93 Comments

Spot on! Just hope channeling these guys isn’t soul-destroying for you.

Expand full comment

More than spot on. This cuts to the bone, one paper thin slice at a time, like the layers of batlawa, each an individual tasty flake making in all a sumptuous dessert, dripping with lightness and venom.

3 marks for the Boss.

Expand full comment

He's been at it quite awhile. So far so good. There are rumors of a portrait up in his attic that reflects the withered state of his soul.

Expand full comment

I read about this piece of shit getting that job and I thought "Sure. Why not? Why wouldn't someone running hard in the race to be the worst human in America hire someone like Penny?"

I soooo hate this timeline.

Expand full comment

Soon to be a major motion picture from the team that gave you "Atlas Shrugged"! Advance tickets on sale now!

Expand full comment

Penny's hire is such a huge fuck you, not just to liberals but to all Black Americans. A complete flex, an assertion that we white hetero guys are in charge now and we're going to constantly remind the rest of you to stay in your place.

Expand full comment

Wonder when Scheißenführer is going to sign the EO mandating the death penalty for aggravated jacket tossing.

Expand full comment

[Andreesen/Silicon Valley rant omitted because of lack of energy]

But this sociopathic piece of shit Penny: for one with energy, there's an old time Theodore Dreiseresque novelization of the rise (but no fall because we're obviously that kind of nation) fall of the piece of shit. Or maybe (more likely) I'm a deluded old fart who, little as I think of society, society's actually worse than I think...

Expand full comment

This is terrific. Maybe his next adventure is having lunch with Patrick Bateman *

* Not to ever compare you with Bret Easton Ellis, one of America's worst authors . From the title, I thought Less Than Zero was going to be a brutal self evaluation of his nearly non-existent writing talent. It wasn't. Turned out to be just another turgid exercise in hysterical minimalism.

Expand full comment

I skipped the book and saw the movie (twice) which I'm told was the wise choice.

Expand full comment

I saw the movie once and read half the book. I read all of less than zero. Was I ever less than impressed.

When I saw the Christopher Nolan Batman I kept expecting Batman to pull out of power drill and kill a hooker with it.

Expand full comment

Frank Miller's Batman has probably done that at some point.

Expand full comment

I was watching the movie little bits at at time, not liking it but kinda sticking with it because others say it's good and waiting for more Willem Dafoe, which would no doubt improve it, but somehow forgot about it and am not sure what streaming platform I was watching it on. Guess if you watched it twice there must be something to it.

Expand full comment

James Spader saying, "Oh, you'll be surprised at what you can get used to" is a movie quote that will never leave my brain, no matter how much I'd like it to.

Expand full comment

Gosh, I'm surprised by all the Less Than Zero hate! Granted, I read it at ~17, but I thought it was great. One line in particular has stuck in my head all these years, at the end of a very debauched party where rumors are circling that certain bands might play: "Fear is supposed to show up but never does." That has felt so applicable to so many situations...

(Fear is a band, for those of you surprisingly not up on your 1981-82 LA punk scene.)

Expand full comment

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I actually liked the movie!

Expand full comment

wasn't Jami Gertz in the movie?

Expand full comment

American Psycho the book sucks; even beyond the misogyny, it's incredibly tedious and its points such as they are are facile (yes, there are occasional moments of real wit, but they're drowned out by everything else). American Psycho the movie is still kinda bad, but better because it completely changes the point of the story. Also, I still rewatch the Huey Lewis scene ever so often, because it slaps.

Expand full comment

I'd think seeing Lewis in Altman's "Short Cuts" would be somewhat more rewarding.

Expand full comment

Bret Easton Ellis is America's worst living writer (Michael Crichton is America's worst dead one).

Expand full comment

Ayn Rand is ready to shoot you over that last...

Expand full comment

And what about Tom Wolfe? (Guy couldn't tell a story or develop a character, which would ordinarily have disqualified him from writing the sort of novel he championed; not to mention that what passes for a story is inevitably simple-minded wish-fulfillment fantasy and what pass for human relationships are inevitably reduced to social status competition)

Expand full comment

View from a barbarian (me): Tom Wolfe was dragged along by the slipstream of much better writers from the mid- to late-60s. He's the cuckoo in the nest that was Clay Felker's New York magazine, and as soon as he left there his writing went South, literally and figuratively.

Expand full comment

A few years ago, my partner and I did a Halloween costume as Francesca Fiore and Bruno Puntz Jones, and I was mistakenly identified as Tom Wolfe. Oyy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF8LDXWR1YI

Expand full comment

i would call her Russian

Expand full comment

Oh mannn... but Andromeda Strain! Sphere! Jurassic Park! Most writers never turn out three books that good. Sure he was a crank in the end, but gosh when I kick it, please judge me by how awesome I was at 26-41 when I believed in the human race, and not as the idiot currently holding a labyrinthine opinion on how Aliens: Romulus sucked. (Although I am correct.)

Expand full comment

This being the Age Of Monsters, I had to stop reading and Google this guy. And I've made an effort to mentally Rolodex these assholes since the late '70s.

Expand full comment

Umm... respectfully, that guy has no place in a Rolodex with Godzilla...

Expand full comment

The writers of "Son Of Godzilla vs MechaKong The New Awakening" would scrap the Penny character. It would mar the realism of the story line.

Expand full comment

LOL!

Expand full comment

As I suggested on Bluesky, VC seems to require even less in qualifications or experience than punditry; at least a pundit has to write something.

Or--it's the new DEI; equal representation for Trumpists! (In everything!)

Expand full comment

I assume that backroom types and assistants do all the work.

Expand full comment

Like Congress.

(I see "VC" and immediately think "Viet Cong". Both subversive from within. And like the original VC, eventually took control of the country.)

Expand full comment

Ha! Now I'll never *not* see it that way. Nicely done!

Expand full comment

Wonder what paper and font Penny selected for his business cards?

Expand full comment

Dunno much about paper, how about Comic Sans for a font? There's actually a joke built into its name, and really, it's about the easiest font there is to read without glasses. As a grad student grown weary of staring at boring Latin text, I converted The Aeneid to Comic Sans and translations poured forth from my pen. Correct translations? Who gives a shit? It's Comic Sans!

Expand full comment

Somebody should make a Comic Serif. Call it Times New Comic.

Or for the Nazis, make a Blackletter Comic.

Expand full comment

Komik Fraktur

Expand full comment

I could be misremembering, but didn’t Hitler mandate a gothic font for awhile, then rescind the order because it was impractical?

Sounds like a perfect executive order for you-know-who!

One of the rare books libraries I worked at had a pre-WW2 coffee table book about Hitler. Beautiful photography of him kissing babies, wearing the shorts outfit to Oktoberfest, shit like that. It was entirely in gothic type.

Expand full comment

He liked the classic gothic Fraktur script, but it’s nearly impossible to read—at least to modern eyes—so I’m sure mandating its use led to some consternation and inefficiencies

Expand full comment

Comic Cuneiform!

Expand full comment

Intriguing, but does it have a place in official memes? Seems like the desired fonts will say either Roman Empire (for dogwhistling) or Fraktur (for no longer dogwhistling).

Expand full comment

Ever notice how when they're talking "Roman Empire" they always mean the Western one, which did business in Latin, instead of the Eastern one which lasted longer and did business in Greek?

Expand full comment

There is no longer dog than my pal Skippy

No longer dog

No tail so whippy

There is no sharper stick

Than what he brings to me

No slobbier ball than what he keeps from me

Who's the goodest boy

I have ever known

And who's gonna chew on this here bone

There is no longer dog in all the world

It's true

No longer dog than Skippitydoo

Expand full comment

Only Trajan font is approved for government use, just like in the classy gladiator movies

Expand full comment

AN EYE FOR AN EYE ROFL

🖊️🔨

Expand full comment

OK, RANT ON:

Y'all know the eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth thing

What I wanna know is how come Lone Skum hasn't downsized the whole thing to eyetooth-for-an-eyetooth? He's such a poser...

Expand full comment

Papyrus is sitting RIGHT THERE

Expand full comment

Nah, they had one o' them Lady Kings, buncha soy boys, if you ask me.

Expand full comment

God knows that the Papyrus font has been overused, but back during my days as a bottom-feeder freelancer in the early nineties I was engaged to produce a flyer for a Bay Area appearance by New Age-ish grifter Benjamin Creme (look him up), and 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨, not even Comic Sans, could have been more appropriate for the header.

Expand full comment

Nickname "Crispy"?

Expand full comment

What, Rittenhouse was already booked? Andreeeeevseeeen settles for second best/worst murdering asshole. Not gonna top SpaceNazi that way.

Meanwhile, traffic in India exemplifies the culture of no government that the Musketeers aspire to: no rules, every car, truck, motorcycle, pedestrian and cow for itself. Except the cows are sacred, so they get special consideration. Musk thinks he’s a cow.

Expand full comment

Rittenhouse, and let's not forget George Zimmerman, strictly ghetto/sticks hires. They don't have the A-list look we're going for in our American psychos.

With the prolonged police actions 'Merika been waging these opening decades of the twenty-first, we have all these ex-military cutouts bouncing around.

We are looking for Warren Beatty in The Parallax View but with today's style. Homicide acquittal a plus. Only angry young white males with impulse control challenges need apply.

Expand full comment

Absolutely. You've seen Daniel Penny of West Islip, Long Island on TV, right? And you've seen Rittenhouse.

The reason you can see one murderer working in venture capital and not the other is the real class divide in white America, but the Morlocks will never see it -- and the Eloi (autocorrects to Elon!) will never admit it.

Expand full comment

Jesus this is a devastating perception. < Thanks! I hate it! >

Expand full comment

Every cow is sacred, the Lord God made them all.

Expand full comment

"The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, And ordered their estate."

(Hate that fuckin' song)

Expand full comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh5x6dv4LHo

Contractually Obligated.

Expand full comment

The Hierarchy, the Natural Order.

Expand full comment

Whoa, the stuff I learn here at RoyBook. I promise to hate it myself from now on.

Expand full comment

Roy has touched on something else indicative of the Zeitgeist now: Glib and superficial references to history, especially epochs such as Rome. Vance uses terms like "late republican phase" without explanation.

It reminds me of Russians under the Czar who would read and memorize a passage from a French book before a party and then work it into the conversation. Now they can do it on the fly or with their fly down in the restroom. AI makes pretending to erudite easy. Haha.

Expand full comment

"Late republican phase": good catch! Sounds important but nobody knows what it means (well, I do, ahem). New "dogwhistle"?

Expand full comment

How does Vance mean it? As "Next comes Caesar"?

Expand full comment

Good question! (Elon)

Fucked if I know! (Me)

Expand full comment

If you’ll forgive me a glib and superficial reference to Roman history, one begins to have a more resonant sense of what it must have felt like living under the reign of one of the mad Cæsars.

Expand full comment

With the added frisson these days that our money might be gone instantaneously whilst we are out golfing, or down ta tavern, or actively licking boots of our betters...

Expand full comment

A work of fiction that I think conveyed well the general lawlessness of Rome is L. Sprague DeCamp's Lest Darkness Fall. A history professor gets hit by lightning and wakes up near the end of the empire. He just wants to help, but he ends up worried about stormtroopers kicking in his door if he offends the wrong politician.

Expand full comment

I hear those Romans did a lot of saluting in a particular way!

Expand full comment

And had an interesting way of representing the truism that there is strength in unity!

Expand full comment

Something about sticks, I seem to recall

Expand full comment

And that's why they're now known as faggots.

Expand full comment

Andreessen's grasp of history is about as deep as a Labrador's. These clowns think "300" was a documentary.

Expand full comment

Yes! These guys love to romance Rome, but I bet 40% of their knowledge of that era comes from Gladiator (2000). Maybe the more in-depth scholar types also listened to a podcast about the Lost Legion.

Oh well. I'm sure in a thousand years there will a bunch of dopes trying to revive the USA who know nothing except George Washington, Sherman's March, and then how, tragically, hippies destroyed us in Vietnam.

Expand full comment

I think Penny's corporate role will consist entirely of schmoozing with douchebags.

Expand full comment

Whatever no-show job keeps him out of the subways.

Expand full comment

Fair, but we all know that, in the big city, running over people while driving is instantly defensible; I want him on a 24/7 tracker if he comes this way, just so's I know where not to be.

Expand full comment

Jeez, those "American Dynamism" links: all your civilization are belong to us. And the sneering face of young made-man investor with his dead eyes (unfortunately, not as dead as Jordan Neely's).

I see Andreesen is one that's not a Boer, just Boer-adjacent. Roy's got it too right: affirmative action hire to own the libs and hang with perpetrator of "the incident."

So, when does the newly elevated one get to meet Curtis Yarvin? And which Congressional district will he be positioned to run for?

Expand full comment

Is there any republican left to outflank from the right? That one.

Expand full comment

Telling, one way or the other, that those who purport to have studied the fall of the Roman Empire support a violent psychotic moron to rule the U.S. Did they learn nothing at all? Or is the real lesson that the richest of the rich get richer during a fall?

Expand full comment

They're fully aware of the role Christianity played in its demise, and want to replicate it.

Expand full comment

As with the latest EO from Scheißenführer, demanding the DOJ spend its time sniffing out "anti-Christian bias", because of course

Expand full comment

Well, my own "anti-Christian bias" is through the roof after the last 8 years, they can sniff that out if they want.

Expand full comment

Yeah, I'm pretty happy I no longer have to take anyone's "sincere religious beliefs" seriously.

Expand full comment

"Hey, after decades of behaving like assholes, we find a large number of people think we're assholes! ANTI-CHRISTIAN BIAS, ANTI-CHRISTIAN BIAS!"

Expand full comment

Innocent. Oh, sure – I got ANTI-CHRISTIAN BIAS up the wazoo, but that makes me no less innocent.

Expand full comment

If they really want my sympathy, they should repeal the laws against making them fight lions in our stadia.

Expand full comment

they learned a violent psychotic moron works quite well for overthrowing a republic

Expand full comment

I was thinking about this situation, and the fact it reminded me of something I'd seen in the past. Then it dawned on me: the people who write fan mail to mass murderers. For example: there was a woman who wrote Richard 'Night Prowler' Ramirez ~75 letters during his early incarceration, and ended up marrying him. This really doesn't seem much different to me.

Expand full comment

I knew a woman who claimed to have written to Gary Gilmore. She was married to polygamist Alex Joseph at that time. Last I saw her she was a libertarian

Expand full comment

Yikes. I suspect that if she was a libertarian then, she's a MAGA now.

I know someone who actually purchased a painting from John Wayne Gacy, and that just seemed incredibly weird to me.

Expand full comment