David Carr and his very surprising new book. Wow!

David Carr has been one of my favorite journalists for awhile. I love his NYT Monday Media Business stories, as I also love the blogger that emerged (aka Carpetbagger) following the annual Oscar race. (Although, if I can digress for a moment, I hate all the time, space and attention that that oscar race takes up! The same thing over and over. Pundits pontification..um, yeah guessing and sounding off. Page after page of precious media dedicated to this one competition. Deafening noise sucking up all the air in the room. It's really a shame.)

But back to David Carr - so yeah, he's one of my favorite journalists. One of the few I follow these days. So boy, what a big surprise to read his new book excerpt in the NYT Magazine today. Yowza!!! Who knew he used to be a crackhead!??!!

Terrific read. Highly recommended.

Me and My Girls

By DAVID CARR

Published: July 20, 2008

Where does a junkie’s time go? Mostly in 15-minute increments, like a bug-eyed Tarzan, swinging from hit to hit. For months on end in 1988, I sat inside a house in north Minneapolis, doing coke and listening to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and finding my own pathetic resonance in the lyrics. “Any place is better,” she sang. “Starting from zero, got nothing to lose.”

After shooting or smoking a large dose, there would be the tweaking and a vigil at the front window, pulling up the corner of the blinds to look for the squads I was always convinced were on their way. All day. All night. A frantic kind of boring. End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame.

After a while I noticed that the blinds on the upper duplex kitty-corner from the house were doing the same thing. The light would leak through a corner and disappear. I began to think of the rise and fall of their blinds and mine as a kind of Morse code, sent back and forth across the street in winking increments that said the same thing over and over.

W-e a-r-e g-e-t-t-i-n-g h-i-g-h t-o-o.

They rarely came out, and neither did I, so we never discussed our shared hobby.

(continue)

The Official Night of the Gun Website (From Simon & Schuster)