--Joe Procopio wrote:

Okay. Sorry you couldn't use it. Good luck.

Hugs to Chelsea. Leslie declines comment.

J. --LePrez1 wrote: Joe,
I really appreciate you coming through on such short notice. However, after much consideration and soul searching, I've decided I'm going to have to pass on your speech. Believe me, I like it a lot, but I think I can still pull up out of this mess. Don't feel this is a rejection, I'm not even using what my own speech-writers gave me. I'm going with my own words for once. It's time.

Thanks again. Chelsea sends kisses. Hugs to Leslie.

B.

--Joe Procopio wrote:

Here. Best I could do in three hours --

Good evening.

Look. I know I've been kind of distant with y'all lately (Trust me. Use "y'all" here). But I've got Ken Starr all up on my ass and today I finally got nailed to the wall on Lewinsky.

(Look down and left of camera and allow half-smile/chuckle to briefly slide across face. Return to camera.)

My bad.

I blew it. I screwed the pooch, as it were (When using the phrase "screwed the pooch", make little quotation marks with your hands. This is just too damn funny to pass up). Not only that, I lied to everybody involved in this. I did it. Me. I lied to every single person who supported me, every single American who voted for me. And most of all, I kept my wife and child in the dark. I am truly, completely sorry.

But what the hell did you expect?

I mean, let's finally face it. Once you get to a position of power in this country any higher than city councilman, it's all payola and crack and hookers. It's not that I don't know what I'm doing, I know perfectly well what I'm doing. The fact of the matter is that I don't care. None of us do. I'm no different than any other sycophant you've elected.

Trust me folks, when we're not on TV kissing up to you and the press and foreign dignitaries, we're in the oval office sipping Busch Light and listening to Jimmy Buffet.

And speaking of the press, for the love of Pete, make up your damn minds, will you? Woodward and Bernstein, my ass. Lately, all you've been able to do is interview each other about whether or not I stained a cocktail dress. If there's a lower rung on the journalistic ladder, clue me in.

Which helps bring me to my point, the reason I'm coming into your homes tonight. For six years, all I've been trying to do is write the first paragraph of my presidency in the history books. And, at this juncture, I figure nothing could be quite as ugly as is it now. So I'm going to take the reigns and do it all myself. I'm going to let you in on a couple of things and then I'm outta here. Gone. Seeya. Let the history books show that I was The President who Jetted.

First off, this country is ska-rewed! We're all done. We had one hundred, maybe one hundred and fifty years of this idealistic crap and then we got as corrupted as the former Soviet Union. It's all been done behind the velvet curtain of Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Mickey Mouse.

There is no such thing as Y2K. You know what's going to happen on January 1st, 2000? You're all going to feel like idiots for watching your VCR clocks and waiting for your cars to explode when you could have really taken advantage of that Prince song.

There was never any such thing as Social Security. We've just been taking your money and giving it to the elderly because they vote more often than you.

Duh.

The entire Gulf War was fought on a ten square mile parcel of desert in Nevada. Right near Area 51. Go figure. The stock market is all run by a guy named Steve who punches numbers into a Commodore 64 and it's been this way since 1985. The crash in October of ‘87 was George Bush's idea of a prank. It's an old vice-president tradition. Same thing with Mondale and the Metric system and Gore and the electric car. The Metric system. Come on.

Celine Dion was my idea. So was Hanson.

Bill Gates is an actor named Horace Silverstein. Windows is a very good way to keep an eye on you all.

The real-estate market is a sham. I can't believe you're all paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to catch a couple of tax breaks. Like we're not going to get it somewhere else. Some of you actually think we left that loophole in the tax-code by accident.

Finally, aliens did land at Roswell and we just weren't smart enough to cover the whole thing up.

All right?

Are you done with me?

I'm a ghost. Al, the keys are yours. And if I don't see you before it rains then piss on ya.

Good night, and thank you for watching.

(Stand, take the microphone off, leave it on the desk, get on a plane, stay gone for five to ten years)

joe@smug.com

in the junk drawer: