Customer Reviews

Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure

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4 star:		(1)
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Paul has a talent for looking twice at products we usually take for granted. It's the "how did we ever miss this?" attitude he takes that makes his book and writing so fun -- he's got a great wit and eye for the absurd in everyday life. After reading his book (and his zine, Beer Frame), I've never been able to go to the supermarket in the same way again

I always wondered if I was the only person in the world who was blown away by products like "Armour Pork Brains in Milk Gravy". Paul Lukas has proven that a) I'm not alone and b) if I was more talented I could have made money writing a book about bizarre products. My only complaint about this book was that it ended. I was ready for hundreds of more examples, particularly the weird foods.

As Sigue Sigue Sputnik so weirdly proved back in the '80s, _anything_ can be a product (even a rock band). This well-written, researched and hilarious book takes us from Thirst and Musk LifeSavers (a favorite in the former penal colony known as Australia) to microwave pork rinds and the smoker's robot (read to believe). The perfect read-to-your-friend-in-the-car-while-roadtripping book

If you are one of those people who likes browsing in drug stores at 3:00 for that hit of domesticated weirdness---such as meat-free Shnookums and Meat pasta or 666 Cold Medicine---then you will savor this book like a fine can of 7 Up Gold.

Also worth looking for are issues of "Beer Frame," Lukas's delightful zine, and "Object Lessons: Songs about Products," a Lukas-inspired EP featuring the highly hummable (seriously) song "Golden Boy Peanuts."

Paul Lukas for many years edited and mostly wrote a small 'zine called "Beer Frame" dedicated to the most obvious and yet rarely missed of pursuits: the reviewing of everyday, household items. We have reviews of movies, beer, wine, albums...here I am writing a review of this book...but it took a man of Lukas' genius to compare and contrast different brand of pork rinds; OTC cold medicines; tape; weird canned meat that most of us would never touch; Japanese sodas; etc. He also occasionally reviewed CDS and books -- for their physical construction, not for their content, typically.

The reviews are sometimes quite straightlaced, sometimes deliberately over-the-top and funny, though the more "serious" reviews often seem to end up being the most laugh-inducing. The review of the device from which the 'zine got its logo is one of my favorites, as is the rundown on canned brains (mmmm). I don't know if he's still publishing (I sure hope so) but this wonderful small collection of the best of the magazine, published in 1997, will do the trick for pop-culture devotees interested in something beyond Flintstones lunchboxes.

This is a book full of interesting information-- no question there. However, it's not super reader-friendly and I just couldn't get into it. I wanted a random-information book I could read straight through-- this isn't it. However, it is a pretty cool book-- maybe a nice coffee table book addition.