Miss Virginia and the Thought Brigade

"Hey, I wonder if that's a vagina~`" McDougal says.

I follow his gaze and look out the window as we approach LAX. "I think that's the Pacific Ocean."

"No. Before that," McDougal says.

"The wing?"

"On my seatback."

McDougal's messing with the airsick bag.

"In your hands?" I ask him.

"No. No. Of course not. Hymen?"

"Are you asking or telling?"

"I'm hardly sure anymore," McDougal says.

I agree.

"We've left Virginia?"

"Some hours ago."

"And she's OK?"

"Who?"

"Virginia. How did she take it?"

"The state?" I wonder.

"Yes, what state was she in?"

"Confusion would be my guess."

McDougal wanted me to be certain. "I thought it was Virginia~`"

"We all did," I admit.

"And she's fine?"

"Who?"

"Virginia," of course.

"Dulles?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I agree."

You have to be careful with McDougal on an airplane. You have to be careful with McDougal most of the time.

"Then we should call her."

"Virginia?"

"The state?"

I don't know what to say.

"Will there be money involved?"

"I would imagine. Yes."

"Then we'll call her when the business is done."

"Who?"

"Virginia," of course.

We called the state Virginia.

And she answered.

McDougal's Movie Reviews - Snakes on a Plane

McDougal took an afternoon off from his busy campaign schedule to catch a matinee of Snakes on a Plane. I took this opportunity to transcribe his remarks and post them here.

Finally, a movie that delivers exactly what it promises. Look. There are clearly snakes. And a plane. This may be the best movie since Porky's. I like that Sammy Jackson Jr. The way he tap dances... When they make a movie about me I want that Sammy Jackson to play me. What? Yes, I realize he is black. It's called artistic license. Read a fucking book you nitwit. What goddamn airline is this?? Look at all that legroom! I wonder if they fly to Pago Pago... Wait a minute... Snakes don't have legs! This movie is full of factual errors. And I didn't like the part where the Crocodile Hunter guy got killed by a stingray. It should have been something really vicious, like a mastodon or an esquilax.

At this point, ignoring the fact that McDougal was confusing the movie with current events, I suggested that perhaps a crocodile would have been fitting. McDougal immediately knocked me unconscious with a tubesock full of sparkplugs. This prevented me from transcribing any further commentary.

How do you like your eggs... scrambled or fertilized?

MCDOUGAL CAMPAIGN TOUR - DAY 13

Campaign Manager's Journal 9/4/06 - somewhere in Georgia

Went out drinking with McDougal last night. He insisted that I was stressing out over the campaign too much and that if he got me laid it would lighten me up a bit. I had serious doubts about his ability to pick up women. At his best, McDougal is usually incoherent. At his worst... Well, imagine a cross between Hunter S. Thompson, a two-year-old child and a bear. You might be alright if you keep feeding it pills and sweets, but for the love of God... No sudden movements.

It was truly astounding to see the Big Man working his game. He can be unbelievably charismatic when the mood strikes him. Before I knew it we were sitting in a corner booth with two stunning South African stewardesses. These were no mere flight attendants. These girls were 100 percent leggy, blonde, stewardess eye candy.

McDougal decided we should assume fake identities to prevent the girls from tracking us down at a later date. I told my girl that I was tail-gunner on the Space Shuttle. McDougal told his stewardess that he was a park ranger at Devil's Toothbrush National Park. While I was whipping up a quick story about shooting one of the solar panels off of the Mir space station just to annoy the Ruskies, McDougal was leading his girl outside to show her a squirrel nest in a nearby tree. He told her that was where the squirrels went to lay their eggs. She asked McDougal if she could make him a squirrel egg omelet for breakfast in the morning. McDougal just laughed and said "you can't eat squirrel eggs honey, they've got fur on the outside!"

I woke up at about 3:30 this afternoon lying naked in the back of McDougal's bus. I had a used condom on my dick and a raging hangover. I had a speech scheduled for McDougal in Atlanta this morning. I have no idea if he gave it or not. And right now, honestly, I don't really care.

Patriots

McDougal LOVES American football. And by "loves," I mean he's never actually watched an entire football game. But he loves the concept.

So when he invited me to accompany him to the Rose Bowl, I was (to say the least) equal parts excited, confused, and scared for my life and for those of the Trojans and Longhorns. But I wasn't about to sit back and watch this bit of curiosity on the tele when I could have a ringside seat for what would surely end in sortid debauchery, crimes and misdemeanors, and most likely - cannibalism.

Of course, we never made it to the game.

McDougal said he had to stop and make a small withdrawal, which I knew before he even said anything meant "rob a small rural bank in Farmville, KY."

So there I was in the passenger's seat of McDougal's 1977 El Camino with a 40-pound bag of dogfood in my lap and a sawed off pump action 12 gauge fixed on a uniformed police officer, while McDougal went inside to make his withdrawal. Three states and two hours later, we were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where McDougal believed the Rose Bowl was to be played, with a duffle bag full of small unmarked bills and two exploded dye packs, and a dead hooker in the bed of the cruck.

McDougal was hopped up on pills, incoherent, had eaten the entire bag of Puppy Chow, and shat himself at least three times in transit.

"What now, Dougal?" I asked him -- not really expecting a response.

"Wait for it," McDougal says.

So I do. For three days, I wait. Then McDougal spots a small private jet on the horizon.

"That's our ride," McDougal says.

Minutes later, the craft - an old school learjet Model 23 - landed in a pasture and McDougal says we have to run for it. I'm not sure what the hurry is after sitting in that shit-stinkin' car for three days, but the big man insists, so I follow orders. I was slowed because he forced me to carry the duffle bag and the whore, who it turns out wasn't dead at all - just very tired.

We board the plane and are greeted by a man I recognize as Handsome Jimmy, a disbarred Florida lawyer who flew in Che Guvera's air force in the mid 60s. Handsome Jimmy doesn't speak, as his larynx was ripped out in a bar brawl in Des Moines, Iowa in 1982. He's got a midget sidekick who does all his spoken word communication for him. He calls the midget tattoo (in sign language), but his name's really Fast Mike. I knew Fast Mike from the Army of the Revolution. We fought together in the Battle of the Sexes. He's a good man. Shifty as hell, but a good man at heart.

Nine hours later, we're in Helsinki, Finland. Handsome Jimmy and Fask Mike are dead (bitten to death by sharks somewhere over the Atlantic), and McDougal is in respiratory failure. Thank God the dead whore knew how to land the plane. We were greeted by a fleet of Interpol officers, who resuscitated McDougal and helped us launder the dye stained cash.

McDougal and I just watched the NFC wildcard game on a 52" plasma TV. I told him we were at the Rose Bowl. He doesn't know. Looked like the Panthers were going to pull it out, but I'm not sure because McDougal ate the TV at the beginning of the third quarter.

If he asks, tell McDougal that the Panthers are the champs, and it was a great game. You might tell him that you ate your TV, too.

McDougal Saves Christmas (Part 2)

As I began to regain consciousness I expected that whistling to fade, but if anything it grew louder. I soon realized that I was hearing the wind shrieking through the shattered windshield of McDougal's Landrover. In the glow of the headlights I could see the hindquarters of eight reindeer the size of clydesdales, and beyond that only darkness. I turned my head slowly to the right, fearing a flashback from whatever was in those awful capsules. McDougal sat in the driver's seat holding not onto the steering wheel, but onto a pair of reins that snaked out through the hole in the windshield. He was wearing Santa's red coat and hat, and for a minute I would have sworn that he had somehow managed to grow a white beard while I was out cold, but as my head cleared I realized that he was merely foaming at the mouth. He seemed to be in unusually high spirits.

"Where are we?" I mumbled.

"Over East Berlin, I think," McDougal shouted out with glee. "Either that or Detroit. It's hard to tell the difference at this altitude!"

I was fairly certain this was a joke, but to this day I'm still not sure. McDougal's sense of humor is nearly as warped as his sense of direction. A surface-to-air missile arced toward us out of the darkness below, which did not entirely rule out Detroit, but seemed to point more heavily to somewhere in the Eastern Bloc. McDougal rolled down his window and tossed out an empty whiskey bottle. It struck one of the missile's stabilizer fins, sending it spiraling off in a safe direction.

"We're going to need to stop soon so I can refuel those reindeer," McDougal yelled over the howling wind.

"Refuel?" I asked.

"Yeah, the pills didn't really seem to agree with them. Completely uncontrollable! So I gave the ones on the right some mescaline and the ones on the left got absinthe. That seemed to level them off."

"Reindeer will drink absinthe?"

"They didn't go for it at first," McDougal explained, "but I mixed it in with a little egg nog and they really seemed to love that!"

He snapped the reins and the Landrover began to descend. As I began to get my bearings I realized that the roof of the Landrover was partially collapsed. The damage from our earlier accident was confined to the front of the vehicle. I wondered what McDougal had gotten into while I was out. The answer was immediately clear when, after a rough landing on the roof of a Bulgarian orphanage, I stepped out of the truck. Balanced precariously on the Landrover's roof was an oversized burlap sack. McDougal climbed up and began tossing toys down to me.

"We aren't seriously doing what I think we're doing?" I asked. McDougal laughed.

"Why the hell did you think I took the reindeer?"

"I don't know," I replied. "Just for shits and grins?"

"Oh come on," McDougal said, sounding hurt. "Does that really sound like something I would do?"

I remained silent and carried an armload of toys toward the roof's service access. When I returned McDougal was digging around in the back of the Landrover. Dozens of long crates were stacked inside.

"What are those?"

"Daisy air rifles," McDougal replied, pulling a roll of parchment out of his pocket. "Check this out."

He held the parchment out toward me and it unrolled down to his feet. Scratched upon it in tiny archaic script were thousands of names. As I looked at it the script snaked around, weaving itself into a new set of names. The letters held their positions for about a minute and then went through their transformation again, forming a third set of names.

"Naughty list," McDougal said, by way of explanation. "Do you believe that fat fuck was going to give all of these kids coal? Anyway, I dropped all of that coal off in Newcastle then made a beeline for the Daisy factory. There are more rifles in the sack."

"Where is the fa... Er, Santa, anyway?" I asked, still trying to absorb McDougal's BB gun distribution plan.

"Ah, I dropped him off at a safehouse in Cape Town. Come on, we've got a lot of work to do tonight if we're gonna pull this off." And with that, McDougal descended the stairs into the orphanage, dragging a bag of toys behind him. "Grab a couple cases of vodka too," he barked. "These little Ivans love that shit."

McDougal Saves Christmas (Part 1)

It was December 1972, McDougal and I were hiking through the Egyptian desert, dragging our scuba equipment behind us, when we came upon the wreckage of the sleigh. On a recent trip to London McDougal had acquired a looter's map marking the location of several intact tombs, filled with gold and other riches, that now sat at the bottom of Lake Nassar following the completion of the Aswan High Dam. Our plan was to retrieve the gold and smuggle it out of the country aboard McDougal's seaplane. Unfortunately, several miles short of our destination McDougal struck a wayward camel with his Landrover and we had to continue on foot.

McDougal immediately went to the aid of the sled's occupant, while I stood transfixed, staring at several quadruped standing at the top of a distant sand dune, backlit by the setting sun. I assumed they were more of those damned camels, but were those antlers on their heads? I shook my head to clear it and went to help McDougal extract the overweight gentleman from the overturned sleigh. McDougal was easily able to turn the sleigh upright. The man was unconscious, but otherwise seemed to have sustained no serious injury. I glanced around, noticing for the first time the huge debris field of brightly colored toys surrounding the crater in which the sleigh rested. I tried desperately to block the natural, but illogical conclusion from my head. McDougal, however, had no such internal struggle. The years of drug use have left him only the most tenuous mental separation between the worlds of fantasy and reality.

"Well, looks like the looting is out of the question," he muttered as he began to pick up toys. "At least for today anyway."

After a careful examination of the sleigh's remains I believe this is what happened. Santa Claus (there, I said it) was on a routine delivery to a local village of Coptic Christians when the Egyptian military, thinking him to be an Israeli combat aircraft, shot him down with a SA-7 missile. It makes perfect sense if you really think about it.

We immediately set to gathering up the spilled toys, coaxing the reindeer back into an orderly herd and treating the minor wounds of the unfortunate Mr. Claus. When we finished McDougal stood back and surveyed the scene. He then reached into his pocket and removed a large paper sack. This sack contained hundreds of large red and green capsules. McDougal tossed a handful into his mouth like gumdrops.

"What are those?" I asked.

"Christmas Spirit," he replied and howled like a banshee.

McDougal flipped one of the capsules to me and then began distributing them to the reindeer. I looked at the capsule for a minute, but then decided that whatever was about to happen next, I would probably be better off with something, anything, in my system than without and swallowed it down.

A cold feeling began to creep through my chest. My heart was hammering, I could feel my bloodpressure skyrocket. Every breath I took seemed to freeze my lungs, making it difficult to breath. Lines began to etch their way across my vision. Spirals with squared edges, Aztec patterns that formed into serpents, condors and jaguars. Somewhere to my left McDougal was whistling "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" off key. Then I could only hear myself screaming, the sound rising like steam escaping from a teakettle. I blacked out.

The McDougal Family Tree: A portrait in greatness (part 3)

Alert reader Carl Spackler writes, "whats mcdougal doing for thanksgiving? also, was he around for the first thanksgiving?"

Mr. Spackler, the McDougal family's arrival in The New World has been a hotly contested subject for many years. Certain factions of historians maintain that the McDougals have only recently immigrated to the United States and that many of the tales of their historical exploits are outright fiction. Some even go so far as to claim that The Great McDougal himself was foreign born. We here at the McDougal Center for Historical Research of Western Connecticut, the nations foremost center for McDougal family documentation, have long believed that a member of the McDougal clan was actually one of the earliest European settlers to arrive in North America. We are pleased to announce that our painstaking research has resulted in the discovery of the astounding tale of Johnathan James McDougal, Mayflower Stowaway.

That a member of the McDougal clan, legendary for drunkenness, whoring, drug use and all-around depravity would have fallen in with a group of religious nutcases like the Puritans is surprising indeed. However, pursued by various law enforcement officials, lawyers, creditors and mothers of illegitimate McDougal children, J.J. McDougal sneaked aboard the first ship leaving England that he was able to locate. When the McDougal finally revealed himself to the Puritans, after nine days at sea, they were none to pleased with his presence aboard their boat, and McDougal quickly began to loath their presence as well. No record survives of the numerous clashes that surely happened between the odd shipmates on the long voyage to America, but what is certain is that McDougal was immediately sent away from the Pilgrims upon their landing at Plymouth Rock to make his own way in the New World.

The Pilgrims surely felt that banishing J.J. McDougal into the unforgiving forest was a death sentence, but this does not seem to have bothered them in the slightest. However, they grossly underestimated the resourcefulness that has always been a hallmark of the McDougal line. Like the Pilgrims, J.J. owed his survival through that first harsh winter to the local indian tribe. McDougal found that each indian provided enough meat to last him for several weeks and their skins could be fashioned into warm clothing. He was careful not to over hunt the tribe, as it takes nearly two decades for an indian to reach full maturity. This casual approach to cannibalism is another one of those survival instincts that is hard-wired into every McDougal and has allowed them to become the successful family they are today.

The Pilgrims, meanwhile, took to farming, fishing and hunting of the local fauna to survive. When the time of the harvest arrived, they prepared a great feast to celebrate the bounty their new homeland provided. From his hideout in the trees McDougal smelled the wonderful aromas of the meal being prepared and was seized by a powerful hunger. Once the feast was prepared, and the Puritans began to take their seats, J.J. McDougal stumbled out of the woods clutching an indian skull filled with mead he had managed to ferment after raiding several beehives for their honey. The Pilgrims, shocked by McDougal's bizarre appearance and seized by a sense of Christian charity, allowed him to stay. McDougal spent the rest of the feast making a drunken nuisance of himself and gorging on the free meal. This started the Thanksgiving tradition of offering a feast to obnoxious and unwanted guests every November 24th.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here at Friends of McDougal.

Oh, and as for what The Great McDougal is doing for Thanksgiving this year? the same thing he does every year... He's going to get hopped up on pills, fly down to Tijuana at cactus-top level in one of his restored WWII fighter aircraft and catch a donkey show, then he's going to eat someone who looks like they might be an indian.

Flight Log (Flying with McDougal: Part II)

Live notes on traveling with the big guy ...

11:30 AM (EST)
I think McDougal just picked up Senator Gephardt's endorsement for President. There was a brief conversation, followed by shouting and a very minor physical altercation, which ended civil enough and involved the Senator handing McDougal the piece of paper below:

“Thanks for all your help, McDougal. Good luck in '08. (Something illegibly scrawled on the bottom – likely "fuck off")

(Meant to scan this, but technology not available.)

12:45 PM (EDT)

We're sitting in the taxi way of the airport. Flight is running very late.

McDougal keeps loudly saying to me, “Goddamn, Frank. There's plenty of chinks on this flight, huh?”

I asked him to please not say that again and he choked me for a minute.

He still has issues with his treatment during the Battan death march. (Historical records indicate McDougal was serving in the motor pool in Ft. Meade, Maryland, at the time of the march, but the old guy swears he was there. Anyway, he hates Asians.)

So the Japanese guy's sitting across from us and McDougal keeps looking over at him. He's reading a book in Japanese. McDougal's either fascinated or infuriated by this. Hard to tell. We're both shithouse drunk.

1:05 PM (EDT)

We're finally airborne.

Good news on this flight – a 757 with three-wide rows of seats. There's an empty seat in our row, but McDougal still insisted on sitting in the seat right next to me and sandwiching me into the window.

He keeps pointing at things outside he wants me to look at. Then, when I turn to look, he jams my face into the window. This makes him laugh loudly. Several people have moved to other seats away from us.

Second brush with fame of the day – the crew on this flight consists of George Taikei and the Oakridge Boys in skirts.

1:40 PM (EDT)
McDougal finally said something to the Japanese guy across from us. McDougal is usually pretty well spoken, so it didn't surprise him when he leaned over to the guy and yelled in his face, “Ching Chong Chinaman!”

He's done this three times in the past five minutes or so.

2:00 PM (EDT)

McDougal says his ass is asleep and he's doing windsprints up and down the aisle. (He always wears a parachute when he flies. George Taikei initially asked McDougal to check it. McDougal broke his own thumb, which somehow convinced George Taikei that he should be allowed to keep the parachute (and helmet, which McDougal has not taken off all day).

2:20 PM EDT

I just re-set my watch to Pacific time, which has infuriated McDougal. He says he's never heard of such a thing, and is now yelling at other passengers, asking them what time it is. He does not like that he has received three or four different answers (Eastern, Central, and West Coast times, plus someone just made some numbers up and told him.)

McDougal is now convinced that we're in a time machine, and he's crying about 1984 and his virginity. Oh, wait. 1484.

No.

Now he says just '84. Delete that floating comman thing, he says. Apostrophe. He doesn't want me to type the word apostrophe. His fist is the size of a canteloupe and he just punched me in the ear.

2:35 PM EDT

McDougal just yelled that “ching chong chinaman” thing at the Japanese guy across the aisle again.

The Chinaman, err, I mean Japanese guy just did some kind of karate chop thing on McDougal's throat.

McDougal's awake, but not moving. Weird.

Oh. He's paralyzed.

Thank God. I can finally get out to take a leak.

Traveling with McD

Sitting in the Detroit Metro. Airport right now.

McDougal's gone missing.

There's this psychedelic hallway with moving stairs and the big guy just completely freaked out on it. Worried we're going to miss our connecting flight ...

Actually may go on without him.

Flight here was terrible.

First off, McDougal's a big guy. Goes 'bout 6'9", 320.

He should have to buy 2 seats, but he never does. Whenever we travel, he insists I take the window seat and het get the aisle seat right next to me.

We board the plane, and find out seats. For some reason, he's freaking out to sit down. He shoves me into the seat, squeezes in next to me and goes nuts looking for his seat belt. The guy's frantic at this point.

He gets his seat belt on, leans over to me and says, "Yo, Betty, check this out, man."

I look over and he's got his "junk" out playin' with it.

then he pushes the stewardess button. she's busy tryin' to board the plane, but he starts screamin' for her. she comes over and he asks for help with his seat belt, and well ...

You see where this is going

anyway, she's a bull dyke. looks like Grizzly Addams in a polyester pantsuit.

She doesn't kick him off the plane or anything. they apparently know each other.

Holy shit -- that's Dick Gaphardt. Sitting right next to me.

I swear to God.

Pussy

McDougal stole my cat and smuggled it aboard an Argentinean freighter bound for Morocco.

The cat died en route and McDougal brought him back to life with an alternator from a 1978 Chevy Nova, a TI-99/4A with a voice synthesizer and a holographic picture of a Yorkie Terrier.

When the vessel arrived in Morocco, McDougal presented the resurrected cat to the king of Amsterdam, who in exchange freed McDougal's commonlaw wife from the secret Moroccan dungeon, where he'd kept her locked away for nearly 16 years.

When she emerged, she'd grown a full Oak Ridge Boys beard, and was wearing only a leather thong and an Ocean Pacific half shirt.

McDougal immediately shit his pants, took back my cat, and flew straight back to the states.

When he landed on my front lawn, I said, "McDougal -- I didn't know you could fly."

Well, neither did McDougal.

And I still have that damned cat.

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.