Death Confetti: Pickers, Punks, and Transit Ghosts in Portland, Oregon

US: Feral House, 2017. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. With savage humor, Death Confetti features performance artist Jennifer Robi n's autobiographical sketches of Portland, Oregon, from the grunge-era obsc urity of the '90s to its current media-darling status. As an only child raised by reclusive grandparents in upstate New York, Jenn ifer recalls that she felt "anemic for the real." At seventeen she broke lo ose and made her way to the west coast. "Civilization is a nightmare-illusion," Jennifer writes, "a three-dimension al spreadsheet perpetuated by machines that hypnotize meat." In a city that's stranger than fiction, grocery-store checkers and meth-hea ds loom as lost gods. We're introduced to the lady tweaker "Chew Toy," who wears moon boots and sings hair metal songs all night as she collects recyc lable bottles. Jennifer visits a bar where executives simulate doggie-style sex acts on the dance floor. Then there's all the tales of late-night life on the city's buses and light rail. Jennifer reflects on her early terror in Catholic school and phone calls wi th her far-out mother, who disclosed that her gynecologist was a murderer. In the all-too-true pages of Death Confetti, Robin remembers her life among noise musicians, junkies, and her escape from a boyfriend who insisted on reviving the lives of hundreds of deceased fruit flies. Death Confetti jolts the senses, and lingers like a mosquito bite to the Portland of everybody's soul.