And the shit hath hit the fan, and so, the humble bumble stumbles forward to do what must be done. He's a man of true depth and awkward brilliance, a child of a sort of Intelligent Design that might’ve had a better outcome in mind. As is, it is I, and only I, the Big Free Me of Nowhere, A Man of Not Now and Maybe Later - a man of pure, raw All-American Power standing fast with a bus pass and a maxed out credit card.

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Once upon a time, I was but a humble reporter on one of those big city dailies, with a name like Times, Post, Beacon, Sentinel, Picayune or Bee, but then again, that was only the plan and never ever really happened. Or maybe it did. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. But that had been the dream and somewhere along the line the dream went bust or maybe never was and I went broke but always had been.

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And somewhere along that slow sad timeline of life, through the pandemic, chronic unemployment, mental dismemberment and losing decades to single days in dark places, I began to read the classics. I read War and Peace, Les Miserable, Anna Karenina and A Hundred Years of Solitude, I checked in on The Invisible Man and The Incredible Lightness of Being, as well as Gone With The Wind and Between The World and Me. In Forever by Judy Blume I read the dread tale of a one-eyed ne'er-do-well named Ralph, a miscreant and hard case who - for right or wrong - is forever standing tall and strong. I went on and read Moby Dick by Melville, too. There's a lot to be learned from that Big Bad Tale of A Good Whale Gone Bad and let it be known - once upon a time - whale oil was a light unto the nations. After all this, it was then and only then, I picked up a pen and decided to write my own tome, a brilliant hypnotic masterpiece of love, romance and high adventure, a tale that regaled all the great lessons of life that surely stand for all eternity. So far, I’ve gotten as far as the first line, but so far, the first line is as perfect as perfect gets:

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“He was forty-years old in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, a hundred and twenty miles due south of New Orleans, making seven bucks an hour as a janitor on an offshore oil rig. Here and now, he found the mop far too heavy. Here and now, he knew, The American Dream had gone awry.”

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Like I said, I’ve only gotten so far as this one opening line but as you can see, it’s a line of pure literary genius which does seem to say it all; with these words every reader knows that happy men are all alike, every unhappy man is unhappy in his own way and all mops are far too heavy on an offshore oil rig and ultimately, sooner or later, the janitor has got to scrub the john. But it’s not only the opening line that pulls off that nearly impossible trick, it’s also the title that I humbly scrawled across a letter from a debt collector when the big idea first hit - OFF-SHORE OIL RIG JANITOR VAMPIRE KILLER: THE PRICE OF OIL IS BLOOD!  However, the rest of the tale remains to be told, but suffice it to say this story is what Tolstoy had searched for, what he called ‘The Unknown Tome of The Ages’ he’d spent his life trying to write but try as he might, couldn’t quite pull off.

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OFF-SHORE OIL RIG JANITOR VAMPIRE KILLER is that most dramatic of dramas, that ‘Big Something’ that the Baird himself often spoke of but could never quite catch, although he got awfully close with King Lear and MacBeth, he often admitted the true near-miss was Romeo and Juliet. But even that was a long yard off when compared to the mind-blowing brilliance of OFF-SHORE OIL RIG JANITOR VAMPIRE KILLER. And it’s pretty obvious why - in my book-to-be there’s a guy that comes back to life each night and sucks the life out of hot babes every day! Permanently! Just as soon as the sun goes down! So, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?' - well, you damn sure better figure it out, especially if you're an offshore oilrig janitor! In my book, Romeo is the vampire and he's flying straight out of New Orleans towards his favorite offshore oil rig to suck the blood of burly roughnecks and roustabouts. But that's way too flaming gay for a guy like me so mostly Romeo hangs out on Bourbon Street, sucking up Jax beer and  busty coed blood, turning hot babes into foxy-hot vampire slaves to fly around with. It's damn near an orgy of the undead! Howling Wowsers! Geezin' Creepers! Got the duck-bumps just thinking 'bout it!

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So, trust me and trust me some more, when I say this soon-to-be best seller is nothing but cold hard cash in the making, the proverbial ‘mint-without-a-dent’ that goes on working without a hitch. It’s a currency of unspent words that would make a Stephen King or J.K. Rowling blush with bigly envy. And it’s all safely tucked away in the wallet of my brain, sewn and stitched inside the gray matter of my own great mind, far beyond the reach of any kind of crypto scheme that may be kicking its’ feet through another brilliant sunset on a Bahaman beach.

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But alas, I am a decent man and schemes of greed do not suit me, even when they are found in the honest commerce of art. To go beyond that very first line - He was in the middle of nowhere - and take the brilliance of the story any further, would not only be an ego-trip of self-satisfaction, it would be an egregious waste of time, a sort of treason against the soul and a laughing slap in the face of Twain and Hemingway. The truth is, we have much more important matters that lie before us. And the hard fact of the matter is this: 

 

The Nation is in the middle of nowhere.

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And there is only one way for our Nation to find itself in the middle of somewhere. What our Nation needs is direction. What our Nation needs is a leader. What our Nation needs is a King. What our Country needs is me. And this is the only need that need be met to save My American People. This is the history that must be written. It is The Resplendent Saga of Me, a grand history of the kingliest king to ever be. And like all things of such magnitude, it is strictly a matter of time, fate and manliness. And I am the time. I am the fate. I am the manliness.

 

And yes, the magnitude is me.

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My name is James Ehrlichman Reinhard-Koenig The First and I am awesome. And I wish you could be awesome, too! But you being you and me being me, let's face it, the only hope you have is for me being King and with that, you'll at least have an awesome Me as your most awesome King! And that is awesome even for someone as un-awesome as you! I am both a genius and a poet, Nixonian and Germanic, hailing from the Royal House of Handsomocity. I am here - by Proclamation of Past Caesars - to make America great again - even greater than it's ever been! And so, always know, I am but a sweet symphony and a summer of wonder scored in bountiful joy! You are invited to join me and truly, I hope you do.

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If not, it will be duly noted.

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And so let us move forward, ever righteous in our Cause, wielding the Chaos of Common Sense as our only sword and the First Amendment as our only shield. In the meantime, in great hope, in the absence of all trepidation, with the highest of righteous aspirations, I bid thee a fond Sieg Smile in welcome, and welcome you with the most noble salutation of our New Age - 'Go King Jim Go!'

 

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