The Village Voice usually lets me just shoot whatever the hell I want for them and usually that ends up being photos of my drunk friends at random dance parties. I like that arrangement quite a bit and the Voice seems pretty happy with the results. But once in a while they assign me something and last night they sent me to Cipriani’s for the National Book Awards after party.  Let’s just say I was a little under dressed. When I checked in on Foursquare I got a Real Housewives badge. Weird.

Anyway, the party was actually a lot of fun.  All these literary nerd types were getting down on the dance floor and everyone was getting seriously wasted on the open bar.  I actually overheard someone say “Is this really your first National Book Awards party?” That person happened to be Foster Kamer who was there reporting for the Village Voice.  He has made a career out of lambasting people as a media reporter for Gawker and the Voice and was quite the celebrity and gossip at the party. He was in his element; it was fun to watch.

I got to meet Patti Smith who won the award for the best non-fiction book for her book “Just Kids” which was pretty cool.  Tom Wolfe was at the awards but I didn’t see him at the after party which was pretty disappointing. I kept telling people I saw him on the dance floor getting loose, but I was lying. Sorry.

I would write more about the actual awards but I was just there for the after party and I am not really literate enough to have any sort of reasonable conversation about book awards. So instead you should read Foster’s epic tale of book awards and after parties by clicking here.

Then what you should do is click here to check out all the photos from the National Book Award’s after party at the Cipriani Club.

Inked Magazine editor Jason Buhrmester just published his first book, Black Dogs.  In 1973 someone stole $203,000 from the hotel Led Zeppelin was staying at during a 3 show stand in NYC.  The crime was never solved.  Buhrmester wrote a fictional account of how the money was stolen.  The party was at Angles and Kings and I covered it for Inked.  Unfortunately because of this, they stole all they good photos for print including shots of some of the New York hardcore scene celebs in attendance.  Still, there is some fun stuff here including Jason getting punched, people getting wasted on free Jack and PBR and a couple ladies getting naked with the book.  NSFW.

Click here to see all the out takes.

A week or two ago I finished Kiss Me Like A Stranger the autobiography of Gene Wilder.   I meant to talk about this a while ago, but I was out of town and since then I have read two books and started a third and so far it was the best of the 4.  (Although the Truffaut/Hitchcock book was very informative.)  Anyway, the book is clearly very funny, but it also deals a lot with his fucked up child hood and horrible dealings with women.  It is really about the loves in his life and less about the movies that made him a star.   He was a virgin until late at life because he thought God was punishing him and he prayed compulsively constantly for years.  His Gilda Radner stories are extremely touching and his conversations with Mel Brooks are hysterical.  All that aside, I have a very love/hate relationship with Gene Wilder.  Blazing Saddles is probably in my top 10 favorite movies, and if it were not for Wayne’s World being the greatest film of all time, it would probably be my favorite comedy.  That being said, Young Frankenstein is a movie that while I enjoyed as a kid, has become one of my least favorite films of all time.  There is exactly one reason for this:  At least twice a week for the last 12 years some asshole has called my EYE-gor instead of Igor because of Young Frankenstein.  You have no idea how often I have to talk about this fucking movie all because of this one seen.  God dammit Gene.

I read the second chapters in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon series.  The second one was just as good as the first.  The books tell about all the extremely fucked up stuff that happened in the golden age of Hollywood.  Basically you learn that people were on way more drugs and having way more sex than we are today.  As crazy as I think my life is, these people were really out of control.  James Dean liked people to put cigarettes out on his chest… Orson Welles named the sled in Citizen Kane after the clit of one of Hearst’s lovers… Cary Grant was gayer than Christmas… very interesting book.   About thirty pages or so just deal with all the Hollywood suicides including one man who killed himself by diving head first into the shallow end of a swimming pool.  What a fucking way to go.  Anyway, the most fucked up thing in the book however were the pictures of the Black Dahlia murder.  I have seen all sorts of fucked up shit on the internet, but seeing something so gruesome as a woman being cut in half, blood drained and then having her mouth cut from ear to ear is very disturbing.   So… I thought I would share for you the pictures!  Have a nice day.

I started to read Kerouac’s On The Road many years ago, but I just never got into it. A week or two ago I finished the last book I was reading, which I don’t even remember what was, but I am sure it was about film, because that’s all I ever read about. That was a horrible sentence, but I am at work and its 7 am and I am fucking tired. So yeah, I finished this book, and I didn’t have another one. So I borrowed a book from a friend. That book was On The Road. I got pretty into it. The idea of hitchhiking all over America does not really appeal to me as I suffer from insomnia and sleeping in a bus station does not sound like my idea of a good time. What does interest me is the idea of writing a road narrative. I am constantly reading books that inspire me to write, and I never do. This one is no exception. So I will write you two hitchhiking stories.

1. The last time I hitchhiked I was in Austin, TX for this years SXSW. I was stuck downtown with my friend Ross and we were a few miles away from the place we were staying. We had our thumbs out for probably 30 min before we got picked up by three hillbillies in a pick up truck. They tried to make us pay them $10, but we talked them down to not paying anything. So we climbed in the back and hid down until we realized they had passed where we needed to be. I we finally got them to slow down and we gave them a Gaskets DVD for their troubles. Weird.

2. Once it was pouring rain and I was driving my mom’s mini van and this crazy looking guy was standing on the side of the road hitchhiking. Of course I picked him up at once. He told us his “bitch cunt girlfriend” left him out in the middle of no where and he needed a ride to DC. DC was out of the way, but we told him we would take him anyway. He told us he was a pilot and that he would give us free flying lessons. He told us he could get us 16 year old girls for sex. Then he passed out in the back of the minivan. At one point I stopped hard in the rain and he fell off the seat and laid unconscious on the floor of my mom’s car. Then we dropped him off at a random hotel in DC and he got out, very confused to where he was and what the hell had happened.

Bonus Story: Once I picked up this guy on the middle of the highway on a bridge between DC and VA. We drove him to a storage place in VA where he has his stuff. He ended up being hilarious and we hung out with him for a long time because he couldn’t get into the storage place. He is on the left in the photo below, my fried Matt is on the right.

Also, on a side note about the book, if nothing else, I have been saying “dig” twice as much as normal. And for anyone who knows me, that is a lot.

Three different people in the last month told me to read the Tucker Max book.  They all told me I reminded them of Max. This is not a good thing.  I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell is a collection of Tucker Max’s articles he wrote for his website.  I actually ended up getting the book on the advice of another internet writer and friend of mine, Maddox.  The book is just story after story of Max getting drunk and doing something insane.  Some of them are funny, some of them are amazing, but a lot of them were things that are real similar to things I have done and really that is sort of depressing… considering I don’t drink at all.  I had been thinking about writing a book like this for awhile, but evidently it has been done.  Max is sort of a jock asshole and the type of person who I spent most of my private school education avoiding.  That being said, he can tell a good story and I laughed out loud at least once every 20 pages, which is pretty impressive.  As much as I love Maddox, I actually thought it was funnier than his book.  A lot of the book is just Max doing sleazy things, bragging about sex, and being an asshole to strangers for no reason… but that pretty much sums up my life.  The most impressive thing in the book is that he got into a fist fight with a hocky mascot.  When questioned by the cops he told the officer (I am paraphrasing) “I am now in the elite group of people that has been in a fist fight with a professional sports mascot, and you sir are not in that club.”  That is brilliant, and probably the best reason for doing something I have ever heard.  Below is a video of him telling one of his more unbeliveable stories on the Opie and Anthony show.  See if you can figure out who the biggest douche bag in the room is… I can’t. 

So last week I finished this book “The Game” by Neil Strauss. He is the guy who wrote the Motley Crue and Jenna Jameson books. “The Game” has to be the funniest book I have read since… well… the Motley Crue book. This book came out a while ago, so I am a little beyond on this pick up game phenomena, but it is pretty fantastic. The book is the true story of Neil Strauss journey from a near virginal nerdy writer to one of the most infamous pick up artists in the world. Basically, if you don’t know about this there are literally thousands of men around the world using the same “technology” to pick up women. The same lines, the same routines, even the same clothes. Like a journalist, Strauss (aka Style in the pick up world) studied every so-called master pick up artists teachings and over a two year period developed his own methods. He now has his own teaching school and probably makes more money teaching people how to pick up women then he ever did writing for Rolling Stone. The book is absolutely unbelievable, although thanks to youtube you can actually watch these guys in action. A lot of the stuff is basic stuff that I have used many times when talking to women, but they go much further with specific routines and lines that work nearly every time. The youtube clip I have included below is Strauss on The View because I find it hilarious to watch him run game on Star Jones, but if you want to learn more about this stuff and you can’t read look up PUA (pick up artist) and sarging (lingo for picking up women) on youtube. Anyway, this stuff blows my mind and I am kind of obsessed with it. I don’t really have the balls to use any of these methods, but they are pretty funny to watch and read about.