Gush: A Celebration of Perverts and Hipsters



It's hard to say exactly when I popped a reading boner for Rayo Casablanca. My best guess is about page 44 of his twisted debut pop-culture massacre, 6 Sick Hipsters. Here's the line that really got my juices flowing (even moreso than the ultra satisfying body drop in chapter one, which I lovingly compare to watching the remake of House of Wax, just to see Paris Hilton bite it--67 minutes 20 seconds into the film--and best done with a living room full of friends, the sound off and the stereo blasting something sweet like Book of Love)...

"At Trisomy 21 all the waiters and waitresses had down syndrome."

Now, excuse me, but if you've stumbled onto this blog from my Amazon page, where I'm forced to be publicly decent, then this might come as a shock, I'm not exactly politically correct (that's not to say that I'm screaming racial slurs or flipping off the elderly) and I don't like my reading material to be either. Nothing stumbles a plotline quicker than a "what about the children" reference, unless it's done with the authors tongue pooching out his cheek like a mock blowjob (thank you Tom Perrotta). Praise Jesus, Sick Hipsters fulfills my naughty needs on all counts.

So what's it about, right?

Well, someone's knocking off hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a serial killer with a pop culture brain like Paper Magazine on fiche. It's up to a gang of coke-fueled, acid-tongued, coffee shop elite to ferret him out. Casablanca blends the sharp wit and pointed social satire of Palahniuk with the cinematic absurdity and pathos of John Waters on a good day (let's say Serial Mom). The book has so many enviable lines that at some point I'll have to stalk and kill the author--and isn't that the ultimate compliment?

Snatch up 6 Sick Hipsters today wherever hipsters shoplift books for a cheap adrenaline rush.

Speaking of Palahniuk, my book club just covered his ode to sex addicts, con artists and colonial reinactments, CHOKE. It seems this guy is all I've blogged about over the last week and a half. The consensus of the group was a resounding "ick", which, of course, left me the lone voice of dissent...again (see Tom Perrotta's Little Children, see also Jeannette Walls' The Glass House). At the very least, Chuck gives you something to talk about, might I bring up the John Grisham debacle of 2007? Granted that choice came from a member who doesn't normally read, so...

Let's end this with the finest book trailer of the year, again for Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff...

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