COMMANDO EX

by Lawrence Grobel

Commando Ex is a wild Australian hedonist racing across Africa on his Motoguzzi motorcycle, chasing thrills and adventure, living life to the max and flaunting what you can be if you’re absolutely free. “He’s the cream of the freedom crop….nerve tingling the moments and bojangling experiences.” This is nothing like any of Grobel’s other books. It’s wordplay on steroids. It's exotic, erotic, and funny, as it follows “the lives and times, the lays and plays, the huck and suck of an antsy chancy ice cream cone of a fella….a galactic whirlwind of a self-proclaimed Commando” who has “not a peep or a beep of quiet in his veins.” He’s someone who “flies around like Dali dangling from the ends of his mustache, not bothering with the rites of culture or the sounds of one hand clapping.” His gospel is “Only one life, one life, one life. A cry and a scream if it's lived at a loss, if it's misused and tossed, too planned, double-crossed” and believes that “with a little muscle and a lot of hustle you could become king of the hog pile, steal all the time it takes to live a full life and go out and buzz burn bull and bellow--the philosophy of the fellow.” After all, “What's to lose? An army to grab you? A desk job to nail you? A mechanic to jail you? Chuck it. Change your name, change the game, steal on a boat and float all the way to foreign places.” Which is what this singular comic book of a character does. It’s a wild, uniquely styled story of a never lonely, one–and-only, who bites and grabs everything that comes his way. “So keep up, speed along, trip flip and skip through the one life worth living, the fully explored, high geared unfeared not scared life of the Commando. Sight...on!”

73 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 10, 2014

About the author

Lawrence Grobel (www.lawrencegrobel.com) is a novelist, journalist, biographer, poet and teacher. Five of his 31 books have been singled out as Best Books of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly and many have appeared on Best Seller lists. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. PEN gave his Conversations with Capote a Special Achievement Award. The Syndicat Francais de la Critique de Cinema awarded his Al Pacino their Prix Litteraire as the Best International Book of 2008. James A. Michener called his biography, The Hustons, “a masterpiece.” His The Art of the Interview is used as a text in many journalism schools. Writer’s Digest called him “a legend among journalists.” Joyce Carol Oates dubbed him “The Mozart of Interviewers” and Playboy singled him out as “The Interviewer’s Interviewer” after publishing his interviews with Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando.
He has written for dozens of magazines and has been a Contributing Editor for Playboy, Movieline, World (New Zealand), and Trendy (Poland). He served in the Peace Corps, teaching at the Ghana Institute of Journalism; created the M.F.A. in Professional Writing for Antioch University; and taught in the English Department at UCLA for ten years. Since 2007 he has served as a jury member at the annual Camerimage Film Festival in Poland. He has appeared on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Charlie Rose Show, NPR’s The Treatment, Marc Maron”s WTF and Adam Carolla’s podcasts, and in two documentaries, Salinger and Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome. His book, You, Talking to Me, highlights the lessons he’s learned from interviewing. His memoir, You Show Me Yours, takes him from the streets of Brooklyn to Marlon Brando’s island in Tahiti. Yoga? No, Shmoga! is his satirical take on staying healthy through stretching. His fiction includes 2 novels (Catch a Fallen Star, Begin Again Finnegan), a novella (The Black Eyes of Akbah), and 3 books of short stories (The Narcissist, Stuck, and Schemers, Dreamers, Cheaters, Believers). His most recent book is a memoir of his three years in the Peace Corps (Turquoise). His books are all available on Amazon and on his website. He is married to the artist Hiromi Oda and they have two daughters.