cover image I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World

I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World

Mike Edison, . . Faber and Faber, $25 (338pp) ISBN 978-0-86547-964-7

This hilarious insider look at fringes of journalism and magazine publishing is written with a gleeful burning-his-bridges-behind-him vibe. Edison is a child of the ’70s who came across High Times magazine and immediately recognized that it “was a miracle of lifestyle journalism.” A daily high school pothead, he delivers an amazingly detailed remembrance of life in New York City after his surprising acceptance into New York University and then, after dropping out, Columbia University, which leads to jobs working first for the World Wrestling Federation, then writing porn novels, before moving on to men’s magazines like Cheri . He shamelessly admits that “putting out inconsequential slap rags was a lot of fun.” After a dalliance with the Raunch Hands punk group, Edison is back writing for Hustler and Penthouse , until he finally gets an editing job at High Times . This stint—the bulk of the book—provides a riotous look at that magazine’s stoned style, where the staff couldn’t arrive on time to planned meetings unless Edison could “fold the fabric of the universe onto itself and led the staff through some sort of cosmic wormhole.” (May)