How to Piss in Public: From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood

This lurid memoir by Vice magazine founder McInnes covers his booze and drug-fueled journey from an Ottawa suburb to the fleshpots of New York City. Along the way, McInnes fronts punk bands, gets stomped by skinheads, contracts numerous STDs, and starts a magazine that makes him a very wealthy man. Unlike most folks who party like rock stars, McInnes doesn’t have to crash-land in a substance-abuse facility to reach his happy ending. Instead he throttles down the partying as he approaches 40, marries a woman with the unlikely name of “Blobs” and starts a family. It’s the American dream come true, reality-TV style. The most interesting section covers McInnes’s early days in Kanata and Ottawa. Like many smart, rebellious teenagers in the 1980s, McInnes found energy and an ethos in punk’s rejection of tradition and conformity. His descriptions of the social mishaps and destructive antics of his friends are entertaining, honest, and occasionally touching. However, as he moves to New York City and up the social ladder, the book degenerates into a self-indulgent series of anecdotes about how wasted he got and all the hot sex he had. (Mar.)