Living The Dream, Part II

--> A few weeks ago Rolling Stone magazine sent a reporter, Jill Villeneuve, and a photographer whose name we never learned out to interview me at New Lugburz. This is a transcription of that interview. The first post took place on the grounds of New Lugburz. This post, the second of three, occurs during a tour of the Big House. -- The Management

Hulles: Here, this here's the Big House. I call it my Blog Cabin, haw haw! What do you think?

RS: Well, it's certainly, er, big....

Hulles: Yep, I've found that size does matter in pretty much everything except cell phones. I wanted to be sure that I wouldn't run out of room anytime soon for my blogging awards, haw haw! Come on up the stairs here, honey, and we'll go on inside.

RS: What are those women doing standing to the side of the door with the long sticks? And don't call me honey.

Hulles: They're the Door Guards, honey, elite members of the Death Commandos that have been selected for the coveted job of standing there all day holding staves without moving.
RS: Staves?
Hulles: It's the plural of 'staff.' If you're going to be hanging around New Lugburz much you might want to buy a dictionary. We have several in the bookstore inside.
RS: [muttering] I've got your dictionary right here you pompous bastard....
RS: What's that on the heads of the Door Guards? Is that a shako like they wear at Buckingham Palace? Assuming of course you know what a shako is.
Hulles: Touchy, aren't we? No, I got the idea from the Brits but I modified it for postmodern America. Those are actually beehive hairdo wigs. We have them custom made in Missouri. The girls call 'em “Mary Tyler Moores,” but I call the wig style “Space Hair” because it looks like the bouffant that all the blondes had on the original Star Trek TV series.
Come on over here closer, look here, isn't it cool how the Door Guards stand there and don't move a muscle? [playfully grabs the cheek of one of the Door Guards] It's really quite photogenic, the tourists love it. Why, you can actually have anal sex with them right there and they won't even so much as blink! The Door Guards I mean, not the tourists. Here, let me show you, no bother at all, won't take but a minute.
RS: No, no, that's okay! I'm very anxious to see the inside of your “Blog Cabin,” I've heard so much about it. Please?
Hulles: Okay, okay, but you're missing out on something to tell your grandkids once they turn 18. Well, come on inside then, and welcome to my humble palace.
RS: Wow. Don't you think the lime green and hot pink color scheme is a little, well, garish?
Hulles: We call it “vibrant,” but I can see where you might be a little startled if you're not used to it. We've found it helps keep the staff alert.
Over there on the left is the coffee shop. I had it created as an exact duplicate of the redundantly-named Nina's Coffee Cafe in Saint Paul. I even hired local crazy people to sit in there and laugh uproariously to themselves and try to bum cigarettes from me just to add authenticity. I find I miss Nina's when I'm up here at New Lugburz.
Well, we'll come back to the coffee shop at the end of the tour when we can sit down and chat. Now if you look to your right under the big neon Smiling Mamegoma sign, you'll notice our Hulles Gift Shop and Souvenir Store. You can get cheap versions of Death Commando gear in there, edible microshorts and toy plastic staves and the like. Our netsuke strap and omijuki selection is probably the largest outside of Japan and the Mall of America. We also sell genuine T. M. Lauth underwear with pockets -- we have a special arrangement with the designer. Oh, and I almost forgot: of course we have the entire line of the cute little stuffed werehamsters that you've probably heard about, even out there in New York or L.A. or wherever the hell your magazine is based. They're collectible! You might want to pick up a couple yourself, can't do anything but go up in value.
RS: It's New York City, and I promised I'd bring some back for my -- if you reach for my ass one more time, you sick fuck, you're going to lose that arm.
Hulles: Feisty, eh? I like a woman with spirit, reminds me of several of my ex-wives. Anyway, down that hall to the right past the Gift Shop is the tobacconist and the liquor store. The hall to the left has the waxing salon. the bookstore, and one of the eight bars we have here in the Big House. That particular one is a replica of Costello's Bar in Saint Paul -- “If we wanted people to come for the service, we would have opened a church!” You can smoke in my Costello's, however, and past 9 PM I try to limit the number of drunk and horny middle-aged women to three or four at a time. Let's keep going straight though, on down the hall towards the back.
RS: What's the little church-thing all the way down at the end of the hall?
Hulles: That's my Margo Timmins Shrine. The church is a scale-model of Trinity Church in Toronto where the Cowboy Junkies recorded their first album.
RS: Duh, I work for Rolling Stone, remember? What about these empty brackets on the hall walls? What are they for?
Hulles: That's my air guitar collection. The bracket we're walking by now holds my vintage Fender Stratocaster. I recently auctioned off one of my autographed air guitars at the annual Bloggers' Binge For An NDPS Cure In Our Lifetime gala for 25 big ones. I autographed it in invisible ink of course, haw haw!
RS: What's that door?
Hulles: That's my private movie theater. Tonight we're showing “Zombie Joe: The Director's Cut,” if you'd care to stay and watch it with us.
Up here to the left you'll see my library. I have an extensive collection of erotica I'd be more than happy to show you if you've got the time. Some of the Tantric Sex Secrets of the Orient scrolls are worth quite a bit of money. I'm currently reading “Fragments From the Delta of Venus,” Anaïs Nin, Judy Chicago illustrations, lots of minimalist drawings of vaginae if you go for that sort of thing.
RS: I'll pass.
Hulles: Your loss. Take a left again up here. Over there is the New Lugburz gym, and just past that is the fashion show runway.
RS: ???
Hulles: Yeah, we like to baste ourselves with trendiness every once in a while just like you do in the big city. In fact I've been known to strut down the runway myself occasionally, usually modeling the Swiss Hanro line of male underwear. [singing loudly] “...catwalk, on the catwalk, then I do a little turn on the catwalk...”
RS: [muttering] Now that's a nasty visual... [aloud] Wow, where's that wonderful aroma coming from?
Hulles: Over here, this is our test kitchen for the world-renowned Hulles dessert recipes! Let's just stick our nose in here for a minute. Hi, Pris! What's cookin'? This is Pris, our chief dessert engineer. Her real name is either Valerie or Mabel, I can never remember, but we all call her Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert. Heh. Pris here develops and personally tests all the dessert recipes that appear in the Hulles blog. She never wears anything more than an apron while she's working, she claims that clothing interferes with her cooking chakras or something like that.

RS: She looks pretty svelte for being a dessert chef.

Hulles: Pilates. C'mon, let's head back down the hall, we're almost done with the tour.

RS: Well, looks like we're back at the fake Nina's. Didn't you say we were going to sit down and talk in there?
Hulles: Yep. Go on in, head up to the counter, be my guest, order anything you want. I run a tab here just like at the real one. I'll be back in a minute, I have to go do manly things in the Unisex Restroom. Oh, and ignore the AA meeting going on over there. In my Nina's we gun the fuckers down right after the opening prayer. “Say hello to my little friend!” Haw haw! Tourists love it, sometimes we have to prop 'em back up and shoot 'em again for the folks with video cameras. Be right back.
-- Hulles