From: puccio@media.mit.edu (Jim Puccio)
Subject: Dan Quayle, Thinking
Organization: M.I.T. Media Laboratory
Distribution: alt
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 22:06:08 GMT

My fiance subscribes to a literary magazine called "Story."  Normally I don't
look at it much (doesn't tend to appeal to me), but some *strange force*
compelled me when I brought in this morning's mail to tear open the plastic and
open the lil sucker up.  And what do you think I found?

"Dan Quayle, Thinking" by Michael Martone.

Imagine my excitement.  Imagine my delight.  Imagine my (... now, don't go too
far here, Jim, this is a *family values* kind of program ...).

It's a series of three vignettes, as seen from inside the Dandroid's brain.
Concept is wonderful.  Execution, unfortunately, only so-so.  Anyway, here
are some excerpts.  (And, if you want the whole thing, it's the Autumn 1992
issue, available from F&W Publications, 1507 Dana Av, Cincinnatti OH 45207, 
(513) 531-2222.

Enjoy ...

"On the State Of The Union

[...]

  "I know what people are thinking.  They see me brooding behind the President.
I have touched up my own temples with a hint of grey.  It is important that
we all forget about the President's mortality.  I alone am allowed to age.
I imagine the Members on the floor squirming in their seats, adjusting their
angles of vision, using the bulk of the President to blot me and then the
thought of me out of their minds.  The President's most recent collapse,
captured on television, has brought me back into their thoughts that now are
drifting away from the prepared text, the paragraph on infrastructure they
have been following halfheartedly, and into that percentage of every minute
each has allotted to daydream, fantasy, or prayer.  I walk in the corridors of
some skulls out there.  The possibility of me.  The blue-eyed, bushy-tailed
fact of me.

  "To get back at them, I employ the old toastmaster trick of imagining the
audience naked, and they sit there like dollops of frosting, their famous grey
heads collapsing into puddles of fat that fill the seat.  [...]

[...]

  "Above us all, the First Lady, also naked, her face framed by an aurora of
hair, rises from her seat and continues to rise, to hover near the ceiling.
Her body divides into hemispheres of breasts and belly and clefts of her butt,
a kind of ancient statue, veined marble and ivory.  She cleaves apart suddenly,
the parts whirling into a system of orbiting planets.  The President looks up
at the glowing constellation of his wife.

  "The President's speech continues.  All of it has already been distributed.
It is being delivered as if by a machine.  I witness the essential part of him
leave himself for a moment, shedding the shell of his suit, to float up above
the august chamber of the House of Representatives, joining the animated and
precious flesh of his wife.

  "I think such thoughts because the President thinks such thoughts.  Much of
what we do is fantasy.  It is my job to dream his dreams.  In case he is 
unable to complete his constitutional duties, I am ready to step into his
place.

  "I chair, at the pleasure of the President, a commission on space.  I see in
his dark suit the deep black fabric of the universe.  There are still flakes
of white dandruff on his shoulders and back.  I stare into the depths between
those flecks of white transforming into twinkling stars.  It is a map of
heavenly bodies.  This vacuum has a texture.  I lose my way in its blackness.
I no longer hear the speech.  On television, I appear lost in grave thought.
I have forgotten the spontaneous applause.  The infinite silence between those
stars terrifies me.

"On Late Night TV

[...]

  "On the far wall, the televisions are on.  The screens seem to float, a
slight flicker in the pictures.  I like to arrange the programs from left to
right.  I have a remote in both hands, and I am good enough now to read the
buttons with my thumbs like braille.  I can start with Carson on the first
screen, then move to Arsenio in the middle.  While I am watching him, noting
the strange new design cut into his hair, I can leapfrog Johnny's image to the
screen on the right, catching him as he turns towards Doc.  My fingers are busy
moving Arsenio from the middle screen left, nudging the volume up there so that
I can hear his first joke while I watch Carson, arms behing his back, lean
forward towards the audience like a figure on a ship's prow.  I cue up Ted 
Koppel on the middle set just to find out tonight's subject.  If I'm not
interested, I'll switch to the comedy channel with its parade of club stand-ups
or run the tape of the morning talk shows, scanning for any reference to me
until it is time for Dennis Miller to come on after 'Nightline' on ABC.

  "If I am alert enough, I can record the jokes on the other two VCRs.  I now
sense when a joke is coming.  When Leno stands in for Johnny, he uses me last
after a string of gags based on the day's headlines.  He likes to end with me.
Arsenio seems embarrased, the punch line swallowed, buried in his nervous
guffaw.  It is almost as if he feels compelled to make a joke about me.  I am
able to catch a couple of these jokes a night, save them on one of the two
one-hundred-and-twenty-minute cassettes.

  "Late at night, after all the talk shows are over and the overnight news
shows are on the networks, I'll run the tape, one long string of jokes about
me.  I want to remember who said what.  There are the nightly bits that turn
on my stupidity, and then the frenzy of jokes when I have done or said
something silly.  "Did you see where our Vice President visited Los Angeles?"
The comic shakes his head.  "This is true," he says.  "He had a few things to
say about television."  The audience is already howling.  He goes on with the
joke.  Quiet, I think, I want to hear this.  I want to know what's true, you
bastard.  Tell me what's true.

[...]

  "While I was in law school, I did watch David Letterman do the weather on
that Indianapolis station, sticking pictures of umbrellas and smiling suns in
sunglasses on an airbrushed map of Indiana.  He drew arrows that meant nothing,
made up forecasts on the spot, and teased the anchors who smiled back at him.
The other students thought he was funny.  My study group took a break to watch
him every night.   He would spend his time asking on the air what a flurry was,
who had seen high pressure, why was Indiana always colored pink.

  "And now I have him on all three screens.  he fiddles with his suit, licks
his teeth, presses his face into the camera.  His jokes aren't funny, and the
audience doesn't laugh.  But the funny part is, I think, that is what is
supposed to happen.  The audience groans and boos.  The harder he works, the
more it fails, the better the audience likes it.  I don't get this being dumb.
I don't get it.

  "At 2 a.m. the dogs in Washington start barking.  I can hear sirens going up
and down Massachusetts Avenue.  I have been watching the weather.  There will
be snow in Vail and sunshine in Palm Beach.  It's a great country.  You can
ski or play golf on the same day.  I've been watching a half hour commercial on
a new kind of paintbrush and, on several channels, the pictures of the pouting
women who say they will talk with me live if I call them right now.

[...]

  "I want to walk onto "The Tonight Show" in the middle of someone's time in
the guest chair the way Bob Hope does.  Perhaps on Carson's very last show.
I want to straighten this whole thing out.  Let people see me as I realy am.

  "'I can only stay for a minute, Johnny,' I'd say.  He apologizes for that 
evening's joke during the monologue.  'Hey, I understand.  I'm used to it.'
I can take it.  I'd show them.

  "I watch the televisions.  I start with the one on the left.  The later it
gets, the more ads there are for private conversations.  The women say they
are standing by, waiting for the phones to ring.  I could call right now.
I would tell them who I am.  And they believe me right away.  I say, 'I'm the
Vie President.'  I say, 'No, really.  I'm not making this up.  I am the Vice
President.  I am.  I am."

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "I've heard people say that [I have a short attention span].  I don't feel  |
|  I do, because when I'm interested in something I'll stay in focus as long  |
|  as it is necessary ... If you get off on something I'm not very interested |
|  in, it's very easy for me to block it out.  It's easy for me to block      |
|  things out."  -- J. Danforth Quayle, 12-JAN-92                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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