Good Advice for Young Trendy People

Edited by Jennifer Blowdryer

Manic D Press (2005), $15

Woe is the life of the tragically hip. If you're not lucky enough to have a trust fund or to parlay your eye for the avant-garde into a cash cow funding your drugs, booze, and forward-thinking lifestyle, you're left with debt, depression, and a life unfulfilled. But that's not what Good Advice for Young Trendy People wants you creative, pretentious, but oh-so-lovable rapscallions to think. Culling a choice array of trendy icons from the (mainly San Francisco) underground scene, writer Jennifer Blowdryer gets these rising and former stars to detail the ups and downs of their distinctive lives. Celebrities and misfits, such as hairstylist Princess Kennedy (of "Trannyshack" and Pepperspray fame) and James St. James (author of the jarring Disco Blood Bath), tell us, respectively, how to earn a noncorporate living and how to enter a room -- both being equally important. Standout chapters come from Gutter Boys author Alvin Orloff, who gives a surprisingly frank account of how to be a flunky. He claims that he "would have resigned [himself] to life amongst the terminally un-hip, but ... [he] discovered the back entrance" by assisting the disorganized artists in his life. And punk rocker-turned-murderer Regi Alsin offers helpful dos and don'ts for time spent in the clink (tips that are surprisingly similar to nightclub etiquette). Hey, it's sound living advice for you or your bipolar artist friend who's ready to throw himself off the nearest bridge.