I just read

[Baj]

Awesome read!!! Much better than the one episode of the tv show I saw, but now that i'm done the book gonna give the show a chance.

[hamilton]

Great book! A nice sequel to Microserfs. I heart Douglas Coupland.

I was intrigued to see that they had attempted a TV show version. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm going to have to add it to my "to do" list.

[bokonon]

Woo Hoo, a book thread! I haven't got to Jpod yet but do appreciate Douglas Coupland. Right now I'm reading Dirty Jobs by Christopher Moore. I finished Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by the same author last week and he is fucking funny! Kinda like Vonnegut but less dark and his twisted mind is easier to grasp.

[Patchoulia]

I didn't finish Microserfs and I have enjoyed his work in the past--is JPod better? I just wasn't engaged. Got about 3/4 through then I didn't care anymore.

[hamilton]

Woo Hoo, a book thread! I haven't got to Jpod yet but do appreciate Douglas Coupland. Right now I'm reading Dirty Jobs by Christopher Moore. I finished Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by the same author last week and he is fucking funny! Kinda like Vonnegut but less dark and his twisted mind is easier to grasp.

I just finished reading Practical Demonkeeping a few days ago. I certainly enjoyed it, but at the same time wasn't blown away. I definitely going to give Christopher Moore another shot, though!

[Baj]

Great book! A nice sequel to Microserfs. I heart Douglas Coupland.

Microserfs is the only other book of his I have fully read. I read almost all of Girlfriend in a Coma but can't remember if I finished it or not..ha..definately not as good as

Microserfs or JPod

Looking forward to reading some of his other gems.

[bokonon]

Woo Hoo' date=' a book thread! I haven't got to Jpod yet but do appreciate Douglas Coupland. Right now I'm reading Dirty Jobs by Christopher Moore. I finished Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by the same author last week and he is fucking funny! Kinda like Vonnegut but less dark and his twisted mind is easier to grasp.[/quote']

I just finished reading Practical Demonkeeping a few days ago. I certainly enjoyed it, but at the same time wasn't blown away. I definitely going to give Christopher Moore another shot, though!

Read Lamb! It's the funniest thing I've read in a while, especially if you know anything about Christianity, Judaism and the associated sacred books. Wonderfully irreverent.

Edited February 15, 2008 by Guest
Blind monkeys can type better than I can.

[bouche]

Awesome read!!! Much better than the one episode of the tv show I saw, but now that i'm done the book gonna give the show a chance.

hey, that's a CUBE guy! A few friends at work want to get a collection of cube characters and mock up some cubicles here.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/722a/

[captainsunshine]

I'm currently 522 pages into 'I Celebrate Myself', a biography on Allen Ginsberg..

Woahhhh! What a guy! I'm learning so much about the Beat Generation, the birth of the hippie generation, and a whole lot more!

I've never actually enjoyed a full on biography like I'm enjoying this one.. Sex, drugs, poetry, music, world travels, and much more.. I highly recommend this one if you're interested in the beatniks, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Timothy Leary, even Bob Dylan and the Beatles..

Here's Allen on January 10, 1965:

[Gr8FuL]

I am about halfway finished this

It great soo hard to put down. the dead coming up form the very beginning all their crazy adventures with the pranksters, the whole lsd boom, and the san fran scene explosion. Check it out you wont be disappointed

[captainsunshine]

I've read that twice! Awesome book..

[d_rawk]

I'm currently 522 pages into 'I Celebrate Myself', a biography on Allen Ginsberg..

Woahhhh! What a guy! I'm learning so much about the Beat Generation, the birth of the hippie generation, and a whole lot more!

I'm so happy to have been able to go see Ginsberg speak and perform (including musically mostly on accordion, but he also just laid down 'Ballad of the Skeletons' so did a Karaoke version of it) not long before he died. Much Music was there to film the event and Suk Yin Lee did all the introduction formalities. He opened with his poem/elegy for Neal Cassady which is quite explicit in its details of man-man sex, and the cameras came down very quickly. The event, as far as I know, was never mentioned on MM.

Great book! A nice sequel to Microserfs

Ah! Really? I loved Microserfs. Will need to check out JPod, I guess. Haven't read Coupland in a long time, should be fun.

[timouse]

I'm currently 522 pages into 'I Celebrate Myself', a biography on Allen Ginsberg..

Woahhhh! What a guy! I'm learning so much about the Beat Generation, the birth of the hippie generation, and a whole lot more!

I'm so happy to have been able to go see Ginsberg speak and perform (including musically mostly on accordion, but he also just laid down 'Ballad of the Skeletons' so did a Karaoke version of it) not long before he died. Much Music was there to film the event and Suk Yin Lee did all the introduction formalities. He opened with his poem/elegy for Neal Cassady which is quite explicit in its details of man-man sex, and the cameras came down very quickly. The event, as far as I know, was never mentioned on MM.

Great book! A nice sequel to Microserfs

Ah! Really? I loved Microserfs. Will need to check out JPod, I guess. Haven't read Coupland in a long time, should be fun.

where did you see ginsberg? i saw him in toronto on what turned out to be his last "tour," and was totally spellbound.

do indeed check out jPod, and just about anything else by dc.

[d_rawk]

where did you see ginsberg? i saw him in toronto on what turned out to be his last "tour," and was totally spellbound.

Convocation Hall - probably the same time you saw him?

CIUT has an excellent recording of that night in their archives that I would like to wrestle out of them. I had a copy, but lost it many moons ago when moving. I'd also recorded it on a mini-handheld, but have long since lost that too.

[OB1]

Reading:

Touching The Void - A True story

It a mountain climing story and it's great.

[timouse]

where did you see ginsberg? i saw him in toronto on what turned out to be his last "tour," and was totally spellbound.

Convocation Hall - probably the same time you saw him?

CIUT has an excellent recording of that night in their archives that I would like to wrestle out of them. I had a copy, but lost it many moons ago when moving. I'd also recorded it on a mini-handheld, but have long since lost that too.

yup, that was it.

now that i thik more about it, i do remember introductions and the uncomfortable shiftings in seats during the full-on man/man sex bits.

i also remember being totally spellbound by the guy, what a captivating performer.

thank you for unearthing that memory, d_jango!

btw, nice new handle.

[LXQ42]

Woo Hoo' date=' a book thread! I haven't got to Jpod yet but do appreciate Douglas Coupland. Right now I'm reading Dirty Jobs by Christopher Moore. I finished Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by the same author last week and he is fucking funny! Kinda like Vonnegut but less dark and his twisted mind is easier to grasp.[/quote']

I just finished reading Practical Demonkeeping a few days ago. I certainly enjoyed it, but at the same time wasn't blown away. I definitely going to give Christopher Moore another shot, though!

Read Lamb! It's the funniest thing I've read in a while, especially if you know anything about Christianity, Judaism and the associated sacred books. Wonderfully irreverent.

I Love Christopher Moore! Practical Demonkeeping! Lamb! The one about the Sky Priestess! Awesome!

[captainsunshine]

So with a tear in my eye, I finished the Allen Ginsberg bio..

What a beautiful, amazing story! So inspirational!

Timouse and d_jango, I'm so jealous that you got to see this legend! And if you're still aching for that uncomfortable, man/man bits, read this book! There's plenty of very descriptive accounts..

But seriously, such an inspiration that man was!

The book just left me with wanting to know what happened to Peter Orlovsky. Does anyone know??

[bokonon]

I did my main project of the year on Alan Ginsberg in OAC. He was truly inspiring, eh? He was the reason I started liking poetry at all.

And back to the topic of Chirstopher Moore, I finished the Stupidest Angel last week. Although I thoroughly enjoyed it I don't think it was as good as Lamb....but still worth a gander. I nearly pissed myself laughing near the middle of the book there is a chapter that is one sentence long...."So that sucked." Comedic timing is a hard art to master in writing but Moore could well, write a book on it. (I guess he's written several demonstrations ) So now I'm reading A Dirty Job and I find this one actually develops his characters as real people moreso than the others I've read. I'm liking it. It's official, I have a new favourite author to add to the list. Ahhh, that's probably why I'm less bitchy than normal, I love finding a new author and it's been a while since that's happened.

[phishtaper]

you people are all just showing off. ginsberg? coupland? sartre? gimme a good legion of superheroes comic and Im happy.

[bokonon]

Dark Knight this summer!!!

Fuck yeah!

[d_rawk]

The book just left me with wanting to know what happened to Peter Orlovsky. Does anyone know?

I think he just fell out of the public eye once all of his more celebrated friends had died. A quick google makes me suspect that he is still living - no one lists a date or cause of death.

Here's a youtube clip that came up of him reading "Good Fuck With Denise" and with Ginsberg at his side. No date given though Never a major talent, but by all accounts a wonderful man.

[captainsunshine]

Wow, thanks, d_jango!

The book tells how Peter never would have written poetry or read publicly if it wasn't for Allen. Allen pushed him pretty much to do it, so it makes sense that after Ginsberg died, he wasn't heard of again. One of Peter's first poems was titled "Right That Down, Allen Said"..

It surprises me that he is still alive, though. The 20 + years before Allen died, Peter was hooked on a series of substances, including heroin, crack, coke, etc., and went into rages and at times injuring himself..

I'm gonna definitely look into his life since 1997..

[captainsunshine]

Just started reading JPod last night and I'm already halfway through.. It's definitely good so far, but I'm kicking myself for watching 2 episodes of the show before reading the book, because the book is way better (and way different!).. I like to use my imagination with forming what I think characters look like, the setting, etc., and since watching the show, I already have images of all this stuff..

Oh well!

But it's quite a change going from reading so much information in a biography to a fun fictional book.. I'm flying right through it..

[captainsunshine]

So I'm resurfacing this thread..

I just finished reading Abbie Hoffman's Woodstock Nation.. What a funny and interesting book!! I knew a bit about him, but I never read anything he had written until now (I found the book in my dad's collection awhile ago, but just got around to reading it..)

The book was published in October 1969, just a few months after Woodstock, and he talks about his time there and also all about his arrests that year, including his famous arrest with the Chicago Eight (which turned into the Chicago Seven at the trial, but when the book was written it was still 8..)

He was quite a crazy and brilliant guy, very interesting!

A very energetic guy, and "I suppose all this energy results from being an anarchist, Jewish, bottle-fed, stubborn, beautiful, white, spoiled brat, dedicated, male, young, old, optimistic, Sagittarius, schmuck, revolutionist, communist, god, self-destructive, egotistical, horny, show-off, paranoid-schitzophrenic, naive, fucked-up, big-mouth, not serious, brilliant, honest Yippie leader and non-leader and a whole lot more from Concord, Mass., and the Bronx, New York.* (*Each descriptive phrase appeared in somebody's review of me [Abbie]. I wonder what critics see when they get up in the morning and look in the mirror.)"

That's a quote from the book..

I look forward to reading more of his writing..