McDougal Fast Blast

McDougal has 372 college degrees, including 35 Doctorates and 59 Honorary Degrees. But the degree that he is most proud of, the one that hangs above McDougal's mantle, is his Associates Degree in Slot Machine repair from Route Six Community College.

The Secret Files

This morning, I was attempting to locate our former campaign manager's files and came across McDougal's stash of personal documents. Since we've nothing better to report (bus still broken down in Minnesota and McDougal's gone missing again), I will share some of the contents of the dozens of three-ring binders containing documents scrawled in mixed media, including crayon, blood, and charcoal.

The first binder I opened was an incomplete autobiography on the big man dating back to 1114 B.C.

Excerpted from McDougal's unpublished autobiography and translated from the author's Portuguese:

(Please forgive any erroneous translations, as my Portuguese is not as strong as I had thought coming into this deal.)

The $40 Lay
by McDougal

In the steamy willows outside Baton Rouge, for which my hamburger with fries gets its nickname, I found the best $40 lay of this heretofore confounded millenium.

Let me tell it to her from the beginning.

I was flying a Corsair 2380A mock-up at 10000' with Ashcroft at the rotors when I saw the twinkle of a harlot's attractor in the bayou. "The Pipeline can wait" I told my mike, which just so happened to be wired to Ashcroft's ear. We dropped her down to telephone wire altitude and "to hell with CINCLANT" as we used to say to the bank over Bloody Marys, "let's bed some of Louisiana's finest".

I set her down in a marshy lot meant for local necking and the dropping of tonnage that I would not like to know of what character. The blades sang their quieting song as I donned my black stealth enviroblenz suit, earpiece with extrasensorial sensors, a briefcase full of Red Stripes,
Galaendeaewagean spark plugs, and condoms. I quickly killed Ashcroft as I realized he was a commodity whose options had recently become undesirable.

With a small GPS screen surgically inserted into my left palm (just before Burma, God help me), I tracked my coordinates and had a cheese danish and a Red Stripe mixed with whiskey. I found myself 3 miles from my intended lay, and daylight was rapidly approaching feathers.

"How do I get myself into these infernal situations?" I asked my small stuffed representation of Tubbs (from Miami Vice), which I carry for just such situational quandaries. I pulled his string and a muffled Tubbian Fishmonger voice told me "chase her down, pull her over, and give her the old Mallory Keaton, Ha Ha!"

I knew then that I must tennis match on.

Pulling a few shoots of browning swampgrass aside, I viewed my obective with the naked eye. In a ramshackle delicatessen or theatre with blazing oil lamps was the entire 2-Year-College of Natchitoches Swampers Cheerleader Flag Brigade en flagrante, dancing to the soundtrack of Risky Business.

I winked at an imagined vision of my left, and downed another Red Stripe. It looked to be an all nighter for "The Rouge Baton".

I flew through the door with guns blazing; girls screamed and hid under discarded panties and pom poms.

"McDougal is here!" I yelled,"and I want my Red Baron Pre-Heated!" The screams were replaced by vaguely muffled moans of interest from the four corners of the room, as the young dancers realized what fortune had brought them this hot and humid night.

"Put away your guns, Mr. McDougal," louder a red-haired young baton twirler, "We have some Red Stripes chilling in the icebox, if you'll have us - I mean them!" she reddened and giggled, waddling away as I patted her on the rump.

The rest, shall I say, is water under the moorings. I didn't finish the Pipeline until September aft, and I told the Baronial Ass who monitors flights to boil his head in a pot of cooking sherry and asparagus-tainted urine. As for the girls, well, the most piquish four were brought back to the Compound for a little reunion tour a few weeks ago, the rest have been 'hitting my digits' for phone sex at a silly rate, so much in fact that I gave them Edmonton's number.

Oh, and the $40, you ask? Still in my pocket, ha! I think if you're looking for a lesson in my little tale of indelicacies, it lies somewhere between the legs of a pre-law student in Crystal Springs.

The Quotable McDougal (#5)

"I had to go to Columbus, Ohio one time to give a commencement address at The Ohio State University. That's the way they say it. THE Ohio State University. Pretentious fucks. That's actually how I started my commencement address. Anyway, Columbus is a weird town. Everyone you meet there wants to sell you heroin, but you can't find a single person who will let you swim in their pool."

Teen People Interview

Every year when I come home for the holidays, I sneak into the attic and go through my old foot locker full of childhood memorabilia and half-empty bottles of stolen liquor.

At the bottom of my trunk, I found an issue of Teen People Magazine with McDougal on the cover. As you can imagine, I was quite shocked at this find.

This magazine is an important part of the McDougal lore because it contains one of the only known photos of McDougal in recorded history.

I've taken the time to copy the transcript of the interview from this issue.

Who is McDougal?
Ten Questions With Archibald McDougal
By Sassy Montgomery
Teen People Magazine

This being my first assignment with Teen People, I was a little apprehensive when my editor told me I was going to be tasked with uncovering the mystery that is McDougal. I was hoping to spend the day with the man, to really learn how he lives and be able to uncover what makes him tick.

Unfortunately, McDougal's handlers would not allow me direct access to him, and he agreed only to conduct the interview using a confusing combination of ship-to-shore radio, semaphore, Morse Code, and smoke signals. McDougal would only answer ten questions, and there would be no follow-up on his responses.

1. Who are you?

I am a man, same as you.

2. But I am not a man. I am a young lady.

That's question number two.

3. But that wasn't a question.

Three

4. OK, umm ... When were you born?

I was born in the Pleiades in the Electra solar system.

5. I said "when" not "Where".

Time is of little matter to me. I am eternal as Ross Martin's career.

6. Who is Ross Martin?

Artemis Gordon of "The Wild, Wild West."

7. Has he done anything since that show?

Don't be foolish. He was in "The Return of Charlie Chan," "The Three Robonic Stooges," "Greatest Heros of the Bible," and "I Married Wyatt Earp." The man's a legend.

8. How many questions do I have left?

Two.

9. How do you earn a living?

No man earns a living. Life is a gift bestowed upon the deserving and undeserving alike. Only the great man appreciates this gift and capitalizes on it.

10. How do you capitalize on it?

That, my dear young friend, is the question of the universe, isn't it?

11. Are you asking me a question?

No more questions from you. It's my turn now.

12. OK.

13. So how do you capitalize on it?

14. I'm not sure how to number these anymore.

Do not use any more numbers. Ever. Never mention numbers again as long as you live.

OK.

So how do you capitalize on it?

Umm ... by taking time to --

Don't mention time. It involves numbers. Let's desist the quantitative view of life.

OK. Then ... I capitalize on the gift of life by savoring every moment.

No. There is only one moment. Right now. The past and future are illusory. They're like numbers that way.

I don't understand.

Then you're retarded.

Am not.

You're denial only proves my point.

What point?

Ha! Now you've got it. There is no point.

No point to what?

There is no what.

Then what is there?

Nothing. Only this moment.

What about everything I've done before and will do from here on.

What have you done?

Well, I graduated from Summa Cum Laude from Vanderbilt University.

There you go with the numbers again.

Who am I talking to?

Who am I?

I thought I was going to be interviewing McDougal.

As did I.

You thought you were going to be interviewing McDougal?

I did. And I am.

No, you're interviewing me.

I am.

And who do you think I am?

Who do you think you are?

I don't know.

I do.

Then why question me, if you already have all the answers.

I'm not.

Yes you are. You asked me how I capitalize on the gift of life.

I did nothing of the sort.

You asked me.

Yes, I know. But you turned it around and then asked me.

Did I?

Umm ... Yes. I think so. Yes.

And did you answer?

Yes, but you said my answer was wrong.

There are no wrong answers.

Then I was right?

There are no right answers.

I don't understand.

There are no answers.

Only questions?

There are no questions, you said so yourself.

No, I said you shouldn't count my statements as questions.

Then what should I count them as?

Nothing. You shouldn't count them.

My point exactly. There should be no counting.

But you said I could have ten questions.

And who am I to tell you how many questions you might have?

Uhh ... McDougal?

There is no McDougal.

Then why am I here?

Why are you here?

To interview McDougal.

And have you done so?

I tried.

So you deem the attempt a failure? How did you plan on measuring your success? With numbers?

Well ... no. I just wanted answers -

There are no answers.

Then why did you agree to the interview?

I never did.

Then why did you agree to talk to me?

I never did.

Yes, I have the letter right here. You said I could ask ten questions via smoke signals and those other things.

There are no other things.

Of course there are.

Then what are they?

Well, lots of things. Too many to list right now. I could never list them all.

There is nothing to be gained by accounting or recording.

Well, I have to record this interview.

Why?

So people will know what you said.

But I've said nothing.

You can say that again.

But I've said nothing.

Well, actually you've said a lot of things. It's just that most of them didn't make any sense.

I've said nothing.

Then who did?

Hello?

Rocky Mountain High

In some ways it's not so bad to be eating sushi off John Denver's back, but in other ways, it's one of those things that in retrospect you know you wouldn't do if it wasn't for McDougal.

McDougal LOVED "Rocky Mountain High". He would play it over and over again, this was in the days before he could make a tape of the song back to back, or a cd of nothing but that song repeating over and over again, or fill an 80GB iPod with 16,000 320kbps mp3s of the exact same song. Back then he would just hit rewind on the 8-track and he got to where he could hit the beginning of the song to the second and yell FUCK YEAH at the top of his bong-ravaged lungs.

Most times it would make him cry, or shit himself, or blubber. If he saw it in a jukebox out somewhere he would destroy the jukebox, saying he was pulling the "essense of the song" from the machine or some late-70s horseshit like that. He claimed Fleetwood Mac as Mr. Denver's sworn enemy, and single-handedly caused the band to break up and impregnated that girl with the long black dress and would have impregnated Lindsay Buckingham except men cannot be impregnated.

So one day he hauls off and kidnaps John Fucking Denver. I was like, "McDougal, you can't do that." He tied Mr. Denver down to a table and we ate all our meals off him, and the poor guy had to pretty much sing that same song 24 hours a day. If McDougal fell asleep, Denver would beg and plead with me to set him free or feed him some food or blah blah blah, and of course McD would hear him and wake up and start blubbering and beating him about the torso. Then Denver would shut up and sing and we were pretty much like that til 1987.

Summer of 87 I let John Denver free mainly because I was so Goddamned Sick of that song. McDougal I don't think even noticed, he was heavy into Nordic Metal and was busy with graduate school.

The day John Denver died, McDougal called me up and said "Sally, want to go down to Mexitown and get some cheap ponchos?" I did, and that led to the icefishing incident I told you about in July.

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.