I went to the BookExpo again on Saturday. While I was waiting in line to get a book signed for a friend — from an author who shall remain nameless in case the friend reads this post and has his or her surprise ruined — I stood behind a woman rolling a giant suitcase. One of the perks of the BookExpo is that basically every big name author who has a new book coming out autographs copies of his or her latest release. The books are free with a $1 suggested donation. There are people, like this woman, who bring their rolly suitcases and go from line to line, gathering new books and collecting author’s signatures. I generally only do this if I want the book itself, because having an author’s signature doesn’t particularly thrill me. I am highly advanced in my views of celebrities and their unimportance, yet, ironically, obsessed with joining their ranks.

As we waited, I struck up a conversation with this woman. Or rather, she struck up a conversation with me to which I reluctantly contributed. In lines and on airplanes I have a massive aversion to talking to the people next to me, a tendency that is surprising in light of the fact that my mom becomes instant best friends with anyone surrounding her in the grocery store checkout line. I think living in New York for 8 years left me with the belief that anyone who bothers to acknowledge the existence of those surrounding him must have some kind of serious mental illness. And at first, when I started talking to this woman with the gigantic rolly suitcase who spent the day getting autographs from minor literary celebrities (and minor celebrity-celebrities as well … she proudly showed me her “jump to the front of line ticket” for the Kevin Nealon signing later in the afternoon), I assumed that she must have some kind of serious mental illness as well. Luckily, she turned out to be a perfectly nice conversationalist who had a lot of interesting things to say about the publishing industry.

Somehow, as we were talking, the subject turned to our musical preferences. She mentioned that she stopped listening to music about ten years ago, when the “gangster rap thing started.” She used to be a big fan of reggae and early hip-hop, but she doesn’t like listening to music about killing people and degrading women. I quite like listening to music about killing people and degrading women, but I kept this information to myself. Sometimes it’s best to keep your cards close to your chest.

Anytime a conversation between two white people lands on the subject of gangster rap, it’s a pretty safe bet that one of the two parties will eventually find him or herself in uncomfortable territory. I felt a familiar sense of creeping dread as she told me her theories on how gangster rap was responsible for a dangerous culture of which we should be terrified. I tried to point out that there are positive things happening in the world, and she conceded the point with a great example.

“The other day, I was working downtown, and I saw a kid handing out free trees. And he was,”–her voice lowered so as not to inflame anyone around us who was not as culturally sensitive as we were–”black.”

“That sounds nice,” I said.

“It was,” she agreed. “And I thought, this is great. Why can’t we have more programs like this?”

“Programs where black kids hand out free trees?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That sounds like a pretty good program.”

What’s the BookExpo, you ask? It’s only the most important conference in the publishing industry, like, ever! Yesterday I went to a panel discussion with Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing and Markos Moulitsas from DailyKos and some other guy from a blog called Whatever that I’ve never read but he was pretty funny so maybe I’ll start. The guy from Whatever said that his only rule for blogging is that he has to post at least one thing every day. That’s what I’m doing right now. I am posting my one item for the day.

The other interesting thing I learned is that a book only needs to sell 3,000 copies to be considered a success. Can you imagine? That’s how many people will see a popular movie over the course of a weekend in a single theater. When I chose to go into independent publishing, I really took a ride on the money train!

PS You should buy my book.

Sometimes headlines are so good that you don’t want to read the story and be disappointed:

Man is fined for throwing hedgehog at teen

I’m working from a coffee shop near San Luis Obispo right now. We’re in town for our friends Benton & Laura’s second wedding. They had another wedding in 2007 that was only attended by close friends and family, and now we’re back for the 300 person blowout.

When I ordered my coffee, I asked for the Internet password. “I have to write it down,” the owner said. “We’ve got a little key code situation going on here.”

“Cool,” I said. I felt like that wasn’t enough. “Nice and safe.”

“Oh yeah,” he answered, and winked.

Radar has an amusing article about how we poor suckers in Generation X were totally screwed by being stuck between the culture-dominating Baby Boomers and the next-gen Millennials. The best part of this article is the flame war that goes on after the article between self-appointed representatives of the respective generations. The comments basically boil down to “who gets to claim punk rock?”

Oh, white Americans. We loooove to be on a team, don’t we? I say “white” because for some reason, other races don’t count when we think about generational identities. One of the commenters has a nice point when he says that Gen X gets to claim hip-hop, which most would agree is the biggest cultural phenomenon we’ve seen since the advent rock n’ roll. But even though members of our generation invented hip-hop, it actually belongs to Gen Y, because they were the first white kids to appropriate it properly.

Personally, I don’t really give a rat’s ass what generation I belong to. I barely identify with my friends, let alone some guy in New York who writes for Radar Magazine who happens to have been born within the same 20 year window as me. And any attempt to define millions of people into one cohesive group tends to tell us more about the people doing the defining than the members of the group themselves. I’m sure there are lots of morons in their 20s right now. Whether or not they are bigger morons than we were in our 20s is strictly anecdotal. As people get older and start to feel like culture is leaving them beyond, they love to find ways in which the world is changing for the worst. I won’t deny that the country’s in a pretty shitty state, but I sure don’t see how we can blame the generation below us for that.

That being said, I would still leap at the chance to kick the Leave Britney Alone kid in the balls.

This article rules. Crissy Thompson is an expert coupon clipper who once paid only $.02 on a $380 Target bill because of her coupon-clipping mastery. She makes me want to learn the art of coupons myself. I probably never will, though, because I am lazy and have disposable income. Still, nothing but respect for Chrissy Thompson.

From the AP, re: the West Virginia primary:

Nearly one in four of all ballots were cast by voters 60 and older, and a similar number by West Virginians with no education beyond high school. More than half the voters were in families with incomes of $50,000 or less. Clinton has done particularly well in primaries to date among older, less well-educated and lower-income families.

I feel like I often hear statistics about “less well-educated” and “lower-income families.” And the popular theory is that Clinton won in Pennsylvania because of “white, working-class voters” who Obama is having a difficult time attracting. So I guess my question is … is this all the same group? Are we assuming that “less well-educated” sort of by default means “lower income?” And in turn, these both mean “white”? I would doubt that Hillary beats Obama among less well-educated, lower income blacks. And even if we assume that these voters are white, there are still two groups who are not being counted here … the less well-educated rich whites, and the well-educated poor whites. I wonder who those groups vote for?

It’s code, right? It’s the media’s way of saying that stupid people vote for Hillary. Now, this is not a slam on Hillary … she’s obviously well-educated, and I would think I’d probably be reading the same language if Obama was the candidate attracting the dolts. But I wonder if anyone involved in this fiasco — from the candidates to the television pundits — isn’t secretly passing judgment on this particular group of voters. It is difficult to reconcile the fact that, on one hand, the candidates will all say that they’re going to educate us and make us rich, but on the other hand, they appeal to poor and uneducated voters as being just as good as rich, educated voters. Which is it? Are they fine just the way they are, or should they change? I don’t really understand why politicians even bother to keep up the facade of good intentions anymore. I would bet you could get a pretty good percentage of the vote if you went before the American people and said you were going to take all the money out of the education budget and use it to pimp all our rides.

The Hazzards @ Galapagos, originally uploaded by CocteauBoy.

Here is a nice picture of me performing with the Hazzards that was just discovered by my friend Sydney, the Hazzard on the right there. Sigh. I miss those days. Stupid Los Angeles! Stupid real life!

I regret to inform you all that I had to remove the Twitter feed from the sidebar of my website on account of it slowing my site down like a mother. So you will no longer know where I am at all moments. In fact, I just may be sneaking up behind you right now … BLAHHHH!!!

Matt has a great piece on Popular Science today about the world’s spookiest weapons. Apparently it’s breaking new traffic records for Popsci.com. Congratulations, Matt!

I like the Gay Bomb!