Touch Me, I'm Sick


Book Description

Love once inspired sonnets, plays, novels, and countless romantic songs. But romance can become obsession, and nowadays, love songs are creepier than ever. Even the Police's stalker anthem "Every Breath You Take" is a popular choice at weddings and funerals. In Touch Me, I'm Sick, Tom Reynolds offers hilarious riffs on 52 love songs that have gone off the rails into the realm of the tawdry, the overwhelming, the obsessive, the self-absorbed, and the completely weird. Including songs by artists as diverse as Melissa Etheridge, Michael Jackson, Paul Anka, Sinéad O'Connor, and Slipknot, he also pillories a handful of the 1,700 different songs called "Butterfly." Praise for Tom Reynolds' I Hate Myself and Want to Die: "A tremendous idea . . . Reynolds ameliorates the pain of having put his ear up close to some of the most inconsiderate despair anthems of our time by having enormous fun deconstructing them." --The Sunday Times "Full of premium trivia and pinpoint pomposity-pricking, Reynolds has made comedy gold from the full base metal of misery." --NME "An entertaining and well-researched set of cautionary tales music fans will enjoy. Consider the list a batch of enthralling liner notes for a box set that comes with razor blades." --Playboy "Bridget Jones would love it." --The Scotsman




Touch Me, I'm Sick


Book Description

Featuring 92 photographs on grunge legends including Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Thurston Moore, Henry Rollins, Eddie Vedder, and others, "Touch Me I'm Sick," Peterson's third monograph, documents the raw power of live performances by the soon-to-be-famous artists and their dedicated fans.




GenXegesis


Book Description

Resituating the term in its neglected (sub)cultural context, this work offers a critical assessment of the 'Generation X' phenomenon and its relation to the fashioning of different identities within and against the mainstream. Topics include punk subculture, the Internet, and alternative music.




Sick Puppy


Book Description

Brilliantly twisted entertainment wrapped around a powerful ecological plea—from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me. When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements—such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks—that leave his human targets shaken but re-educated. After watching Stoat blithely dump a trail of fast-food litter out the window, Twilly decides to teach him a lesson. Thus, Stoat's prized Range Rover becomes home to a horde of hungry dung beetles. Which could have been the end to it had Twilly not discovered that Stoat is one of Florida's cockiest and most powerful political fixers, whose latest project is the "malling" of a pristine Gulf Coast island. Now the real Hiaasen-variety fun begins… Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads and a Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts—these are only some of the denizens of Carl Hiaasen's outrageously funny new novel.




The Nazis


Book Description

Piotr Uklanski, a New York based artist, has put together a most surprising and at the same time simple series of pictures. With them he has created an art book consisting of 160 portraits of movie actors playing Nazis. This volume is as much about history as it is about the industry of entertainment. In 1998, The Observer, London, wrote about these compelling and at the same time enstranging portraits: "If you are an actor, chances are that you will play a Nazi, or at least a cruel German officer in the Second World War. How do you make yourself look the part? First comes the matter of expression. Mug up on verbal cliches: 'ice-cold eyes', 'thin, compressed lips', with if possible, 'the hint of cynical smile playing around the corners of the mouth'. An 'air of cold command', rigid jaw muscles denoting 'utter ruthlessness', a tiny flare of nostrils to suggest unspeakable depths of sadism. Fine! Now put on the gear: the tunic with its collar-tabs of SS lightning flashes, the tall black cap with eagle, swastika and death's head. Stunning! Now all you need is that gargling accent unlike any noise ever uttered by a real German."




Ask a Manager


Book Description

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together




Cypher


Book Description

Acclaimed rock photographer Charles Peterson is back with a new subject-the world of contemporary breakdancing. B-boying, as it's referred to by its adepts, centers around the "cypher" (circle) created when b-boys and b-girls gather to practice or to "battle." Bigger and badder than ever, breakdancing has grown since its beginnings in the 1970s to become a global youth phenomenon today. Yet it remains a highly individualized practice-all one needs to get down are some beats and a smooth floor (and, of course, scads of strength, style, and brio). WithCypher, Peterson takes a fresh look at this phenomenon with his own brand of fine-art documentation: part Larry Fink, part Barbara Morgan, with a heaping dose of the spirit that defined his previous powerHouse monograph,Touch Me I'm Sick. He focuses not only on some of the most radical performances by today's most talented breakers, but also on the fans, the sidelines, and the camaraderie of the crews in order to put you inside the world of the b-boy. Taken primarily with cumbersome medium-format cameras, the photographs have the depth and resolution normally associated with high-end fashion and portrait photography- even when the subjects are caught spontaneously in mid-air! Despite the awkwardness of the method, the photos still have all the buzz and excitement found in Peterson's iconic images of the grunge movement, with an added twist of unexpected elegance. Cypherwas shot over a period of six years, primarily in Peterson's hometown of Seattle, as well as at major events over the last few years in Los Angeles, New York City, and Portland, Oregon.




When the World Is Sick


Book Description

This story is about a little girl who imagines meeting the coronavirus she's heard so much about. She tells the virus all about how to stay safe and, ultimately, remembers to have joy despite the circumstances.




Our Band Could Be Your Life


Book Description

The definitive chronicle of underground music in the 1980s tells the stories of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and other seminal bands whose DIY revolution changed American music forever. Our Band Could Be Your Life is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties -- when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives re-energized American rock with punk's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith is an indie rock classic in its own right. The bands profiled include: Sonic Youth Black Flag The Replacements Minutemen Husker Du Minor Threat Mission of Burma Butthole Surfers Big Black Fugazi Mudhoney Beat Happening Dinosaur Jr.




Taking Punk to the Masses


Book Description

Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind visually documents the explosion of Grunge, the Seattle Sound, within the context of the underground punk subculture that was developing throughout the u.S. in the late 1970s and 1980s. The book serves as a companion and contextual backdrop to the Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses exhibition, which opens at Seattle’s Experience Music Project in 2011. This decade-and-a-half musical journey will be represented entirely through the lens of EMP’s oral history and permanent object collection, an invaluable and rich cultural archive of over 800 interviews and 140,000 objects ― instruments, costumes, posters, records and other ephemera dedicated to the pursuit of rock ’n’ roll. Taking Punk to the Masses focuses on 100 key objects from EMP’s permanent collection that illustrate the evolution of punk rock from underground subculture to the mainstream embrace (and subsequent underground rejection) of Grunge. These objects are put into context by the stories of those who lived it, culling from EMP’s vast archive of oral histories with such Northwest icons as Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, cartoonist Peter Bagge, design legend Art Chantry, Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson, Sub Pop founders Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, the Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan, Nirvana’s krist Novoselic, photographer Charles Petersen, Soundgarden’s kim Thayil, and dozens of others. From the Northwest’s earliest punk bands like The Wipers, to proto-grunge bands of the 1980s like Green River, Melvins and Malfunkshun, through the heady 1990s when bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Mudhoney rose to the national stage and popularized alternative music, Taking Punk to the Masses is the first definitive history of one of America’s most vibrant music scenes, as told by the participants who helped make it so, and through the artifacts that survive.