I am in love with Chuck Klosterman

Ben gave me Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs *a low culture manifesto (now with a new middle) for Christmas.

I must say I love that tag line too, "now with a new middle". I'm working on one of those myself. Unfortunately I appear to be sculpting it with chocolate and cheeseburgers rather than the much better tools of salads and free weights. But I digress.

Anyway, Ben gave me the book for Christmas. I had never heard of Klosterman, but since I don't read SPIN or browse the rock and roll section of Powell's I don't think it particularly strange. So here I am with this book that I desperately want to read right away, (I love getting books as gifts. They say so much about the relationship between the gift-er and the gift-ee.) but I had a long trip coming up and I felt I should save it for the twenty some odd hours of travel time I had in store.

I resisted the urge to indulge in instant gratification and saved my new book for the last leg of my journey. I had by then exhausted all of the other books that were tucked here and there in my carry-on, plus the one that I purchased in the Mexico City airport. So with seven hours to go I got onto the last plane and pulled out the Klosterman book.

I was laughing out loud and, most likely, annoying my seat-mates (a cute indie couple about my age, so typically Portland that they made me achingly homesick) by the end of "This is Emo". Upon finishing the next essay, "Billy Sim" the woman next to me gave up on trying to sleep and started a crossword while I had to check the "About the Author" blurb on the back jacket. I had to know something about this genius writer.

I was surprised to find that Chuck Klosterman looks like a middle-aged lesbian gym teacher. And not in a good way, not that there is a good way to look like a lesbian gym teacher when you're a straight man, but I feel that description also insults lesbian gym teachers. The problem is, that's precisely the description that comes to mind when I see his photo. I can easily picture, just out of frame, a metal whistle, a clipboard, and unshaven legs ending in flat feet shoved into a pair of crew socks and cross trainers, all ready to wrangle the standard Real World selection of high school girls and force them to play field hockey or dodge ball.

It just this moment occurs to me that should he Google (is it still capitalized when used as a verb?) himself - and who doesn't? - and stumbles across this blog then the previous paragraph may cause him to laugh uproariously, but it won't exactly endear me to him, thus ruining my shot at a torrid cross-country affair. But isn't that the way of things when you get right down to it? It is eventually your own words, the truth that is you-of-the-moment, that brings down your own happiness.

Whatever. Google or no Google; Chuck Klosterman looks like a middle-aged lesbian gym teacher, and I love him. Despite his looks, that are so far out of my norm that were I to show up with someone who looked just like him (but wasn't him) my friends would politely pick their eyeballs up off the floor and put them back into their heads then quietly and one by one pull me aside to ask, again politely and gently, if he was hung like a horse or unreasonably intelligent or could possibly fly. And despite the fact that he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about sports. Of course I consider more than a passing interest to be "inordinate", so I'm biased there. And despite the numerous mentions to a desire to be married in the early parts of the book. (I said I loved him, not that I was willing to permanently not be single for him.) Despite all of that, I still love him.

He made me laugh out loud on a sold-out flight. He made me think a time or two, even if it was just to wonder at what point one would consider the word "seminal" to be overused. And at times it was a bit like reading passages from my own twisted mind, and who doesn't like that?

My favorite section was the untitled inset beginning with, "The twenty-three questions I ask everybody I meet in order to decide if I can really love them."

What makes this my favorite part is not the questions, although they are (with the exception of question 23, which has been posed in several movies and, theoretically more accurately but somehow less conclusively, on television) some of the most obscure and thought-provoking questions I've ever read. (To answer number 19, I would probably say something like, "You snore like a room full of lumberjacks and I've got a mean streak. It's why you love me.") Each question could easily spark a hypothetical discussion that, given the correct participants, could go on for years, proving to be a never-ending supply of road-trip conversation. I suspect they were born out of long periods of time spent traveling with (or without) people who may or may not be interesting. One's mind goes to some very strange places when left to its own devices.

What makes this my favorite part is simply its existence. It just seems so in line with the infamous five pages of "requirements for dating me" that I once put together. What it really comes down to is standards. Not just for those you date, buy for those you let into your life on any level. It's good to have standards; as well as standard conversation starters.