Why Be Normal?: Armed with two skirts and endless joints, two immigrants with an American experience set out to reach Los Angeles with three hundred dollars.

Short Description:
Armed with two skirts and endless joints, two immigrants with an american experience set out to reach Los Angeles with three hundred dollars. Between finding compassion in a Florida trailer park, defending the honor of wearing european swim trunks, having a romantic debauchery in New Orleans, and picking up a retired Mexican coke dealer walking along the highway, these two “Droogs” manage to find the meaning of life with the guidance of a blurry speedometer.

Foreword by Alec Gross (Solebury Mountain Media):
The "road-trip" tale has become a bit of a cliche in the almost 60yrs. since Kerouac's On The Road was published. Young Americans, seeking thrills and fortune and kicks on the High/By-ways of the U.S., and finding themselves along the way. Okay, so maybe it will never be told better than ol' Jack told it in On The Road, but that doesn't mean that new tales of post-adolescent adventures, fueled by the freedom of automobiles, aren't worth telling. The tales told in Why Be Normal are definitely worth the telling and the reading. The author, Dmitry Wild, begins by recounting the confusion and psychological/literal dislocation of the immigrant experience, coming to the U.S. from Russia in the early '90's. It's difficult enough to navigate the emotional and physical bizarro-ness of one's teenage years without having to leave everything one has known behind (friends, extended family, society), to come to a country where you don't speak the language, and where you know no one. This reality is sensitively told and effectively lays the foundation for the journey that lay years ahead when the story's real adventure begins. Dmitry begins this literal journey after struggling to find the purpose and happiness our culture promises us post-college graduation: "We got our grades, we did our time! Now what?!" He finds himself the 2nd wheel-man and reluctant mentoree to the wild Russian-American savage, Roman, a man several years older and seemingly far more world-weary/wise to the comparatively innocent Dmitry. Neal Cassidy and Dean Moriarty? Yup, but with the awesome twist of being completely different people, from completely different backgrounds, navigating the same country and existential questions in a completely different time. Author Wild reflects honestly on his own emotional and intellectual confusion of that period, and the trip becomes not just a journey populated by wild hijinks, potentially dangerous encounters and dares, and hilarious strokes of luck, but the journey any of us deeply thinking and sensitive people undertake as we transition to adulthood- it's the journey that allows us to better define our beliefs, our values, our morals, and sets us on the path to mature fulfillment. Whether we reach our goal is not the promise, Why Be Normal promises only an honest, thoroughly entertaining, and often hilarious rendering of the American journey (made even more American by it's immigrantness).

Editors: Andreas Petrossiants
Editors: Michael Bottomley
Editors: Dylan Brown
Editors: Cynthia Santiglia