The Monk Bought Lunch

I smell something, but i don't think it's esther williams

I think differently in the shower. After my 1/2 hour cancer check, my mind tends to wander in unpredictable directions. So I would be hard pressed (see cancer check) to retrace the steps that got me there this morning, but I got to wondering what ever happened to Mark Leyner. At one point he seemed to be chugging along pretty good, producing vacuous but entertaining material that was good bathroom reading. I was thinking that he might have, in some ways, been out out of business by episodic bloggers like Latigo Flint and the Peabs (who appears to be out of business himself). People can get their outrageous quasi-fictional biofantasies with a click of the mouse- why buy a book?
So I did a fast bit of Googling to see if I could find out what Leyner's been up to. I found out here that Leyner recently co-authored a book called Why Do Men Have Nipples? : Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini, which tells me that he's fully accepted his toilet-author mantle. I didn't think about that too long, though, because I was distracted by these sentences by the website's author:

Leyner is a very hyperactive mix of a biology thesis, a pop culture dictionary, and a homicidal terrorist weaving through rush hour traffic in an ambulance with an AK-47. There is no other way to describe his writing.

Really? You've found the one way to describe Mark Leyner's writing and it's "Leyner is a very hyperactive mix of a biology thesis, a pop culture dictionary, and a homicidal terrorist weaving through rush hour traffic in an ambulance with an AK-47"?
I've been trying to parse this description, and the only result is that I'm nostalgic for this morning's shower, particularly the cancer check. Leyner is a mix. This mix is "very hyperactive". Not simply "hyperactive", mind you, but "very" so. This mix consists of a college research paper, a book (fortunately we don't have the problem of having to imagine a "very hyperactive" biology thesis or dictionary since it is the "mix" which is hyperactive, not its components), and a "homicidal terrorist". This last not to be confused with a philanthropic terrorist. I think it's just the terrorist who's in the ambulance with the AK-47, but I like to think of them all in there- the book, the paper and the terrorist, maybe calling each other Mother, Jugs, and Speed. Finally there is the confusion over whether the author is describing Leyner or his writing (Leyner is a very hyperactive mix... There is no other way to describe his writing). Maybe this is something to do with auteur theory- I don't have my old college notebooks handy right now (maybe they're in an ambulance).
I'm reminded of those old Spin Magazine record reviews, which always included some kind of collision or impossible combination: "The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion sounds like Lon Chaney's werewolf in a three-legged race with Traci Lords, but instead of burlap the bag is satin, and on fire". The Spin hacks, however, never had the gall to follow that with "there is no other way to describe the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's music".
And guess what? The man responsible for this website has a book out. Here's his own description of the contents:
A combination of pop-fiction references, heavy metal speed, and hilarious parody mix the half-dozen different stories together into a nightmarish tale of post-apocalyptic America.
I'm guessing there is another way to describe it.