Despite my neighbor/new best friend living three suburban homes away, I always chose to travel through the woods to make the journey home that much more epic. There was a chance that I'd find a waterlogged porno mag or even some beer. This day, fate left a white plastic bag — or "DeMoulas Bag" as they were called in the Merrimack Valley, after a local supermarket chain — in my path. I poked the bag with a stick as if it were a dead cat, and some Polaroid instant photographs fell out face down like snowflakes. Unfortunately upon flipping them over with my oak scepter, I quickly saw the bottom halves of naked middle-aged uncircumcised men and ran, for fear of becoming "a gay."I pushed open our red steel door, complete with gold-plated door knocker, and heard my parents conversing about "that idiot who lit the field behind the pond on fire." Apparently the fire department had gone out to extinguish the blaze. I wasn't sorry to break up Salem's Finest's poker game or that I ruined a forest, because I was fixated on those fucking Polaroids. Why couldn't they have been of hot chicks from Canada that I could lie about fucking, only to hide in the toolbox I made in metals class? I felt tricked and weird. Little did I know, tricked and weird were the hallmarks of suburbia.
The above was excerpted from Anthony Pappalardo's essays "Get Your Wings" and "Me, You, Youth Crew," originally published in Live . . . Suburbia! (power House Books). Order a copy at powerhousebooks.com.
The Live . . . Suburbia art show at Orchard Skate Shop's Extension Gallery opens December 10, with an all-ages book reading from 6-8 pm and a 21+ reception 8-11 pm. The gallery is located at 156 Harvard Ave in Allston. Visit orchardshop.com.
Related:
Photos: Images from Live . . . Suburbia, Interview: Alice Bag of Stay at Home Bomb, A talk with Sam McPheeters, More 
- Photos: Images from Live . . . Suburbia
The Live . . . Suburbia art show at Orchard Skate Shop's Extension Gallery opens December 10, 2011.
- Interview: Alice Bag of Stay at Home Bomb
Alice Bag (nee Armendariz), who shone bright in the Los Angeles punk scene of the late-1970s, will be in town Saturday to read from her book Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage and to play a few tunes at 7 pm at Rochambeau Library.
- A talk with Sam McPheeters
One of the most interesting people to emerge from the second generation of US punk rock, Sam McPheeters has had a pretty full life.
- Review: Patti Smith's Just Kids
How do you get to be the Godmother of Punk? Pure dumb luck, for starters.
- Strange world
Bob Pfeifer's debut novel, University of Strangers (published by Power City Press, the print arm of the punk label Smog Veil Records), is a fictionalized retelling of a sensational, true-life murder case, as related in the voices of real people.
- Papercut Zine Library & the Lucy Parsons Center re-open
Zinesters perused hand-stitched books and photocopied pamphlets on topics ranging from punk politics and parenting to feminism and freeganism, while local musicians played folksy tunes on acoustic guitars, mandolins, and cello between floor-to-ceiling shelves of used books.
- Susan Orlean gets the dirt on Rin Tin Tin
New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean has been busy talking up her latest book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (Simon & Schuster), a biography of the most popular animal actor in history, and his impact on American culture.
- Staying hardcore in the land of the stripmall
Some of us enter this world prematurely. After peaking on parent-approved science fiction, you find yourself with a pocketful of quarters pedaling your PK Ripper toward the inviting glow of a neon ARCADE sign.
- Under new ownership, changes are coming to the New England Mobile Book Fair
A few weeks ago, I dropped by the New England Mobile Book Fair to buy an Orhan Pamuk paperback, The Museum of Innocence , for my book club.
- Geoffrey Wolff and the ‘pee-wee metropolis’
Jeffrey Eugenides entered a select club last month when he published his novel, The Marriage Plot . His ticket for admission was a sentence on page 9 that began, "Providence was a corrupt town, crime ridden and mob-controlled . . . ."
- The Ploughshares years
After reading an item on the Boston Globe book page noting that DeWitt Henry had published a memoir, I bought a copy of the book.
- Less
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, Books, punk, Anthony Pappalardo, More
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