McDougal is a Survivor...

I'm not talking about his skills as a woodsman, although those skills are considerable, and I'm sure as shit not talking about the reality television program. I'm talking about the rock and roll band. Now don't expect to see McDougal up there on stage playing bass (McDougal plays bass, of course) on "Eye of the Tiger" if you go to see Survivor at your state fair or local rib cookoff. He hasn't played with them in decades, but McDougal was part of the original lineup. I mean, the original, original lineup, not the one you see in official band bios and all that. Back then they were called The Survivors and they played a very different style than what Survivor eventually became famous for. It was sort of an electrified Balkan folk/Prog rock fusion thing... It's hard to describe. But McDougal was the visionary behind the whole thing and when he decided to leave the band to pursue a solo career, well the rest of the band had no choice but to seek out a different style of music to play. But notice I said McDougal is a Survivor, not was. You see, out of respect for McDougal's musical genius the band has a standing order that if, someday, McDougal shall return he may claim his place as bandleader with no questions asked.

Rodeo

From 1978 to 1990, McDougal was on the professional rodeo circuit. In an attempt to clarify some of the confusion/conflict over the number of rodeo records he holds, the Friends of McDougal research wing has interviewed a few of those who were close to him in those years:

• "That son of a bitch was quick as lightning and twice as furry." ~ Grandma McDougal
• "McDougal was like a mandarin drake when he mounted his mighty steed." ~ A mandarin drake
• "Bullriding is an art that most people cannot fully grasp, like the post-Romantic German movement of the early 30s or the music of Sigur Ros. It took a crossover star like McDougal to bring it to the masses so that Everyman could - Oh God, not my fucking hand!" ~ Ben Kingsley, as his hand was being sawed off by a table saw
• "MacDougal? What is that? Some kind of a Goddamn Scotsman? You know what I like? The Choctaw. Really, just anyone sort of brown hued." ~ Tamerlane O'Shea
• "McDougal comes in the dark of night, castrates the men, and rapes the women. Some call him the CHUPACABRA!" ~ An 11-year-old Mexican boy
• "McDougal was a bright star who burned hot and fast like a star that burns bright and fast and then goes out. No. Wait. Make that like a birthday candle that someone blows out. But like a really big one. Like if the birthday candle burned with the heat of 300 suns andthen some big powerful being (Allah, Zeus, God, whatever) came and blew it out. Only when they blew it out, you could see this thing that you knew used to be really hot, but it was obviously just blown out, but could maybe re-ignite at any minute ... you know ... if it hadn't already burned up. Kind of like a match or something." ~ Lech Walensa
• "I'd eat his bloody fucking heart." ~ Bono
• "He would, true as word." ~ The Edge
• "McDougal's way too big to ride a horse." ~ A horse
  
  

Delirious Mangina

McDougal wrote this song last night and demanded I post the lyrics here. It's not a song as much as it's him screaming these words while banging away on a rusted Frigidaire with a boat anchor:

I live in a sock
Broke down jock
My hair is taunt
On this wicked October jaunt

Pig tails and ice cream dreams
Muffling the one-eyed stripper's screams

Missing three teeth
On the back of my neck
Constables for peace
And I'm a burnin' wreck

Missed on the free government cheese
Asked the wizard, can I have some please?

Magic cheese on a crisp fall night
One of my parents was not white

My heart is black from all these pills
Chemically solving society's ills

Rabbits live in my left shoe
And ain't much more for me to do

Crap on a rat
Eat my hat
Growing fat
And that's where it's at
That was blood I spat
On your black cat

Leaves are turning
Heart is burning

And it's with this devil I dance
Too tight - these pants

~~~~

The man's gone over the ledge into the black abyss. I haven't seen him in this state since Laos in '74. I fear he's nearing his end.

Pork v Prok

I want to know why everyone thinks McDougal has something against the pork industry. Let me tell you bloody fucking porkers a little story about when I was in the Army with McDougal.

It was the summer of '84, and we were holed up near Phnom Penh. We were surrounded by peasant zombies, who were intent on eating our brains. McDougal's mind was blown on a pound of premium Iranian hash and CIA-issued brake fluid, but he was still sharp as a tack.

I looked up at him and he had this kind of half-smile, half cryface on and he was listening to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes on his Sony "Walk Man". I was making sweet love to a buxom Irish barmaid we brought along for entertainment, and the rest of the troops were making a hollandaise sauce in the puptent, so to speak.

"Buck Rogers, stop fucking the irishman and get ready, here come a shitload of flesh eating zombies."

I hear the telltale swishing and groaning of the approaching zombies and fear strikes me temporarily flaccid. McDougal is still perched up on the gunnery wistfully singing CSN&Y. All at once he is shooting in 40 different directions, his body a blur of fire and metal as he mows down a hundred slack jawed zombies. I see one creeping into the mess tent and getting his rotting mits into the hollandaise sauce. "McD!" someone yells as his head is being ripped off, "the sau--" and Bam, McDougal is on him like shit on grass, the bullets tear the zombie from his ill-gotten ladle and before I can pull a scream from my throat Tullis and Pettyjohn are getting the ladle back into the pot and cleaning out the pieces of zombie from the sauce and surrounding cooking area. Then I hear another creak and off to my left in the latrine there are three zombies building a Jenga tower with toilet paper tubes "MCDOUGAL" I scream and he's launching a rocket into their fucking faces one for each one of their goddamned stupid fucking faces....

I'm sorry. Every time I let my mind go back to that place I ... I'm sorry.

So anyway, I hope that makes a difference.

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.

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.

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.