Voyageur PressAs Jon Bream emphasizes repeatedly throughout Neil Diamond is Forever: The Illustrated Story of the Man and His Music, Neil Diamond is not hip. That's probably why my parents liked him. Actually that's probably why most people's parents liked him, except for people whose parents ran off to Woodstock and lived on communes and never got over talking about how hip they were. My parents were so unhip, they referred to joints as "marijuana cigarettes" and left the one party they ever