Build Date: Tue Jan 21 04:50:10 2025 UTC
TV rots your brain.
-- Johnnie Royale
The Night I Met the President
2006-12-27 14:10:12
It was late at night on September 4, 1975 and my mom woke me up. "We're going to go see the President" she said.
We drove a few miles out to McClellan Air Force Base. I think it was after midnight when we got there. My mom flashed her military ID and we drove onto the base and out to the flight line. Some MP's waved us out onto the tarmac. There was a velvet rope line stretched between short poles that a crowd of about a hundred people stood behind, five deep. I wiggled my way through the crowd towards the rope but couldn't quite get to the front.
Air Force One landed and a walkway rolled out to the plane. The door opened, and down the steps walked President Gerald R. Ford and Governor Jerry Brown. President Ford looked a bit tired but Governor Brown had a bounce in his step as they worked the rope line.
As they reached my position I could see them both very clearly but my way was blocked by two blonde women who looked like fashion models. President Ford was almost past when I heard my mom yell from behind "How about a handshake for this little guy?" and she pushed me forward. Ford looked down and reached through the crowd to shake my hand. "Hi Red!" he said with a warm smile and suddenly he didn't look tired at all. Then he was off again.
Governor Brown shook my hand, smiled, and mussed my hair. Then the two of them got into a waiting limousine with some other people and sped away to the Governor's mansion.
That was the night I got to meet the President.
Rest in peace President Ford. Rest in peace.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
A Blast from the Past! Pao Tzu goes over and under the crucial variables in the production and consumption of Salvia Divinorum. A must read for psychonauts of all stripes. (More...)
First there was the Bloody Mary: Vodka, Tomato Juice, Worcestershire sauce, some spices, and celery. We drank it, and it was good. Then any drink with tomato juice got a prefix of "bloody" attached to it. We drank them, and they were mostly bad. Now Pigdog gets back to basics and introduces The Bloody Dog, a drink with REAL BLOOD in it. HUMAN BLOOD. (More...)
A Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Liquor
Curled up cozy with a good book? All warm and snuggly and thinking about friends far away? So am I, reading the greatest story by the greatest writer -- when he suddenly starts waxing philosophical about liquor! (More...)
Australian Troops Set for Days of Debauchery to the Tunes of Kylie Minogue
This weekend Australian troops in East Timor will be able to put their feet up and push all the images of mass graves and charred remains from their minds as they relax to the giddy melodies of Kylie Minogue - including exclusive unplugged performances in the militia-ravaged and blood-spattered border towns of Balibo and Suai. (More...)
The Peppermill Is Not Good For You
Paradise lounge on the strip. Expense it, bad boy! (More...)
Brother Wayne Lays Down the Truth
Flesh interviews Wayne Kramer of MC5. (More...)
