Part the First: Chuck Klosterman is an amazing writer. If you like music, pop culture and a wicked smart sense of humor, he should be your go-to guy.  All his books are great; I’d suggest starting with the one that appears above, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story , or Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs . Any writer who can namecheck The Drive-By Truckers , Superchunk and The Replacements in a single book and is not me instantly earns my love. He also hates Coldplay, as all men should (I can’t link to his actual quote about the band, ’cause it’s all sweary).

Part the Second: If you’ve been playing Rock Band 2 (if not, the hell is wrong with you?), you’ve inevitably ripped through the new Guns N Roses song, Shackler’s Revenge. You probably thought to yourself, “Really? This is GnR?” Believe it, sucka. Axl has been slowly working towards the weirdest third act in rock ‘n roll history, and the oft-mocked record,Chinese Democracy , will finally! be! available! on November the 23, AD 2008, honest and for true. But only at Best Buy?

Part the Third (aka, The Premise of the Post): Over on The Onion’s AV Club , Klosterman fires up Chinese Democracy and gives it a thorough listen, then gives us his thoughts. Klosterman, a recovering New York hipster and usually more associated with indie rockness, is, at heart, an unabashed midwestern rawker with much love for ballads inspired by the mid-80s Sunset Strip and all the Aquanet, heroin and fishnets that came along for the ride . Pairing Klosterman with Chinese Democracy is a brilliant tactic, and the review itself is gen-u-wine genius. There’s too much good stuff to quote from the review, so I’ll just pull the opening line:

Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It’s more like reviewing a unicorn.

From there, it only gets better. Klosterman never really tells us if the album rocks or fails, but there are lots of interesting thoughts that pour out from his absorption of the bangin’ nu chunez. Head on over and read the review here.