1208LD1 Chippendales21500 points the market plummeted last week. This was preceded by months of money drunk Wall Streeters feeding like little piggies at the trough of dirty money. For me it’s déjà vu all over again. Black Monday, October 19, 1987, the market crashed 508 points, while I was the master of ceremonies at Chippendales, the world’s greatest male stripping empire. And just as one-bedroom fixer-uppers were recently being valued at half a million dollars, citizens were taking out loans with balloon payments so full of hot air they exploded, and the new Bush was turning Wall Street into a Vegas casino; so Chippendales, with its steroid-bloated, mountain-peak-pecced excess was business as usual in a culture where the Emperor was a male exotic dancer with no clothes on. In both cases, America was writing checks with its mouth that its ass couldn’t cash and it crashed like an addled addict after a lost weekend.

In fact, that’s what happened to me. Started when the Snowman, a Chippendales studmuffin, began feeding me coke so I’d give him better intros. Soon I was shoving massive amounts of blow up my nose to feed the demon beast inside that could never be satisfied, til one night I did so much coke I died. Luckily, I came back to life. I quit coke that night. Dedicated myself to working hard, finding love, and conquering my demon beasts old-school style, by unraveling my knots slowly and painfully. Took me decades of busting my hump and years of hypnotherapy, but today I’m drug-free, with a job I love, a wife who loves me in all my idiocy, an apple-of-my-eye baby girl, and a
glorious home with a spectacular garden that feeds me every day.

I’m hoping America will have just as happy an ending. Dump the gas-guzzling SUVs, play well with others, stop the billion dollar a day war, and prosper the old-school way: work hard and earn it. Well, that’s my two cents worth, and with inflation I owe you approximately one trillion dollars.