So you've already written and submitted your Lenin-themed poem. Script Frenzy doesn't begin until tomorrow. Doing actual work is clearly out of the question.

Well, you could read the first eight chapters of Elmore Leonard's new novel, Road Dogs*.

Foley ate his macaroni and cheese staring at the mess of it on his tray while the skinhead hard-ons made their lazy remarks Foley would hear again and again for thirty years, from the Brotherhood, from the Mexican Mafia, from Nuestra Familia, from the black guys all ganged up; thirty years in a convict population careful not to dis anybody, but thinking he could stand up with the tray, have the tables looking at him and backhand it across bare skulls, show 'em he was as dumb as they were and get put in the box for sixty days.

The novel is a sequel to Out of Sight and stars Jack Foley, the character played by George Clooney in the movie version. I've got a lot of respect for Elmore Leonard. His novels are almost always a pleasant diversion on a lazy afternoon. They don't take long to read but they're entertaining and never insult the reader's intelligence. My favorite Leonard book was Tishimongo Blues, about a high-dive performer (he generally dives from an "eighty-foot-high platform into a tank with just nine feet of water")who gets wound up in a scam involving a Civil War reenactment group.

I was pleased to see former Leonard main character Maximum Bob get mentioned on the second page of this excerpt, too: Leonard's been working on building a cohesive universe for some time now, and it's always kind of a thrill to notice the crossovers.

* Of course, the problem with the Entertainment Weekly excerpt is that, for some reason, they've clipped the swears: s—-, p—-y, and f—-n' all make their appearances in the first three pages. Who are they afraid of offending? Longtime Elmore Leonard fans know their way around a swear, of course, but anyone who's going to be offended by a prisoner saying "pussy" isn't going to get too far into an Elmore Leonard story anyway. It seems arbitrary and ridiculous.

UPDATE: Gold Star Comment is Matt Fuckin' Hickey's:

I know I might catch hell for this, but I have to say this: Out of Sight is a terrific book, and the movie version is also fantastic. Sure, a few things were changed, but the wry sense of humor and shadowy, doomed romance are intact.

I know a lot of people hate Clooney (I don't) and/or Jennifer Lopez (I don't, really), but it's a really fun, smart movie that, sadly, almost nobody I know has seen. And if they have, it's because I made them.

Go rent it tonight.

I agree one hundred percent. It's a great movie.