Wonkette
HOBO KEN LAYNE TO WANDER BEACHES AND WRITE BOOK ABOUT CALIFORNIA: If the publishing industry isn’t officially dead yet, this is sure to kill it! At some point in 2010, HarperStudio will publish “a history of California’s culture, environment and politics framed by [Layne's] bravely idiotic solo hike up the entire 1,000-mile coastline of America’s weirdest, most populous state.” It will sell like hotcakes, as long as he publishes under the moniker “Meg McCabe.” [New York Observer, HarperStudio]
How can you wander California beaches if you’re in Hoboken?
Is this the official sequel to Madonna’s Sex?
I like the cover.
This should be an interesting historical perspective, since California will be gone by 2010, at this rate.
When is Ken Layne going to suck my vicious cock?
Watch out for Robert Stacy McCain.
It would be great if you could model this on Sherman’s March? also.
HEY!! - put the original photo back, Layne!
Crab1: When he gets his mouth off mine.
Will it star a beautiful young beer fortune heiress, who was also the first ever daughter of a US senator and Republican presidential candidate to write an election blog? Because otherwise, I ain’t reading.
Sequel to Vineland?
He won’t make it past the stables. Then he’ll make up the rest.
Bearbloke: Layne has become much sexier now. Mrawr!
So it’s a book about Argentina?
You know, I’d love to do something like this if I had the money and/or patience and/or sanity and/or possible lack of sanity required to take on something this idiotic. I’d travel across the country in a Volkswagen van, spreading my love of peace and love and free monkeys for everyone, while blasting freeform jazz out of a vinyl turntable hooked up to the back of my pimped out hippie van.
Now that would be the shit.
Anybody can hike up the coast. Try doing that one hundred miles further east and tell me how that goes.
qwerty42: INDEED.
Please let the cover artist be new Wonkette commenter The Lauri Appleperson. (Click the link to see NEW Apple art in the avatar.)
rambone: You mean, where I live and walk every day, now? Yeah it is called the Mojave Desert.
Based on the new photo up there, it appears Ken has already made to West Hollywood.
Following in the footsteps, so to speak, of the late, lamented W. G. Sebald, Ken’s book is sure to rocket to the top of the charts, so long as it’s not published by Duffy & Snellgrove.
Ken Layne…Didn’t he run Enron at one time?
It’ll have buttseks into it?
Does this make Sara the boss?
If there is not a chapter fully dedicated to tortoises, it will be a literary and artistic failure!
Be careful on the beach at Camp Pendleton; they’ll shoot you just for the sport of it. ( Plus, you do look kind of muslimy with that beard.)
Try doing that one hundred miles further east and tell me how that goes.
Hiking one hundred miles further WEST of the California coast would make it even more interesting.
Alaska resents the implication that it is only the second weirdest state.
But how will he abuse Blingee for our delight out in all that nature? I fear this.
Ken Layne: Be sure to travel with Charley, and if you don’t already have a dog named Charley, adopt one.
So, you are staying along the coastline where the liburls live, love, work and play. Coward.
Go inland a bit where the real Mericuns are. They’ll shoot your ass as soon as you open up your laptop.
I look forward to chapters 12-17: California and Ass Fucking, could they exist without each other?
rambone: or west…
Joshua Norton: dang it!
As someone who has ridden a bike from San Franciso to Los Angeles, get ready for some long as stretches of nothingness. Now if you ate a burrito each day to keep you going, I’d like to read about that….
Ahhh…the mystery of the gigantic dump I saw outside my friend’s oceanfront home in Mendo is finally solved!
Ken, seriously - you need to get some roughage in your diet, as opposed to just in your sex life.
Noonan: better her than that ginger
Be sure and have the Eagles set it to soaring mediocre balladry….
This is a wonderful plan, but Ken will never make it past the baths at Esalen.
Bravely idiotic, particularly given all the ‘hidden’ illegal pot farms in Humboldt. Don’t accidentally hike through one of those or you’ll be one dead hiker.
a bike from San Franciso to Los Angeles
Ack. How did you survive? Even when you drive, it seems like 3 days before you finally reach downtown LA after you pass the “You are now entering Los Angeles” sign.
Maybe this has been asked before, but why is Paper Moon-era Tatum O’Neal dressed up as an Afghan girl?
Well, I, for one, am glad to hear that Ken got some money to write a book, so he can keep working at Wonkette for essentially nothing. Right?
Wait a minute, this bastard now has 2 jobs?
You realize that by 2010 the US will have degenerated into a version of “Thunderdome” and Mother will be forced to burn you book for “juice” all because you’re hogging the gainful employment!
I’m tellin’ Rahm on you…watch your back.
norbizness: You never saw The Bad News Bears Go to Kabul?
rambone: He should walk from Las Vegas to Salt Lake looking for many wives.
Naked Bunny with a Whip: If you say so, I guess - I just want to give my minions a recent photo so they know whose neckbeard to harvest….
Only California? Why not all the way from Tijuana to Wasilla? Lazy, Layne, Lazy!
Bearbloke: *covers his throat with his paws*
Enlarge Layne’s photo and you’ll have only 7 days to live.
KL: Basically, I’ll just wander the earth, like Kane in Kung-fu.
SKS: That’s called being a bum, Ken.
Ken, I expect this book to feature many fascinating tales about Walter O’Malley, Milton Berle’s penis, and the cast of “The O.C”.
It’s not a book about California unless it has a chapter devoted to Burning Man, even though that happens in Nevada.
Ken Layne: I don’t speak your fancy mexican, but that sounds about right.
It seems like things degrade quickly when you drive away from the coasts. Plus, it’s really hot!
So anyway, yeah, please hike 1000 miles due north while one hundred miles inland from the Pacific Coast, and ummm . . . make sure you have one of the following stuck on your hippie backpack. http://images5.cafepress.com/product/19710695v1_350×350_Front.jpg or http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/surprise-buttsecks.jpg .
Now THAT would make for some good writing.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe Judge Judy is about to start and this bag of Cheetos by my side aren’t eating themselves.
Make sure you throw in some zombies, the kids love zombies these days.
Ken
When you get to Long Beach. Stop by the world famous Reno Room for a ice cold one.
TWJ
twowheeljunkie:
Ken
When you get to the end of the Santa Monica pier - keep walking…
there are hippies, yuppies and rednecks. sometimes there are all three in one person.
the end.
Joshua Norton: AIDS Ride, my then girlfriend asked me to do it with her and some co-workers, 575 miles in 7 days, she’s now my wife and I haven’t been on a bike since, CURED!
What the fuck, way to render my hilarious comment meaningless, dicks. This is Riley’s fault, probably.
Well remember, to be a seminal work on California you MUST minimize the importance of African Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans and indigenous peoples on the history of California’s culture, environment and politics. In fact, stick mostly to the lily-white 50 or so years in the middle of the last century - that’s really the only California worth remembering.
Blender: Yes, and Ken, if you’re smart, you’ll time your visit to San Francisco for Burning Man week. The main tourist season is drawing to a close, the weather’s usually at its nicest, and the majority of the city’s most annoying people are off sweltering in the Nevada dust.
Don’t stop for any botoxtinis at Cougar Cindy’s house or we won’t recognize you when you get back.
Ken: You should hike from North to South. Going downhill is easier. Also.
BigDupa: me too, five times, but mostly just to get out of work.
Bearbloke: WIN
Hey, I live on the California coast (ish) ! OMG, you should totally, like, call me or something. Because when you visit Venice, I can point out all the coolest weirdos (and the ones who are holding), including roller-skating Jimi Hendrix dude, crazy dancing guy, other crazy dancing guy, oily muscle dude with the snake, 80-instruments-in-one guy and gold statue guy (who, unlike silver statue guy, is not a total dick).
Hooray for visiting California before it falls into the ocean! (because of all the dudes having buttsecs, not global warming, obvs)
Warmest congratulations, Ken.
Ken–I have an MFA in writing, I am friends with many writers, I have taught English off and on for almost twenty years–I have heard or read thousands of book announcements–many from people who were, at least nominally, my friends.
I have to tell you, quite honestly, this is only perhaps the second or third in all those years that has not filled me with hatred and impotent rage.
‘grats!
Bye, Ken. Don’t forget to write!
Now, if someone asks you a dumb question, you can replace “Does a bear shit in the woods?” with “Does Ken Layne shit in the dunes?”
Will you sell “premium” Wonkette memberships to Wonkette, like Joe the Plumber sells premium memberships to those who buy signed copies of his book? Well, back when JTP could afford to have a website that is.
Just out o’ idle curiosity: how the heck long will this take? (the ramblin’ part, I mean, not the grueling scrivening part)
Best of luck, kiddo. (If you put in desert tortoises I’ll buy it.)
Ken, I strongly recommend staying clear of the small stretch of beach that lies in the path of LAX take-off traffic. The blue ice that occasionally falls from the sky isn’t from the beautiful, clear blue California skies.
My wonderful State DOES have beach access laws (thank GAWD for the Coastal Commission), but you need to carry around a Commie permit in order to make it happen. Even with said Commie permit, residence (yes, even those in Malibu you LA person you) will still not only card you, but deny you access.
In Half Moon Bay, CA there is, for instance, one of “those beaches.” It’s sand is pristine, there are no people, and you could very well compare it to heaven (like Big Sur, but stay the hell out foreigners.) HOWEVER, there is a crazy artichoke farmer who will point a gun at you and tell you to “fuck off.”
I guess all we can say is, “don’t meet this man, Pope Cat.”
I’m guessing, since the book comes out next year, that Ken has already done the wandering California part and is or soon will be immersed in the writing part. Books don’t usually get contracts & then published only a year later or less, unless they are cheap, quickly knocked out affairs like, say, the new, unauthorized bios of MJ about to appear in the grocery check out line near you.
Mr. Layne, who has been a blogger at Wonkette on and off since 2006
I thought Ken was the editor, owner, boss and official overlord. The Observer makes it sound like he was a part-time temp.
Sounds like a hippy’s walk about to me. Bring mushrooms and Beach Boy’s tunes.
When I buy a copy I expect an autographed version. Congratulations Ken.
And my grammar continues to be terrible. This is what happens in the generation of spell/grammar check. It isn’t “IT’S”, it is “ITS.” These two things have completely different meanings.
TIME FOR FUN. FUCK ALL OF US, for it is the 4th of July Holiday.
I don’t see many opportunities to be rude about David Denby in a book about California, but I’m prepared to give this project the benefit of the doubt for now.
Take pictures, Ken! All that shit’s underwater in 30 years or so, even without earthquakes.