Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

by Chuck Klosterman

Overview

From the author of the highly acclaimed heavy metal memoir, Fargo Rock City, comes another hilarious and discerning take on massively popular culture—set in Chuck Klosterman’s den and your own—covering everything from the effect of John Cusack flicks to the crucial role of breakfast cereal to the awesome power of the Dixie Chicks.

Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman. With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an almost effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter, Klosterman attacks the entire spectrum of postmodern America: reality TV, Internet porn, Pamela Anderson, literary Jesus freaks, and the real difference between apples and oranges (of which there is none). And don’t even get him started on his love life and the whole Harry-Met-Sally situation.

Whether deconstructing Saved by the Bell episodes or the artistic legacy of Billy Joel, the symbolic importance of The Empire Strikes Back or the Celtics/Lakers rivalry, Chuck will make you think, he’ll make you laugh, and he’ll drive you insane—usually all at once. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is ostensibly about art, entertainment, infotainment, sports, politics, and kittens, but—really—it’s about us. All of us. As Klosterman realizes late at night, in the moment before he falls asleep, “In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever ‘in and of itself.’” Read to believe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743236010
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	07/02/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	26,846
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.43(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Chuck Klosterman is the New York Times bestselling author of seven previous books, including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Eating the Dinosaur; Killing Yourself to Live; and The Visible Man. His debut book, Fargo Rock City, was the winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He has written for GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Believer, and The Onion A.V. Club. He currently serves as “The Ethicist” for the New York Times Magazine and writes about sports and popular culture for ESPN.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

June 5, 1972

Place of Birth:

Wyndmere, North Dakota

Education:

Degree in Journalism, University of North Dakota, 1994

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1:This Is Emo0:01

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

Should I be writing such thoughts? Perhaps not. Perhaps it's a bad idea. I can definitely foresee a scenario where that first paragraph could come back to haunt me, especially if I somehow became marginally famous. If I become marginally famous, I will undoubtedly be interviewed by someone in the media, and the interviewer will inevitably ask, "Fifteen years ago, you wrote that no woman could ever satisfy you. Now that you've been married for almost five years, are those words still true?" And I will have to say, "Oh, God no. Those were the words of an entirely different person -- a person whom I can't even relate to anymore. Honestly, I can't image an existence without _____. She satisfies me in ways that I never even considered. She saved my life, really."

Now, I will be lying. I won't really feel that way. But I'll certainly say those words, and I'll deliver them with the utmost sincerity, even though those sentiments will not be there. So then the interviewer will undoubtedly quote lines from this particular paragraph, thereby reminding me that I swore I would publicly deny my true feelings, and I'll chuckle and say, "Come on, Mr. Rose. That was a literary device. You know I never really believed that."

But here's the thing: I do believe that. It's the truth now, and it will be in the future. And while I'm not exactly happy about that truth, it doesn't make me sad, either. I know it's not my fault.

It's no one's fault, really. Or maybe it's everyone's fault. It should be everyone's fault, because it's everyone's problem. Well, okay...not everyone. Not boring people, and not the profoundly retarded. But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack.

I once loved a girl who almost loved me, but not as much as she loved John Cusack. Under certain circumstances, this would have been fine; Cusack is relatively good-looking, he seems like a pretty cool guy (he likes the Clash and the Who, at least), and he undoubtedly has millions of bones in the bank. If Cusack and I were competing for the same woman, I could easily accept losing. However, I don't really feel like John and I were "competing" for the girl I'm referring to, inasmuch as her relationship to Cusack was confined to watching him as a two-dimensional projection, pretending to be characters who don't actually exist. Now, there was a time when I would have thought that detachment would have given me a huge advantage over Johnny C., inasmuch as my relationship with this woman included things like "talking on the phone" and "nuzzling under umbrellas" and "eating pancakes." However, I have come to realize that I perceived this competition completely backward; it was definitely an unfair battle, but not in my favor. It was unfair in Cusack's favor. I never had a chance.

It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box-office star in America, because every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker. For upwardly mobile women in their...

Table of Contents

Contents

1 This Is Emo

(carnivore interlude)

2 Billy Sim

(reality interlude)

3 What Happens When People Stop Being Polite

(Pat Benatar interlude)

4 Every Dog Must Have His Every Day, Every Drunk Must Have His Drink

(Monkees = Monkees interlude)

5 Appetite for Replication

(an interlude to be named later)

6 Ten Seconds to Love

(metaphorical fruit interlude)

7 George Will vs. Nick Hornby

(Ralph Nader interlude)

8 33

(Fonzie recalibration interlude)

9 Porn

("kitty cat as terrorist" interlude)

10 The Lady or the Tiger

(hypothetical interlude)

11 Being Zack Morris

(50-50 interlude)

12 Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth

(anti-homeless interlude)

13 The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise's Shattered, Troll-like Face

(punk interlude)

14 Toby over Moby

(Johnny Cash interlude)

15 This Is Zodiac Speaking

(Timothy McVeigh interlude)

16 All I Know Is What I Read in the Papers

(boom!)

17 I, Rock Chump

(waiting to die interlude)

18 How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Gary Shteyngart author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook The funniest thing I've read in an ice age...Chuck Klosterman is a Gulliver among the cult-crit Lilliputians. America should wrap her freckled arms around Klosterman's scrawny neck and press him to her bosom. He may be the last true patriot among us.

Bob Odenkirk of Mr. Show Chuck Klosterman has the time and inclination to think through the issues that you didn't even know were issues. Laugh at him, or with him, or both...but you will laugh, dammit, you will laugh.

Editorial Reviews

The Onion a.v. club One of the brightest pieces of pop analysis to appear this century.

GQ Quintessential Klosterman — sometimes exasperating but almost always engaging.

San Francisco Chronicle The reigning Kasparov of pop culture wits-matching.

The Washington Post Maddeningly smart and funny...[Klosterman's] good humor, compassion, and raw associative powers put him in the same league as Nick Hornby and Douglas Coupland, though he's a more tenacious critic than either.

From the Publisher