John Steinbeck banned the book from the county's publicly funded schools and libraries. It was burned in Salinas on two different occasions. In 2003, a school board in Mississippi banned it on the grounds of profanity. According to the American Library Association Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004, with "Of Mice and Men" ranking sixth out of 100 such books in the United States. The award of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature to Steinbeck was controversial in the United States. The award citation lauded Steinbeck "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as
Lenny and the Squigtones credited guitar work by future Spinal Tap member Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest). A photo on the inside cover also includes two band members, "Murph", the keyboard player from The Blues Brothers, and "Ming the Merciless", purported to be Kiss drummer Peter Criss without his famous "cat" costume and make-up, though Criss denies it was him. McKean has confirmed that the drummer in the photograph is actually Don Poncher. Lenny and the Squigtones Lenny and the Squigtones is a fictional musical group headed by Michael McKean and David Lander, the two actors who played the characters Lenny and Squiggy on the