Don't Try This at Home

Rock guitarist Dave Navarro`s true-life account of a year attempting to kick his heroin and cocaine habits is lavishly illustrated with photo booth pictures of key players in his life as well as hangers-on, though those readers lacking intimate knowledge of Hollywood`s rock aristocracy and its strict hierarchy may be hard put to tell the difference between these documentary snaps of pouting women, blank-eyed men, desperate-faced young girls, and not a few innocent bystanders who don`t quite seem to fit into the druggy tug-of-war narrative. In Neil Strauss`s retelling, the Navarro household was a free-for-all of sex, drugs, and any other forms of dissipation its owner could conjure; a combination of early-1920s jazz age Hollywood and late-60s free love with a touch of Generation Y dystopia thrown in. Its participants are frozen in the funhouse glare of the photo booth, their expressions defiant, studied, self-conscious, bored, or sometimes just despondent. Navarro goes through detox, retox, and detox again. His life revolves around his addiction. His photo booth ghosts revolve around his life. Quite the opposite of a self-help book, DON`T TRY THIS AT HOME is Edgar Allen Poe rewritten for the MTV generation. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.