milkeggsvodka.com [A book by Bill Keaggy]

Been a bit busy and haven’t blogged the blog mentions, so let’s do another gang roundup:

1. Sweatervestboy calls the intro story, “Amazing.”
2. Dana Graves at The Collecting Gene says, “I don’t know why THIS collection is so interesting…”
3. Michelle says, “fabulous, very funny“
4. Whippleworld says, “This is brilliant“
5. One Girl Revolution says, “This one is FUNNY!“
6. Sarah Cool says, “I was laughing so hard that I was kind of, well, really embarassing myself. It was soooooooooo funny!!!!!”
7. dreams of cottages says, “i am loving the book milk eggs vodka. i found it as i was browsing through our new non-fiction and was instantly captivated.”

Hey St. Louis and the rest of the Midwest — I’ll be interviewed on KMOX Radio (AM 1120) tomorrow morning, July 27, around 8:45 a.m. I’ll be on with Debbie Monterrey and Dan Grey on the Total Information AM Show, talking about Milk Eggs Vodka, of course.

Update: Here’s the podcast: Debbie Monterrey and Dan Gray speak with St. Louis’ Bill Keaggy, who compiled a book of abandoned grocery lists!

I was on vacation when this got posted, but the awesome mental_floss magazine is giving away a copy of my book Milk Eggs Vodka as part of the Harry Potter madness. It’s probably too late to enter now, but hey, they called the book “hilarious,” so I’m happy.

The Akron Beacon-Journal says this about Milk Eggs Vodka:

Some of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of commonplace items with the random, like the list by someone who needed Pepsi and “smelly stuff.” Others are funny because they’re vague… the lists alone, and Keaggy’s commentary, are reason enough to read this book.

I’m only linking to this Lenore Skenazy column because I wanted to be able to refer to myself as an “oddball/genius” again. The column originally appeared in Advertising Age but now is out on the wire courtesy of the New York Sun.

…John! John typed in “Oh the mundanity,” hit “Publish” and quickly won my potentially everlasting admiration.

St. Louis’ premier restaurant and food tab, Sauce Magazine, published a great review of Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found in the July 2007 issue. The book and I even got a big blurb of the cover! Excellent.

Absolutely addictive… I challenge you to pick up the book and not read it straight through, from intro to index. You’ll never look at grocery lists the same way again.

Ha! The first sighting of my book on eBay!

My sister sent me a weird recipe — it actually uses the ingredients milk, eggs and vodka! Check it out: White Russian Cupcakes with Kahlua Whipped Cream Frosting. It comes from a recipe book called Cupcakes: From the Cake Mix Doctor. Thanks, Kathy!

Been mighty busy for the last week. I’ve been neglecting most of my sites and I really need to step it up as Guest Editor over at Coudal Partners. Anyway, here’s a quick recap of some recent “Milk Eggs Vodka” blog mentions:

“I love Milk Eggs Vodka” —Gold & Silver Stars

“Yesterday a friend who knows my passion for the novel ‘A Canticle for Liebowitz’ passed me a website that is a posting of peoples Grocery lists…” —Varifrank

“I will be sure to flip through Bill Keaggy’s new book, Milk Eggs Vodka, when I see it.” —The Rage Diaries

“I find this fascinating.” —Beyond Madison Avenue

“This is probably the best way to make money. Collect people’s trash…” —Long Haired Thunder

“What more do you need?” —Strategy Chef

“Speaking of lists….what happens to them when they are tossed? Answer: they could end up in Milk, Eggs & Vodka.” —The Daily Geek

Along with a mention in St. Louis’ Arch City Chronicle, and that’s all for now… more later.

Cool, here’s a post about the lists and the book from the folks at Organic:

I recently discovered grocerylists.org, an ecclectic collection by Bill Keaggy… Keaggy recently published a book entitled “Milk Eggs Vodka” where he reprinted several hundred grocery lists in their crumpled, stained and misspelled glory (featured in AdAge)… As intrepid students of human nature, human behavior and constant seekers of insight, I am sure that we will be pouring over this treasure for some time to come!

Hey St. Louis, I’ll be a guest on Thomas Crone and Amanda Doyle’s The Wire radio show on KDHX 88.1 FM, the excellent community radio station here in St. Louis. It’ll run 7:30-8 p.m. Central tonight. Listen in!

Advertising Age columnist Lenore Skenazy wrote a wonderful piece on “Milk Eggs Vodka.” It was a lot of fun talking with her because she was very interested in the brands and customer profiles behind all of my found grocery lists — and that’s an angle I haven’t given much thought (compared to the amount of time I spend simply making fun of the lists ;-). Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

There’s a new reference book out for anyone trying to sell anything at the grocery — or understand America. It’s called “Milk Eggs Vodka.”

It’s a book of shopping lists.

Yes, real shopping lists — a couple hundred of them, reprinted in all their crumpled, stained and misspelled glory. They represent just a fraction of the thousands of lists collected over the past decade by oddball/genius Bill Keaggy, who hopes you’ll send him any lists you find too. He just loves them.

So do I! So do untold legions!

A couple weeks ago I did an interview with Sara Porter of St. Louis’ ‘West End Word.’ The issue just came out and I have to admit that it’s so well put together that even I couldn’t wait to read what I said!

The lists in the book are arranged in many different categories such as lists with bad spelling, lists that feature prominently healthy or unhealthy foods or lists with doodles on them. Keaggy said the categories were meant to make the reading more fluid and to provide more humor.

“I didn’t want to keep saying over and over ‘that’s a dumb list, that’s a dumb list,’” Keaggy said. “So I put the lists into different piles to see what they had in common. Each chapter goes through 10 or 12 lists and the readers will turn to the next chapter and find another different kind of list. The categories also help the book flow better. On the site, they aren’t arranged in any order so people go on for 10 seconds, look and then leave. But with a book they expect to be fulfilled and to stay until the end.”

Jeff Houck, the food writer at the Tampa Tribune, has started a podcast for TBO.com called Table Conversations — and I’m pleased to be the first victim guest. ;-)

We talk about my book, “Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found,” collecting, bad spelling, obsessions, the humor and humanity to be found in other peoples’ grocery lists and … rocks shaped like shoes! You can check it out here: Table Conversations Podcast with Bill Keaggy. Thanks again, Jeff!