Aviva Las Vegas brings a new face forward each month. Sometimes
it's a celebrity, and other times, well; it's just a nobody.
Please let her know who you would like to see interviewed
here, and she will do everything she can to arrange this.
This month, she travels across the parallel universe to meet
Douglas Coupland, author of numerous books including Generation
X: tales for an accelerated culture, Girlfriend in a Coma,
and most recently City of Glass. Our meeting takes
place in an inconspicuous part of town. In his newest book,
he refers to this area as a cross between Utrecht Holland
and the Florida Everglades. Aviva Las Vegas prefers to refer
to it as...
Aviva LasVegas meets...
Douglas Coupland
by avivalasvegas
"This is a fucking suburban wasteland, I swear to Elvis,
where the hell are we?"
That was my first question as my publicist and I got out
of the car in the parking lot of a suburban strip mall. "And
what the hell is this?"
A "Chapters" booksigning. Our first one disguised as suburbanite
Gen X fans. Could we feel less glam?
We armed ourselves with coffee. At http://www.teleport.com/~denning/coupland.html,
we learnt that Douglas Coupland drinks lots of coffee, hates
P.R. work and would like to build a walled city out of scratch.
My publicist and I are planning to try and sell him on our
new idea for a hotel on the Strip. "Gen X Land," complete
with walled city built from scratch "a la Coupland."
There he was standing behind a small table, with piles of
his latest book on top it. "Chapters". For a man who doesn't
like PR, he sure has gotten sucked into it.
This strip mall, was a far cry from The Strip, but hey, they
don't call me Aviva Las Vegas for nothing. It was worthwhile
to track down one of the leading lingo-ists of our time. I
had 2 copies of parallel universe, ready for signing, and
my publicist had a well-worn copy of "Generation X."
When it was our turn, he mentioned his addiction to Scrabble,
and how he doesn't get out that often. We let him in on Scrabble
software, and Scrabble on the Web, just in case he wanted
to go out even less.
He looked a bit tired, a wee bit older than we imagined our
Gen X hero to look. Then again, our image of him was based
on how he looked in the early to mid 1990's (see http://www.nlc-bc.ca/events/readings/couplane.html
) I guess time stops for no capsule.
When he finished signing our books, I mentioned Mr. Penis's
book club, and how the entourage were complaining, all of
the time. To be truthful, I just called it our book club.
I didn't mention Mr. Penis...yet.
"How come Oprah has celebrity authors at her book club, why
don't we get any at Mr. Penis's book club..." I told Mr. Coupland,
imitating the entourage. "And so, we wanted to ask you, if
you would be our celebrity guest at our next book club meeting?"
Mr. Coupland graciously declined, and I would like to let
him know, on behalf of Mr. Penis, that he is still welcome
to join us, just as soon as we have a free slot open for him.
Also, if he would like to invest in a new hotel, just let
Aviva Las Vegas or her investment group know.
Nonetheless, he signed all 3 books and away we went, back
from the Utrecht Everglades, through Sydney Australia, Singapore
and final destination San Francisco, before making our way
back to that part of the mind, we call, Las Vegas.
For some great graphics and video clips, check out Douglas
Coupland's media savvy site at http://www.coupland.com/index_ok.html
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