Susan’s Book Talk: Beer! Good!

I don’t know how many of you remember — assuming you even saw it — the Camp Choas spots, lambasting my favorite real band and the whole Napster debacle.

Even if you’ve never seen it, you need to. Ten years later, it still cracks me up. The Tour Manager and I used to mimic the Cartoon James and announce “Beer! Good!” Hell, to this day, I still say, “Fire! Bad!”

But we’re talkin’ beer here. And books. Because, while beer is the booze I prefer, beer and books just don’t get along.

See, here’s the deal. I went to the post office on Wednesday. It’s a small post office, and the two women who work there know me. So it was with some chagrin that a package was handed to me. It had arrived that morning — and it was wet. Another package had erupted in the mail sack, and wouldn’t you know, but this 9×12 catalog envelope headed for me had gotten the worst of it.

By the smell, it’s beer.

Now, it turns out this is a very very bad thing. Not merely because inside this package is a book I’d been expecting and intending to review. But because the author was kind enough to send me THREE COPIES so I could give them away.

All ruined.

My postmaster tried to get some restitution for me. But… the post office is buried under layers of legislation protecting their profits. They aren’t going to pay to replace my books, even though this happened while the books were in their hands. And they aren’t going to try to track down the sender of the beer, even though if you hunt around the USPS.gov website long enough, you’ll find that you’re not actually supposed to mail beer.

To add insult to injury, there was the implication that this was partially the author’s fault, for throwing three books into a 9×12 catalog envelope and not wrapping the books better. Like he was supposed to know some schmoo was dumb enough to mail beer?

Now, this is where it gets good. No, not that I contacted the publicist who’d set this whole thing up and she was quite understanding and wonderful.

It gets good the very second that I tell you that these books are about the 80s glam metal frontmen — a group of Aqua-Netted, bleach-blonde men who were known for their copious beer consumption. You know: who partied hard and lived to tell the tales.

These books certainly partied hard, whether or not any of us wanted them to. Lived to tell the tales? I’m not so sure.

Still. Who mails beer?