies, over a 100 safety deposit boxes worth of goods from the most secure safe in the world.

Bangin’.

One of the guys that was caught, Leonardo Notarbartolo, who has been in prison for six years finally broke the story to writer Joshua Davis. Dubbing his characters with names like “King of Keys” and “The Monster”, he clung to anonymity because, you guessed it, there’s potential mafia connections. His blood lines run directly to the Italian Mafia’s helm.

Awesome.

Go check out the story for some grand readin.

Big ups to the guys over at The Book Cover Archive (http://www.bookcoverarchive.com) for taking on this project. Over a thousand cool looking book covers and counting, they’re all sortable, searchable, and even submittable (if you have a new one that is). Allow me to dodge the cliche joke about judging a book by its cover. Just gimme the covers.

Two days til I head back to Ithaca, and there’s a glacier about to fall on the North East. My mom has been freaking out for the last two days.

While in Shop Rite today, filling up a cart on my parents’ dollar to feed me come starving student mode, a bewildered old lady shouted to no one in particular, “They’re all here getting food cause of the storm! If their cubpoards are empty at this point they’re screwed! That’s what I say!” Read the rest of this entry »