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Vice Blog

LITERARY - THREE USEFUL NEW BOOKS

This is the time of year when publishing houses start rolling out their holiday books for out-of-touch aunts to buy their 20-something "alternative" nephews and vice versa. From what we've received so far, the for-aunt portion is pretty consistent with what it's been for the past 40 years, mostly funny pictures of cats accompanied/ruined by torturously unfunny captions. The subjects aimed at the nephew population traditionally cover a more varied terrain, like newspaper typos and unrealistically complicated suggestions for life-threatening situations you'll never be in, so let's see where all they're headed this year…

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Thames & Hudson
By this point we thought we'd learned almost everything there is to know about the mysterious tribe of people who write their nicknames on the pull-down gate of delis in the middle of the night so no one will catch them. Stylewars showed us what they looked like and how they dressed. Yo! What Happened to Peace? showed us their ability to articulate a nuanced political agenda. But one niggling question that has long eluded proper investigation is what do those graffiti kids eat? Well, after years of half-guesses and endless theorizing (game hen?) this book of "creative recipes for the graffiti generation" is poised to blow the lid off one of the street art community's most carefully guarded secret. Are you ready for it?

They eat hamburgers.
CHELSEA DURHAM


In case it's too small for you to read onscreen, the marquee feature of this handbook is a list of 420 things to do when you're stoned. If this list had been up to me, item #1 would have been "Are you seriously sitting here high, reading a book of things to do while high? Really? Are you the most boring human on earth? Put this down and go hang out somewhere with your friends. Watch a movie if it's shitty out. Jesus fucking Christ dude." Then the rest of the list would just be inside jokes and ads for local restaurants. Clearly, however, I am a list-compiling lightweight compared to the editors of High Times, who open theirs with, "Join NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws." No joke, their top suggested weed activity is going to the website of a (lame) political activism group and filling out an application form. Want to know what number two is? Badminton.

Fuck it, this isn't worth getting this angry over (you can't see me now, but my face is the color of a baboon ass).
TERRY HAND


Collins Design
Roger Dean is the artist who made the covers for all those Yes albums in the 70s that look like blacklight posters and very often found their way onto actual blacklight posters. He also did the cover of that Asia album with the dragon, which has forever borne weird associations for me due to its presence on the wall of a Leonard Lake-esque back room at my childhood Cub Scout hut. Anyways, all those pictures are pretty cool to look at when you're blasted on somebody's couch at 2 AM, but they're not in this book. Not a'one a'them. I'm assuming it has something to do with the bands owning all the rights to the good ones, but you might want to rethink putting out a Roger Dean coffeetable book when the highlight is a two-page spread on the Tetris logo.
CHRISTIAN NEVERS