despite klosterman's hairy-chested prose, this collection is more than a mensa edition of maxim magazine. "the lady or the tiger," his essay on the metaphysics of breakfast cereal, is a clever parsing of what coolness is all about. he notes that most advertisements for kids' breakfast cereals rely heavily on the tantalus myth: the cocoa puffs bird has been driven "coo-coo" by his unfulfillable dream of digging into a bowl of chocolatey goodness. then there is that silly rabbit, whose peculiar pathology cannot admit the a priori fact that trix are for kids, or the faintly homoerotic obsession barney rubble has with fred flintsone's forbidden fruity pebbles. "they're the first step to indoctrination of future hipsters," writes klosterman. "cereal commercials teach us that anything desirable is exclusionary."



he hits here on "exclusionary cool," the device subcultures rely on, mostly through various signifiers -- purple mohawks, hot pants, split tongues, neil young's discography. these are designed to separate the cool from the uncool, and to cultivate the psychology of belonging to a club. and it all starts with the most important meal of the day.