A message from the Editor's desk.

Greetings faithful readers, and welcome to the first ever Freinds of McDougal Behind the Scenes Week!

Sorry it's a bit late, first of all. We had every intention of starting Behind the Scenes Week yestereday morining, but in hindsight this was an unrealistic goal. Sunday mornings are reservered for hangovers. Everybody knows that. The revised goal of Sunday afternoon was also unrealistic, as sunday afternoons are reserved for league softball. (We played the writing staff from that "Lonelygirl" blog yesterday. It was a squeaker, we ended up losing 9-8, which drops us below .500 and pretty much destroys all hope of capturing a wild card spot) Afterwards we were really in no condition to write a blog entry, which is perfectly understandable for anyone who has ever played league softball. I mean, what would softball be without beer and peyote, right? I had high hopes for sunday night, since there would be no football this week. But sports betting is a longstanding tradition here at the office and McDougal wanted to use the off weekend to work everyone up to a pre-superbowl frenzy by staging, right in the office, a cockfight between roosters named "Bear" and "Colt." For the record, Colt won, but lost his left eye in the process. Place your Superbowl bets acccordingly.

Anyway, here it is, Monday night, and we realized that we should either delay the start of Behind the Scenes Week, or someone had better write something. Personally, I was in favor of another delay, but the guys in the mailroom are sick of answering angry letters from someone named "Carl Spackler." There are more employees in the mailroom than on the editorial staff, so they managed to carry the vote. McDougal abstained, which is to say he is still passed out, and the writing staff has used "Behind the Scenes Week as an excuse to take a week's vacation. I think that's bullshit, by the way. Ever since they added the screenwriting division they;ve been taking more and more time off. Everyone else had to work over the holidays, but they all skated out somehow, which was a bit hit to the quality of this blog in my opinion. Last year's Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's segments were some of our most popular ever, but this year the website sat idle for all three. Not a peep from management about it either. Too busy getting sucked off by the writing staff I guess...

Oh, I guess I'm supposed to answer some letters too. OK, our first letter comes from alert reader Josh Williams, of Indianapolis, India.

Josh writes:

When McDougal bitch slaps you and humiliates you in front of your friends for doing or not doing your job do you pray to God that you are fortunate enough to have a job in retail?

Retail? Josh, I am an editor, with twelve years of experience. I do not work in retail. OK, yes.. I do also maintain the website that sells Starbox Productions t-shirts and McDougal trinkets, but I don't consider myself to be a "retail worker." I have a master's degree. As for the beatings at the hands of McDougal, they are frequent and severe. During them I often pray to God, Josh, but mostly I pray that the beating will end. Failing that, I pray that I will black out before the sodomy begins.

Our next question comes from the aforementioneed Carl "Hot Carl" Spackler*:

which does mcdougal prefer...coke or pepsi?

Coke, Carl. Kilos and kilos of coke. Without McDougal the economy of Columbia wouulld collapse overnight. McDougal does like Pepsi too, though. Sometimes he wil mix the two. He will mix them into an enema, for quicker absorbtion, which I will then be forced to inject into his anus. He says the bubbles tickle. The whole time he giggles and kicks his feet. It can be quite dangerous. I've had my jaw broken before.

Well, that's all we have time for today.** Join us again tomorrow when we will be answering more reader questions on Friends of McDougal: Behind the Scenes Week!

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* As far as I know Carl Spackler does not go by the nickname "Hot Carl," however, as this is a popular internet nickname for anyone named Carl, I have included it here. This is what editors do.

** This is a baldfaced lie. I have all the time in the world. Truthfully, when I started writing this I was still a little drunk form last night. But as time wore on, my buzz wore off and now I can feel the iron grip of a massive hangover imbeding its jagged fingernails into my skull. My left eye is twitching. I have nothing but contempt for you all.

Did somebody say McDougal's?

For a few years in the late 1970s most of the delis in New York City were selling a kind of a sandwich called "The McDougal." The Big Man's vices were considered excessive by even the Studio 54 crowd, which is saying quite a lot. Of course, in '70s New York that was exactly the kind of thing that would make one a celebrity. The sandwich was as excessive as the man whose name it bore. A whole Virginia ham was thin-sliced, topped with a full wheel of melted Stilton cheese (which stunk like sweaty feet), a whiskey-mushroom sauce and grilled Scotch Bonnet peppers, all of which was served between two family-sized chicken pot pies. The price was also excessive, averaging at $149.99. Most chose to split the cost and the sandwich among a large group because of the enormity of both, but not everybody would share. Elvis Presley particularly fond of The McDougal during the year preceding his death. Now, unless you knew of a deli that was truly disreputable, you couldn't get The McDougal prepared in what the in crowd considered the real way it should be served: topped with a generous mixture of cocaine and heroin. It was up to you to add that particular finishing touch. It is rumored in certain sandwich circles that it was actually an over-seasoned McDougal that took the life of John Belushi. I'm not sure I believe that though. Today it is impossible to find a deli that will even admit to knowing about The McDougal. Every once and a while I hear about some back alley deli in an unfashionable neighborhood that has put The McDougal back into production, but so far all have turned out to be mere rumors. It seems that kind of irresponsible sandwich-making died out with disco.

McDougal Saves Christmas (Final Chapter)

After dropping off the load of toys for the orphans McDougal topped off the reindeer with mescaline and absinthe and we rocketed off into the cold December air. We continued on Santa Claus's rounds, supplementing the toys with BB guns, slingshots, liquor, cigarettes, pornographic magazines, small animal traps and anything else that caught McDougal's eye. Entering the homes became a bit of a problem. McDougal made a valiant effort at sliding down chimneys, but he just didn't have a knack for it. After trying several other tactics we finally decided on simply kicking doors in and tossing the toys inside. Guard dogs were a problem. McDougal knows a highly effective canine sleeper hold, but this takes a few minutes even when the dog does not struggle, which is rarely the case. For expediency's sake many of the dogs (and one medical helper monkey) had to be dispatched using McDougal's silenced 9mm handgun. We left a few extra presents at these houses.

When we finished with Europe McDougal swung the Landrover south, landing in a small village in Afghanistan.

"McDougal, I don't think they celebrate..."

But before I could finish, the big man was out of the truck like a shot.

"This will only take a minute," he yelled over his shoulder as he disappeared into the darkness.

McDougal returned a short time later clutching an armload of tightly wrapped bundles.

"Had to finish my Christmas shopping," he explained. "This place has the best hash."

Once again we flew off into the night. I assume that Santa Claus follows some type of orderly pattern when he makes his annual rounds. McDougal did nothing of the sort. We zigzagged across the globe, collecting nearly as much stuff as we gave out. In Columbia we picked up a bale of uncut cocaine. In Zimbabwe we picked up ivory and rhinoceros horns. In Baghdad we picked up a solid gold AK-47 that had "Uday" engraved on the side. In the Philippines McDougal picked up a pair of champion fighting cocks, and I picked up a particularly virulent case of gonorhea.

As we walked back to the Landrover McDougal looked at his watch.

"Fucking hell! We've got to pick up the pace! We'll head to the United States next, get that finished up."

"Once we get there can you just drop me off at my apartment?" I asked. "I'm tired, hung over and my cock is on fire. I don't think I can handle any more of this."

"Nonsense," McDougal roared, "you've just run out of Christmas Spirit!"

He flipped me another capsule. That was really the last thing I needed at that point, but I was suffering so much that unconsciousness did seem pretty appealing. I swallowed it down and waited for the freakout to set in. As my vision started to fade, slumped in the Landrover's passenger seat, I heard McDougal say "this ought to speed things up." I watched him reach into the back, remove one of the air rifles and take careful aim at the hindquarters of one of the lead reindeer, either Dasher or Dancer I guess. I buckled my seatbelt. McDougal's voice, seeming to be coming from very far away, "But I guess if you really want to be dropped off I can work something out..." That oppressive coldness in my chest. The snap of an air rifle and the Landrover giving a sickeningly violent upward jerk. Sleigh bells... Sugarplums...

A cold concrete floor and the smell of urine. A voice barking at me in Arabic. I don't speak Arabic. A large hand dangled a Ziploc bag full of red and green capsules in my face. More Arabic. Then a kick in the ribs. I coughed up a bit of blood, but my vision cleared a bit too. Thank Allah for small miracles. I was in a cage. No, a cell. That bastard McDougal was nowhere to be seen. But there was that Egyptian prison guard waving the bag of capsules, screaming at me now, still in Arabic. A second guard swam into view. He leaned in close and said quietly in thickly accented English, "He says 'Are these your pills?' You should answer. You are in big trouble sir."

All Saints Day Update

McDougal just beat a girl in a sleeping bag to death with ... a girl in a sleeping bag.

Oh wait.

That was Jason Vorhees.

Goddamn, I LOVE COCAINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Huxtables

The one thing McDougal really hates is Pi. I don't mean Pi to the 10th or 11th decimal, I mean Pifuckin' Pi, like out to the 80th or 90th place.

So one day we're riding the train into Tegucigalpa and I'm raking in about $60K in whatever the fuck they use for money in Tegucigalpa, maybe chickens or rocks. McDougal is playing the part of out-of-town rube, and I'm pretending to be a tungsten miner from outside Comayagua.

I don't speak a word of Honduran and the game was not going well, but in typical style The D plays it off by standing up and announcing, "cortamos las tarjetas, el hombre con la tarjeta más grande me soplaremos" which brings down the house. Two of the guys are spitting mad, and it's all the train conductor can do to hold them back. A few other guys and this one naked chick are kind of into the offer though, and so they put down their ante.

Next thing you know, we're doing coke and eating clams with Ahmad Rashad and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Now just stay with me, this is where Pi comes into play.

So we're all splayed out in the pool, and McDougal has this huge chicken breast on a stick. Natrone Means (#30) swims up and splashes McDougal, getting both the chicken and his big pile of coke all wet. The Big Man just kind of coughs out a laugh, and drinks the poolwater-cocaine slush off his belly as fast as he can. This was bad luck for the Jaguars because of two reasons:

1. cocaine and chlorine do the following in your brain:

N2(g) + 3H2(g) ↔ 2NH3(g) + ΔH


and

2. McDougal, in this instance, was forced as he twisted diagonally on his raft into the pool to guesstimate the circumference of the arc of his chicken breast on a stick as it flew in the opposite direction.

So in this 3 second span of time - I want you to try to imagine this - you can see McDougal's face run from bliss (chicken/coke) to surprise (Jaguar/splash) to fear (cokechicken/fall/pool) to sorrow (cokepool) to dawning realization (chicken/arc) to incredulosity (arc/math) to wrath (Pi) to murder (Natrone) and back again to bliss (eating/Natrone).

Rashad and I were laughing to beat the band at this split second display, just laughing til tears poured down our cheeks. And that's why to this day crazy ass McDougal will smash any TV that is playing the Cosby Show, or that show with Theo Huxtable with dreadlocks.

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.