What do you get when you throw two postmodern pilgrims, two cats and a Macintosh into a twenty-six-foot motor-home? A high-octane, high-camp asphalt odyssey through the offbeat corners of America! The Monks are Jim Crotty and Michael Lane, who quit the work-a-day world in 1986 and hit the road in search of enlightenment, adventure, and a well-stocked K Mart. Along the way they created the world's only mobile magazine, appropriately called Monk. Now, in their first book, they tell the amazing and hilarious story of life on the run - encounters with extraterrestrial canines and Peruvian princesses, plus warmhearted tales of hermits, cowgirls, waffles, and more. Experience the On The Road of the nineties!

A Buddhist monk and two Catholic monks go on a thrilling road trip across the American Midwest. '3 Mad Monks' is an exciting yet thoughtful story about human conflict, emotional turmoil, and dark comedy.Father Miller is a cantankerous, middle-aged monk at St. John's Abbey. One sleepless night he decides to go for a long walk. Finding himself on a deserted road, a strange taxi driver pulls up next to him and offers him a ride. What happens next, you're not going to believe...Brother Grayson is also a monk at St. John's Abbey. In a few months, he is to be fully ordained. But he has doubts...and the fact that he just fell in love with a hotel receptionist only complicates matters.Thach is a Buddhist monk who works in a small temple. He is a man of few words. In fact, he barely speaks English. Yet he might have the biggest part to play in this world of spiritual turmoil.How do these monks chance upon each other? In the spirit of 'The Blues Brothers', the monks travel half way across America only to find themselves in outrageous situations, while being relentlessly pursued by forces they struggle to comprehend.

Cannibals, Surfboards, and, Like, Everything! In the deep, dark 1980s, Jim Crotty and Michael Lane quit their jobs, traded everything they owned for a 26-foot motorhome, and hit the road with their cats, their convictions, and a solar-powered Mac. Their mission: to travel the great American landscape and report on the incredible people, places, and parking lots they encountered along the way. One fateful day, their Monkmobile rattled into California… "Reading these guys is like watching a grainy, irreverent film about America— real, unreal, surreal." —The Boston Globe "[The Monks] don't simply document a chosen city or region. They dissect it, demystify it, revel in its oddities." —San Diego Union Tribune "Modern troubadors…writing about themselves and America." —The New York Times "Kerouacs of the ’90s." —The Seattle Times "An unshaven version of Travel & Leisure." —Utne Reader Dockweiler State Beach Museum of Jurassic Technology Slab City ■ Mojave Airport Pacific Lumber Company Saint Stupid's Day Parade Columbarium ■ Sixteen to One Mine Banana Man ■ Nudist Colonies The Astrophysicist of Love L.A. Police Academy ■ Madonna Inn Forestiere Underground Gardens Foster's Big Horn ■ Critical Mass Devil's Golf Course Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum Deep Creek Hot Springs Sagely, City of 10,000 Buddhas and more, More, More Visit us Online at www.frommers.com

The Naked Truth on the Naked City In the deep, dark 1980s, Jim Crotty and Michael Lane quit their jobs, traded everything they owned for a 26-foot motorhome, and hit the road with their cats, their convictions, and a solar-powered Mac. Their mission: to travel the great American landscape and report on the incredible people, places, and parking lots they encountered along the way. One fateful day, their Monkmobile rattled into New York… "Reading these guys is like watching a grainy, irreverent film about America—real, unreal, surreal." —The Boston Globe "[The Monks] don't simply document a chosen city or region. They dissect it, demystify it, revel in its oddities." —San Diego Union Tribune "Modern troubadors…writing about themselves and America." —The New York Times "Kerouacs of the ’90s." —The Seattle Times "An unshaven version of Travel & Leisure." —Utne Reader Annie Sprinkle ■ Bar Hopping Blessing of the Animals Circus Amok ■ Cupcake Cafe Domsey's Warehouse ■ Dr. Zizmor Driving to Ellis Island Fly Fishing in Central Park Fresh Kills Dump ■ Gene Pool Lady Bunny ■ The Mermaid Parade Mother Cabrini Shrine The New York Doll Hospital The Phun Phactory ■ Quentin Crisp Sideshows by the Seashore The Subway Inn ■ Supreme Macaroni The West Indian Dry Parade Wigstock ■ and more, More, More Visit us online at www.frommers.com

From the Pacific surf to Nob Hill to Chinatown, the legendary City by the Bay comes to life in this diverse collection of essays celebrating America's favorite playground. Praise the Lord at Glide Memorial Church, skate through the wonders of Golden Gate Park, discover culinary delights in the Mission, and relive the days of the gold rush.

Follow the brilliant and hilarious adventures of a mad Zen Buddhist monk who rose from humble beginnings to become one of China's greatest folk heroes! Ji Gong studied at the great Ling Yin monastery, an immense temple that still ranges up the steep hills above Hangzhou, near Shanghai. The Chan (Zen) Buddhist masters of the temple tried to instruct Ji Gong in the spartan practices of their sect, but the young monk, following in the footsteps of other great ne'er-do-wells, distinguished himself mainly by getting expelled. He left the monastery, became a wanderer with hardly a proper piece of clothing to wear, and achieved great renown—in seedy wine shops and drinking establishments! This could have been where Ji Gong's story ended. But his unorthodox style of Buddhism soon made him a hero for popular storytellers of the Song dynasty era. Audiences delighted in tales where the mad old monk ignored—or even mocked—authority, defied common sense, never neglected the wine, yet still managed to save the day. Ji Gong remains popular in China even today, where he regularly appears as the wise old drunken fool in movies and TV shows. In Adventures of the Mad Monk Ji Gong, you'll read how he has a rogue's knack for exposing the corrupt and criminal while still pursuing the twin delights of enlightenment and intoxication. This literary classic of a traveling martial arts master, fighting evil and righting wrongs, will entertain Western readers of all ages!

This cultural history reveals the unique qualities of road stories and follows the evolution from the Beats' postwar literary adventures to today's postmodern reality television shows. Tracing the road story as it moves to both LeRoi Jones's critique of the Beats' romanticization of blacks as well as to the mainstream in the 1960s with CBS's Route 66, Mills also documents the rebel subcultures of novelist Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who used film and LSD as inspiration on a cross-country bus trip, and she examines the sexualization of male mobility and biker mythology in the films Scorpio Rising, The Wild Angels, and Easy Rider. Mills addresses how the filmmakers of the 1970s - Coppola, Scorsese, and Bogdanovich - flourished in New Hollywood with road films that reflected mainstream audiences and how feminists Joan Didion and Betty Friedan subsequently critiqued them. A new generation of women and minority storytellers gain clout and bring genre remapping to the national consciousness, Mills explains, as the road story evolves from such novels as Song of Solomon to films like Thelma and Louise and television's Road Rules 2.