First off, I ought to mention that I was entertained by Klosty’s latest jive-fest pretty much from end-to-end, in exactly the same way I am entertained by a good subway lunatic, or like, Bill O’Reilly blathering on about some old right-wing grandpa bullshit. It’s fun while it lasts, but I’m not taking it home with me, dig?

Briefly, Klosterman gets an assignment from his editor at Spin to visit some rock n’ roll deathsites in a whirlwind week of blurry motion and emotion, but he fucks it all up. Sure, he goes to the Chelsea hotel to see Sid’s murder-room (gone), and to the Station’s singed parking lot to do coke with the grieving redneck locals before heading due west to for the expected Skynrd, Holly, and Cobain exhumings, but his mind continually drifts to thoughts of pussy and pop culture and so, he doesn’t learn anything from his trip. And neither do you.

But hey, he confessed in his last book that he was an “all nonsense” kind of guy, so I suppose we shouldn’t expect much. He does manage to make with the funny a few times along the way (“By now, the sky is as dark as Johnny Cash’s closet”), so he’s got that going for him. I tell you this much, though – if you somehow started reading “Killing Yourself to Live” on the page where he compares his old girlfriends to the four original members of Kiss, based on their 1978 solo album cover paintings, you would hate him so much that you’d probably wanna punch him in the nose if you saw him in line at the 7-11. I don’t even know how to describe it. Imagine reading a Tommy Lee drum solo.

Lucky for Chuck, you will not start there, you will start at the beginning, and you will probably find some stuff to like about this hollow but funny book. You will not, however, find any poetry or purpose in the sad and lonesome deaths of your favorite rock stars, which, after all, was the assignment the man was given. I tell you, for all the times I fucked up at work, my boss NEVER offered me a book deal as a result. I ought to ask him about it. I bet I could write a pretty funny travelogue about delivering boxes of paper downtown all winter. I could even throw in a bit where I compare all my old girlfriends to the original members of Hellhammer. No wait, there’s not dudes in that band. Sha Na Na it is, then.