Mas-Debate

We've had some Democratic candidate debates recently, and big Hube has been involved, making his intentions to run known. I must say, he's been doing a great job.

During the YouTube debate, he said this after a question on the Iraq War:

"Nice question. Liked it better three weeks ago when Brian Williams asked it during his debate. That's why this whole format is ridiculous. You let these morons with no concept of the realities of the American political machine waste our time with frivolous, stock questions. Things were so much better back in '68."

Though very correct in what he said, his comments were censored out.

After a question on gay marriage by two lesbians in the same debate, he said this:

"You two don't look like you're wanting for any meals, if I may say so. As such, maybe we should feed all the hungry people and get all the kids who don't have health care affordable medical treatment. Then we'll worry about whether or not you can get married. God, things were so much easier back in '68."

Unfortunately these comments were also censored out. I'm worried, because Hube is running a distant fourth behind Clinton, Obama, and Edwards in Iowa. It's no feather in one's cap to beat Dennis Kucinich (sp?). I also told him his gay marriage logic was dumb, because if it's the non-issue he's saying it is, then gay people should just be allowed to be married. He was so annoyed with me he sent me out for venti iced lattes from Starbucks.

Executive Privilege

Hubert Humphrey, still alive in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, made an appearance on Keith Olbermann's show. It wasn't so bad. He interviewed us via satellite from a local roller skating rink.

"Senator Humphrey," Olbermann said. "The current president has been invoking Executive Privilege recently, for a whole host of reasons, some extremely frivolous. If you were president, under what circumstance, if ever, would you invoke this privilege?"

"Well, would invoking the privilege make me look like a dick?"

"Excuse me?"

"A dick, you know... when I was vice president, as I'm sure you're aware Mr. Olbermann, the man holding the office of president, LBJ, was something of a dick..."

Keith chuckled.

"Yes, I remember that."

"Well, I'd like to avoid being a dick as much as possible. I know sometimes as a president you gotta be one, I just only wanna be one when I have to."


Keith went to say something, when he was interrupted by music starting in the background to signal a couples skate.

"Oh, that's my joint right there," Hubert said.

"What? The Jets 'Let's Make it Real' is your joint?"

"You know it, Keith. If you were here right now, I'd totally slow dance with you."

Keith cut to commercial.

Our Trip to New York

Boston is great, but sometimes we need a break, so me, Gwen, Sir Ian McKellen, Hubert Humphrey, and Matty the Mainer made a trip down to the Big Apple. We decided to take in an amateur night at a comedy shack.

The comedian was horrible, and no one was really enjoying it, except for a few pity laughs. At the end of the set, he made a joke about his kid taking a dump on the floor, and his response to it.

"What... should we rub his nose in it?"

You could almost hear the crickets, until Ian Mckellen stood up. Oh shit, I thought, here it comes:

"Why doesn't someone rub your nose in this set so you don't do it again? You suck."

The comedian tried to respond, but was drowned out by the cheers and laughter. Luckily for us, no one recognized him as Magneto from X-Men, or we'd've heard about it in the tabloids.

Makin' It Rain

Hubert Humphrey wanted to let a load off with all this stress from the campaign, so I took him to a strip club. Maybe not such a good idea.

He took a briefcase full of campaign funds my niece helped us raise, and started throwing money around. We got a VIP room, and he "Made it Rain" on the dancers as they showed us their stuff on the pole. He yelled these outrageous statements like:

"That's right bitch, I'm the only man who's ever been both the senior and junior senator of a state."

Or:

"I knew John F. Kennedy. How many of those rap guys can say that?"

Report of the incident was all over MSNBC the next day.

Who Sings "Electric Blue"?

Hubert Humphrey and I were having a bite to eat, discussing recent campaign developements. Overhead, Icehouse's "Electric Blue" was playing, and two husky men in the booth behind us were having an arguement about it.

"No way, this song was done when Lou Gramm was with Foreigner. I know, it was on the album with 'I Don't Want to Live Without You'."

"No way, dude. It was when he was solo. It was on that album that had that 'Just Between You and Me' song."

I held a finger up to Hube, and he nodded. I turned to the boys behind me.

"If I may interject, fellas, but this song has absolutely nothing to do with Foreigner or Lou Gramm. It was done by an Australian band Icehouse. In fact, the song was co-written by John Oates of Hall and Oates fame."

They seemed none too convinced, until the song ended and the DJ proved me right. I gave them a thumbs up and turned around. I wanted some more fries, but found my container wanting. I looked up. Hubert had a mouth full of my fries.

"Dude, that was way weak."

He shrugged his shoulders and continued chewing.

Captain America A-Go-Go

I was having a cigarette while Hubert Humphrey tried to get the Minnesota Vikings to the Super Bowl on Madden 2007, when Gwen came in waving a VHS cassette.

"Check this gem I found at the Goodwill."

It was some old 60s Captain America movie, entitled Captain America A-Go-Go. It looked rather dubious. In order to avoid conflict with Hube's game, we took it into my bedroom to watch it. It was a trip.

The whole thing was Cap trying to fight bad guys while being surrounded by hot women in go-go boots and short skirts. He'd be chained to the wall, while they fondled him, or he'd beat the Red Skull, and they'd fondle him some more. There was no real dialogue, just some sketchy male narrator, and this music that sounded like some variation of "Tequila": lots of brass and guitar.

I was stunned. So was Gwen, only less so because she'd found this rare piece of Cap memorabilia.

"Hey, I'm gonna order out, you guys want anything?" It was Hube. "Hey, watcha watchin'?"

"Captain America A-Go-Go."

"No shit. I'm in this. Rewind back to the 33 minute mark."

We did. There was a young Hube, dressed as a French sailor, sitting at a table in some seedy bar with a stripper on his lap. He was watching with excitement while another woman danced in front of them. Then he made a half-hearted attempt to fight Cap when the Star Spangled Sentinel came in to do whatever. I don't really know why they were fighting, and neither did Hube.

"I needed the cash, so I just whatever the director said."

I looked at the box. It said 1961.

"Weren't you a senator back then?"

"Okay, I didn't need the cash."

That Smug Bastard

This was it, our big moment for my boy Hubert Humphrey. He was going on Meet the Press with Tim Russert. It didn't quite go the way we planned, though.

"Hello, everyone," Tim Said. "I'm joined right now by former Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey, who has just thrown his hat into the 2008 presidential race, and his campaign manager, who is sitting next to him here. Welcome to both of you gentlemen. I want to start with... aren't you dead?"

"I was Tim, but the Democratic party needed me, so I was brought back to life. Not a bad deal, you know?"

"I guess not..."

They discussed the current issues facing the US and why Hube thinks he's better qualified to deal with them. Then Russert mentioned the Hamilton-Baker commission. That's when things went downhill.

"The what? The Hamilton, Joe, Frank, and Reynolds?"

"Um... Hube, I think it's Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds," I said.

"The guys who did "Don't Pull Your Love Out on Me Baby", right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, what did I say?"

"You said Hamilton, Joe, Frank, and Reynolds, but there's no pause between the Joe and the Frank. Joe Frank is one person."

"What the hell kind of name is that?"

"Guys, let's get back on track here. The question I was getting at is should the Democrats be hiding behind Baker-Hamilton when they said..."

"You know what the Democrats should be worried about? Pulling those damn misleading Apple computer commercials off the air."

Now I was confused. Where was he going with this?

"Man, I saw that commercial where that smug little bastard that's playing the Apple tells the PC guy that digital cameras only work well with Macs, so I get one. But then I need an external hardrive because I'm downloading so many movies illegally that I'm running out of space, and I go to BestBuy, and the kid there not only tells me 98.5% of the external hardrives don't work with my Mac, but that every PC they had works with every digital camera on the market. Now whenever I see that commercial I want to kick that smug bastard in the nuts."

Russert went to commercial. Needless to say both he and I were shocked by Hube's behavior. I don't disagree at all with his point: I mean if i wasn't more computer savvy I too would be mislead by those Apple commercials, and they probably should be pulled off the air... but you can't say you want to kick that smug bastard in the nuts on Meet the Press, can you?

Before we made it back to Boston, the clip was up on YouTube and had been viewed 4179 times.

Double H

I got the call today that I'd forgot to expect. Hubert Humphrey wanted to meet to discuss his campaign for president in '08. We hooked up at a local underwear shop that caters to gay men. We had to sneak into the dressing room because we couldn't hear each other over the extremely loud house music. The current song was a remix of Climie Fisher's "Love Changes Everything."

"Love changes... changes everything... man, who does this song," I said to myself.

"Climie Fisher."

"Climie Fisher? How did you know that?"

"I had a lot of time to kill in the '80s and '90s. I spent 24 hours a day sitting on a beach in the Caribbean listening to music."

"24 hours a day? You didn't sleep?"

"I didn't. But anyway, we need a strategy to get me the NH Primary."

"Well, I was thinking you've got the best record on Iraq and the economy and social security, because you haven't had to vote on any of those things in like 30 years."

"Okay. What else you got?"

"That's it for right now. What did you have?"

"I'm thinking of having Jack Wagner as my running mate."

"Jack Wagner?"

"Yeah, Frisco from General Hospital..."

"Yeah I know who he is."

"He's on Bold now."

"Yeah, with Lorenzo Lamas. But whatever, why Jack Wagner? Why not Pacey from Dawson's Creek?"

"Joshua Jackson... yeah, Double H and Double J. I kinda like it, make it shorter I'll buy it."

I looked at him pondering my suggestion, and realized just how much my work was cut out for me.

"Think we can make this has been a president?"

"Has been? Dude, you're a never has was."

He laughed and patted me on the shoulder. He walked to the front of the store, then turned back to me:

"We're gonna win this shit, fucker, you know that?"

"I do, bitch. I do."

Love changes... changes everything...

Humphrey in '08

I was sitting in a coffee shop reading up on current events in Uzbekistan when a man approached me:

"I saw Hubert Humphrey at a hole in the wall restaurant in Chinatown."

He left me a picture and directions to the restaurant. I went to protest, but he was gone. I finished the article I was reading, and hopped on the T. I had nothing better to do that day, so I figured I'd see what this Hubert Humphrey business was all about.

Sure enough, he was sitting in the restaurant, eating a pu-pu platter. I sat down across from him and helped myself to a crab rangoon.

"My God, you look exactly like Humbert Humphrey."

"That's because I am. I've come back to run for president as a Democrat in 2008. In fact, I could use a man of your talents in my campaign. What d'you say? You want in?"

I hesitated.

"C'mon, I'll be your best friend."

An image flashed in my head of me and Hubert Humphrey riding a tandom bicycle, ringing a little bell and waving to Mads, my Norwegian companion. Mads looks away, one single tear falling down his cheek.

"How about this, Double H: I'll help on your campaign, but I won't be your best friend?"

"Deal."