the brutal times

By Barry Hussein, TORONTO – Maverick Arizona senator and recent candidate for US president John McCain is hard at work, holed up in this identity-lacking town, applying the finishing touches to his tell-all campaign trail memoir, “Inside McCain”, due out this Christmas.

After McCain fell asleep last night in the Four Seasons Hotel at his standing desk (that’s right – he sleeps upright) I sneaked round him and by tongs pulled the moist manuscript from a secret location on his person where it had been secretly secreted.

Among the juicy tid-bits in the 10 page pop-up book: prior to selecting sizzling Sarah Palin as his preferred vice-presidential pick, the Maverick (or ‘Rick’ as some call him), had all-but cemented Star Wars Episode One child actor Jake Lloyd as his number one choice.

As you know, Mr Lloyd was that awfully-annoying kid whom director George Lucas selected to play Darth Vader as a toddler after looking out his window and seeing Lloyd mowing a neighor’s lawn.

“Originally the whole of Episode One was going to be set on a giant lawn and I thought Jake would be pretty good at mowing that lawn in the movie,” Lucas said back in 1999 prior to his 10-year sentencing for crimes against entertainment.

Anyway, regarding McCain, “Actually, Mac- Mick- Rick, wanted Macaully Culkin to be vice president, but we told him Culkin wasn’t in Star Wars, at which point he became flustered and stated that if he couldn’t have a kid as a running mate then we might as well ‘get me some woman,’ or some such kind of thing, and that’s how we came round to settling on Ms Palin” said a former McCain campaign spokesperson on condition that he/she /it not be named in this article, as it would be extremely hard to prove anything he/she/it/said.

Unlike here in comfy Canada, kids can’t vote in the United States, but McCain apparently believed that the presence of Lloyd, whose classic bowl haircut was praised by both supporters and detractors of the former child actor within the McCain camp, would galvanize US parents to cast their ballots in favor of the first-ever man-child presidential ticket.

Making the pop-ups pop up in McCain’s pop-up book, one can’t help but wonder why McCain made a pop-up book.

“John wanted an in-your-face kind of format and that’s  what he got with this book,” explained Rudell Gamie, 109, who handled the final preparations for “Inside” for  Canadian publishing giant Pets & Gardens Magazine. “I think this book is going to scare some people, it’s going to challenge some people, and it’s going to be in at least the 20 – 30 US dollar range due to the fact that it was carved here by hand,” he went on.

Or…did…he?!?

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