Sad Bastard Book Club Autobiography
"Let's Get Drunk and Read!" exclaimed the bumper sticker. It seemed like sound logic at the time, so that's what we did. We named the meetings that took place in our cramped apartments during those bleak months the Sad Bastard Book Club. We fancied ourselves pretty damn clever.
Then a streak of misguided romanticism came over us. "Why should we just be readers? Do we not have stories to tell? Everyone's life is a novel and every person is an author!" Hooray we thought. We are all authors. We fancied ourselves pretty damn clever.
It became very clear, very fast that every person is not, in fact, an author. The hobo poetry that came from those days shames us still. It's best not to speak of it.
While we sulked over our literary failings, a few of us began noodling with the old instruments that were hanging around. It turns out that we were a little better with those than we were with the pens. Not by much mind you, but enough. And so it became that we were a book group that played music relating to books. We fancied ourselves pretty damn clever.
It was only after we had performed a song called "James Patterson is Pure Fucking Rubbish… Seriously, Absolute Garbage," did we realize the flaw in our design: it sucked. So we returned to stage one- get drunk and read.
Now a few years later and with a distinct lack of cleverness, we have started in with the music again. Things are different though. We take both storytelling and music more seriously. Yes, we are still an absurdist book group with bumper sticker logic, but now buried in all the superficial ha-ha, we have placed landmines of boo-hoo. Lot's of them.
