I love Rob The Bouncer’s blog. I know I’ve recommended it here, but I will do so again, especially for New York-area people who will read his descriptions of the local Guido talent, choke a little on their Diet Cokes, read his entire archive, and forward the hell out of him.

But if you already check Rob’s blog regularly, let me ask you a favor. I just finished his book, Clublife, which I couldn’t wait to read, and it’s really good — he’s got a couple of minor off-putting tendencies as a narrator, starting with his overuse of the word “simply,” and while I’m up, a note about that particular overcorrection: I’m all for changing up word choice as much as you can, but don’t change “just”s to “simply”s for the mere sake of it. “Just” is a perfectly good word; yeah, you find yourself using it frequently, but you’ll use the verb “to be” frequently too, and while your sophomore English teacher wasn’t wrong when she urged you to find stronger verbs, sometimes it’s better to just say what you want to say and not try to fancy up the diction. Writers who aren’t super-confident in their vocabularies, or who don’t consider themselves “real” writers, tend to give away that belief with various usage “tells,” and “simply” is one of them. Rob, my boy: you wrote a book. You still post to your blog. You might not write for a living, but technically, neither did I most of the damn time. You’re a writer. “Simply” is a crutch you don’t need.

Anyway: the book is good. The problem is that, if you’ve read the blog for a while, you’ll recognize most of the material; it’s still awesome, especially the dance instructions, but you don’t necessarily need to buy the book, because you’ll have seen a lot of it before.

Here’s where the favor comes in. Christmas is coming, and the world — your world — is full of people who grew up in the tri-state, haven’t read the blog, and will think Clublife is the shit, because it is: fun to read, easy to pick up and put down, great for the subway or the john. It’s a great gift, and you will look brilliant for giving it, so instead of forwarding? Buy the book for a friend.

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