granted, klosterman gets some shit for being too deliberate, but this was a very fun read ( )

I have lent this to:
-Ben
-Graham R. (who has it now.) ( )

If you take a transcript of every late night, bong-hit driven, pop-culture conversation ever had in every dorm room across this great land, condense them, edit them, then place them lovingly in a book, you would then have a near facsimile of "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," by Chuck Klosterman.

Is it interesting? Yes. But just like those dorm conversations, it will fade quickly. All that will remain with you is the illogic of half remembered hypotheses, which only made sense in context. ( )

If one is searcing to understand the term "emo" then look no further. Some of his ideas were ones I agreed with (maybe 20% of them?) but for the most part I disagreed with every word. The book is essentialy a 243 page sulking rant in which he goes on and on. Granted, some of it was intersting, some of it was entertaining, some of it was even educational. But none of it was something I couldn't have lived without reading. Defeniatly made me rethink reading books I see Seth Cohen reading on The OC. The most enjoyable part of the book was the set up, although writing a book's table of contents like a CD track listing isn't really that fufilling now that I think about it. Essentialy, it's a good read if you're bored and can't possiably find anything else to read. After all, it's not Life of Pi, so it's got that going for it.

This person has a lot of wit and I really enjoy the way he writes. The books seems to be a collection of short stories and articles he wrote in the past. I love his musings on the Real World. ( )

Collection of essays analyzing pop culture. This was both funny and thought-provoking - such as blaming John Cusack for our collective inability to accept real love, instead of movie/song love.

Recommended - this was great fun, and I even felt a little stupid at times (but in an awed sort of way). ( )

For those with an affinity for GenX culture, this is an entertaining read. This is a group of musings on those things that were both watershed and pervasive if you were consuming youth culture in the 80s and 90s. It's not that we live and died by Saved by the Bell, it's that you can find someone your age that remembers Bayside and those kids because they were watching it "ironically" on the weekends. Then again, watching a live-action show on Saturday morning during the cartoon block while in college to see kids learn important life lessons probably negates the quotes, doesn't it? It's also not all about that show, but this is probably one of the essays that will weigh down a person that didn't live the show the most.

Either way, it's a trip down memory lane for anyone that's lived it. For a good time, the Hypothetical Interlude can lead to a few good conversations with friends. Thus far, we're all against letting the gorilla play for the Raiders. Hilarity of the gorilla in uniform aside, we fear the accidental dismemberment of opposing players would be far too frequent to offset the enjoyment of primate in a helmet. ( )

An entertaining commentary on 90s and 00s pop culture. I really enjoyed the author's sarcasm and the mini-essays peppered in between the longer ones. ( )

Some of the essays are awesome and brilliant, and others are... just not. I loved This Is Emo (how John Cusack ruined love), What Happens When People Stop Being Polite (which made me want to watch the Real World), and Being Zack Morris. I'm a sucker for pop culture analysis. Other essays had a whole host of problems. Some of them, like Ten Seconds to Love were creepily misogynistic, and others were just uninteresting. ( )

the book that made Klosterman a commendable music journalist. he goes out there in this one, and it truly is a great look at pop culture on the time from the real world to rock n'roll. who knows with this guy other than you'll love his style. I read this when I was 18, my freshman year in college. ie ages ago ( )

Chuck Klosterman is a genius. I knew this before I even read this book but it was confirmed within the first few pages. This book of essays about pop culture and modern life is laugh out loud funny and incisive. I can't even pick a favorite essay because they were all so wonderful. Reading this definitely reminded me why I lean towards media studies. ( )

Solipsist. Never has a single word ever summed up one person so well. When this came up on my book group's reading list, I was all excited: essays on pop culture? Yes, please! Too bad it turned out to be the ramblings of a self-satisfied, self-styled genius with all the piercing insight of the average brick.

Aside from Klosterman's incredible self-absorption, his casual misogyny infuriated me. Has this man ever actually talked to a woman? After reading the first essay, I had my doubts. By the end of the second or third, I was sure he hadn't. The relentless cliches about American female roles and the gratuitous swipes piled up to the point that I started wondering if Klosterman was talking to someone else. ( )

It's not that I didn't like this book... Okay, that's exactly what it is. But the real issue I had with Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is this: I've either had every conversation in this book (which I enjoyed more than these essay versions of them) or I've walked away from the conversation because it didn't interest me in the slightest. I can name at least ten people I know who could have written this book (give or take an article or two), and probably could have written it better (including the person whose choice this book is for my book club).

I didn't dislike it all, though. It was amusing in parts. It's just that I didn't find it to be wonderfully clever even though it was clearly trying very hard to be.

I could talk a lot about why I didn't like this book for little reasons, but on the whole, I think my distaste for it was rooted in the fact that I couldn't simply read it at my leisure, picking it up and putting it down to read a single article and then switch to something else, because we're reading this for book club and thus my reading has a deadline. Had I been able to just skip an article (such as the mind-numbing article on basketball) or stop reading one (like when he made repetitive references to Sigur Ros and Devo as though they were symbols of uniqueness, only to make them ordinary by constantly referencing them) so I could move on to something else or read an essay every few days, then I probably would have a kinder outlook on this book.

But here's the kicker as to why I can't simply dismiss this book. Do you know the game "Table Topics"? Or have you read the If...? books? They work on the same premise... posing a "what if" kind of question that you're supposed to then discuss with people. This may seem lame, because it implies that you can't have a natural conversation with your friends without the assistance of cards, but I found them amusing in college... and probably still would, given a particularly creative bunch of friends and a few bottles of wine. "If you could only listen to one album again for the rest of your life, what would it be?" "If you had to kill an innocent person to end world hunger, could you?" "If you were exiled from your current country, what new country would you pick as your new home?" "Which famous dead person would you most want to have a dinner conversation with?" "If you could either sleep with one famous person and never tell anyone or give the impression of a deep and loving relationship to the world but never actually sleep with them... which scenario would you pick?" (I actually think he did pose this question somewhere in the book...)

Anyway... there's one "essay" in this book that's my favorite part, not just because it's funny, but because it seems like it unwittingly captures the whole essence of the other articles -- or at least distills what good this book can accomplish. It's a small section of twenty three questions that the author would pose to a person and their answers would determine whether or not this could be his soulmate. Think of Table Topic and If...? questions (like those above) and multiply them by ten on a specific and weird scale... then you'd get the kind of questions that he asks.

For example, here's a fairly ordinary but still interesting one:

Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you are the guest of honor. No one will be in attendance except you, the collection of your former lovers, and the catering service. After the meal, you are asked to give a fifteen-minute speech to the assembly. What do you talk about?

And here's a weird one that I quite enjoy:

Defying all expectation, a group of Scottish marine biologists capture a live Loch Ness Monster. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, a bear hunter in the Pacific Northwest shoots a Sasquatch in the thigh, thereby allowing zoologists to take the furry monster into captivity. These events happen on the same afternoon. That evening, the president announces he may have thyroid cancer and will undergo a biopsy later that week. You are the front page editor of The New York Times: What do you play as the biggest story?

And one more for kicks:

Someone builds and optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it’s essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that—for some unknown reason—you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed. The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?

Okay, last one, for real:

Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks--he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence. Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?

These make me think that Chuck Klosterman missed his true calling as a "Table Topics for Gen X" writer. ALL of his essays seem to serve one purpose for me: they're mildly interesting, but they make me think of more interesting things that I then actually want to discuss with other people.

Weirdest thing of all, but I actually think this might be a good book for discussion at book club... not for discussing the merits of the book, but because Klosterman's random topics (the true meaning of Saved by the Bell, the weird interest he has in people who have met serial killers and lived, etc.) will hopefully inspire other things we want to talk about in the Table Topics sense of things.

My mother tried to make the point that perhaps Klosterman was really intending to inspire conversation with these topics. At first, I found it hard to believe that Klosterman, who writes about saved by the Bell and cartoon cereal characters, is really trying to inspire discussion... but that's totally it. I might find his writing to be somewhat lacking, but he really is creating a jumping-off-point for people who might find these topics to be of interest.

So Klosterman, despite all of the complaints I have, I give you three stars.

Oh, and if you don't pick the Loch Ness Monster, then I don't understand what you could possibly be thinking. ( )

So, I have had this in my “To Read” pile for a while. As I was finally entering all my books into my LibraryThing account, I pulled it out of on of the many spill over piles that surround my bookcase and said, I need to read this. It’s been a while since I got around to reading a non fiction book and I had a feeling that this would be a great way to get back into them. I have to say that I have yet to disappoint myself with my book picks.

If you are a Gen Xer, lost and outraged at the world, this is the book for you. As I read each of these, there were points that I agreed on whole heartedly, mostly because they were things that have happened recently of with in the general timeframe that I grew up. The idea of how all dichotomies can be analogous to the Lakers/Celtic rivalry. The way the everyone in the world strive to be a single, identifiable character type after the first season of the Real World aired. A lot of these ideas echo my own, or they made me think deeper on my previously held thoughts to find a deeper truth that I never challenged myself to see.

But I did find there were essays or points in some that I didn’t agree with completely. I think this is where my birth between generations come into play, I was born at the very beginning of the Millennial generation and having two Gen X sisters. In one essay towards the end, “Toby versus Moby,” He goes on to talk about about how people talk about music always put down popular country, and basically anyone who has eclectic taste in music would never have any popular country. Now, maybe that is true for the old farts that started, if not still work at, Rolling Stone, but my lack of popular country isn’t because of some elitist attitude. It’s because I just haven’t found an artist or band that I like yet. And there are a lot of “in-your-face” accusations on here that I think make sense to a specific section of the people alive (Gen X) and the rest of us are going to find some faults in his logic.

Over all though, I highly recommend it, if anything, for the great sarcastic wit throughout the book. If you don’t crack up laughing while reading is essay on how The Sims is the most postmodern work of art, Then there is no help for you. As a writer though, I recommend it for anyone who wants to really have a good understand of how the minds of people born from 1965 - 1981 and use that insight into a character(s). ( )

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman seemed to be a good book. Its a good idea but it was just a major rant. And of nothing in particular either lol. What ever popped in his head at the time he was writing is what he ranted about. Couldnt stand it, sounded like a kid whining the whole time i was reading it ( )

Well, it was an interesting read…I’ve seen it on a LOT of reading lists on the 50 book challenge. I was mildly entertained, but not wowed in any way. There were a few laugh out loud moments, but overall, there wasn’t much in the way of sex, drugs or cocoa puffs. I’m glad I got this from the library because it wasn’t entertaining enough to pay for. ( )

a guilty pleasure ( )

This book came highly recommended as not only a keen social observation, but also as being remarkably funny. It is very clear that Klosterman is incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable as he has his say on everything from the deformed nature of perceived modern love to the effect of 'The Real World' to the obsession of serial killers. He certainly gives the impression that, over the last twenty years, he has listened to every piece of music worth listening to and quite a few which aren't, and knows enough about them to bring up their cultural significance in just about every pop criticism he approaches. At times, I find him to be pretentious and slightly alienating, two claims which I imagine he would not only agree with but endorse, but regardless of whether or not I agree with him on any given subject, I can not help but admit that he often has a good point. His style is biting, witty, and journalistic in the best sense, and manages to reveal a great number of cultural misconceptions and truisms often ignored by the public at large.

Bottom line, this book is fun, smart, angry, and may shake you up just a little bit. What's not to love? ( )

Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks - he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence.
Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein? ( )

I liked this book when I had an understanding of what he was writing about and some of his thoughts were pretty similar to mine, but when I didn't, I thought it was really boring (like the Celtic/laker chapter. I didn't even know the Celtics were a team).

I liked his sense of humor. Normally I dislike reading people's philosophies, but his were interesting. I liked the interludes much more than the actually chapters.

He makes a lot of sports comments. It kind of ruined it for me. I'm not a sports person, I guess. ( )

Hilarious and interesting book. A good read. Interesting rants and social commentary written before the guy goes to bed, which results in some very thought provoking material.

Its also somewhat like Gilmore Girls in a book, in the way that both make obscure pop-culture references that no one really understands, and still manages to maintain its audience. ( )

loved this! he connects the lowest of low celebrity worship with insightful ideas from the academia. the only downside for me was when he talked about musicians that i really don't care about -- i.e. the billy joel chapter. ( )

If your life is shaped by pop-culture than you will like this book. It was funny, but honestly, I can't remember anything particular about this story. I know the author looks to Three's Company and Saved By The Bell to guide his hipster lifestley. But seriously, feels like I could have read this content in The Village Voice or the New York Press. ( )

A collection of essays on pop culture; a few were interesting, but overall, the book was a bore. ( )