Go on, call fag on me all you want for this and I won't care: I purchased the fuck out of Mozipedia: The Encyclopedia of Morrissey and The Smiths. Half-drunk with a friend in a bookstore, I pulled it from the display and bought it on pure speculation. Couldn't help myself. The purchase was not without obstacles: the price, 30 dollars, for one, and my "friend" who humiliated me by yelling, "Jesus. You're actually getting that?! You're buying a rock book? On fucking Morrissey?" Some friend. He fully shamed me, to be sure, but the Smiths fan homunculus inside me stuck its chest out and trudged up to the cashier, past laughing shoppers, carrying this giant baby blue book with a faceless Morrissey head on it. While others were pointing and laughing, I studied the cover and pretended not to notice them. With this particular design and size, I wondered if they wanted the reader to become Morrissey or something. Like, "Hold your face up here and be Morrissey by having his hair." How idiotic, I thought. Still, I really wanted to see what else was inside. The cashier smiled kind of flirtatiously as she waved off my stupid friend and the others. I don't know if she had bought a Mozipedia herself, but she must have checked it out once or twice. Due to our shared affinity for high art and the music of The Smiths, I probably could have copped some anal, lubed with her urge to commiserate alone.Writing a 500 page book on Morrissey might be, among other things, a little insane, no? Can we get together on that one issue? Great. But you have to do go deep to please the world's most dedicated fans. Author and compiler Simon Goddard certainly went far enough here to please the people, I think, but I can still imagine death threats phoned in from fans in disagreement with him about "Picadilly Palare." I'm a Morrissey fan as well, but only to a certain extent. I love the music and I'll go to a concert. I'll even wear the t-shirt if I'm not going anywhere. You have to be something beyond a fan to start writing an encyclopedia on one of your idols. An endeavor like this takes an unimaginable amount of dedication, which is rare, so I commend Mr. Goddard. It's difficult even to wrap your mind around the sheer hours it took to put this together. I wonder if he can even still listen to any Smiths or Morrissey music at all.Writing down and compiling every single factoid you can possibly imagine about Morrissey must have been a huge pain in the ass. Knowing that there will be a crowd to love it probably pulled Goddard through. Several questions about Morrissey lyrics immediately came to the front of my mind when I saw the book. The first thing I looked up was a lyric from "Now My Heart Is Full" that I never understood. I always thought this was kind of a drug song because of the line loafing oafs in all-night chemists. I always heard this line as loafing oafs AND all-night chemists (which sounds like all of downtown New York on a Friday night) so I gleaned that immediately. To give you an idea of the ground covered in here, you would need only look at the 800 word entry on this song alone. A quarter of these words are based in fact, the rest are the author's interpretation. So you might not--and probably won't--agree with Goddard's dissections. He may be dead wrong, and he admits this in the introduction. He does, however, provide answers to any questions you may have regarding absolutely any obscure reference you can think of. Also from "Now My Heart Is Full," I never knew what the line "Dallow, Spicer, Pinkie, Cubitt" meant. I'm pretty sure I thought they were druggies' names. I now know that these are characters from the film version of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, and that this song was a salute to his British big-screen favorites. I'm sure this is probably common knowledge in certain circles, but not any of mine. And, to be honest, I liked the song more when he was singing about doing drugs.Though he may go over the top in his interpretation, there is no doubt about the job Goddard's done. Each page is about four pages worth of words, so this book is actually two thousand pages dedicated to Morrissey--hence my earlier remark about insanity. He not only covers everything about Morrissey and all that Morrissey did, but everything Morrissey loved and sang about. Can you imagine watching every movie and reading every book that Morrissey has ever name-dropped? I can't even read the entire Mozipedia. I'm certain that many in Morrissey's flock tore through this thing from front to back, but if you're just looking for a quick answer, the Mozipedia is nothing if not convenient. One thing though: Morrissey wanted nothing to do with this book. He wasn't consulted and I am not sure if he has ever commented on it. That's kind of a bummer, but not really if you think about it. I like Morrissey best when he's singing, and although I appreciate the facts about certain names and references in here, I still like to hear how terrible it all is from the man directly.GIANCARLO DITRAPANO