What You See Is What You Regret

DONNY:
White House.

STEVE:
Wow.

DONNY:
Yeah, wow, right. White House. Can I help you?

STEVE: Is this Mr. Donald LaVeque?

DONNY:
Donny, yeah. Who’s calling?

STEVE:
This is Steve Stover? I just started at the office of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. I sent you the 10-page letter introducing myself? You didn’t exactly answer or anything.

DONNY:
Oh yeah, yeah, the library. Right.

STEVE:
I just started here and it’s incredible. It’s just super. This is just the best job ever. This is just incredible.

DONNY:
Great. Glad to hear it. Well I got to run. All the best to you.

STEVE:
No wait, wait, I really need to talk to you. I need help with this.

DONNY:
With the library? This is the White House, Stevie. The White House. We don’t have time for libraries. We are doing real work here.

STEVE:
Hey, don’t I know it.

DONNY:
Just yesterday, we ran out of cookies. Totally out. I mean like no cookies in the building.

STEVE:
I can’t even begin to imagine that.

DONNY:
It was a nightmare. Nobody knows what we go through here.

STEVE:
Exactly. So listen, I need your help here? I’m in charge of doing a display based on the presidential papers. And all these people around here are saying there aren’t any. Now are they pulling my chain?

DONNY:
Presidential papers? No, there aren’t any presidential papers.

STEVE:
How could that be? I can’t believe he never wrote any papers.

DONNY:
Are we talking about the same George W? He draws a line with his finger on a frosty window and they make it into a half-hour video.

STEVE:
Well okay, maybe he didn’t write any papers. But he must’ve read some of them, didn’t he?

DONNY:
Not likely.

STEVE:
You mean he would’ve signed them all without reading them?

DONNY:
You know, we got that auto-sign machine working so good now, it actually duplicates the gravy stain on his middle index finger.

STEVE:
He doesn’t sign any of those executive orders?

DONNY:
Well he signed the one to buy the auto-sign machine. He loves watching it work. He watches it all the time. You know, when there’s no game on.

STEVE:
Okay, but I found this whole box of papers signed in crayon after Hurricane Katrina?

DONNY:
Thought I shredded those. Jesus M.F. Christ.

STEVE:
Some of them look really impressive.

DONNY:
Well, with Katrina, it was starting to look like he was too distant, too out to lunch. So we figured we should have him start signing stuff. We were thinking like Rosh Hashanna cards, you know? And then Michael Chertoff starts giving him memos to sign. Memos. He thinks he’s working for James Frigging Madison.

STEVE:
Right, so I was hoping we could make a whole exhibit out of them? You know, show his signed orders, and then show like thousands of happy people living back in their newly rebuilt houses in New Orleans, listening to jazz, marching in the parades. Maybe bring in Al Hirt.

DONNY:
He’s dead.

STEVE:
Yuh, that’s even better. We do this whole anthropomorphic display with him and Satchmo and Pete Fountain.

DONNY:
He’s still alive.

STEVE:
Okay, scratch him. But we’ll have all these happy people in their new homes.

DONNY:
Sure, if you don’t mind lying.

STEVE:
Lying? Lying? This is the presidential library.

DONNY:
Well I’m sorry I offended you. It’s a crying shame, but see we weren’t really able to rebuild many homes. Especially in New Orleans. It was the damnedest thing. I still can’t figure it out.

STEVE:
Yuh, but at least you were able to give everybody who needed a home one of those trailers to live in so they could come back to the city and listen to jazz and celebrate Fat Tuesday, right?

DONNY:
Well, we actually weren’t able to get trailers for everybody.

STEVE:
A billion dollars and you couldn’t get trailers for everybody?

DONNY:
I know, isn’t it a bitch?

STEVE:
But you got trailers for a lot of the people, right?

DONNY:
Definitely. Thousands.

STEVE:
Thousands? That’s great. That’ll make a great video. And they’re all happy, right? They’re ecstatic?

DONNY:
Yes. Except for the ones with that formaldehyde problem.

STEVE:
Formaldehyde?

DONNY:
I know, isn’t it the funniest thing? Yuh, the trailers we bought had unsafe formaldehyde levels, whatever that means. So there was a potential for eye and throat infections. Not that anybody lost the use of their throat or anything. But some people are so damn sensitive…..

STEVE:
But the president didn’t let that stand, right? He fixed all those trailers and now there’s no more formaldehyde.

DONNY:
No, there’s still formaldehyde. But we absolutely, definitely, cross our hearts, double-dare promise that all the new trailers we’re buying now will not have higher formaldehyde levels than the ones we bought before.

STEVE:
And that’s all you can promise?

DONNY:
Well, we can promise one more thing.

STEVE:
Yes?

DONNY:
By the time they’re delivered, we are going to be SO OUT OF HERE.