“Survivalism isn’t about staying alive. It’s about choosing how you die,” writes Neil Strauss in Emergency (It Books, 2009). Strauss, who’s formerly written books with rock stars, porn stars, and pick-up artists, stepped up his game with this one. In the wake of 9/11 and hurricane Katrina, Strauss had a bit of an epiphany. Acknowledging that if he was involved in a major catastrophe, he wouldn’t be much help — unless helping involved a working knowledge of rock and roll and its many trappings — Strauss set out to get …

Amy Cohen’s memoir, The Late Bloomer’s Revolution (Hyperion, 2007) is chock full of tales of woe and hilarity — losing a great job, a bad break-up, a bad face rash, bad dates, a dying mother, a distant father, worse dates, and the feeling of constantly having to prove that you’re okay, even though you don’t have what everyone else your age does. But Amy’s such a beautiful, funny, smart, young woman, it’s difficult to believe she didn’t make it all up.

Twenty years later, Vale Vale and Company finally return to the land of pranksters with Pranks 2 (RE/Search). These interviews, mostly done by V. Vale himself, illustrate just how deep pranks run in our current cultural milieu — and how far they’ve spread since the last volume (RE/Search #11: Pranks). From the spread of culture jamming and parody to the mainstays of satire and social commentary, pranksterism is standard fare. Heck, just the mainstreaming of the lyrical spoof, which has nearly put Weird Al Yankovic out of business, is proof …

Some of the sand has settled from our time in the desert, but we keep kicking it back up again.
Last Sunday night, Doug Stanhope was in town for a show, and we kicked it up again. That’s not the point. The point is that after being in the desolate climes of Panamint Springs with Doug and friends for five days, one comes away with a new sense of so many things. On my two-day trip home from there, I wrote and wrote, trying to record and remember all the magic …

Ok, so I just returned from Panamint Springs and Doug Stanhope‘s annual Death Valley desert party (pictures). I rode down with Andy Andrist. We took a tent that, during five days in the desert, never made it out of the car. We slept where we fell. And there was lots of falling.

Last week my girl and I were headed out to get some lunch. We were driving through back roads in San Diego, and we got stuck behind this big, honking SUV in which the driver was talking on the phone: nothing out of the ordinary, but frustrating nonetheless. Anyway, this monstrosity-on-wheels kept creeping along, veering from one side of the road to the other. Just as I was about to lose it and lay on the horn, the SUV took a slow, un-signaled left and crawled out of the way.
As …

If you recognize Doug Stanhope, you probably know him from the later seasons of The Man Show, where he played Coy Duke to Joe Rogan’s Vance. But that, my dear people, was hardly a glance into the world of Stanhope. His stand-up finds him teetering on the brink among several forms of utter oblivion. He stares down the evils of narrow-mindedness wherever they may lurk, attacking any and everything you might hold sacred, find wholesome, or think is just plain good.

This is it, folks: the definitive collection of Bill Hicks stuff all in one book. Interviews, letters, lyrics, live routines, etc. are all compiled inside. For the uninitiated, Bill Hicks was the best comedian to ever jump on stage and bless the mic with his wisdom. Constantly railing against governmental idiocy, corporate control, censorship, and the indolence of America, among other things, Hicks took on all the evils of the world and the enemies of the open mind. You’ve heard him — even if it came from someone else’s mouth, …

My friend and colleague Tom Georgoulias let me run this interview in my book, Follow for Now.
David X. Cohen is the executive producer and head writer of Futurama, my favorite TV show. In case you haven’t watched the show, it’s about a pizza delivery boy named Fry who is accidentally frozen in a cryogenics lab and revived 1,000 years in the future. Instead of getting a chance to reinvent his life, Fry’s career implant chip predetermines that he, again, is destined to be a delivery boy. After a futile attempt …