Six-Pack Moz

The VI Books Morissey Most Likely Keeps In His After-Hours Cocktail Cabinet of Solid Reads

James and I started talking, and this list was the result. Kudos to you, J, especially on the first pick. This kid is so raven. Say what?

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret: There is no way Morissey hasn't regularly night-tabled this little pink paperback of perfect Americana ever since he came across it in that beige-carpeted car-dealership at a squalid Chelsea mall. Why was it sitting on the agent's desk? Morissey gave her a wry smile and pocketed the novel after scanning the blurbs on the back. The agent never acted on the theft, not knowing that Morissey loathed automobiles and would never buy one from her. The pink-shirted man was dallying with her capitalist agenda. Pasting "Morissey" across "Margaret" probably happened no more than three paragraphs into the novel.

Wuthering Heights: Morissey looked up Emily Bronte's novel six months ago, having just watched the MTV film version of the same name. He fell in love with the novel, of course. Everybody does. But why hasn't he returned the DVD? Is stealing from Bandito Video the kind of ironic gesture with which Morissey fills the daily void?

Something Under The Bed Is Drooling: It's a little known fact, but, before he began reading Calvin & Hobbes, Morissey once had an imaginary friend who considered Morissey to be a stuffed tiger. This imaginary friend's parents thought of Morissey as no more than the product of the overexcited, rather macabre imagination of their son. They were right. Morissey waxes sardonic over this paradox in several songs.

To The Lighthouse, or anything by Virginia Woolf, the most elegantly depressing author to ever write a novel about androgyny and then fill her pockets with stones and sadly drown in a river. Morissey can't swim, though, and won't go near water. Liverpool doesn't count.

Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man And Life's Greatest Lesson: This one really choked Moz up. And he never made it past the title! Which was really because the singer threw a petulant rage when he realized "Morrie" was short for someone other than himself.

40 Years of "Coronation Street": Mostly because he stopped watching EastEnders after the cast performed "Thriller" in 2002, Morissey purchased this book as an unhappy birthday present for himself. Oh, Jackson was always too unambiguously sexual for the English singer's stomach. Perversely, Moz has never really been a Corrie fan; the doom and gloom of EastEnders had suited his sociable yet depressed outlook for many years. This book still remains unread, the flyleaf hardly bent. He's thinking of trading it in at the pawn shop for a lunar globe or some of those ceramic animals that used to come with the packets of Red Rose Tea.

Reading: The Rule Of Four + Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

Listening: You've got to wait nearly two minutes for the good stuff to kick out in the last chorus and it's a good idea to look at the video meanwhile. The lizard plays guitar, a catfish rattles some drums, odd mer-things sing "Aah", and what about Ice Cream & Babies? Everybody travel arcade-game style to the magic raft and sing "Do The Whirlwind" + Architecture In Helsinki