Jef With One F Signs His (Awesomely Fun) Book, Tomorrow at Cactus

It’s a little weird to think about, honestly, but I’ve heard a lot of rambling/accusing about nepotism and favoritism lately: writers promoting their buddies’ bands, regardless of how good they are, etc., etc. And yeah, I’ve gotten dinged for it myself, rightfully or not. It’s pretty hard to escape — you go to the shows, you write about the bands, you meet the people, yadda, yadda, of course you’re going to end up being friends with people in The Scene.

I like to think, however, that I’m pretty honest. I’ve got friends who make music that just makes me shrug, and while it sucks (and definitely can make the friendship tricky), I’m not going to say they’re great when they’re really not; that’s not fair to anybody.

So when friend & SCR contributor Jef With One F sent me a copy of his book, The Bible Spelled Backwards Does Not Change the Fact That You Cannot Kill David Arquette, And Other Things I Learned in The Black Math Experiment, my initial reaction was to cringe.

I mean, how could it not be painful? I figured it had to be up there with Weird Uncle Dick wanting to read his deep, emotional poetry to the whole family over Thanksgiving dinner, looking desperately around the tableonce he’s done.

Thankfully, Jef’s no Uncle Dick. What he is, instead, is like some weird crossbreeding of David Sedaris and Henry Rollins, mashing together sordid stories of hard-fought rock-band-dom with quirky, oddball observations and the most bizarre job history I’ve ever run across. As I read the book (twice), I found myself reading my favorite parts aloud to my wife, driving her crazy with my little readings from the thing. It could still use an editor at a few points, but hell, that’s no biggie. At the end of the day, it’s a massively entertaining read.

Happily, other people seem to agree — check out the {29-95.com} writeup over here and David Cobb‘s writeup at {Houston Calling} over here, for two.

And hey, tomorrow, Saturday, December 11th, you can meet the man behind the book live and in-person — he’ll be at Cactus Music from 1-3PM, signing books and chatting with fans and generally just hanging out (while St. Arnold’s passes out the beer).

So go by, pick up a copy of the book, and get a retired luchador to sign it for you; trust me, it’ll be fun…