In this blistering evisceration of celebrity culture and literary fame, a roguish loser sets out to write the best-selling bestseller of all time. When he actually pulls it off, he winds up tearing like a tornado across America's cultural landscape.
Die Idee: ein Wettrennen um die Welt. Der Einsatz: eine Flasche Whisky. Bedingung: keine Flugzeuge! Steve findet sich bald auf einem Containerschiff nach Schanghai wieder, beladen mit Rinderfellen und Altbatterien. Und Vali heizt derweil im Mietwagen nach Mexiko und begreift erst langsam, dass ihn der Start gen Osten jeden zweiten Tag eine Stunde Schlaf kosten wird. Umso eiliger hat er es, bei Juan Lozano in Cuernavaca seinen ganz persönlichen Raketenrucksack zu erstehen. Doch Augenblick mal. kommt man mit einem Raketenrucksack über den Atlantik?
The most absurd, hilarious, and ridiculous travelogue ever told, by two hit-TV comedy writers who raced each other around the world—for bragging rights and a very expensive bottle of Scotch It started as a friendly wager: two old friends from The Harvard Lampoon, Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran now hotshot Hollywood scribes, challenged each other to a race around the globe in opposite directions. There was only one rule: no airplanes. The first man to cross every line of longitude and arrive back in L.A. would win Scotch and infamy. But little did one racer know that the other planned to cheat him out of the big prize by way of a ride on a quarter-million-dollar jet pack. What follows is a pair of hilarious, hazardous, and eye-opening journeys into the farthest corners of the world. From the West Bank to the Aleutian Islands, the slums of Rio to the steppes of Mongolia, traveling by ocean freighter and the Trans-Siberian Railway (pranking each other mercilessly along the way), Vali and Steve plunge eagerly and ill-prepared into global adventure. The Ridiculous Race is a comic travelogue unlike any other, an outrageous tale of two gentlemen travelers who can't wait to don baggy cardigan sweaters, clench corncob pipes between their teeth, and yell at their sons, "You lazy bums! When we were your age, we raced around the world without airplanes!"