Showboating

McDougal's been on a bit of a tear lately -- ever since he lost his job at the Pentagon. Me and McDougal and the boys were at O'Toole's the other day, when Scotty pipes up with, "Well I had no idea you used to play pro ball, McDougal!"

I don't know why I didn't jump up and sprint out the door at that very moment. I'd heard this conversation 300 times if I'd heard it a once. And it never ended well.

McDougal hears this, then does that weird thing with his brows. It's not quite a furrow. You know the look I'm talking about, right? The one where he kind of rolls them (or really the single brow) into a sort of a rolling sea of unkempt facial hair so that it kind of looks like a symbol they might use for Nessie if they were to erect a "Loch Ness Monster Crossing" sign.

And McDougal says, "Aye, lad. I did, indeed."

Scotty says, "Well who'd ya play for then?"

God help me, why didn't I leave the place?

"I played for the Memphis Showboats," McDougal says. "Under the fine tutelage of the infamous Pepper Rogers."

Poor stupid Scotty. That poor dumb bastard. "The Showboats?" Scotty guffaws. "What the hell are they?"

God, why did I stay? Why, why, why?

McDougal comes to his feet, but was still not fully perturbed. "They were the finest squad in the finest league ever to don the uniform of professional athletics. They were the true champions of the USFL."

I didn't even seek cover. I just sat stupified over my ale. Why, Zeus? Why not guide me in this moment of terror? Why not set me free?

Scotty takes a long pull from his stein and mumbles under his breath, "The USFL? That's worse than the Canadian Football L -"

And those were the last words dear old Scotty proclaimed before leaving this life.

McDougal picks up the table (one of those 250-year-old solid oak jobs that have been in O'Toole's since the Battle of Falkirk), and in about two and a half seconds, he gnaws the table down to a spear, and runs it clear through Scotty's gullet.

He then lops off Scotty's head with the back the back of his fist and impales it on the end of the spear. He grabs me by the forearm and hauls me outside -- though I'd done nothing wrong, I was now inexorably linked to this terror.

McDougal rips off the roof of Scotty's Mini, yanks his car keys out of the dead man's trousers, directs me to sit in the passenger's seat and hold the spear topped by Scotty's severed head, and climbs into the driver's seat. When he realizes the car's too small for his massive frame, he rips out the driver's seat, and plops into the backseat, and starts the car.

"We're going to America," he says.

And off we go.

Six hours later, we're in Miami, and McDougal has ordered me to walk six steps behind him, displaying Scotty's severed head, and singing his favorite Peter Morrison tune, whilst strumming the fiddle.

The Battle of Scotland

That reminds me of the time McDougal decided he was going to train a quarter million head of cattle to fight the Irish Republican Army in a duel to the death - Winner Takes Dublin. He was really fired up about the chaos in Palestine in the late 60s and because he was at the time regularly banging a couple of Israeli sisters, he put all the blame on the IRA.

So he buys up, no shit, about half the beef herds of Nebraska and Lower Montana, puts them on a couple of oil tankers and sets sail for Ireland. Only, he was leading the convoy in a speedboat meant mainly for pleasure skiing, and he thought Ireland was in Africa. Damned if he didn't lead those oil tankers around the globe three times, feeding the cows fish that he caught himself with a extra sharp gardening hoe and bag of baby bottle nipples.

It took him 20 years to reach the port of Glasgow. When he pulled in the people cheered as if the Beatles themselves were crushed and dying in those oil tankers, but McDougal didn't even look up at them. He immediately unloaded the few surviving cattle into a 1962 Aston Martin DB4, packed his satchel in the boot, and sped off leaving the couple of thousand crew and cattle tenders on the docks with not a penny of their two decades' pay.

Did they say so much as a harsh word against McDougal?

You tell me.

The next few months were spent in isolation in the jagged peaks of Mull Kintyre of Oa, teaching the blank eyed cows to fight a pistol-brandishing man with their bare hooves, to fashion weapons out of everyday lanyards, and to live off the streets, hiding in the shadows for weeks at a time without moving a muscle. By the end of winter McDougal had a bovine army 4,000 strong, living in the shadows of Kilmarnock and Glenluce - the residents of those towns never had a clue they were sharing their bars, houses, bathrooms, and wives with thousands of cows painted all black and silent as the wind.

The morning of April 3rd, McDougal woke, cast aside some Irishman's besotted wife, and stood fully erect.

"Today is the day," he seethed, "that the dirty Irish swarm will pay their blood to me through broken teeth."

He then violently bleated the Call to Arms, practiced so many times over the years and across the miles, and at once the sleepy townspeople found the ninja-like cattle appearing from behind their dressers and moving out of the patterns of their dining room wallpaper. The cows slaughtered mercilessly, women and children alike, and the men they sliced and dried into jerky for the boatride home. McDougal fought more lustily than them all combined, single-handedly removing three small provinces and a waterslide park from the earth and grinding them into a sort of spreadable paste not unlike olive tapenade.

They rode the verdant hills in modified Mini Coopers for 6 days and 5 nights, raping and pillaging anything over 10 centimeters tall and gathered in a satiated heap on the peak of Ben Vorlich. The jugs of whiskey were flowing, the jerky stores were full, and McDougal sat back fat and happy. He looked over his mooing crew with a paternal eye, and then realized he was in Scotland.

Was he embarrrassed about his geographic error? Would an embarrassed man trim his mustache, buy a horse, and host a morning talk show on Oakland's NBC affiliate?

McDougal sure would.

Year of the Yak

Several years ago, I was living with McDougal in a grass hut on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal.

We didn't have much money at the time. McDougal was fresh out of prison, and I'd been out of work from the meat plant for close to 34 months.

The series of events that led us to this miserable existence is far too complex to detail here. In summary, however, let's just say:

1. The classification of pork as "the other white meat" is wrong on many levels.
2. Pig farmers have very little sense of humor.
3. Pig farmers are a vengeful lot.
4. There are more of them than you would think.
5. Sometimes it's good just to step back and re-evaulate your life, and the path that you've chosen.
6. All roads ultimately lead to Kathmandu.

Well, McDougal and I didn't exactly "fit in" with the locals. I'm a gruff, balding sausage engineer, and McDougal is a giant bear-like figure with six-foot arms and a glass foot. The villagers thought he was a damn yeti. As such, they kept their distance.

In our days in Kathmandu, we subsisted on a diet of roots, berries, and an hallucinogenic compound McDougal crafted from yak droppings and dried flowers. If not for the makeshift drugs, I don't think we'd have survived that long winter.

Things were looking bad by February, when McDougal came up with an idea that literally saved our lives, lifted us from starvation, and abject poverty, and finally gave us some level of social standing among the locals.

We bought a Rally's Burgers franchise and built in in the center of Kathmandu.

Let me tell you something about the people of Nepal -- they freakin' love Rally's chocolate shakes!

We ran the joint for six months, in which time we made close to $7,000,000 dollars each, then McDougal sold the place for $40 (US) to a Nepalese business man named Artie Shaw.

Six days later, McDougal set the place on fire in a drunken rage. He felt the service had gone down the toilet under new management. Then he ate the entire city before being chased into the mountains by a Chinese army helicopter.

Turns out that crazy ass McDougal actually was a yeti.

Who knew?

McDougal enrolled in one of my self-help seminars, stayed through the opening exercise, then abruptly left with three women with self-esteem issues.

Soulgasm

The happiest I ever saw McDougal was the three crazy months his band opened for Bon Jovi's "Blow My Cock" Tour in the Fall of '85. His band, Soulgasm, had a kind of Fuck-Rock-Springsteen kind of sound, heavy on the drums. They had a total of eighteen drummers, some nights you couldn't even hear the guitars, but McDougal didn't care. He was so blown on crack and Chinese Checkers he would just pass out two or three songs into every show ... God he was in paradise.

One night in Albany NY I was loading up when I heard what sounded like McDougal fighting a leopard. I looked in the direction of the Amazing Rhythm Aces' bus and sure enough, there was McDougal and Butch McDade beating a leopard to the tune of "Lipstick Traces" and downing PGA out of a rucksack.

Those two used to call themselves the Double McD's, and it was pretty much a given that if they got together after a show some bad shit was going to go down. So I went over to try to smooth it all out, and next thing I know I'm wearing the leopard - still alive mind you. I had to wear that damn thing for three weeks (McDougal, that crazy son of a bitch, fed it and kept it alive for 2 of those weeks), and at some point got my picture in the Charlotte, NC Herald with that damn thing around my neck.

Anyway, the Double McDs are really ramping up and so I say, hey let's go jam a little with Jon Bon. They are all over this idea, so we stumble up to the Bon Jovi Private Superbus and get stopped by the bouncers. They look at the Rhythm Ace we've got with us and are no way going to let us in. So McDougal takes the first bouncer, Rick, and places a raven's blastocyst right on the tip of his nose, and tells him,

"Вы двигаете so much как Soulgasm мышца, и я поверну вас в soaring raven заклятье которого проклинает его к летать Soulgasm через эту большую нацию, всегда ищущ для righteousness."

That gets us in the door, and as soon as we walk in McDougal challenges Jon Bon Jovi's keyboard player to that game that Roger Moore plays that bad guy where it kind of looks like Missile Command but they get shocked if they get hit and they almost die, I forget the name of it.

Fuck, that was a great night.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Back in 1988, I was in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament with McDougal.

I don't like to brag, but when it comes to Ultimate Frisbee, I'm no slouch. And, well, you guys know about McDougal, right? What? You don't know about McDougal's years on the UF tour?

Well, this isn't really the time to get into all that. Suffice it to say, the man can flat out Frizz. Seriously, check the record books. They look like the credits to a Hollywood movie about McDougal and starring McDougal as McDougal ... And as everyone else!

Anyway, I'm good, and McDougal, he's just out of this world. So we were pretty much set to win from the moment we walked onto the court. But there is one thing about playin' with McDougal -- you got to watch your back because everyone's gonna be gunnin' for you from the get-go.

In my case, it came in the form of a vicious attack from what I first thought was a rabid polar bear. Turns out it was just some drunk Venezuealan dude in a rabid polar bear costume. Regardless, the guy sucker punched me in the stomach as soon as I got off the shuttle, and I ended up shitting blood for six days.

For those of you who've only seen Ultimate Frisbee on cable television and magazines, you may not realize what a cutthroat, dangerous sport it is. Let me tell you, Ultimate Frisbee is as crooked as McDougal's third wife's prosthetic leg. That's because it's run by the Chinese mafia.

So this tourney in '88 ... I was a little nervous because it was to be played under Lunar Rules, because it was on the moon. I'd played under California rules, Pennsylvania rules (the de facto US Standard, for those of you UF newbees), and even international rules from when I was in Korea.

But Lunar rules are far more complex because of the whole gravity issue.

Like, for example, in most rulebooks lightchucking (also known as spigot hurling) is perfectly legal. But on the moon -- FORGET IT! Someone could lose a foot in those conditions. So I thought the Lunar rules were a bit of a handicap, but at least they hit everyone the same way.

So we make it through the semi-finals in the 88 championships, and the PCP starts to wear off.

I'm pretty sure my game completely went to shit in the championship match, because I was fading in and out of consciousness and lucidity.

At one point, I had this crazy dream that I wasn't even on the moon, I wasn't really sure what Ultimate Frisbee was, and I was really collapsed under a urinal at a Flying J near Galveston. And one time, I had this vision that McDougal was my dad and we were actually a couple of pot bellied pigs who lived alone on a deserted island made out of Oprah Winfrey's beautiful mocha teets.

McDougal said that happens to everyone at some point in their career. Then we huffed some more varnish and I can't remember for sure, but I think we ended up winning the tourney.

Ultimate Frisbee's a really fun game.

Dick Cheney

One thing about McDougal, he's always going to obey Maritime Law.

The man was in the Merchant Marines for 14 years -- made the rank of Senior Chief Petty Officer. You don't move up like that in the Goddamn Merchant Marines without 1) respecting the hell out of some Maritime Law, and 2) Blowin' the ass end out of your sales quota month after month after month.

Because one thing about the Merchant Marines that you can't forget -- sure, they're marines ... but they're also merchants.

And you motherfuckers know McDougal's a goddamn flat out sales dynamo. That old bastard could sell rhino urine to the Choctaws!

Of course, I didn't know McDougal when he did his time in the service. That was, I guess, between his prison stints in Upstate New York and that stretch in federal. But I've heard tales you wouldn't believe.

But I'll leave those tales for another man. A man who could tell them with the honesty, vim, and vigor they deserve. Someone who was there with him through the hurricanes, the monsoons, the typhoons, and the ports of call ... oh the ports of call.

But I have had the great honor and privelege of sailing with McDougal on his private frigate. And, my friends, the frigate is a mighty vessel, and McDougal an able captain.

In the late 19th century, I had the honor of sailing with McDougal on a whaling expedition in the great Indian Ocean.

Those were good times. They were honest times. And McDougal was an honest captain.

Our bounty in those days was sperm whales.

McDougal and I set sail on a cold Christmas morn' in Nantucket in the year 1877. Soon after we departed, McDougal nailed me to the mast and announced to the rest of the crew that he was in search of a six-legged whale by the name of John Ashcroft. He promised a bounty of fresh thigh meat from my left leg to the first man to spot Ashcroft.

We sailed for seven months with no word of this mighty Ashcroft beast. And I nailed to the mast the entire time.

Then on our 214th day at sea, it happened.

The mighty Ashcroft was spotted just astern of midship.

McDougal unleashed a fiery attack on the not-yet-Attorney General.

He hit the man just below his blowhole with a flaming Oldsmobile. Ashcroft was, however, unmoved. Then he had Mr. Hooper fire six barrels into his belly. Six barrels!

But not even those barrels were enough to keep him afloat.

"You've got city hands, Mr. Hooper," McDougal announced.

"He can't go under. Not with six barrels, he can't."

But he did.

And we never saw him again.

That is, until he was elected Senator from Missouri by beating some dead guy. Well, that really set McDougal off, and before I know what's happened, the old crew's loaded up the frigate and going after him again.

I resumed my honored position nailed to the mast, and we pursued the mighty Ashcroft for eight and a half years. Then, one day, without warning I was thrown overboard for insubordination, and left for dead in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Fortunately, I was rescued by a Russian troller, and transported to Topeka, where I spent 11 months in a half-way house, before being released to continue my search.

But by then, the trail had grown cold.

Ashcroft, who'd once been spotted singing patriotic hymns on the Senate floor, had achieve supreme rank in the Federal government, but had by then retired to pursue fascism full-time.

But I kept at it. Day and night, doggedly pursuing the mighty Ashcroft.

I finally caught up with him two weeks ago at a Day's Inn in Rochester, and we stayed up half the night, just talking, and laughing, and holding each other in our underwear.

Waking Up with the D

One morning I woke up with McDougal sitting next to me in an 18-wheeler going 230 miles per hour. I looked over at him with that damn silly grin on his face, tried to slam on the brakes, and of course they didn't work.

"What the fuck are we going to do now?" I yelled, gripping the wheel for dear life. And he just lit his cigarillo and kicked a porno in the truck's DVD player.

So there I am, trying to keep this thing on the road at 240 plus and McDougal is over there jacking off to a skin flick. I checked the gas, no problem there, tested the brakes again and felt no resistance whatsoever, and decided to settle back and just take it in stride.

McDougal.

Once he was done cleaning his clock, I asked him to at least let me in on what we were hauling in the big rig.

"You got 400 pallets of nitroglycerine, 30 cases of Grade A PCP from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a dead endangered skink back there, hot rod," he laughed. I knew the "you" meant that I personally had purchased it all and loaded it fully under hypnosis, giving him witnesses and fingerprints to clear his name in case this thing went belly up. I was in deep.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and tried to remember where I was last conscious. Grand Funk Railroad reunion? No. Tibet? No. Ahh.. then it came back like a flash,

I'm standing on a diving board in a hilltop pad in an L.A. suburb. Rodney Dangerfield is doing lines off both of my big toes and there's McDougal, naked as the day he might die, drinking out of a plasticized blowfish.

"Salty Dog," I hear him say in a bleary crash of drugs and Ro-Tel cheese dip, "you're going to drive that rig if I have to hypnotize you and hide behind bushes giving you commands to make sure you get it all packed and loaded on deadline."

So that explained it. Now I just needed to get the damn thing over the border, shut the yapping Shi Tzu up in the overhead sleeper, and get McDougal to quit shooting bottle rockets at the state troopers.

"Pull over at the next stop, Jansport, and let's get some Arby's."

I reminded him that the brakes were out and I'm sure you were expecting this one - yep, he took a woman named Joan Finley, tied her to the grill, threw her out like an anchor, and brought the whole mess to a screeching halt: troopers, truck, skink carcass, and Puerto Ricans. We got the 5 for 5, and damned if McDougal didn't give me his Potato Cakes for not getting too mad about it all.

Year of the Rabbit

McDougal and I were in Tibet last Halloween.

I dressed as Robert Mitchum in "The Friends of Eddie Coyle." McDougal dressed as Peter Boyle.

McDougal shanghais a ricksha, and at gunpoint he forces the driver to take us into town.

Of course, I don't speak a word of Chinese, but McDougal knows enough to get around. We pull into this Kosher deli, and I get some hummus and a bag of raw oats. McDougal orders a couple of Panda steaks.

Well, the damn Chinese are freaks about those pandas. Next thing I know, the waiter loses it on us and launches about two dozen throwing stars smack into McDougal's gullet.

McDougal goes down hard. He dies right there on the spot; and I'm left alone and helpless in a foreign land.

Then the waiter says to me, "Ming mao a itsi wei."

I kind of just shrug my shoulders, so the guy says to me in English, "Peter Boyle is dead."

Just then, the real Peter Boyle busts in with an uzi and a sawed-off pump action 12-gauge. He kills everyone in the joint, then throws McDougal over his shoulder and says I'm to follow him.

Boyle rushes us to some monastery up in the mountains, where a kindly old Buddhist monk brings McDougal back to life.

Boyle looks at McDougal and says, "Now we're even."

The monk wanted my autograph, so I signed "Robert Mitchum" on his forehead qith a quill dipped in yak blood.

On the way out, this little AmerAsian boy tells us they don't celebrate Halloween in Tibet, so we hop on a freighter bound for Long Island and get there just in time to enter a costume contest at a wharf-side pub.

McDougal won 1st place for his Andy Warhol costume.

I was disqualified because they thought I was a real rabbit.

Lunch Plans

I just got back from lunch with McDougal. We went to Godzilla's Drive-In & Eat on Highway 18. It's run by this old Vietnamese guy, who mostly serves hot dogs and loose meat.

I had three chili dogs, a bag of Funyuns, and a vanilla shake. McDougal ate a little town in the Gansu Province of China.

After lunch, we stopped by McDougal's new house. There were about half a dozen contractors there widening the doorways, and putting the entire house on floats.

Later this summer he's gonna sail the whole thing over to China, where the villages are a lot fresher.

My Wife

McDougal showed up at my house late one night -- drunk as a skunk.

He says to me, "I'm here for some pussy." Then he woke up my wife and had his way with her.

Then he crapped in my pantry, and guess who had to clean it up?

That's right -- my wife.

Bass Boat

McDougal borrowed my bass boat, took it out and caught the biggest catfish in Oklahoma state history. Got his picture in the paper.

Then my boat was seized in a crystal meth sting operation that McDougal ends up pinning on me. I went to jail for 8 years.

When I get out, McDougal's married my wife, moved into my house, and my kids call him dad. But I couldn't be mad. Little Billy was on the honor roll, my wife had dropped 40 pounds, and I'd never seend McDougal happier.

He gave me $11,000. He said that was for my troubles. I used the money to actually start a meth lab and turned that 11 grand into a small fortune of nearly 270 thousand dollars.

Long live McDougal!

Minjas

Do you guys remember when McDougal went on that big kick about the Minjas?

He put together that crazy ass business plan and everything.

I told him it was a hair-brained idea, but he wouldn't hear it.

"Nipsy," he told me, "there's a whole class of little people who maybe feel inferior because they don't measure up to societal norms. And there's a whole other class of people out there who spend their days freakin' puttin' the bad karate on hapless saps -- generally killing them in the process. Let's put 'em together and see what shakes out."

"It'll never work, McDougal. Let's get back to work," I said.

But damn if he didn't up and quit right there.

Walked into Bossman's office, spit in his face, and jacked a wad right there. Told him, "You eat my nut, Bossman, or I walk."

Of course, Bossman ate the nut.

But McDougal walked anyway.

Told him he'd send Bossman a fresh batch for severance.

He went off, got all liquored up, and put together this business plan.

He was gonna breed midget ninjas to be sold on the open market for personal use, tactical operations, espionage, and corporate security.

He went to a couple of VC guys, and they laughed him out of their offices.

Fortunately, he was able to hook up with the Chinese mafia, and they gave him $2MM in Mezanine Financing for his project.

I bet those VC guys rethought things in the last moments before they were beheaded by crazy ass midget ninjas.

I don't know what kind of money McDougal ended up making out of the deal, but he moved a few hundred of 'em when all was said and done.

I still have a couple of them, but due to a genetic defect, they age six times faster than regular ninjas, and after three or four years, they aren't any good for ninjonics anymore.

I use mine as personal valets and lawn decorations, mostly.

Sometimes I bring them in and have them jack me off a little bit, but mostly they sleep outside with the Vietnamese boy McDougal sold me back in '82.

Clubbed a Seal? So what

That may have been exciting for you, but let me tell you about the last time I saw McDougal pull out his Seal Club.

We were travelling through Europe screwing hippie girls in hostels, and McDougal got a bad case of the Czech Clap. He was so pissed he stopped talking on trains and would only fart to communicate, which was obviously a terrible way to deal with the Germans. A ticket person would walk down the aisle and punch people's tickets and when he or she got to our row and said "Karten gefallen" McDougal would raise one leg and fart out a massive egg sulphur response. It was just terrible.

So anyway, by the time we got to Italy I had taken to not sitting anywhere near him. When we pulled into Rome he was nowhere to be found, and I got to the nearest hostel and laid up with a Brazilian 19 year old named Margarita. We fucked for about 4 days straight and then decided to go to the Vatican. When we got there, we could see a big crowd milling and yelling around the big main doors. I had a bad feeling, and sure enough, when we pushed our way up there, I could see none other than McDougal raising and smashing his Seal Club down over and over again on the Pope. Those weird clown guards were standing around helplessly, and the Pope was screaming something in Latin.

I told Margarita it was time to beat it and we rode a bus around for a while and then fucked in the Parthenon.

And when the Pope just died a few weeks ago, McDougal kissed his Seal Club and repeated this phrase: "Eu amo bater meu papa, e se eu vir algum mamífero do mar mim matança da foda da vontade essa cadela como um whore catholic..." again and again.

Mountain Otter

Last year, I was on an expedition in the Ruwenzori Mountains (Ugandan side) with McDougal.

We were about ten days in when we came across a misplaced sea otter, who was obviously lost and far from his natural home in the sea.

The poor thing was terrified and alone.

We spent about two hours crafting a plan to return the lost creature to his natural habitat.

After considering the logistics, and realizing, "Hey, we could do this!" we opted to club him to death and eat him.

The Roomba

McDougal invented the Roomba at a Super Bowl party back in '87. He called it the Soulsucker Seven after his wife at the time. The number 7 because he was in his early twenties (this is where the story gets hazy). He claimed to have an advanced robotics degree from the local 4H club, but I couldn't help but notice the device was crafted from a tape dispenser, shaved meat, and the cowl intake off a 71 Cuda. Is was loud as hell, but the thing worked.

Mrs. McDougal

Let me see a show of hands, who was at McDougal's wedding? You? You? OK, yeah I remember you, and you. Well, for the couple of dozen of you that weren't there let me try to set the scene:

We were all strapped into a line of Ford Fairlanes and getting the mandatory tattoos ("Mr. and Mrs. Motherfucking McDougal") around the circumference of our necks, and the wedding was supposed to be in one hour. McDougal is trying to follow the rule about not seeing his wife before the wedding, so he's smoking a mixture of crack and Applebee's Onion Rings, and he was beating the shit out of anyone within about 40 feet of him. So everyone's kind of hunkered down in their Fairlanes.

At some point I'm hitting a nitrous balloon pretty heavy to ease the pain of the neck tattoo, when all of a sudden McDougal lunges up and shouts to the Devil. I mean To the Devil, because the Man in Red is standing right there, fashioning a Ford Fairlane of his own out of charred souls and licking flames. The Devil looks up, sees how fucked up McDougal is, shrugs and looks at us the way you look at a man who's hotass wife is so drunk she's rubbing your cock with her foot under the table, and puts his arm around McDougal.

"McDougal," he vomits, "you got another thing coming if you think you can marry my sister without a bachelor party from The Prince of Flames," and all of a sudden the entire wedding party, tuxes and all, magically appear in a shitty shake joint in south Philly.

McDougal is too fucked up to notice, and everyone at the church (now about 6,000 miles away from where we all are) is too wrapped up in Mozart's Andante Cantabile to notice we've all disappeared. Next thing I know, I see that crazy son of a bitch (McDougal, not the Devil)* eating two Philadelphia roofers alive. They are screaming and blood is everywhere, and I'm just completely speechless. Not that I hadn't seen McDougal eat people before, I'm just seeing the mess all over his tux and thinking about showtime at that church in less than an hour.

So I'm thinking, "no way McDougal's gonna pull through on this one, this time he's really done it." We spend about another 45 minutes watching fat shaved Philly girls strut their stuff, and McD finishes off the roofers and passes out on the stage.

Now the Big Man is laid out in his own puke, and the Devil's brothers-in-law are laughing at him in a way that makes me uneasy. This wakes him up out of his stupor, I see his eyes lock as he realizes the enormity of the situation, and he jumps up and sacrifices them and a bouncer to the Prehistoric Nordic God Ba:äl which gets us all a free ticket back to the church with 2 minutes to spare.

When the music shifts and we hear our cue, I whisper to him, "McD, your tux!" and he looks down and sees all the blood.

And you know what that crazy fucker does? Strips me naked, throws me out into the crowd as a diversion, marries that hellbitch wife of his before anyone sees it, and plants a goddamned fig tree in the middle of Monroe, Alabama. And that fig tree is there to this day, still putting out figs.

* the Devil was actually glued to his cell phone half the night dealing with some new "pod installation" or some horseshit down in Hell over the weekend; I was pretty disappointed after all the shit I had heard about the guy.

Starbuck's Coffee

McDougal started a band with my cousin and six dancing bears in the mid 80s.

Two of the bears played guitar, one played drums, and the other three just danced around and ate people.

I think my cousin played bass or something, and McDougal played the harp.

The band was called the Crockpots. They did six live shows and recorded an EP called "I'm Gonna Crush Your Lungs, Ahmad Rashad."

McDougal lost it at their final show up in Canada.

It was during his PCP phase, and I guess he was pretty tweaked out by the time they were done with the tour.

During the Crockpots' third encore, he stood up in the middle of "These Legs Are Diamond Flagships and I Own the Moon and Most of the Stars" (a 43-minute jazz exploration of the mesozoic era as witnessed by a talking fig tree) and hurled his harp into the crowd, which at that point consisted of 13 Canadian sailors and a freemason from Tempe, Arizona.

The harp hit the freemason and crushed his lungs.

The police didn't recognize the irony when they tried to arrest him. But later when my cousin explained it to them, they thought it was pretty funny. Then they shook McDougal's hand and thanked him for saving them from the marrauding bears. Then they deported the whole band. Put 'em on a bus, and escorted them across the border.

As soon as the bus was back in the states, McDougal said, "Lonny, I'm sorry." Then he stripped off his clothes, jumped out of the bus, and ran butt naked into the woods.

When my cousin got back to Jackson two days later, McDougal was already there. He and two of the bears had stolen a Cessna 182 and flown straight in.

McDougal and thos bears were all high as Canadian sailors and had eaten the entire contents of my cousin's refrigerator, pantry, and trash cans.

My cousin legally changed his name the next day, and moved to Portland.

He later started a specialty coffee shop that's done pretty well.

McDougal's New Pants

You ever been pants shopping with McDougal?

The man has impeccable taste, and a wonderful sense of the keen juxtaposition of curves and lines.

He's always worn very tight pants. He has to have them specially made to contour to his gargantuan body.

Of course, McDougal doesn't pant shop at department stores. He gets all his pants from a tarp and awning manufacturer up in Toledo. They've been custom tailoring his pants since 1974, and they do a bang-up job.

I've been with him eight or ten times -- generally to provide moral and emotional support. Also, I help spot him on some of the heavier projects.

We were up there last May, and the man designed a pair of phenomenal banana yellow vinyl trousers that were so hot, they'd give the Pope a boner.

McDougal was so fired up about them that he refused to wait the mandatory six weeks for government approval. He paid the tailor an extra $4,300 to put an express order and complete the pants in 8 minutes.

The tailor was nervous when we left. He'd never prepared pants that tight and with that much fabric in so little time.

When we got on the plain back to Scranton, something happened at altitude, and the pants exploded.

The poor lady in seat 46AA (aisle seat) lost a foot and was permanently blinded in the accident.

The plain had to make an emergency landing in Detroit, and McDougal was escorted off the plane by Homeland Security officials.

He ended up meeting with John Ashcroft completely nude from the waist down.

Ashcroft made him a federal agent and gave him a medal.

Six weeks later, the awning company sent him a proper pair of pants. They even crafted a matching pair for me.

Now McDougal makes me wear 'em every time we go out.

McDougal's Wrath

I'll tell you the maddest I ever saw McDougal. The day he got out of prison, a Tuesday, first thing he does is pick me up from work in a stolen front-end loader. We cruise down the road smokin a leftover prison doobie, when all of a sudden he turns down the Ani DiFranco.

"You been fucking my wife?" he asks, well, not really asks as much as spits through a mouthful of McDonalds Apple Pie, "Rat Jimmy told me that's what you did all the time I was up in Pine Hills."

So I hand him over about $30k (Canadian) and beg for my life.

He whipped the front-end loader over to the side of the road and pulled me out and set me on the guardrail. He had a Prussian dagger in one hand and a pack of Kamel Reds in the other.

"You tell me one thing," he said, "when a whale gives birth," he was pretty much crying at this point and his knuckles were cutting straight through the muscles in my shoulders, "tell me they don't come up out of the water. Tell me they don't come up out of the water."

So I did, and he said ok, and we drove on back to his house, running over three animals and a track team on the way. I was scared, sure, but I'll tell you we both learned a little something that day.

The Early Years

When McDougal and I were in Elementary School we went out to the Charing Cross Whorehouse one November afternoon. I was maybe 10, 11 at the most and McDougal was like 23. We rode on griffins, and in those days he was on a real Bob Seger thing so we had to listen to "Greatest Hits 2" at full volume all the way out there.

We pulled in and stabled our griffins, and downed a couple of bottles of week-old Mai Tais. McDougal, goddamned crazy McDougal, busted in the door and yelled for their darkest Arabian chestnut hare. Being a whorehouse they didn't have any rabbits or anything close, which pissed him off even more. So he picks up this one girl and draws a map on her tits showing the Cherokee Trail of Tears, and it was pretty good I might add, showed the current cities and roads overlaid in this kind of faded color so it didn't detract from the original primitive landscape ... you really had to see it to fully appreciate it.

Anyway, he draws this thing out on her tits and then pours the rest of his Mai Tai down her gullet. So she's about drunk as can be and I'm just wanting to get home and watch GI Joe Cartoons, when he ups the ante by bringing in the entire cast of "Stomp". Damned if he doesn't hand every one of them a Bible, pair of Titanium bracelets, and a gatling gun - each one in a different color.

So we're all kind of standing there, not knowing what to say, and crazy ass McDougal clogs up the whorehouse toilet with a big stinking shit and then just walks out and goes home.

And that's the day I became a man.

HIV Positive

One time this Peruvian whore tried to give McDougal the dreaded HIV virus.

McDougal just laughed and laughed.

She didn't understand what McDougal thought was so funny.

When he peeled off his outer layer of skin, she figured it out.

Later, I asked McDougal how many extra layers of skin he had.

He said, "How many rings are there in that oak tree?"

Of course, I didn't know.

"Forty one," he said.

Dead as a Doornail

That reminds me, there was a day last year McDougal showed up at my door with three whores and a dog, all tied together and slathered in mucus. I said, "Hey it's McDougal," which of course was a mistake and he murdered me right there. Dead as can be.

So there I am, dead, with McDougal on my porch with his mucus-whore-dog. He's completely drunk, racked out on meth and Dimetapp, and he's got some sort of wireless television strapped to the top of his head. I think you can see where this is going.

So he carries us all in, me the whores, and the dog. Apparently, and I never knew this, he had built an underground laboratory under my house sometime in the late 60s, and he took us all down there and strapped us into some kind of whirling lightning bolt. One month later I'm opening my eyes and seeing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. That's right, old McDougal had brought me back to life as a Jimi Hendrix exhibit, complete with black skin and an acid bandana. There I was getting my picture taken all day long with families and old hippies, with McDougal just laughing and laughing. Goddamn him to hell, is what I said.

---

Ha! You're not the only one he's done that to. Remember Murray from A/P? That bastard's living out his days as a Pteranodon's assbone in the Natural History Museum.

I think McDougal's put shit under all of our houses. His own little subterranean empire is what he's got going.

This spring, my youngest boy was playing under the house, looking for spiders and vipers and shit, when he comes upon this trap door. Naturally, he opens it up and goes in. He ain't got a flashlight or nothing. Just goes on in.

Turns out, McDougal'd opened up a portal to hell right there under the master bath. And he'd rerouted our sewage to drain right down in there. So the boy goes to hell through a tunnel of shit.

He shows up stinking to high heaven, and they mistake him for the cable guy.

The devil says to him, "Son, we can't get the Starz channel."

Of course, the boy don't know shit about cable. So he says, "We get it just fine. Why don't ya'll come up to my place and we can watch it there."

So, I get home from a long day at the office, and what do I find? My boy, the devil, and six billion angry souls watching "Iron Eagle II" in my living room. Everyone one of 'em stinkin' like shit and lounging all over my furniture.

So I send the boy to his room and try to run out the devil and all the damned souls.

That's when the devil says he'll go, but he's takin' my soul with him.

So he takes my soul back under the house and straight to hell. Leaves me standing right there a soulless shell of a man waiting for the Nightly News with Bryan Williams.

So it comes on and wouldn't you know it ...

Lead story is about McDougal setting fire to a government-subsidized housing project, then singlehandedly going in and rescuing all the occupants. They were going to press charges, but McDougal had already built them a brand new luxury high rise with 300 fully furnished units and moved them into it that day.

Needless to say, I forgot about my petty problems and poured myself a tumbler of Jack and had one to McDougal.

Here's to McDougal, the kindest, most tender man I've ever known.

Is it true that McDougal has a homemade penile fistula?

Ice Flounder

Me and McDougal and some old college buddies were ice fishing up in Maine a few years ago. We used to go every year after McDougal lost his job at the steel mill. He'd been out of work for about four and a half years at that point, and McDougal said that was going to be the last trip he was going to be able to take, so we wanted to make it a big one.

Anyway, the fourth night we were up there, me and McDougal were the only guys out on the pond. Everyone else had either already gone to bed, or McDougal and stabbed and eaten them in the previous days.

McDougal looks over at me with those puppy dog eyes, and says to me,

"Harley," he always calls me that. "Harley," he says. "I need some money."

Now you all know how proud McDougal is. He wouldn't have asked if he didn't really need it.

So I say, "Sure thing, buddy. How much you need?"

Well, you know McDougal goes big when he goes.

He says to me, "Harley, I need three and a quarter million dollars."

"Jesus, McDougal," I say. "You know I don't have access to that kind of capital."

"Well," he says. "What kind of access do you have?"

I tell him I'm good for maybe six grand.

He says, "Six grand? I wipe my ass with that. Come on, Harley. I'll give it back to you ten-fold in two hours. But I need a significant investment here."

I say, "I don't know, McDougal. I can maybe scrub together like $20 grand if I know I'm getting it back."

"TIMES TEN" McDougal booms.

"Right," I say. Though I have to admit -- I'm doubtful.

"OK," I say. "Maybe $25,000."

"That's the spirit," McDougal says. Then he holds out his hand. No shit. He holds out his hand like I'm going to give it to him right there on the lake.

"I don't have it on me, McDougal."

"Well," he says. "How much do you have on you?"

I take out my wallet and count out $240 and another $200 in money orders.

He motions for me to give it to him.

I didn't want to, but I also didn't want to get stabbed and eaten. So I gave it to him.

That crazy bastard then takes all of it and dumps it in the lake. Right there in front of me. Dumps it in the lake and goes back to fishing.

I say, "McDougal -- that's my money for getting back home. What am I gonna do now?"

He doesn't say a word. Just keeps fishing.

Thirty minutes later, he reels in a massive flounder and says, "There. I told you I'd get your money back." He hands it to me and re-baits his line.

I say, "McDougal. I never seen anyone catch a flounder while ice fishing, and this is truly amazing. But I can't exactly pay for a hotel with this."

Well, McDougal's pissed at this point. He stands up and punches me dead in the face. Knocks out every one of my teeth. Then he yanks the flounder from my hands, cuts it open, and pulls out a gold brick and $3,200 in 100s and 20s.

He shoves the money in my mouth and puts the gold brick up my ass, then he walks off.

I couldn't find him for six months after that.

He didn't call me until he bought a house in Malibu and invited me and the kids out for a barbecue.

Auto Repair (Part Two)

As we all well know McDougal hates the Chinese. So one day we're sittin around watching Superbowl porn and he jumps up out of his beanbag and tells us he's going to take 30 Chinese and build himself a street rod. Damned if he doesn't have it, 2 hours later, the fastest machine you ever saw built entirely out of Chinese body parts and boxes of oatmeal. The fucking thing ran on 3 cycle oil and he had painted it fire engine red, Lord, it was a sight.

So he snorts a line of coke from the hood clear to the back bumper, says, "Let's go to Vegas," and throws her into gear and drives straight into the ocean. My eyes popped straight out of my head, literally, when he took that thing down to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and fucking laid open a castle full of snacks and video games. One of the Chinee, the one that he used his intestines for belts and an exhaust pipe, was hollerin and screamin but you couldn't hear him of course cause we were under about 20,000 feet of water. So McDougal, crazy ass McDougal, takes one of those weird ass deep sea sightless albino squid things and fucking goes to town on it, I mean TO TOWN, oral, anal, weird shit with spoons, I can't even remember it all. Next thing you know we're sitting back on the docks in New Jersey and he's bitching about the equator. God damn he's something else.

Auto Repair (Part One)

Before he joined the Marines, McDougal took a course in auto/body repair at the local junior college.

He dropped out after two days. When the instructor told him he'd never amount to anything, McDougal stole the guy's car (an old Chevy Nomad), stripped out the engine and did some work on it.

He ended up designing the next generation of rocket technology that to this day is more efficient and powerful than anything Lockheed Martin or McDonnel Douglas have been able to come up with.

He entered the car in a drag race up in Rock Hill and set the world land speed record that still stands to this day.

Later, when the military contacted him about his engine, McDougal said he couldn't tell them how he designed the engine because he'd shredded the plans, pissed on them, and fed them to his auto/body repair instructor's dying mother on her last day on this earth. He then sold the car to the Chinese, and lost all the profits in a craps game at some seedy indian reservation casino in upstate New York.

The Pentagon tried to bring him on as a rocket scientist, but you know McDougal. He ended up going infantry. Near the end of the war in Vietnam, he killed and ate his entire platoon. The Marines still gave him an honorable discharge, and they even gave him a medal.

When they tried to pin it on him, crazy old McDougal took the medal and stuck it in a falcon's eye and set it free. The falcon flew straight up into the air about half a mile. Then he burst into flames and came plummeting back to the award stage. McDougal slowly stepped out of the way just before the bird landed. Ended up killing two generals and a colonel.

Catty

You know how McDougal's got that thing where he's always eating cats, right?

Well a couple days ago, I was at the McDougals' place in the Hamptons and he was cooking up some cats on that 30-foot barbecue grill he's got. Then his neighbor, Paula Barbieri, comes over. She's wearing nothing but a six-inch grass skirt and a pair of old school Chuck Taylors. She says to McDougal, "You cookin' those cats again?"

McDougal doesn't even skip a beat. He puts his big mitt on Barbieri's right bosom and says to her, "Me and the boys are gonna be eatin' some pussy tonight. You can either join us, or go home and eat your own."

I'll tell you what ...

Nobody ate any cats that night. That's for damn sure.

McDougal may be a lunatic, but he's SMOOTH with the ladies.

Sweet Corn

Did I tell you about the time me and McDougal went to the corn maze up there in Iowa?

Yeah, me and McDougal went up with the families. McDougal's boy is a big kid. He goes about 6'2, 270. And he's just 9 years old.

Anyway, we get to the maze and my boy -- a smart, but sickly lad says to me, "Daddy, it's tremendous."

McDougal says, "Kid, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Then McDougal and his boy take off into the maze and me and little Timmy struggle to keep up. But those McDougals have those long legs and tremendous gaits. Within three minutes, they were two miles ahead of us.

I give McDougal a lot of room though. He's a big fella, and needs it. You know, he runs about 6'11", 430.

For a while we can see his head above the rows of corn. Then suddenly, it disappears, and we don't see it again for another half hour or so. Me and Timmy were hopelessly lost deep inside the maze. Then out of nowhere, some crazed bear comes charging at us. He's holding a chainsaw in one hand, and a World War II battleship in the other. I think it was the USS Missouri ... or maybe it could have been the Alabama.

Anyway, that bear charges my son and cuts his legs off with the chain saw, then fires 24 rounds from those big ass battleship guns right into his chest. The attack was so horrific that it put me in a state of shock, and I went into a coma for six months afterwards.

When I came to, I was in the bottom of McDougal's pool with a cement block tied around my neck.

I see McDougal on the surface with a garden hose in one hand, and a rusty pipe in the other. He drops the hose in the pool and drains its contents. When it's all gone, I realize that it wasn't water I was soaking in. It was genuine Kentucky moonshine. Needless to say, when it's all drained, McDougal's HAMMERED.

He pulls me out by my neck, and he's laughing hysterically. He tells me that "bear" was actually his son dressed up in a wookie costume and that after they cut off my boy's legs and shot him with that battleship they ate every bit of him except for his head, which they'd regenerated and brought back to life.

He then opens up this mini refrigerator with my boy's detached head in it.

He's all smiles, and he says to me, "Daddy, Mr. McDougal has a big screen TV and a collection of 4,000 Asian porn DVDs and snuff films.

We ended up turning the boy's room into a sewing room for my wife, and we keep his head in the garden, where he scares off birds and eats worms.

But I'll tell you what -- that kid's never been happier.

Engine Mounts

Was all that on the menu at the Italian restaurant?

Actually, I know what you're talking about. McDougal NEVER orders anything on the menu.

Back last August (after his 5th heart attack), McDougal and I were at a Denny's in Deer Springs, Missouri. The waitress (young girl, couldn't have been more than 18 -- cute ... looked like an American Michelle Wie) comes up to take our order.

McDougal's staring at the menu and he busts out (in French) with, "Yeah, sweetie. I'll have the engine mounts from a 1979 Desoto soaked in a light Brazillian pepper sauce and liver paste, warmed but not burnt, the ass end of a rodeo clown, and three hundred thousand fresh blueberries with a side of amaretto ice cream and a barium enema."*

The waitress doesn't even flinch. She just looks at me. I'm speechless at this point. I don't know what to say. So I just sit there, staring like an idiot.

Then McDougal orders me the Grand Slam.

I'd never had it before.

It was the best meal of my life.

~~~
* In the original French:
Ouais, bonbon. J'aurai les bâtis de moteur d'un Desoto 1979 imbibés dans une pâte légère de sauce et de foie à poivre de Brazillian, chauffés mais non brûlés, l'extrémité d'âne d'un clown de rodéo, et trois cents mille myrtilles fraîches avec un côté de la crême glacée d'amaretto et d'un enema de baryum.

Italian Restaurant

Ha, that's funny.

McDougal got blacklisted from our local Italian restaurant for pretty much the same thing. We walked in one night after raping a couple of Barnes and Noble's employees and McDougal sits down and orders - I shit you not - a burrito/taco combo plate, 3 orders of chips, a whole cow, four daquiris, and a dead Mexican. I'll be damned if he didn't just prop the dead Mexican up on a stool next to him when the order came out and proceed to stuff two of his tacos down its pants and start doing a goddamned Hat Dance on our table. He was whooping an yelling to beat the band and the wife of the Mexican was crying and of course the police came in but you know what McDougal did? He sat right down and penned a 400 page mystery novel set in the late 1800s Burkina Faso. I've never laughed so hard in my life, crazy old McDougal.

State Fair

Couple of years ago, me and McDougal were at the State Fair down in Columbia. Now you know McDougal's a big man. He goes like 6'9", 320. We get to the weight guesser and the guy shouts, "Hey, Golliath. Let me guess your weight."

McDougal takes a deep breath and swig of PGA from that half-gallon flask he always carries. Then he holds up his Churchill and spews the liquor all over it, sending a huge fireball at the weight guesser. Lights the guy up like a Roman candle.

McDougal just sits there while this carnie burns to death, jumping around, screaming, and just going nuts. It takes about 14 minutes for him to cook all the way through.

When he falls dead, McDougal leans in, picks the guy up, and swallows him whole.

He then looks over at the bearded lady and says, "You feel like guessing my weight, too, you nasty yak?"

She looks at him with those cold, black yak eyes, and says, "Probably about 402 after eatin' the weight guesser."

Goddamn if she wasn't right.

Meeting Mr. McDougal

Ray: Did anyone see McDougal last night? He had a blonde on one arm, the state of Missouri on his cock, and he was yelling at cars something about tit-fucking Paris Hilton with a ship mast. Goddamned crazy McDougal.

Frank: I saw him. After he ditched the blonde, fucking McDougal erected a life-sized statue of Tony Blair out of pats of butter. Then he ate the whole damn thing with a loaf of white bread. Goddamned crazy McDougal.

Ray: that was him? I'll be damned. I thought for sure that couldn't be McDougal, because I saw him 30 minutes earlier eating most of the population of Ontario while listening to an old cassette tape of Jesus Christ Superstar. I didn't think there was any way in hell after all that he could eat the butter Tony, but God Damn that man.

Frank: You saw that, too?

Well you must not have heard about what he did at the office before he left.

Randy and Ted from Accounting were grabassing outside of Melba's cube, and fucking McDougal walks right up to Randy and sucker punches him in the sphincter. His fist went clean through him and came out the other side grasping Randy's abdomen and an unopened pack of chicklets.

He then gives the Chicklets to Melba, but doesn't say a word to her.

He just looks over at Ted, and says, "Unless you want a fistful of hymen and a boot full of lead, I'd hit the road, nippledick."

Of course Ted high-tails it out of there right then.

Then McDougal leans in to Melba and kisses her on the neck.

Of course, she melts like that Tony Blair statue on a hot day in Trafalgar Square.

So he just bends her over the desk and takes her from the rear.

The whole thing took about 8 seconds.

It was the most magical 8 seconds I've ever had the privelege to witness.