Monday, May 16, 2011

Announcing: Collector's Edition: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive

This is the big project that's been taking up most of my time this year (and will continue to do so for the bulk of 2011). But I thought it was time to let the cat outta the mylar (if you get that reference, you will see yourself in this book).
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COLLECTOR’S EDITION: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive by Karl Heitmueller Jr. is an examination of the changing nature of popular culture from the early 1970s to today in the form of a memoir. Mixing history, humor and criticism with sometimes embarrassingly personal anecdotes, Heitmueller paints a picture of a life that, at the age of 46, continues to revolve around pop trappings that are usually abandoned upon adulthood. But it’s also about how the evolution of technology has radically altered the consumption of culture, making it easier to acquire and perhaps less meaningful in the process.

COLLECTOR’S EDITION is divided into chapters that deal with the numerous aspects of Karl’s obsessions: comic books, music (both collecting and compiling), Christmas, action figures, recording TV shows, books, self-publishing, archiving and a three-decades-running compendium called, “The Motion Picture Log.” There are also chapters on how sports just doesn’t fit into the equation and why Star Wars lost its luster for the author (while Superman perhaps means more than ever).

Peppered with illuminating sidebars, anecdotal comic strips and illustrations, COLLECTOR’S EDITION tries to explain the collector’s mentality, and posits that loving STUFF may not be such a bad thing after all. Readers who share the malady of nostalgia will find much to which they can relate, while those who’ve never felt the urge to scour eBay for a long-lost relic of their childhood will hopefully gain insight to the mindset of an oft-ridiculed demographic.

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