The Rake Magazine

^{photo from Pander Watch}

(read aloud)

Obama!

Obama, mama!

Obama mama, blackjack!

Obama mama blackjack, jackpot! Smoke a lot?

Brain rot?

 

Minnesota

pep rally, rock show! Let's go! Cash flow!

Are we here? Do we know? Where to go? Say so!

Minnesota slam dunk. In the trunk. No junk.

Put it in the mix, punk!

 

Hoosier daddy

Indiana Tarheel store bought fortune wheel.

No more vacant lots. Hard fought short shots.

Jacka lacka jackpot. Spin the lever. Maybe not.

Don't forget to get the pot.

 

Summer winner?

Who knows? Who cares? Cash flows down stairs.

Hoosier daddy, where'd he go? Izzy at the rock show?

Scalpin' tickets on the street? Where to meet to beat the heat?

Save the country from the dogs, high hogs, rollin' logs.

Save the country sez you, home brew! Who to screw?

Are we in a hot spot? Be cool, somethin' new.

 

Tell a vision

Sunday morning on the tube. Am I just another boob?

Tell it to me wholesale. Rock The Nation; find the Grail.

Are ya lyin' press corps? Tell me just a little more.

Over under, what's the score?

Who's a whore?

 

Revolution,

is it real? Can you feel?

Buy a T shirt?

 

(not to be confused with "God Bless America")

 

In the wake of the Great War there was Dick Tuck, and Dick Tuck begat Donald Segretti, and Donald Segretti begat Karl Rove. Karl Rove's further begetting remains undisclosed.

Dirty tricks come to politics when politics become seriously political. Before Richard Nixon spends those Watergate dollars burgling Democrats' offices and spying on their psychiatrists, Nixon himself is dogged by campaign mysteries and malfunctions of suspiciously organized origin. Nixon's hound is Democratic political operator Dick Tuck (his real name; you can look it up).

Tuck begins his career with Helen Gahagan Douglas, Nixon's 1950 opponent for US Senate; later he squires for presidential crusades of Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. In each campaign, his best remembered assignment is to make Richard Nixon look foolish. Sometimes this is not a difficult task. After Nixon's first 1960 TV debate with John Kennedy, legend portrays Tuck hiring an elderly woman, who wears a large Nixon button, to greet Nixon as he exits a plane, plant a kiss on his cheek, and gush, "That's all right, Mr. Nixon. He beat you last night, but you'll win next time." In 1968, the lore continues, Tuck hires visibly pregnant women to carry signs with the Nixon campaign slogan, "Nixon's the One," at Nixon rallies. And so on.

Tuck's peculiar pleasure is Nixon's agony. Tuck is preoccupied with Nixon, but Nixon is obsessed with Dick Tuck. The emotional open window exposes Nixon's paranoid and vengeful soul. Hunter S Thompson, a darker, less balanced Nixon antagonist, later opines, "Nixon was so aggressively evil that he almost glowed at night. His political instincts were so dangerous that he made the politics of total opposition a very honourable trade for two generations of the best people in America." Whatever. Nixon decides to hire his own Dick Tuck.

From Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) in 1972, a friend offers Donald Segretti the job. Barely out of Vietnam and the JAG Corps, a young and impressionable Segretti stalks Democrats in "black advance." His object is to sow dissension among Democratic campaigns. Dragnetted in the larger Watergate scandal, Segretti's labors earn four and a half months prison time, on misdemeanor charges of dispensing false campaign literature ("campaign literature without proper attribution," he recalls), and a two-year suspension of his California law license. At trial, Democratic prosecutors flaunt a faked letter, on Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie's stationery, alleging fellow Democratic candidate Henry "Scoop" Jackson had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old.

Karl Rove comes to CREEP after dropping out of school to become College Republican National Committee executive director. Rove labors for Segretti on the 1972 campaign. 28 years later and in full control of Sauron's scepter, "Bush's Brain" finds his old boss on the opposite side. Segretti is John McCain's 2000 Orange County campaign chair. Beyond irony, a South Carolina push poll of mysterious origin ravages McCain: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" The beat goes on.

April 2008, BBC News reports: A helium filled giant pig, born one of Pink Floyd's Animals and now a metaphorical billboard for Roger Waters' political agenda, floats high over the crowd at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Coachella (where else?), California. Its belly paint spells "Obama"; adjacent is a checked box (see approx 3:30 here). The BBC newsreader pauses, then muses whether thousands of stoner Floyd fans will vote for Obama per instructions from a flying pig.

Later reports say The Pig "broke free from its tethers" and "drifted away." After two days, residents of La Quinta, a country club community fingered by conspicuous consumption rag the Robb Report as "the nation's leading golf destination," wake to find the Capitalist Pig in pieces — "like pulled pork" says one of the finders — on their manicured lawns (no, I'm not making this up). Still later, CNN reports "organizers" had cut The Pig's mooring cables. This assertion is unconfirmed. Chris Willman of Hollywood Insider is thinking black advance. "Is it possible the shredded pig was blown out of the sky by a Clinton or McCain supporter with a rocket launcher?" asks Willman.

Home in Corona del Mar, two hours from Coachella, Donald Segretti denies knowledge of The Pig's abduction and apparent assassination. He's been out of the black advance business a long time. Segretti is forthright and more than contrite about the Nixon campaign work. He decries the South Carolina tactics in 2000 and those between Obama and Clinton campaigns in 2008. Why do it? "The job is to get candidates elected," he says quietly, "There is no second place." He avers his 2000 campaign work for McCain followed the credo "no negative campaigning". "You learn a lot as you go along in life." Out of politics, he allows he "wouldn't be unhappy" with an Obama presidency, provided the product is as advertised.

Dick Tuck is unrepentant at age 85. He won't confirm or deny legends about pregnant women. Tuck has published a political newsletter for over 30 years. He called it The Reliable Source until The Washington Post appropriated that moniker. "Don't even think about suing someone who buys ink by the barrel, " Tuck growls. Still a fouille-merde, he renamed his letter WashPostIt. Tuck has also set up DickTuck.com, but to date the site is pretty bare. He says, if it's worth his while to come, he'll reserve a men's room stall at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport main terminal for the Republican National Convention, but expects "a long line". He dismisses George W Bush as inconsistent: "He lied to get us into war; why not lie to get us out?" Tuck disavows personal knowledge of Coachella events, but claims, "If it had been twenty years ago, they would have blamed me."

Dead since 1994, former President Richard Nixon could not be reached for comment on The Pig's demise. Campaign finance reports indicate daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower has maxed out on primary election contributions to the Obama campaign.

It's unclear whether these events are related.

Now that I have been in Scotland for a bit I have begun to notice the great shadow the infamous creator of Braveheart still casts over this hilly northern country. If you venture into any bargain store in Edinburgh or Glasgow you will find many bric-a-bracs aimed at spend-happy tourists. These items range from the relatively funny "kilt beach towel" to the aggravating "William Wallace doll." Now, there's nothing wrong with the historical figure of William Wallace. The man heroically stood against the English in order to defend Scottish independence, and this I can respect. And I really can't judge the people who are making money from the dolls themselves; far be it for me to begrudge anybody the right to strike gold by abusing national symbols.

No, the William Wallace doll is an abomination because it is just a little version of that big schmuck, Mel Gibson. It is a vivid rendering, capturing accurately even the most Jew-hating contours of the man's face (from an era before the expert ironist decided to grow a strange Abrahamic beard). I know Braveheart is one of the most profitable things that has happened to Scotland since whisky became the local manna, but when you hold a lil' Mel in your hands you do not want to fight for your freedom, you just feel sorry for all the civilizations Mel Gibson has ripped off and made a mockery of (e.g. Scots, Mayans, ancient Israelites, and counting).

I could forgive this if it were a phenomenon confined to shops that sell inflatable heart-shaped mattresses and "I'm not as think as you drunk I am" t-shirts, but unfortunately Mel Gibson has managed to worm his way into actual history. I went to the city of Stirling one day, and visited the National William Wallace Monument, a great 19^th-century century-built landmark perched loftily on a lovely, green hilltop. After making my way down from the summit, I encountered something that morphed my good feeling into outright disgust. By the foot of the hill stood a big stone statue of Mel Gibson, mace in hand, screaming triumphantly. It seemed like stone-Mel knew he was ruining my time in Stirling and that there lied his ultimate victory over me. The word "FREEDOM" carved into the rock mockingly reminded me of how very trapped I was in the Mel-universe.

Next to the statue there was a plaque with the story behind the work written on it. Some poor guy carved the thing because when he was down in the dumps (slowly dying from some horrible disease), he watched Braveheart, and the movie had been able to fill him with national pride and confidence. I thought it was strange how the one thing that made this sculptor so hopeful in his final days was the source of so much unpleasantness for me. Why couldn't the guy have seen The Mary Tyler Moore Show on his deathbed and carved a statue of its namesake, like the one that dazzles in the streets of the fine city of Minneapolis, Minnesota? I guess some people just aren't lucky enough to get Nick at Nite.

It is commonly accepted that the population of Europe would be declining in a pretty startling way if not for constant immigration. Unlike Americans, the people of Western Europe are simply not having very many children. Who can blame them? These are heady days for the European economy and I assume the citizens who work hard to make their nations prosper would like to benefit from their labors without having to think of the next generation.

When I walk around Edinburgh, though, what's right there in front of me is at odds with these statistics. Experts say how the population of Scotland, in decline since the 1970s, will continue to shrink unless immigration reverses the downturn. When I walk around the city, though, I usually encounter many, many people who look like they are in their teens. Many of them are schoolchildren cutting class to shout and cuss around beautiful St. Giles Cathedral. Others are chavs (in Scotland called "neds") playing silly games between sips of Scotland's famed hangover cure, Irn-Bru. Indeed, not a day has passed that I haven't seen kids on Edinburgh's main streets and thoroughfares loitering and whiling away their time.

Now, at my tender age, I must admit, I have little to warrant a dislike for the more unseemly behavior of foolhardy youth. At the expense of sounding like a stick in the mud though, I will say that sometimes I see kids here do things that I think are pretty stupid. For example, recently I saw a crowd of chavs congregate around a KFC, and two of these wannabe street toughs began to take swipes at each other. Their dozen or so companions watched as the violent horseplay escalated. The boys began to punch each other in the face: a brush on the chin, a cutting hit across the cheek, and so on. The kid's smiles contorted into scowls and, as their punches got more and more audible, the crowd around KFC got bigger. I looked to my left and right and saw old ladies, men in ties, thirty-something-looking couples, all of us pulled to this spectacle by our shameless voyeurism. The kids continued to fight, until finally one pulled away, but fell. The other fighter, his faced stained red with exhaustion, lunged towards him. The boy on the floor jumped up and ran away, and then his opponent followed briskly, with a band of eager street-fight aficionados behind him in pursuit of the show.

Sometimes the aggressive urges of the urban young are filtered in other ways, as when a group of older teens scrawl angry political manifestos like "END LONDON RULE!" and "SCOTLAND IS NOT BRITAIN!" in chalk, usually after a drunken night out. Of course, feelings of nationalism are not limited to the young or the bored. Respected Glaswegian author, Alasdair Gray of Lanark fame is an avowed nationalist, as is Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister (the equivalent of a prime minister in the local parliament). The young Scots who make a patriotic mark on the sooty walls of their capital, in some not-too-distant future, might be likened, to the Irish freedom fighters of yesteryear, voicing the wills of a growing multitude. Their future countrymen may refer to these graffiti as a sort of shorthand "St. Crispin's Day Speech," helping to rouse the feelings of millions of potential Bravehearts. For my part, I think it's a better pastime than watching your friends get beaten up outside a fast-food place.

Still, it's wrong to judge kids so harshly, I suppose. Most adults probably fantasize about getting into spats about nothing and punching their colleagues across the mouth. I imagine that some of those weekday warriors watching the fight, their ties wound up to 11 and their palms sweaty with anticipation, were probably living through those kids, thinking at the time, "God - beating my best friend up would probably be so much cheaper than fucking therapy." But then they immediately think of potential complications like apology letters and anger management and other things society demands of the civilized, and all those violent fantasies disappear the way the dreams of getting a hot wife and a yacht did all those years ago. Mr. "Maybe Next Year" sinking irreversibly into the quicksand of casual Fridays and postponed pleasure. At least those kids seem to get what they want: a big, visceral smack in the face, the publicity of gladiatorial combat and a feeling of idiot grandeur.

No pictures from the rehearsal yesterday. We forgot. Too many other things came up. Hopefully, we'll get them tonight, and I'll post them tomorrow -- which will be my last post and where I'll make a final pitch for you to pick up that phone and make a reservation.

I suspect that hearing how the sausages get made isn't as interesting to the sausage eater as the sausage-maker, so in the interest of providing a taste of the sausage, here is just some dialogue from Everywhere Signs Fall that I like hearing the actors say:

 Guy: How do you sleep in this heat? You sleep nude? I bet. I can imagine.

Juliet: (dry) O my. I guess I'll have to slap your imagination.

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 Juliet: If you must move your mouth, make sounds that play a tune.

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Jeremy: The universe is a mystery and scientists are like nature's private dick.

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Guy: She's dead. Now she looks sadder.

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Guy: This is Phoenix. People melt to death here. I've watched 'em.

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Juliet: I'm twenty-six. My father died for no reason and then my mother died exactly eleven months later.  I think I'm entitled to cynicism. (PAUSE) Aren't you sorry?

Guy: About what?

Juliet: My parents. Death.

Guy: Sure. I'm sorry about death.

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Guy: I looked. Couple ol' guys in the bar since their retirement, someone's drunk wife from two nights ago still here, later afternoon, and me. I looked at you. What else did I have to do?

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Juliet: I was thinking of the sky, the sunrise. The sky. - I'm a photographer. - how easy it would be to get lost in the desert in that sky.

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Guy: Point that gun like you know what you're pointing at, Kiddo. Aim for something at least.

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Guy: Guy. Nice to meet you. We weren't probably introduced.

Jeremy: We can see that you're a guy.

Guy: My name is Guy.

Jeremy: O

Juliet: It doesn't matter.

Guy: Tell that to my mother.

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Jeremy: Time is an illusion. The essential -- the essential evidence -- we discover outside of the present. We study and replay memories.

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OK. I could do this all day. I'll stop. Come hear the dialogue starting April 18 at Loading Dock Theatre. It's fun. . . And I haven't even got to the really intense stuff.