Agent Palmer

It’s hard to believe that there’s someone out there who hasn’t heard some version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” My cursory research revealed almost 100 official covers of the song and I believe that to be soft. 

But GNR’s version along with Warren Zevon’s edition got me thinking about what else is out there. I’m not talking about Dylan’s own preoccupation with playing his own songs at different tempos and phrasings live, never performing the same things twice. After all, that could be its own thing for almost anything Dylan sang.

As someone who has, at this point, read almost every easily accessible published work of Douglas Coupland, this book is something of a crescendo.

“Bit Rot” is shorts and essays, from some things I have read and many that are new to me. But it is the crux of the book’s essence that’s amazing to experience.

Years ago, and much closer to its 2014 publishing date, I told you about Console Wars and its masterful retelling of the marketing and gaming dominance match between Nintendo and Sega.

The book is absolutely amazing, but the documentary also stands on its own. Since it clocks in at only 90 minutes, it’s best referred to as the abridged story of the Console Wars as they occurred.

Given my interest in politics and a college minor in journalism, it’s amazing it took me this long to read All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But it’s 50 years after its publication, and it is still a fast-paced, well-written masterpiece. 

It is a balm in troubling times that despite some of the horrors of the world, great investigative journalism was alive and well, and it could be again.