How to Piss in Public is a book that will punch you in the gut--and other, less-salubrious places--then make you ask for more. It's a memoir of one of the hardest, most unapologetic human beings to grace the planet over the past 40 years, the story of Vice magazine founder Gavin McInnes as only he could tell it.
McInnes covers it all: drugs, rock and roll, greed, writing, journalism, sexual escapades and alcohol--often all at once. His sense of humor is one that polite readers may cringe at, but the rest of us will laugh until our eyes tear up. The considerable volume of sexual encounters he describes would sound like bragging in any other context; here, McInnes's authorial voice gives them an air of documentary truth, warts and all. The amount of alcohol he's imbibed and the number of drugs he's done would have killed a lesser man--and yes, there are stories about that as well.
The progression of McInnes from a teenage punk rock fan to the founder of Vice and then, in his 40s, a rich married man with kids takes up most of the book. He is unapologetic about his drug and alcohol (ab)use; McInnes wants his readers to laugh through the pain of every story about death, overdose, loss of fortune and humiliation. Somehow he survived and is now able to write about it all with humor and, oddly enough, a rough sort of grace. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor