Is a French bande dessinée by a chap known only as Pacco which, unfortunately, seems to have fallen by the wayside after just one volume.
The premise is this - Vince, the narrator and only sane man, and his friends Pac, a long-haired gangsta wannabe, and Toubib, a medical student prone to getting in over his head, all have just finished university and decide to go on a coast-to-coast road trip across America to try and find themselves - and to act like American tourists do in France, only the other way around. And while snarking at everything.
Needless to say, it all goes horribly wrong. Right from the start.
Toubib went on this trip to "improve his English." His currently stinks. This is rendered by having him speak English but spelt phonetically as a French speaker would read it. For example: "Izz iitt possibeule zat aiii can haiiirrre ooaane décapotabeule plizzzz?" Naturally nobody understands him.
Pac is more interested in pulling women and living out his gangsta rap fantasies. The fact that he's as white as a sheet doesn't preclude him from claiming that he "has black blood in his veins" and suchlike. Unfortunately when he attempts to buy a gun in a pawnshop then a lumberjack's jacket in either blue, red, or grey (for crips, bloods, or latin kings respectively) because "in the hood if you've the wrong colours, man, you're dead," only to be told to look out the window where some real-life gang-bangers are shooting at each other, his inner suburban butterboy is revealed.
Vince went along because he was bored and had no idea what to do with his life. He also has this idea that he's going to find himself.
Anyhow. The first volume, and so far only volume, covers their landing in Los Angeles and working out what to do next. They note with some disdain that the famous Chinese theatre is a bit on the small side, go shopping, and argue about what sort of car to hire. This results in Toubib knocking out Pac with a censer in a cushion (it make sense in context) and then noting that "there were no bathing beauties on every corner. Just the human equivalent of tanks, bunker busters, and aircraft carriers," when they try to pul hot Californian women. When they do find three suitable young ladies, Pac wades in saying (in French) that they're "a bunch of brutal, depraved, perverse little piggies, I'm Snif Snif and these two are Snuf Snuf and Snarf Snarf, and we're here to drink your beers and fuck your women!" Only for one of the three gals to be a fluent French speaker and to have heard all this. Not to be put of, Pac challenges them to a game of alcoholic strip poker upon where the boys all lose their shirts but get a tip to meet them in a bar in Phoenix, Arizona.
After eating totally the wrong things at MacDonald's because of a failure on the part of Toubib to get the order right, they set off for Phoenix, almost get busted for urinating by the roadside (it should be mentioned that in France, there still are pissoirs in some towns and motorway service stations NEVER have enough bogs), and go to the bar but the girls aren't there. Not to worry, they start shooting some pool, at which Vince is a total n00b and also a total prodigy, winning large amounts of cash off the locals, who, perturbed, waylay the boys outside and tell them (in French phonetically written like an American might try to speak it), "on say que vouse avey triché, donc, rendez-nous note arjont, ou on vous kick le ass!"
With some arse-saving cowardice, they head off to Las Vegas, and the adventure continues.
Between all these episodes are various flashbacks to Vince's childhood and growing up, about how he first met Pac attempting to pull women by signing up to study law at the Sorbonne to take advantage of the girls seeking Mrs. degrees and then asking them to skip lectures in favour of going to his place for "a symposium on Jamaican herbal cigarettes, reggae, alcohol, and the exchange of bodily fluids." Or about Vince throwing a random boozy house party while his parents were out, or about Toubib's mate who believed everyone had a single talent but his was being able to, using A=1, B=2, etc, convert entire blocks of text into strings of numbers.
This is very French, I must say, as is the theme about finding oneself. However it is also very, very, very, funny. Unfortunately it's not been translated into English. Also there's no indication of when Volume II will be out. More's the pity.
(IRON NODER 2011, 30/30)