It’s out. Almost four years to the day I started my big Kii walk in 2021 (it began on May 10), today — May 6 — marks the release of the Random House edition of Things Become Other Things. This has been a crazy monumental undertaking. I’m so happy with where it landed and I can’t wait for you to read it. You can pick it up in all the usual spots:
We launched last night at Rizzoli in Manhattan to a packed house on a cold and rainy Monday. The store ran out of books (sorry to anyone who didn’t get to grab one / get it signed; I’ll be back in Brooklyn on May 30). The audience was lovely and asked great questions. Matt Rodbard interlocutor’d beautifully. I signed and stamped books (including a few Kxks and Fine Art TBOTs). And thus it was, TBOT was launched!
If you want to support this launch, there are a few things you can do that go a long way in materially helping this book reach as many people as possible (which is, ultimately, one of the main points of publishing with a huge entity like Random House and their massive distribution network):
Post a photo of the book to your Instagram Stories (I think Stories has better each than “normal” posts) (and tag me: @craigmod so I can share it)
And of course, just tell folks about it. Gift it to folks (sorry not sorry for verb-ing “gift”), buy copies and throw them at strangers on the street (right in the belly), shoot it out of blimps, hide it in your favorite café, burn a copy in an exciting pagan ritual, take a copy and type out an exact copy on a typewriter and then sell that typed copy on Craigslist, buy the rights to it and turn it into an HBO show, buy the rights and then turn it into nothing in an effort to keep anyone else from turning it into a TV show, trick David Blaine into eating it, befriend a Michelin Starred Chef and have them turn it into a foam, perform the book in the NYC subway using only a saxophone. Or, simply enjoy it and then read something else.
To say I’m … tired would be a vast understatement. I am more depleted than I’ve been in a long, long time. Getting to this “finish line” (ha ha ha, actually, it’s the starting line ya bonehead) — I think I may have underestimated the psychic and physical energy needed. But we’re here. It’s out. I just got a massage. My body was a big ball of death stress. So I hunted down a massage. It can be hard to find a “legit” massage in Manhattan. It’s a minefield of creepy and weird. But I found one called “Thai Massage — NYC” which seemed almost too simple. And yet: 113 five-star reviews. Intriguing. I went. Old building on Union Square. Chopped up into a million little offices. I go in, a peaceful looking dude named Reinhold (the owner) greeted me before a wall of guitars. A veritable forest of hand-made guitars. He did not talk about the guitars. He also looked not like any Thai massage professional I had ever seen. I’ve had hundreds of Thai massages. Mostly from tiny women with strong hands who laugh while you squirm. Reinhold is a big white dude with a big white beard and a jolly belly. His hands are three times the size of my baby mitts. He had me fill out a form and then I got on the mats and Reinhold did what Reinhold apparently does: He cranked his iPad (playing a mix of country, Thai music, 80s pop) and twisted all the goddamned crappy-ass energy out of me. He replaced it with Reinhold Energy. He said scant few words to me during the session, but he would burst out, quite randomly, into chorus with the music. Ride that eighteeeeennn wheeeellllleeeerrr. It was the most New York thing I’ve ever experienced. Reinhold, atop my back like a giant St. Bernard, pulling and pushing and twisting and singing. Sixty minutes where I thought my arms might be ripped from their sockets and then he offered one of his giant paws and pulled me to my feet and said … Namaste.
I feel lighter (look at your face it’s so much kinder!! Reinhold immediately said after I stood up, bringing over a mirror — and it was true, I looked 5% less like an asshole) and ready for the rest of this tour. Should you find yourself in Union Square in need of some stretching, give Reinhold a ring and tell him Craig sent you.
