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Musical apathy has thrown me into another reading bender, so let's get on with it-

Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs is so goddamned infectious that most of one hungover Saturday went to it and had me pulling out not only GI, but the likes of My War, Group Sex and Los Angeles. This oral biography demystifies the cult legend that's grown around Darby since his suicidal overdose, illuminating the forces that led to his demise. Evidently, living alone with your 270 pound schizophrenic mom, attending one of the nation's first school-within-a-schools featuring the loving strategies stolen from EST and gestalt therapy, ingesting drugs blindly and at great pace and quantity, exploring mostly texts dealing with manipulative power and how to get folks to do what you want them to, denying publicly homosexuality that you are really, really ashamed of, and you have the basic elements of Darby's rise and fall. This book is so well organized, however, that it becomes much more than just a rehash of decadent stories. It puts the evolution of LA punk into historical perspective and clearly shows how the aesthetics of anything goes, DIY early punk gave way to the dogma and violence of hardcore, and it sadly illustrates the sordid lives of so many of that early p-rock circle. Even if you've never heard of Darby Crash or have run screaming from a party with GI on the turntable, you should still be riveted by this one.

Francis Wheen's Idiot Proof is one Brit's attempt to decapitate stupidity and serve its lopped off head on a platter of the Complete Works of Kant to Descartes. Wheen is just the latest in a series of curmudgeons bemoaning the descent of reason in public debate and culture, and this surly curmudgeon can only applaud. Yes, the proverbial ducks in the barrel get water in their eyes, as astrology, Princess Di mourners and Deepak Chopra put their necks under the blade. But Wheen is not just a sardonic pop cultie man, as he strangles post-modernists (Foucault and Derrida go unloved here), lashes globalists (Tom Friedman lovers beware) and slaughters cabalists (Noam Chomsky, you blindly hating punk). The essays are erudite and funny, and after 100 pages you feel like you've just settled in with a favorite uncle in front of the hearth who keeps plying you with bourbon and then illuminates the proper way for a drunken gentleman to live in the world. I didn't agree with everything, but he was always sharp and crackling and entertaining. Idiot proof I am now not, bumbling up the stairs post-Sharks debacle, but I can pretend.

Mark Reisner's A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate is the scariest book I've probably ever read. I'm guessing most of America digested this account of what could happen in the next big Cali quake with secret or open glee, praying that the Vegas beachfront property would finally be theirs oh theirs and that the fucking fruitbaskets dragging down the GOP electoral vote would finally be resting in the watery grave they deserve, but I just poured drinks and sweat. Reisner didn't really finish the book, as he was dying of cancer when he wrote it (what kind of sad and sick irony is that? desperately trying to finish a book to warn folks about massive death and destruction while you're going down yourself), but he made clear to folks that he wanted what he left behind published in some form, and some form is what we get. It comes in two parts: the first is a brief history of the forces that shaped California, divided once more, as we like to do here in the Bay Area, into North and South. Reisner's mini-history is colorful and full of haveachuckle details, and it makes a solid case for how the character of each region came to be what it is. Gears grind quickly, however, in part two, as Reisner narrates a what if scenario about the Bay Area if the Hayward Fault (that's right kids, we sit astride it right here in ultra-overpriced Rockridge) were to deliver the kind of seismic friction scientists predict is on its merry way. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say that Oaktown don't fare so pretty, and the resultant power outages, floods, freeway collapses, communication breakdowns, fires, water shortages, etc., paint an Armageddon portrait that this grizzled ostrich is failing to repress. If there is a thesis, it is this: the quake is coming, and it will fuck things up unlike anything we've seen. Living here means accepting some potentially unimaginable ramifications, so enjoy the view while it lasts. Thus, I ask you: if I get the barn studio in Portland, will you come?