Kerouac Is Back!

It's the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road, and here comes bad-boylit author Quentin Cain with a series of road-trip novels narrated in the first person by one Slick F. Worthy, presumably Quentin's only slightly less reputable alter ego.

Quentin knows how to construct a sentence, spin a yarn, and engage an audience. So I'm suspecting he's not the dropout he claims to be. I read Notes from the "G" Spot: The Uncensored Diaries of Slick F. Worthy, and it is indeed a slick, sick, and funny hunk of prose. Never mind that Slick not only has the predictable predicament of searching desperately for the legendary spot--but also, like most of us most of the time, he has a hard time just describing what he thinks it is. It's the pursuit of that ration of individual happiness the Constitution guarantees us the unrestricted pursuit of. That it evades Slick's detection isn't so much a surprise as the extent of sexual suffering and kink twisting he's willing to endure to find it.

You will want to peruse these Notes, particularly if: 1) you are a ninety-five pound weakling who dreams about being an NFL almost-ran with no money whose rough charm keeps him barely out of trouble, 2) you are bedridden and can't take a road trip just now, 3) you avoid casual sex for fear of STDs or because all your pickup lines fail but you're curious about what might happen if you actually went home with a hooker, or 4) if you wonder what sense Jack Kerouac might make or not make of post-digital society.

Quentin promises another Slick novel sometime soon. But he might also do well to brag that he's descended from that other Cain (not the Bible guy--James M.). Then he could do a noir story and call it The G-Man Never Asks Twice.

Rollo Speaks!

We held a book-signing event for My Inflatable Friend recently at Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore in Los Angeles. Just posted an MP3 podcast of the reading from Chapter 2, which we staged as a radio play. Free download!

Rollo Hemphill is a slacker, a failed hacker with a rap sheet, who gets embroiled in a really improbable case of identity theft. My Inflatable Friend is the first book of his confessions and misadventures.

Fat Tire Is My Inflatable Friend

That's my beer (ale, actually). I know you can get it in the West and Southwest. Not sure whether it's distributed nationwide yet. There was a time (long before I was born, of course), that you couldn't get Coors back East, and now it's, what, in the top-three national brands? FT and Coors both started in Colorado. Not sure what that means, either. They say it's the water but municipal water and a chemist will get the job done just about anywhere on the planet. For example, one place Busch brews Bud is just over the hump from here in Van Nuys, and nobody ever claimed that L.A. water was anything special (although lots of it is snow melt from up north).

Comments encouraged on the theme of: "Why a Fat Tire Is My Inflatable Friend."

Book copies of My Inflatable Friend: The Confessions of Rollo Hemphill now on sale at a shockingly low price for your end-of-summer reading pleasure at our new eBay store LaPuerta Books and Media.

Think of LaPuerta as a micro-brewery for books, and don't forget to check your pressure every now and then.

The Mommy Angle

I've been saying for awhile now that boychik lit is hipper fratire. One reason is because the potential audience is broader. Consider the HBO series Entourage as an example. This show draws not only an audience of young men, but also older men who like to fantasize about being young and on the make again.

I'm just beginning to realize, however, that the audience is even bigger than that. In My Inflatable Friend, unlike either Entourage or the fratire novels, Rollo Hemphill is a lovable loser.

Who loves lovable male losers more than women -- of any age? That material instinct, along with the drive to procreate, is probably the most powerful force on earth!

I Love Scooter Libby...

...as a name for a fictional comic character. Too bad some real bozo already grabbed the name and forever tagged it to an unbelievable story that has no audience appeal and is not the least bit funny.

Hillary Soprano and the NY Mob

Yikes! Hillary's video Soprano's spoof inspires almost as many layers of interpretation as the original.

The touch I noted was that spooky, hairy eyeball from the Johnny Sack character, as if the NY mob were saying, "Don't go there, little lady."

Hey, no worries. As David Chase has assured us, the Feds are so busy chasing down rumors of terrorist plots that practitioners of good, old-fashioned home-grown crime and corruption need not worry.

Is Hillary saying, if she were in office, she'd do an RFK on those guys?

Tony Soprano, Future Senator from New Jersey

Like I said, he lives. All of the pieces are now in place for the movie. Not only are the Feds closing in, but also Tony has a renewed alliance with FBI Agent Dwight Harris (and owes him bigtime).

So in the movie (which I'm thinking is a remake of All the Kings Men), Tony gives major bucks to the party and runs for office. Too preposterous, you say? Obviously you never studied much U.S. history!

Another model for the movie would be Get Shorty, in which juice-loan enforcer Chili Palmer goes to Hollywood and finds that his highly refined criminal techniques make him exceptionally well qualified to succeed as a movie producer. (I won't belabor the parallels.)

And there's another reason I think Tony's karma will take him to Washington: No self-respecting producer would allow all that asbestos to just sit there!