MR: It’s the magic underwear Marriot.
MAL: That’s a very thought-provoking answer. Can you FedEx me a couple of pairs of underwear? I can keep my promise to become a Mormon, and then I can make enough money to give up this crummy job.

WASHINGTON – Workaholism continues to be in style in Washington as Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats go all out to prove that they are do-something legislators.

Lush For Life could not get an interview with Pelosi this week, but Minority Whip Republican Trent Lott had time to talk to us.

Lush For Life: The Dems are very busy around here, Congressman, but it seems that the Republicans in the House are stepping up the pace, too. Can you tell us your plans to increase the House’s productivity?

Trent Lott: Well, there was a lot of whining about the 109th Congress, and how we didn’t do enough. So we have to do more.

L4L: 383 pieces of legislation were signed into law during the two-year 109th Congress, and more than twenty-five percent of those involved naming post offices.

TL: Yes, eighty-nine post offices received very good names during the 109th Congress. This is an example of an area where we can do a lot more. Always grow through your strengths. I say. There are many more post offices that need names, and there is no reason to stop at post offices.

L4L: It costs $2,300,000 a year to run Congress per Senator, and we have one-hundred of those, and $836,000 per year for each of our 435 House members. Double that for a two-year period and you get hmmmmm…. I make that $532,732,000…

TL: Yes – and add in the cost of elections. Even when you subtract the cost of negative advertising, that’s one heck of a price. It’s more than the Iraq war has cost so far. The American voter wants value for all that cash!

L4L: So what else needs naming by Congress?

TL: Lots of things need names – various wars on things, military operations, streets, and American exports – like computer games. And citizens. People have no imagination. In 2006, 100,000 Americans named their kids Jacob, Emily, Michael, or Emma. There were 15,492 Ethans registered. Sounds like some kind of gas! Whaddah they feed the kids? Beans?

[There was a long pause until the Congressman could speak again, as he became breathless after laughing at his joke.]

L4L: Do you think Congress could settle name disputes? My girlfriend and I can’t decide what to name our cat.

TL: Well, I’d have to think about that. I’ve got to make sure that we’re focused on the right principles and the right philosophy this time – the type that appeals to all the voters. I learned that with Strom Thurmond and the Conservative Citizens business. There’s no accounting for taste, and some people don’t like cats. We want the White House and Congress back in 2008.

L4L: Would it make a difference if we had a dog?

TL: Oh, then it would be okay. Do you watch Barney’s Christmas videos? God, that dog is cute!

Gale Force: Secretary Rumsfeld. Thank you for your time. LushForLife.com is very interested to hear why you have appointed a woman, with no military experience, as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Donald Rumsfeld: No mystery there, Dr. Force. It’s this Israeli thing. We’ve woken up to how the enemy is thinking divergently, and we need to think even better than he does. We’re pale male, railroad track thinkers, so we found someone who is a real innovative thinker. We need someone is a step ahead of the enemy, not playing catch-up like we do now. Dr. Rosenfeld is that person. Kraft has accepted that their loss is our nation’s gain.

GF: Dr. Rosenfeld is Jewish, Secretary Rumsfeld. I believe Mel Gibson says that Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Aren’t you taking a bit of a chance here?

DR: The CIA assures me that this is not true, Dr. Force. They proved to me that, at the last count, there were 18 wars going on in Africa, and not one was caused by Jews. So he must have been drinking or something.

GF: Irene Rosenfeld knows a lot about the food industry. Do you see this helping her in her new position?

DR: Napoleon said that an army marches on its stomach. The president told me that ‘Yo’ Blair explained this. It means that it is important to feed the army well. President Bush thinks that women generally know a lot about feeding men, too, and this will be useful in places like Iraq where our troops are short of a lot of things? like armor. He says good food will be helpful. But the main thing is, she can think ahead and see what is coming, and we can’t.

GF: What does the President say about this ‘thinking ahead’ stuff?

DR: The President is generally not in favor of thinking ahead, but he is out of a job in two years. I’m still in, with a chance. You can’t blame a guy for looking out for himself.

GF: Any chance that the President will give the new Chief a neck rub in meetings?

DR: Well he is always good to the little ladies like that. He’s not sexist, though. I’m sure he’d be happy to give the generals and people like Putin neck rubs if they asked, but they don’t because their suit jackets are too thick. Merkel was just being weird. A lot of German women are actually lesbians.

GF: So Dr. Rosenfeld will find ways for our people to deal with new tactics from enemies who will attack USA bases using civilians as shields, who fight from underground tunnels, who fight from mobile bases in cities, or wage suicide and creative guerilla attacks on us from deep within city structures? And her secret weapons will be her brain, mind maps, and a thick suit jacket?

DR: If she can’t, we’ll ask Genentech for their CEO. Levinson’s next on the list.

GF: Is he also Jewish?

DR: You LushForLife.com people are beginning to sound like Jon Stewart.

Calling our Tampa offices shortly after the discovery, Andrews shared some thoughts about his experience with me in a brief telephone interview:

Egbert Souse: So, you finally read TheOnion.com. What did you think of it?

John Andrews: Oh. Well, it was… You know, I don’t really know. I saw some headlines, and they were kind of lame. It was stuff like, “”Local Man Reads TheOnion.com,”" and other junk like that. Nothing really satirical about it. I was under the impression that the site is run by a bunch of lazy slackers who don’t really care about their readers. It seemed as if they think that we’ll laugh at anything they put up.

ES: And is that the case?

JA: No, of course not. Anyone who is intelligent enough to actively seek well written, thought out satire, instead of accepting what mass media has to tell him, deserves to be stimulated in a g-spot bending orgasm of intellectualism. Is that really too much to ask?

ES: No. No, I don’t think so. At an office such as ours, for instance, we work really hard, night and -

JA: Look: This isn’t about you. It’s about TheOnion.com. Can we please stay on the subject?

ES: Fine?

JA: Anyhow, I did find myself chuckling at a headline that used a play on the homophone ‘way’ and ‘weigh’. But, overall, I must say that it leaned more towards complete retardation and laziness than it did witty, scathing satire that pointed out the flaws and inconsistencies of our modern day culture and society.

ES: Okay.

JA: Are you all right, man?

ES: Yeah, I’m fine. I just wanted to talk about LushForLife.com a bit more.

JA: Look: I didn’t even mean to call you. I meant to call my wife to tell her I’d be home five minutes late because of reading that trash. I’ve never even heard of LushForLife.com before I dialed this number on accident.

ES: Okay. Will you please read it, now? It’s really funny.

JA: No!

ES: You don’t have to be so rude about it, asshole.

JA: Fuck off, prick! [click]

A transcript of this interview has been forwarded to both TheOnion.com and the National Security Administration for further dissection.

“

Danny Albertson: A lot has happened since the last time we spoke, buddy.

Brett Favre: It’s been a busy time for me and my family. I don’t get to come down here and chat with you guys as much as my publicist would like.

DA: I know it’s always about family with you, Brett. You don’t have to remind me of that. You don’t seem to have the same kind of dedication to your football family, though…

BF: Well…

DA: To me, the least you could offer to the organization and city that has been so good to you, both lucratively and in your personal times of need, is to tell them what your immediate plans are in a timely fashion.

BF: Is this the kind of hassle I’m going to get from you, today, or are we going to take some questions? I’m here to help people with my infinite wisdom of life.

DA: Have it your way, scrimshaw… This question comes from Dale in Carlisle, Pennsylvania:

Dear Brett,

I work a blue-collar job, make a decent wage, and try to be a good man in society, a good father to my children, and a good husband to my wife – so I know you can relate to my situation. While I was having a drink at a bar after getting off of work, I met a nice single woman who happens to work in the hardware department at Sears. We instantly hit it off, enjoying several rounds of Pabst while we sang several karaoke duets together. She told me she could give me a brand new John Deere tractor – that is, if I slept with her. I’m dedicated to my family, but this is a tractor! I know you’re a family man, and a tractor lover. What should I do?

BF: There’s no reason you can’t get the tractor from this woman in another way. Offer to mow her lawn for a month or so. There’s nothin’ better than being on a tractor, sweating, drinking a beer, doing an honest man’s work. If that doesn’t work, you better hog that singin’ lady’s beaver out and get that dern tractor. Just imagine being on the open highway, cruising in a fresh-off-the-line Deere, gnawin’ on beef jerky while you’re bird-doggin’ chicks. It’s the ole’ Miss-Sipp dream.

DA: So you’d cheat on your wife and turn your back on your family, which you constantly say is the number one priority in your life, so you can try to pick up chicks on a tractor?

BF: Don’t dog it till you hog it, city boy.

DA: Okay… Our next question is a little more socially relevant. It comes from Doug Neidermeyer in Faberville, Oregon:

Dear Brett,

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, gas prices all over have gotten severely out of hand. Gas has eclipsed three dollars a gallon on the west coast. Knowing how big of a help to the community you are, I’m curious if you have any plans to establish a charity fund for those of us who are in need of gas?

BF: No. I only support charities when my career is sagging and there’s not an eligible member of my family willing to die. Basically, I only support charities when my name isn’t already in the headlines. Plus I need all the money for gas that I can get, so I can continue to shag-ass on my badass John Deere. Sorry.

DA: Do you think I could come along when you “shag-ass” one day, buddy?

BF: There’s only so much room on a tractor, Danny. But the one I have has room for four or five people, so I could make some room for you. As long as you don’t mind hairy armpits, and inbred, Mississippi born, toothless farm sluts, I’d be glad to have you.

DA: Now this sounds like something worth doing…

BF: You have no idea.

DA: Our last question comes from Sylvia in Bakersfield, California:

Brett,

The President’s approval rating has fallen lower than it has ever been. For someone like yourself, who is dearly beloved and always seems to be in the hearts and thoughts of Americans everywhere, what kind of advice would you give President Bush?

BF: I’d say the best thing that could happen to him is the death of an immediate family member. Say like, one of his daughters. All of the families who’ve lost a loved one in Iraq would finally feel like he can identify with them. He could arrange exclusive media coverage from inside the Oval Office of himself and Laura mourning together. The American people would be sympathetic, and his approval ratings would rise. How do you think I’ve gotten by these last few years?

DA: Before we conclude our Q and A session, let me ask you – why did you decide to not retire and play yet another year?

BF: I felt like it was the right thing for both me and my family.

DA: Blah, blah… Your decision has nothing to do with Mr. Clemens? He retired. You contemplate retiring. Then he says he may play baseball this year for a contending team. All of a sudden, you’re coming back, and may play next year, too. Should that strike a clear-thinking individual like myself as a bit odd?

BF: I am the greatest ever. I don’t know who the hell that bastard thinks he is. I’ll slice open that washed-up redneck’s stomach and eat his intestines, the vomit them back up into his mouth so he chokes on his own guts, on an altar, in front of his children – if it comes down to it.

DA: I’ll join you for that, too.

BF: First we’ll have a gutting, then some ass-shagging. And we’ll do it on the back of a sturdy John Deere…

DA: With some toothless slags and a case of Pabst.

BF: I’ll make the jerky.

DA: And I’ll bring the knives.

I awoke on the floor of my Columbian hotel room this morning to the buzzing of my god damned cell phone. It was Duncan Idaho, bitching to me about deadlines and due dates and the sort. I rebuked him, reminding him that I was Senior Editor around here, and I’d be the one barking orders and reprimands. I hung up on him and realized: “Oh, fuck. That foreign cocksucker has a point.” It had been more than a month, and the entire interview with Debbie Rochon had still not been published, on account of the fact that my personal assistant, a young Japanese girl named Miyuki, who was supposed to transcribe the fucking thing, had run off in a hurry after… shit. I don’t know. I blacked out and she had gone back to Nagasaki the following morning.

Here’s Part Three of our exclusive interview:

ES: Have you seen all those Chevy ads talking about how they have thirty million green fuel vehicles? Do you believe that?

DR: Do I believe it? I don’t know. But I do know one person in L.A. that bought a non-gas vehicle. They were on the waiting list. But you have no choice of the color, for some reason.

DI: What?!

DR: Like, it just shows up. It could be blue, red, yellow… Why is that? You know what I mean? Isn’t that strange? There’s, like, no choice of the color.

DI: That is really strange.

DR: It’s odd.

DI: It’s going to keep me up at night.

ES: And the polar bears.

DI: What do you think of the Dubai Port situation, then?

DR: The what?

DI: Dubai Port situation?

DR: Ooh. Tell me about that.

DI: United Arab Emirates…

DR: Oh, yes! The ports! I see what you’re saying.

DI: Good idea or bad idea?

DR: Oh, man. It seems like racial profiling to me. Doesn’t it? Can’t there be normal Arabian-type people? Can’t there be? I think it’s just like the McCarthy era. Like when Hollywood went through the communist… the whole thing they went through. I think it’s just this fear-driven ridiculous behavior on the part of politicians. Y’know, I spoke to a lot of doctors (I just want to segue into a very important subject matter, here), but I’ve spoken to a lot of doctors… A filmmaker that I know, his father is a researcher of infectious diseases. I asked him seriously. I said, ‘Do you really think that this bird virus, this bird-flu virus… How real is that?’ and he says, ‘It’s really not.’ And he says, ‘They’re just wanting to sell Tamiflu.’

ES: Does he think so?

DI: Really?

DR: Yeah. He really does. It’s not the first time that I’ve heard that. I think our society is so fear-driven…

DI: It’s a good marketing plan, though.

DR: It is. But it really is. And every commercial on TV is fear-driven. ‘Do you want to do this? Do you want more of this? Less of that?’ I mean, it’s always, sort of, playing into your fears. And then, that’s what I do, too, right? I make horror movies and I play into your fears.

DI: That’s true.

DR: So, I’m a hypocrite.

[Laughter]

DR: You didn’t know that about me. I didn’t know that about me.

DI: Last night, we saw… What is it? Corpses are…

DR: Corpses are Forever. By a filmmaker that’s in Miami. It’s his first film. [It was] shot in 35[mm]. I thought it was really beautiful. He had two 35mm cameras, a great cinematographer… His sound was just terrible.

DI: Yeah.

DR: He got screwed in the sound.

DI: But it did look good.

DR: It did look good.

ES: You are saying the same exact thing we said, last night, actually.

DR: Yeah. And he knows it. He knows it. He has such an interesting story. His parents came from Cuba and he now lives with his grandparents down in Miami and they both died and they left him approximately, a little bit less than, say, a quarter of a million dollars, and he made this movie with all of that money.

ES: That’s brave.

DR: This was his thing, and the sound guy completely screwed him. He spent all of his money, and being his first film, he didn’t leave enough money for the post, so, even though he cut it, he wasn’t able to fix the sound. It’s such a sad story because I think it could have been more enjoyable. I mean, there are other problems with the movie, but I think if the sound was really slick, it would’ve…

DI: Been a lot better.

DR: Yeah, been a lot better.

DI: You’ve written. You’ve produced. Do you have any aspirations to direct?

DR: Not right now. I think I would only want to direct if I had a project that I couldn’t not direct. Like, if I had an idea that was just burning in my brain and I had to do it, because I know how hard it is and I know to do it well is very hard. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to do it, but just I really do enjoy producing at Fangoria Entertainment. I have my own show, there, but I love producing, love writing, acted forever. Love it. But I don’t have that pull. Not right now. Tomorrow, I could wake up and have it, but I don’t. I don’t. Too many problems.

DI: Yeah.

DR: I don’t want to be stressed out like that. Then you have to worry about everything.

DI: Before today, had you ever heard of LushForLife?

DR: Y’know, I did. I’d heard of it in New York. People talk about it in the street, in Starbuck’s. It’s amazing. People reference it on the news.

DI: So, you would say it’s the best website ever, probably…

DR: Ever! Ever! It’s better than mine, better than MySpace; it’s better than Google. It’s better than anything. It’s my favorite.

DI: We should go public.

DR: You should go public.

ES: Do we have time [to go public] today?

DR: I thought you were out in the public. You should go public, and after all of this, I am actually going to go to the website, now.

DI: Great! That’s a good idea. We also make up a lot of stories. Can we make up a story about you?

DR: Yes.

DI: We could make one up, if you don’t mind.

DR: Me? I should do it?

DI: No. We’ll just write one about you, randomly.

DR: Sure. Absolutely. Write it. Um, I don’t know what. Write what you want.

DI: You could write a story. Just a random, fake story. You’re welcome to submit one.

DR: Yeah. Jeez, there’s just so many things, what couldn’t you say?

ES: You could write a story about… what’s the name of the drug you were talking about for bird flu?

DI: Tamiflu.

ES: Yeah. She said that, first thing I thought was, yeah, there’s a story right there.

DR: Yeah. That I’m for it or against it?

DI: Doesn’t matter.

DR: So, it’s a scam. By the way, it’s true, but, yes, say that I personally endorse the fact that this is a scam to sell Tamiflu, just like it was a scam after 9/11 to sell New Yorkers duct tape and tell them that that was going to make them safe. Isn’t that great? That was really smart.

ES: I think, y’know, one or two people bought it.

DR: It’s brilliance on part of the government, y’know? They spend so much money on these things and yet we have Tamiflu and polar bears and…

DI: You could take duct tape, Tamiflu, and polar bears and tie them up into one story.

DR: Yes, I could.

DI: That would be good.

DR: Literally tie them up.

DI: There you go. With duct tape.

DR: Actually duct tape the ice so it doesn’t melt, anymore…

DI: And pump the polar bears full of Tamiflu.

DR: Inject Tamiflu into the polar bears so they don’t get sick and die. Maybe we could do something like that. I don’t know. And shoot any Republicans that try to go up to Alaska.

DI: Feed them to the polar bears. They’re underweight, already, remember?

DR: But I hear Jeb Bush is doing a good job, here, so I hate to trash him.

DI: Oh, go right ahead, please.

DR: Oh, really?

ES: Yeah, sure.

DR: Are you non-Jebs? It seems like Jeb Bush is doing good and he got the only good genes in the family.

DI: Both of them.

ES: They were Levi’s.

DR: Yes. Exactly.

ES: Actually, they were probably Wrangler’s.

DR: Yeah. He doesn’t shoot people in the face.

ES: Not yet. Well, not that he’s talked about.

DI: Pity.

DR: Yeah. Well, you get a lot more done that way. It was kind of funny that they [Dick Cheney and pal] were hunting quail when, in fact, his [George “Dubya” Bush] father’s vice president was Dan Quayle. I find that very… if you’re a conspiracy theorist…

DI: I don’t think anyone’s played that angle.

DR: See? There’s a conspiracy theory there, right?

DI: … Um, I’m behind you.

DR: Maybe he was aiming at Dan Quayle, to be honest, and he accidentally shot the other guy.

ES: And who wouldn’t want to? I mean, Dan Quayle?

DR: He called it “quail hunting.” He got out of the car to shoot quail? You see what I’m saying?

DI: I think you’re onto something here.

DR: Ooh. Interesting.

DI: If you ever want to write for us, please check us out.

DR: Okay. Obviously, you can see that I’m very intelligent…

DI: As long as you can write.

DR: Yes.

DI: We know you can act, but let’s see if you can write.

DR: I try and I do actually write for a lot of magazines. Is it like TheOnion, then?

DI: Yes. But a little edgier.

DR: Edgier?

DI: And some other real stuff.

DR: Kind of mixed in: real and unreal. I like that.

ES: We cuss and make fun of things. We have no respect at all.

[Laughter]

ES: We’re jerks.

DI: Do we have any more questions, or should we let the lady get back to work?

ES: Um, where is the “B” Movie Hall of Fame? Every hall of fame is in Canton, Ohio, so it’s gotta be in Canton, Ohio.

DR: I’ll tell you where it is: it’s in Syracuse, New York.

DI: Really? Not Canton, Ohio?

DR: Nope.

ES: Everything else is in Canton, Ohio.

DR: I have not been to Canton, Ohio.

ES: That’s where the Baseball Hall of Fame is; the Football Hall of Fame. Not the “B” Movie Hall of Fame, apparently.

DR: Nope, nope. It’s in the great Syracuse, New York.

ES: I was going to ask you earlier if you had any problems with Laura Dern, because I thought we’d done good research, but you brought up Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains before we did.

DR: Did I have problems with her? No. Laura Dern was just very studious and kept to herself. Diane Lane, on the other hand, was so young – she was fourteen or fifteen, at the time – and she wanted to go out and party. She had her mother there, because she was so young. She actually had a shower scene and a make out scene with Ray Winston. But, she was on set, so, she was going through that trying to get away from her mother thing, I think, so she was on the set, sowing her wild oats and really getting into her sexuality and that age.

DI: At fourteen? Nice. Good job.

DR: Well, I heard she lost her virginity at, um, thirty. No, I…

DI: I’m planning to, soon. Any day, now.

DR: Any day, now. Any day, now. There’s actually… I’d really like to mention that there’s going to be a Troma disc coming out that is highlighting all of the work I’ve done with them the past fifteen years. It includes the movies, the skits, intros, stuff we’ve done for overseas television, Cinemax, and everything. But – here’s the clincher, this is the good part – it’s going to be hosted by one of my biggest fans who really really is a forty year-old virgin. For real.

DI: Really?

DR: Yeah.

DI: Wow.

DR: Yes. And he is absolutely amazing. I think he might steal my thunder, to be honest, because the clips are great but this guy… His name is George and…

DI: What’s the boxed set called?

DR: I don’t know, yet, but it’s going to be something like My Dinner with a Stalker or The Stalker Diaries. I don’t think it will be Debbie Rochon’s Best in Tromaville. That’s too boring. It’s going to be ‘stalker’ in there, because I think it will grab people.

ES: People like stalkers.

DR: They do.

ES: It’s such a Hollywood society.

DR: You’re nobody unless you have had one.

ES: I’ve had three.

DR: Have you?

ES: This week.

DR: Where they all men?

ES: Two men and a young, small girl.

DR: Young men… Two older men and a young girl.

ES: This forty year-old virgin – is this religious for him? Is it religious, like, ‘God doesn’t want me to have sex until I find the right one?’

DR: No, no. No, it’s not. It’s absolutely not.

ES: Is he really creepy?

DR: Well, he’s unusual. I had a showing of a movie of mine called American Nightmare at this theater. It screened at seven o’clock and he got there at eleven a.m. to make sure he was the first one there.

ES: People do that for Star Wars months in advance.

DR: It’s not that crazy. He has asked my character – not me, but my character from a movie – to marry him. He’s written letters to Jane, which is the character’s name. Long letters, and hopes for a reply. It’s not a religious thing. He actually has a page on MySpace and he says that his fantasy is a female magician who is a lesbian who will force him to watch he have lesbian acts and then allow him to touch their soft calves and then, afterwards, marry him.

ES: Isn’t that all of our fantasies?

DI: You can’t make that kind of stuff up.

DR: Yeah, but it has to be in that exact order.

ES: I’m flexible on the calf thing, so…

DI: I prefer the joint at the knee, personally.

ES: You’re a knee guy?

DR: Everybody has their variation on it, but it’s… He’s a very fascinating man.

DI: Thank you very much, ma’am.

DR: Thank you very much.

DI: Check out the site.

DR: Yes! I’m going to go, now, because I’ve read about it in the New York Times and I’ve read about it in Wall Street Journal and now I must actually go to the site.

-fin-

Here’s Part Three of our exclusive interview:

ES: Have you seen all those Chevy ads talking about how they have thirty million green fuel vehicles? Do you believe that?

DR: Do I believe it? I don’t know. But I do know one person in L.A. that bought a non-gas vehicle. They were on the waiting list. But you have no choice of the color, for some reason.

DI: What?!

DR: Like, it just shows up. It could be blue, red, yellow… Why is that? You know what I mean? Isn’t that strange? There’s, like, no choice of the color.

DI: That is really strange.

DR: It’s odd.

DI: It’s going to keep me up at night.

ES: And the polar bears.

DI: What do you think of the Dubai Port situation, then?

DR: The what?

DI: Dubai Port situation?

DR: Ooh. Tell me about that.

DI: United Arab Emirates…

DR: Oh, yes! The ports! I see what you’re saying.

DI: Good idea or bad idea?

DR: Oh, man. It seems like racial profiling to me. Doesn’t it? Can’t there be normal Arabian-type people? Can’t there be? I think it’s just like the McCarthy era. Like when Hollywood went through the communist… the whole thing they went through. I think it’s just this fear-driven ridiculous behavior on the part of politicians. Y’know, I spoke to a lot of doctors (I just want to segue into a very important subject matter, here), but I’ve spoken to a lot of doctors… A filmmaker that I know, his father is a researcher of infectious diseases. I asked him seriously. I said, ‘Do you really think that this bird virus, this bird-flu virus… How real is that?’ and he says, ‘It’s really not.’ And he says, ‘They’re just wanting to sell Tamiflu.’

ES: Does he think so?

DI: Really?

DR: Yeah. He really does. It’s not the first time that I’ve heard that. I think our society is so fear-driven…

DI: It’s a good marketing plan, though.

DR: It is. But it really is. And every commercial on TV is fear-driven. ‘Do you want to do this? Do you want more of this? Less of that?’ I mean, it’s always, sort of, playing into your fears. And then, that’s what I do, too, right? I make horror movies and I play into your fears.

DI: That’s true.

DR: So, I’m a hypocrite.

[Laughter]

DR: You didn’t know that about me. I didn’t know that about me.

DI: Last night, we saw… What is it? Corpses are…

DR: Corpses are Forever. By a filmmaker that’s in Miami. It’s his first film. [It was] shot in 35[mm]. I thought it was really beautiful. He had two 35mm cameras, a great cinematographer… His sound was just terrible.

DI: Yeah.

DR: He got screwed in the sound.

DI: But it did look good.

DR: It did look good.

ES: You are saying the same exact thing we said, last night, actually.

DR: Yeah. And he knows it. He knows it. He has such an interesting story. His parents came from Cuba and he now lives with his grandparents down in Miami and they both died and they left him approximately, a little bit less than, say, a quarter of a million dollars, and he made this movie with all of that money.

ES: That’s brave.

DR: This was his thing, and the sound guy completely screwed him. He spent all of his money, and being his first film, he didn’t leave enough money for the post, so, even though he cut it, he wasn’t able to fix the sound. It’s such a sad story because I think it could have been more enjoyable. I mean, there are other problems with the movie, but I think if the sound was really slick, it would’ve…

DI: Been a lot better.

DR: Yeah, been a lot better.

DI: You’ve written. You’ve produced. Do you have any aspirations to direct?

DR: Not right now. I think I would only want to direct if I had a project that I couldn’t not direct. Like, if I had an idea that was just burning in my brain and I had to do it, because I know how hard it is and I know to do it well is very hard. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to do it, but just I really do enjoy producing at Fangoria Entertainment. I have my own show, there, but I love producing, love writing, acted forever. Love it. But I don’t have that pull. Not right now. Tomorrow, I could wake up and have it, but I don’t. I don’t. Too many problems.

DI: Yeah.

DR: I don’t want to be stressed out like that. Then you have to worry about everything.

DI: Before today, had you ever heard of LushForLife?

DR: Y’know, I did. I’d heard of it in New York. People talk about it in the street, in Starbuck’s. It’s amazing. People reference it on the news.

DI: So, you would say it’s the best website ever, probably…

DR: Ever! Ever! It’s better than mine, better than MySpace; it’s better than Google. It’s better than anything. It’s my favorite.

DI: We should go public.

DR: You should go public.

ES: Do we have time [to go public] today?

DR: I thought you were out in the public. You should go public, and after all of this, I am actually going to go to the website, now.

DI: Great! That’s a good idea. We also make up a lot of stories. Can we make up a story about you?

DR: Yes.

DI: We could make one up, if you don’t mind.

DR: Me? I should do it?

DI: No. We’ll just write one about you, randomly.

DR: Sure. Absolutely. Write it. Um, I don’t know what. Write what you want.

DI: You could write a story. Just a random, fake story. You’re welcome to submit one.

DR: Yeah. Jeez, there’s just so many things, what couldn’t you say?

ES: You could write a story about… what’s the name of the drug you were talking about for bird flu?

DI: Tamiflu.

ES: Yeah. She said that, first thing I thought was, yeah, there’s a story right there.

DR: Yeah. That I’m for it or against it?

DI: Doesn’t matter.

DR: So, it’s a scam. By the way, it’s true, but, yes, say that I personally endorse the fact that this is a scam to sell Tamiflu, just like it was a scam after 9/11 to sell New Yorkers duct tape and tell them that that was going to make them safe. Isn’t that great? That was really smart.

ES: I think, y’know, one or two people bought it.

DR: It’s brilliance on part of the government, y’know? They spend so much money on these things and yet we have Tamiflu and polar bears and…

DI: You could take duct tape, Tamiflu, and polar bears and tie them up into one story.

DR: Yes, I could.

DI: That would be good.

DR: Literally tie them up.

DI: There you go. With duct tape.

DR: Actually duct tape the ice so it doesn’t melt, anymore…

DI: And pump the polar bears full of Tamiflu.

DR: Inject Tamiflu into the polar bears so they don’t get sick and die. Maybe we could do something like that. I don’t know. And shoot any Republicans that try to go up to Alaska.

DI: Feed them to the polar bears. They’re underweight, already, remember?

DR: But I hear Jeb Bush is doing a good job, here, so I hate to trash him.

DI: Oh, go right ahead, please.

DR: Oh, really?

ES: Yeah, sure.

DR: Are you non-Jebs? It seems like Jeb Bush is doing good and he got the only good genes in the family.

DI: Both of them.

ES: They were Levi’s.

DR: Yes. Exactly.

ES: Actually, they were probably Wrangler’s.

DR: Yeah. He doesn’t shoot people in the face.

ES: Not yet. Well, not that he’s talked about.

DI: Pity.

DR: Yeah. Well, you get a lot more done that way. It was kind of funny that they [Dick Cheney and pal] were hunting quail when, in fact, his [George “Dubya” Bush] father’s vice president was Dan Quayle. I find that very… if you’re a conspiracy theorist…

DI: I don’t think anyone’s played that angle.

DR: See? There’s a conspiracy theory there, right?

DI: … Um, I’m behind you.

DR: Maybe he was aiming at Dan Quayle, to be honest, and he accidentally shot the other guy.

ES: And who wouldn’t want to? I mean, Dan Quayle?

DR: He called it “quail hunting.” He got out of the car to shoot quail? You see what I’m saying?

DI: I think you’re onto something here.

DR: Ooh. Interesting.

DI: If you ever want to write for us, please check us out.

DR: Okay. Obviously, you can see that I’m very intelligent…

DI: As long as you can write.

DR: Yes.

DI: We know you can act, but let’s see if you can write.

DR: I try and I do actually write for a lot of magazines. Is it like TheOnion, then?

DI: Yes. But a little edgier.

DR: Edgier?

DI: And some other real stuff.

DR: Kind of mixed in: real and unreal. I like that.

ES: We cuss and make fun of things. We have no respect at all.

[Laughter]

ES: We’re jerks.

DI: Do we have any more questions, or should we let the lady get back to work?

ES: Um, where is the “B” Movie Hall of Fame? Every hall of fame is in Canton, Ohio, so it’s gotta be in Canton, Ohio.

DR: I’ll tell you where it is: it’s in Syracuse, New York.

DI: Really? Not Canton, Ohio?

DR: Nope.

ES: Everything else is in Canton, Ohio.

DR: I have not been to Canton, Ohio.

ES: That’s where the Baseball Hall of Fame is; the Football Hall of Fame. Not the “B” Movie Hall of Fame, apparently.

DR: Nope, nope. It’s in the great Syracuse, New York.

ES: I was going to ask you earlier if you had any problems with Laura Dern, because I thought we’d done good research, but you brought up Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains before we did.

DR: Did I have problems with her? No. Laura Dern was just very studious and kept to herself. Diane Lane, on the other hand, was so young – she was fourteen or fifteen, at the time – and she wanted to go out and party. She had her mother there, because she was so young. She actually had a shower scene and a make out scene with Ray Winston. But, she was on set, so, she was going through that trying to get away from her mother thing, I think, so she was on the set, sowing her wild oats and really getting into her sexuality and that age.

DI: At fourteen? Nice. Good job.

DR: Well, I heard she lost her virginity at, um, thirty. No, I…

DI: I’m planning to, soon. Any day, now.

DR: Any day, now. Any day, now. There’s actually… I’d really like to mention that there’s going to be a Troma disc coming out that is highlighting all of the work I’ve done with them the past fifteen years. It includes the movies, the skits, intros, stuff we’ve done for overseas television, Cinemax, and everything. But – here’s the clincher, this is the good part – it’s going to be hosted by one of my biggest fans who really really is a forty year-old virgin. For real.

DI: Really?

DR: Yeah.

DI: Wow.

DR: Yes. And he is absolutely amazing. I think he might steal my thunder, to be honest, because the clips are great but this guy… His name is George and…

DI: What’s the boxed set called?

DR: I don’t know, yet, but it’s going to be something like My Dinner with a Stalker or The Stalker Diaries. I don’t think it will be Debbie Rochon’s Best in Tromaville. That’s too boring. It’s going to be ‘stalker’ in there, because I think it will grab people.

ES: People like stalkers.

DR: They do.

ES: It’s such a Hollywood society.

DR: You’re nobody unless you have had one.

ES: I’ve had three.

DR: Have you?

ES: This week.

DR: Where they all men?

ES: Two men and a young, small girl.

DR: Young men… Two older men and a young girl.

ES: This forty year-old virgin – is this religious for him? Is it religious, like, ‘God doesn’t want me to have sex until I find the right one?’

DR: No, no. No, it’s not. It’s absolutely not.

ES: Is he really creepy?

DR: Well, he’s unusual. I had a showing of a movie of mine called American Nightmare at this theater. It screened at seven o’clock and he got there at eleven a.m. to make sure he was the first one there.

ES: People do that for Star Wars months in advance.

DR: It’s not that crazy. He has asked my character – not me, but my character from a movie – to marry him. He’s written letters to Jane, which is the character’s name. Long letters, and hopes for a reply. It’s not a religious thing. He actually has a page on MySpace and he says that his fantasy is a female magician who is a lesbian who will force him to watch he have lesbian acts and then allow him to touch their soft calves and then, afterwards, marry him.

ES: Isn’t that all of our fantasies?

DI: You can’t make that kind of stuff up.

DR: Yeah, but it has to be in that exact order.

ES: I’m flexible on the calf thing, so…

DI: I prefer the joint at the knee, personally.

ES: You’re a knee guy?

DR: Everybody has their variation on it, but it’s… He’s a very fascinating man.

DI: Thank you very much, ma’am.

DR: Thank you very much.

DI: Check out the site.

DR: Yes! I’m going to go, now, because I’ve read about it in the New York Times and I’ve read about it in Wall Street Journal and now I must actually go to the site.

-fin-

DI: That thing terrifies me.

DR: Rabid. With Marilyn Chambers.

ES: …and now, he’s huge.

DR: He’s huge. He’s real huge. And when I was in Cannes last year, I saw him speak and was say that there certainly was a point were he could basically do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted, meaning any actor. Cast approval. He had approval over everything. And now he wants to work in a bigger level because he needs to make money. He’s very open about that. So he says, y’know, ‘I get a cast and I have my wish list and at the end of the day, the studio has to okay everybody.’ He may get final cut, still, because he is great and they know he’s great, but they still have to have cast approval. So even someone like Cronenberg, with his amazing, y’know… What’s the word?

DI: Talent?

DR: Talent and…

DI: Pull?

DR: …and proof of his work, track record, thank you. He has to succumb to some of the Hollywood stuff, which is amazing. But he’s just… He’s great because he takes horror and he takes real life situations like marriages gone bad and he sort of makes them into these… He makes people into monsters but he physicalizes what’s really happening emotionally and certainly The Brood is another great family film that he made. I love him, yeah.

DI: You were in a movie called Who Wants to Be an Erotic Billionaire?…

DR: Erotic Billionaire. Yeah!

DI: …What would you do if you were an Erotic Billionaire?

DR: What would I do if I was an Erotic Billionaire? [Laughs] I would… boy, what a great question… I would probably buy an erotic car…

DI: Okay…

DR: …an erotic mansion…

DI: Big erotic car.

DR: Big erotic car. I guess everything would be phallic or vaginal shaped. I think I would have to spend the money in the right way.

DI: Would you make a lot of donations to charity like the Bill and Martha Gates Charity Foundation… with an erotic twist?

DR: Yeah. I would donate to people who do research on sexually transmitted diseases and stuff like that, maybe. I would be a good donator, I think.

ES: Well…

DR: You know what I would do, actually? I would go to Vincent Gallo’s website where he is selling his sperm for a million dollars and I would buy that sperm. I wouldn’t necessarily use it…

DI: Put it on the wall…

ES: Mix it with some paint…

DR: Yeah, just to say that I had it. And he really is selling it. For a million dollars.

ES: I don’t think it’s worth it…

DI: It’s just sperm.

DR: He even has a description of what type of people he will sell it to, which is very weird.

DI: Wow.

ES: Do you fit the description? Would he sell it to you?

DR: He may. I fit at least three-quarters of it. I think he just has final approval.

DI: Okay. Is there a waitlist?

DR: No, I don’t… I’m not sure that he’s sold any, yet. You can either have it… what’s it called? Not intravenous but…

DI: In vitro?

DR: In vitro. Or the natural way, but that costs a little more.

DI: Fair enough. It is a little more work.

DR: Exactly.

DI: Do you believe that Scrotal Vengeance is a dish best served cold?

DR: [laughs] I believe it’s one hell of a comedy! It’s one of the best titles and I don’t think anybody has not asked me about Scrotal Vengeance. And there are actually three Scrotal Vengeances…

DI: Really?

DR: Yes, three of them…

ES: I figured there’d be two…

DR: I’m only in one, though. Scrotal Vengeance, which is by Chris Seaver… he’s the funniest filmmaker. He’s about 25 years old and he’s the new Troma, basically. He’s up in Rochester and he makes these crazy Troma-esque movies. He did a movie called Mulva 2: Kill Teen Ape.

ES: I was wondering about that, actually.

DR: It’s parodying the Kill Bill movies. Completely.

DI: You come out of a coma…

DR: Yes! I come out of a coma but I’m…

DI: …and go fight Teen Ape…

DR: Yes! But the thing is, in his movie, I went into a sugar coma because I was sort of like a geek…

DI: …and he stole your [Halloween] candy?

DR: …and, yes. Exactly. But I come out and I’m actually… I am good looking instead of a geek. But I must avenge the people who stole my Halloween candy. So that’s the slight difference between the two movies. Otherwise, shot for shot, they’re the same.

ES: The new Quentin Tarrantino, obviously.

DI: Yeah.

ES: Let’s hope he makes more movies than Tarantino, though… Where are we at here? If you were the president, I guess of the United States, right?

DI: Sure. Might as well be.

ES: Or of the MPAA…

DR: Of the world?

ES: Or of the world, yeah. What would be the first thing you would do to make the world… not even necessarily a better place… you can make it a worse place if you want to. You can do whatever you want.

DR: Okay. This is very very political and boring…

ES: Make it fun.

DR: I would absolutely, immediately develop a replacement for gas because within a hundred years we’re not going to have any polar bears left. The ice is melting up there and the female polar bears have to… Literally, they have five months less of food that they actually get to eat and feed their babies with. They’re underweight by a hundred pounds and ir babies are underweight by I don’t know how many pounds. Within, literally, a hundred years, they will no longer exist.

DI: So, you’re a fan of polar bears.

DR: I’m a fan of polar bears. I’m a fan of ice. I’m not a fan of pretending that this greenhouse effect is just a hippie thought. It’s very real and I think we’re extremely selfish people and we should do something about it.

Four hours, two-and-a-half packs of cigarettes, and 16 grams of pure Columbian blow later, Idaho sashays into my flat with a half- bottle of Glenfiddich in one hand and a training bra in the other.

“What’s this about?” he says in his Queen’s English proper South African accent. “I was busy establishing contacts south of the border!”

“We have an interview! We must prepare!”

I didn’t get much info from my source; only to watch Corpses are Forever in preparation. We did, I think, and then as soon as it ended, it was daylight. Time to meet our destiny.

We drove to South Tampa, a drive that should have taken twenty minutes, but took an hour, as Idaho had ingested eight hits of blotter acid before we dove into his vintage Aston Martin DB-5. When we arrived at our location, Alternative Edge Studios, we were greeted by a diminutive woman of thirty-something who told us that Debbie would be ready for us shortly.

“I’ll bet she means Debbie Rochon, that chic from the movie last night,” I told Duncan. “Undoubtedly.”

Few minutes later, and we’re sitting in a large concrete room with a couple of random women and the talented Debbie Rochon. Pay dirt! I set out my $4 tape recorder and began the interview like we knew what we were doing:

Debbie Rochon: I think I can answer anything.

Egbert Souse: How did you get started in the film business?

DR: When I was eleven or twelve years old, I was living in Vancouver, Canada, which is north from here… that’s terrible, sorry. I was homeless at the time, and Paramount Pictures was doing this movie called Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains starring Laura Dern, Diane Lane, some of the Sex Pistols and the Clash. This was like 1981. Directed by Lou Adler. So I went in as an extra, and they said are you willing to die your hair like platinum blonde and black on the sides and do like a skunk thing and I said, you know, absolutely. It was $300 cash a week. And I was there for three months and I got started then. I really got the bug then.

Duncan Idaho: When you were twelve?

DR: Yeah. And I’m only fifteen, now.

DI: What are you working on here? What are you doing in Tampa?

DR: I just finished the MegaCon, which is a great convention in Orlando. This particular movie is called Meat Market and it’s by Joe Casey, of course. He’s directing. He wrote it. He’s shooting it. It’s about the slave trade, really. Just like in the script, you may not know it, but 4 million people a year still get traded in the sex trade slave business. And I could probably get you somebody at a very good price.

It’s based on that. It’s part of an anthology of shorts. He’s doing two of them. And two other filmmakers are also doing shorts, and he’s putting them together as an anthology and them putting them out on DVD. [I have since spoken to Joe Casey, and there are three other producers... ed.]

ES: He’s doing that with Brinke Stevens? She has something to do with it, as well?

DR: Yes. She was in another short and she also hosts it.

ES: Out of the many movies you’ve been in, what’s your personal favorite?

DR: My favorite movie is probably Nowhere Man directed by Tim McCann. It’s a really crazy movie, sort of inspired by DOA. Film noir. DOA, of course, is where the guy has twenty-four hours to counteract the poison he’s been given. In this case, the short description is we’re a very happy couple, me and my boyfriend. We’re engaged to be married. He finds a tape of a porno movie I did five years earlier and I didn’t tell him about it. So he gets very upset and very abusive. He starts abusing me physically and emotionally. And then he comes home one night and he rapes me. And I snap, finally, after all of this abuse and while he’s passed out drunk I snip his penis off…

DI: Nice.

DR: …and I go on the run with it. So in comes the DOA influence. He has twenty-four hours to get his penis back or it will decompose. I’m not going to tell you if he gets it back or not. I don’t want to ruin it or anything. It’s really tense, like pitch- black dark comedy. It’s not light; it’s not played for laughs. It’s played very very seriously. There’s a scene in it that most men can’t watch. It’s not even the one you’re thinking. He has to urinate through a catheter. It’s just… it’s a pretty amazing movie. It played at the Sarasota film festival down here and now it’s out on DVD. It played theatrically as well.

DI: Do you know how many movies you’ve been in?

DR: 140, approximately.

DI: 140? Wow. Can you link yourself to Kevin Bacon?

DR: Yes.

DI: In how many?

DR: Honest to God, it’s one, and I can’t remember.

ES: We can do it.

DR: Okay. I’ll bet you it’s one person. I’ll bet you it’s someone like Diane Lane, or something.

ES: It’s actually not Diane Lane.

DI: Tim House.

DR: Who?

DI: Tim House, in Underdogs. He was in In the Cut with Kevin Bacon.

DR: There ya go. I knew it was one.

ES: You said the number of movies is 140? IMDb has you at 113.

DI: Well, IMDb’s outdated.

DR: Yeah. Not everything is listed. There are some things that are upcoming. IMDb is good, but it’s not always thorough.

ES: That changes our question, then. We had you as being the exact number of movies that Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, and Katie Holmes have starred in. You starred in more movies than all of them combined.

DR: That’s right. That’s right. So, where’s my mansion?

ES: Yeah! Why aren’t you on the cover of Teen People?

DR: It’s a really good question. I made the choice to do indie films and I’ve had a lot of fun, I’ve had much better roles than a lot of the women that are working in Hollywood get. Because I get to do the sort of crazy nutty characters, like in American Nightmare I play a psycho serial killer. Very seriously. Not for laughs. I get to play really good roles and that’s why I’ve always been drawn to it. At this point in the game, now, I would love to absolutely do that. And I did, actually, a role on a new series called Conviction. I worked on it for a couple of days. I’m not sure which particular episode, but it’s in season one. It’ll be on, I think, fall.

ES: Is right now the point in your career where you want to be Hollywood mainstream?

DR: Yeah. I’m making the transition. I don’t think I’ll get into Hollywood mainstream, but I think I can do character work on TV at this point. I love horror and that’s my passion, but at the same time there comes a point where you do need money. It always has been about art for me, as silly as it sounds, because some of the movies… you wouldn’t exactly call them art.

About three years ago, on a film shoot in Tennessee I had my fingers cut off. There was an accident. Someone switched up a prop for a real machete knife and didn’t tell me.

DI: Ugh!

DR: Another cringing moment for the guys. But when I was on the scene, I took the knife and plunged it down very hard into a fake dead body and there was no edge between the handle and the blade and my hand went like, you know, butter and a knife, hot knife, whatever the expression is. I couldn’t work for two years, I lost my home, I lost all my savings, a half a million dollars in surgery. It changed my whole world. It’s been a long process coming back. That was three years ago. So now, I love doing indie projects, still, but I have an agent, now, which I never used to. I get so much work offers that I really didn’t need one, but now I want different work offers, so now I go after other things.

ES: Who would you really like to work with?

DR: Oh, boy. The people I’d really like to work with are great horror directors.

ES: There aren’t many of those left, it seems to me.

DR: A friend of mine, James Gunn, whose new movie Slither is coming out. I’d love to do another one with him. I was in Tromeo and Juliet, which he directed in 1995 and he’s gone on to do the Scooby-Doo movies and the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I’d love to work with him. And Cronenberg, who is my idol. He’s just so amazing. Of course, some of the greats are dead, so it’s too late, like, you know, Kubrik and stuff like that. You know what? Anybody who’s just really amazing. I’d like to work with Tim McCann again because he’s got some good stories.

Danny Albertson: It’s been awhile since we’ve had a chance to sit down and rap, Brett. The questions have been piling up in my email since the last time we spoke, so we’ve got a lot to cover.

Brett Favre: I’ve been real busy man. I hate the fact I haven’t been able to get over here lately, but between my family and quarterbacking, my slate stays pretty full.

DA: I know you’d like to be here with me. Lets get to it, shall we?

BF: Okay. Blue forty-two, hike!

DA: Haha! Our first letter comes from Leslie in Montgomery, Alabama:

Dear Brett,

I’ve noticed how you are able to overcome everything that life can possibly throw at you. The other day, a group of friends of mine came across a nigger walking down a rural road in the outskirts of Montgomery. They grabbed him, hogtied him, threw him in a sack and brought him over to my house. He is tied up in my basement right now, and my friends have given me first dibs on anal sex. What should I do?

BF: Well, I grew up in Kiln, Mississippi, and if I said I’ve never come across this exact situation in my life, then I’d be a liar. Let me just say, do what you think is right. What is just, to me, has always been determined by whatever zip code I was in. In ‘Bama, I’d say you gotta hog him out, and then lynch him. Do what’s right, Leslie.

DA: Usually my editors won’t let such an edgy question through. I want to apologize on behalf of LushForLife.com to everyone out there who may be offended by that question, or Mr. Favre’s response. Our next question comes from Harold in Newark, New Jersey:

Brett,

My mother is upset that I haven’t been going to school lately. I’ve been ditching class to go practice my quarterback mechanics so that one day I can be like you. I tell my mom it’s you’re fault I don’t go to school. What do you think?

BF: First off, you need to respect and love your mother. Give her all the affection and caressing and kisses she needs. A boy who’s afraid to give love to his mother is no boy at all. Also, a lot of kids out there want to be me; not just you. The bottom line is no one can ever become all that is me. I am the Immaculate Favre, and I can cure all ills, except if you are a family member of mine, because then I have to let you die so I can get another headline.

DA: Well, Brett, I think that Rob Johnson could give you a run for your money any day of the week.

BF: You think what you want; I know I’m a God.

DA: We’ll end our monthly periodical here, because this bastard is starting to get on my last nerve. We’ll see you all in our next installment.

BF: If you want to submit a question for me to answer, email Danny at LushForLife.com, and I’ll do my best to get to all of them. See you next time!