Chuck Klosterman - Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

5. “A certain kind” meaning “bad.”

1. An obvious example: White kids using the word like phat unironically.

2. Kevin from RW 1, Kameelah from RW 6, Coral from RW 10, etc.

3. Norman, Beth, Pedro, Dan, Chris, et al. 4.

4. Julie, Elka, that big-toothed Mormon, the girl with perfect lips from Louisiana, and Trishelle.

5. Joe from Miami.

6. Judd from San Francisco.

7. Dominic from L.A.

8. Kind of like that dork from Hawaii who fell in love with the alcoholic lesbian and then dated her sister.

9. Theoretically Ruthie, the drunk chick from Hawaii—although (in truth) she was actually more reasonable than everyone else in that house.

10. Cory in San Fran, all the other girls from Hawaii, Tonya from Chicago, and every other female who spends at least two episodes of any season staring at a large body of water.

11. Julie from the first NYC cast, the blonde from New Orleans, Kevin in the second set of New Yorkers, and Frank from Vegas.

12. I say “seemingly” because this argument appears totally superficial—until you find out the context: It happened during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, a fact that MTV never mentioned. As a rule, The Real World does not deal with the issue of context very well, consciously skewing it much of the time. When David (the black comedian in Los Angeles was kicked out for “sexually harassing” future NBA groupie Tami in RW 2, the viewing audience is given the impression that he had been living in the house for weeks. In truth, it happened almost immediately after everyone moved in.

13. Relatively speaking.

14. This is partially because everyone who does use postmodern in casual conversation seems to define it differently, usually in accordance with whatever argument they’re trying to illustrate. I think the best definition is the simplest: “Any art that is conscious of the fact that it is, in fact, art.” So when I refer to something as postmodern, that’s usually what I mean. I realize some would suggest that an even better definition is “Any art that is conscious of the fact that it is, in fact, product,” but that strikes me as needlessly cynical.

15. This was that chick with Lyme disease.

16. This was the gay law student with the spiky hair.

1. “Close to the Borderline” was also the inadvertent cause of the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me. I was playing Glass Houses at college—this was like 1991—and my roommate Mike Schauer walked into our dorm room at the exact moment Joel was singing the lines, “ Another night I fought the good fight / But I’m getting closer to the borderline .” Mike made a very strange face and said, “Is this Stryper unplugged?”

2. It just now occurred to me that—if Billy Joel were to actually read this—he must hate how every attempt at advocating his genius is prefaced with a reminder of how cool he isn’t .

3. Actually, it turns out I was completely wrong about this: When I eventually had the opportunity to interview Joel (months after the completion of this essay) I asked him about “Laura,” and he said it was about a family member. He noted, “There’s a complete giveaway line where I sing, ‘How can she hold an umbilical cord so long.’ Now, who the hell could that be about?” Obviously, I can’t argue about the meaning of a song with the person who wrote it. But I still think my interpretation is more interesting than his truth.

1. Three days before Pohlman’s haircut, Dischner had told me that “What sets us apart from the other twenty-two Guns N’ Roses tribute bands in America is that we don’t wear wigs.” This new development with Pohlman’s scalp was not to his liking.

2. Premonition’s two singles, “He Is Rising” and “Mr. Heroin,” were both (presumably) about Carlos and allegedly charted in Greece.

3. The last time Paradise City performed in Harrisonburg, they received a death threat from two Middle Eastern patrons after playing “One in a Million.” Over the course of the weekend, this story is breathlessly recounted to me six times.

4. During the Paradise City set, Punky will lay on the dressing room’s concrete floor after falling down a flight of stairs. Though he will continue to post-party with the band for most of the night, Punky will need to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance the following morning when—upon finally sobering up—he will realize he has broken his wrist. Oddly (or perhaps predictably), the band will simply leave him in Harrisonburg and drive back to Ohio.

1. It’s possible that The Man Show might be off the air by the time this book is released, mostly because Jimmy Kimmel seems like something of a rising cultural force. Of course, it’s entirely plausible that Comedy Central would replace The Man Show with an innovative new series featuring two guys sitting in a beer garden each week and comparing their wives’ vaginas to that of a Hereford heifer.

2. Although the fact that he never missed a cut-off man in his entire career somehow makes this seem acceptable.

3. And—as I mentioned earlier—it’s surprisingly unsexy (it’s sort of like watching that cow get butchered at the end of Apocalypse Now).

4. However, you gotta give Steve Nash this: On December 11, 2001, Nash scored 39 points against the Portland Trail Blazers on 12 of 16 shooting. He scored 17 points over the final 6:23 of regulation, including two free throws with 3.9 seconds remaining that gave Dallas the win. And then he went back to his hotel room AND PROBABLY HAD SEX WITH ELIZABETH HURLEY. Nice night, dude.

5. And here’s something you only notice if you’re as obsessive as I am: Kid Rock likes to mention in interviews how he hates Radiohead; in his video for “You Never Met a Motherf**ker Quite Like Me,” he actually wipes his arse with toilet paper that has the word Radiohead embossed on every tissue. On the surface, that might seem like a statement against pretension and elitism, almost as if Rock is saying he’s the anti–Thom Yorke. However, it actually has to do with Mötley Crüe. On page 358 of the Crüe biography The Dirt, Tommy Lee mentions that Pamela threw a massive birthday party for him when he turned thirty-three, and Lee says she “cranked our favorite band, Radiohead, on the sound system.” I have no doubt that Pam has told Kid how she and Tommy used to adore OK Computer, and it drives him crazy. Kid Rock hates Radiohead for the same reason I hate Coldplay (as described on page 4).

6. Approximate.

1. And losing to Poland!

2. And also Jake Gyllenhaal.

3. My statistically obsessed compadre Jon Blixt once made a brilliant deduction about World Cup soccer: It must be a nightmare for gamblers. “I cannot comprehend how casinos could set the point spread for these games, as it appears the favored nation wins every single match—yet never by a margin of more than a single goal,” he wrote me while watching Italy defeat Bulgaria 2–1 in a 1994 World Cup semifinal, a contest that was immediately followed by Brazil’s 1–0 win over Sweden. “Perhaps they only bet the over-under, which must always be 2 ½.”