Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

Mein Kahn ist ohne Steuer, er fährt mit dem Wind, der in den untersten Regionen des Todes bläst.

Comments (Newest First)

SugarFrostedXOXO is introducing junk DNA into the genome of the story. Don’t panic. Just keep chanting Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike! And keep in mind that even this junk DNA (cunningly disguised as SMS abbreviations) that XOXO has inserted into these comments is now considered an integral part of the epic, and if the vagrant, drug-addled bards were to recite or perform Season Nine without this junk DNA, the audience would feel — and justifiably so — cheated, and probably demand a full refund.

Posted 11:26 AM

BeachgirlWhat is that? What does that mean?

Posted 11:20 AM

KidComaDYHAB DUM DUWBHTPHFIYAWYC GYPO IWFU DYSL GNOC SMB EWI ATG CTA TCA TTG ACC TTG AGT TAT TAA ATG CTA TCA TTG CAC TTG AGT TGT TAA ATG CTA TCA TTG ACC GTG AGT TAT TAA ATG CTA TCA TTG ACC TCG AGT TAT ATA ATG CTA TCA TTG ACC TTG AGT TAT AGA GTG TGA TTA TAA ATG CTA TCA TTG CCA TCG TGA TAT ATA ATG CTA TCA TTG ACC TTG AGT TAT AGA

Posted 11:17 AM

BeachgirlIke, Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike!

Posted 11:13 AM

KidComaFMUTA!!!!!

Posted 11:11 AM

BeachgirlXOXO!! That’s you, right?! You’re vandalizing The Sugar Frosted Nutsack again!!!

Posted 11:08 AM

KidComaROTFLMAO!

Posted 11:06 AM

BeachgirlYou’re a complete asshole!

Posted 11:01 AM

KidComaLMFAO!

Posted 10:55 AM

BeachgirlI hate people who just laugh at everything. Do you think spina bifida is funny or the Holocaust?

Posted 10:53 AM

KidComaGet your pants off!

Posted 10:50 AM

BeachgirlIt is not stupid OR pretentious. You have a great deal of LEARNING to do. You’re just too shallow to delve deep into questioning yourself and your life. READ MORE!!!

Posted 10:45 AM

KidComaIt’s stupid and pretentious.

Posted 10:42 AM

BeachgirlWhat’s funny about that? I think it’s so profound. And it’s so beautifully emblematic of Ike.

Posted 10:35 AM

KidComaLOL!

Posted 10:32 AM

BeachgirlIt’s from Kafka’s “Der Jäger Gracchus” (The Hunter Gracchus), dickwad. It means: “My ship has no rudder, and it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death.”

Posted 10:30 AM

KidComaWhat the fuck does that mean?

Posted 10:24 AM

Showing 17 of 9,709 comments Instead of a Monocle and a Walking Stick

It’s usually at this point in almost every authenticated version of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack —following “Comments (Newest First)”—that Ikestrolls to the Miss America Diner (on West Side Avenue, at the corner of Culver), where he engages in an extended adagio with The Waitress, ordering a tongue sandwich, discussing the erotics of second-person POV during endodontic procedures, and writing the lyrics to the narcocorrido “That’s Me ( Ike’s Song)” that The Kartonswill sing at the “Last Concert.” (In traditional public recitations, the bards — vagrant, drug-addled, and almost always blind, but sometimes just severely dyslexic — are expected to chant all 9,709 of the “Comments,” and not just the seventeen included here, especially if the performance is taking place in a remote, rural area “where the pace of life is unhurried, where the air is fragrant with the aromas of shearing sheds and cattle yards, honeysuckle or corn dogs from some fair, and where the appetite for orally transmitted, maddeningly repetitive epic entertainment remains unsated.”)

The image of “ Ikethe Flâneur” strolling to the Miss America Diner has become one of the most familiar and iconic representations of the sinewy and reticent hero who, in addition to being convinced that Goddesses are almost continuously leering at him from the top floor of the Burj Khalifa and masturbating, believes that Western materialism — most perfectly embodied by privileged celebrities — is polluting the soul of every living creature in the world (in addition to the souls of human beings, Ikebelieves that Western materialism is also polluting the souls of animals, especially house sparrows, swans, and mice).

Instead of a monocle and a walking stick, this flâneur sports a tight guinea-T and a baseball bat. But don’t worry — he’s loaded with gem-like aperçus and aphorisms! For example:

— If you give people too many things to remember you by, they’ll forget them. Pick one.

For anyone attending a performance of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack today, there’s likely to be little if any suspense about what actually happens. The story, with its escalating crises, divine interventions, and hyperviolent denouement, is so well known by now that an audience at a public recitation would not only be able to anticipate every single plot point, but would probably know many of the lines by heart and almost be able to lip-sync along with the bards. And they’d know the history of the making of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. They’d know how each “section” became known as a “Session” and then as a “Season.” They’d know how these Seasons were produced — over the course of hundreds, even thousands, of years — by nameless, typically blind men, high on ecstasy or ketamine, seated in a circle, and chanting for hours and hours on end as they sipped orange soda from a jerrycan; and how every new improvisational flourish, every exegetical commentary and meta-commentary, every cough, sniffle, and hiccough on the part of the bard is incorporated into the story, and is then required in each subsequent performance; and how numerous unrelated episodes have, over the centuries, fallen into the epic’s orbit and gradually become incorporated into the epic itself; and how vernacular variants are incessantly generated in its mutagenic algorithms; how it’s been “produced” through layering and augmentation, repetition and redundancy, more closely resembling the loop-based step sequencing we associate with Detroit techno music than with traditional “writing.”

Adults and children alike would be familiar enough with the plot to already know (before the bards even opened their mouths to deliver the first words “There was never nothing ”) that the saga of Ikebegins with him making a lewd mandala of Italian breadcrumbs for the Goddess La Felinaand then engaging in an extended adagio with the waitress at the Miss America Diner and writing his narcocorrido “That’s Me ( Ike’s Song)”; they’d already know that Ikegets high with his daughter’s boyfriend, Vance, and makes a list for him called “Ten Gods I’d Fuck (T.G.I.F)” and neglects to include the Goddess Shanice, which incurs her eternal wrath (FYI: La Felinawas #1 on his list); and that Koji Mizokami, the God who fashioned the composer Béla Bartókout of his own testicular teratoma, helps Ikeshoplift an Akai MPC drum machine from a Sam Ash on Route 4 in Paramus, New Jersey; and that Bosco Hifikepunyebegins supplying Vancewith the hallucinogenic drug Gravy to sell on the street; and that Ikegoes to Port Newark for a tryst with La Felina, who’s transformed herself into a container ship; and that she promises Ikethat before he martyrs himself, she’ll appear to him in human form and fuck him; and that she says she’ll get in touch with him on his cellphone and let him know exactly when and where; and they know that he’s photographed there by the ATF; and they’d already know that while Ikeis interviewing for a butcher’s job at Costco, a God impregnates his daughter; and that Ikeaccidentally kills his father as they wrestle for Ike’s cellphone because Ike’s father is trying to change Ike’s ringtone from “Me So Horny” to John Cage’s 4'33" —the composer’s notorious “silent composition” consisting of four minutes and thirty-three seconds in which the performer plays nothing (e.g., a pianist going to the keyboard and not hitting any keys for four minutes and thirty-three seconds) — and Ikeimmediately realizes, to his horror, that having Cage’s 4'33" as a ringtone would essentially mean that he’d have no ringtone, and that he’d almost inevitably miss La Felina’s call, which, for Ike, is literally the booty-call of a lifetime; and they’d already know that on the morning of his father’s funeral, Ikewakes up with a incredibly gross (“grotesquely purulent”) case of conjunctivitis and, after delivering the eulogy (a phantasmagorically anti-Semitic diatribe, akin to Céline’s Bagatelles pour un Massacre ), he tries to pull the pillars of the synagogue down and crush the congregation; and that his daughter gives birth to a half-divine, half-mortal infant named “ Colter Dale”; and that soon after The Kartonsbegin their “Last Concert” (which happens to be their first concert), the ATF/Mossad raid on the compound begins; and that after retreating into his two-story brick “hermitage” and reciting The Sugar Frosted Nutsack in its entirety to the infant Colter Dale, Ikeis killed. (And they know that, in a coda, Colter Dale—who mythologically functions as Ike’s successor — explains how Ike’s so-called “delusions” are actually irrefutable proof of the Gods’ existence.)