Kinky Friedman may be enjoying major mainstream exposure as his bid for Texas governor appears to be less and less of a joke (anyone else kvelling over last week’s Newsweek profile?) but his compadre Steve Rombom is getting some bad press:

Rombom, a private investigator and Nazi hunter, has been arrested for impersonating an FBI agent in order to intimidate a witness.

Curiously enough, there’s a recurring character in Kinky’s fiction named Steve Rambam, who — follow me now — is a private investigator and Nazi hunter, and — in several novels — also meshuggah enough to impersonate, intimidate and be an intimate of the equally meshuggah Kinky Friedman. The real life Rombom denied all charges and was released on his own recognizance.

Speaking of Kinky’s other talents besides giving Texas gubenatorial incumbents a run for votes, I’ve become quite a fan of his books. Somewhere in Oklahoma, when El Yenta Man and I had listened to all our cds and had nothing left to say to each other, we picked up the audio version of Kinky’s Steppin’ On A Rainbow at a truckstop amongst the John Grisham and Janet Evanovich dreck (sorry Grisham and Evanovich fans, I’m just not that into literary fast food) and found it smarmy, unlikely and hilariously entertaining.