August 9, 2007
Tour Blog: Algeria’s a Distant Land…
The moment we stepped off the boat in Algiers, the men were waiting. They took one look at my spandex-encased crotch and knew I was the guy. In all, there were four gentlemen. Two looked rather polite and pleasant, dressed in tweed suits and horn-rimmed glasses. Enormous gun-toting militants, glistening with sweat, flanked the polite-looking men.
“Girth McDürchstein, I presume,” said the shorter of the tweed-clad men in an accent halfway between English and Danish.
“What’s this about?” I asked.
The militants aimed their guns, but not at me—at my friends, my bandmates, my wife. Margo didn’t look very happy with them, but she made no move.
“Come with us, please,” the shorter man said.
I glanced at Margo again. She nodded slyly, and I went with them. They forced me to sit between the militants in the backseat of a Jeep, while the two “intellectuals” drove. We went out of the city, into the desert—harsh plains of sand that felt remarkably cool in the evening with the wind blowing sand grains in our faces.
When we had reached a point that the living world had totally abandoned—just sand, far as they could see— I saw a little black pellet on the horizon. As we drove closer, I realized it was a very small cabin—a shack, even—near the side of the road. They drove right up to the cabin and the militants forced me out.
The four men led me inside the cabin, which looked smaller from the outside than it felt inside, and they took me through a complex maze of hallways until finally we reached a small, darkened bedroom.
An elderly man lie prostrate on the bed that occupied much of the room’s space, wheezing and sweating profusely. He didn’t notice anyone had entered the room until the taller gentleman, the one in gray tweed, knelt beside him and whispered, “Grandfather, we have brought the man you wish to see.”
The man looked but didn’t appear to see us. “He is here?” the man gasped.
One of the militants jabbed the butt of his gun into my ribs. Now it was my turn to gasp. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Girth McDürchstein…”
“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure…”
“I…am Dr. Clement Okon, a former official of Nigerian government who could have helped you gain so much if you had only helped me.”
“But—but—you’re a fraud. You’re not even supposed to exist—”
“And yet I do exist. How do you explain that?”
I said nothing.
“How do you explain that your exposure of my livelihood, yours and the New York Times and L.A. Weekly, damned me for all time?”
“Dude,” I said, “you’re a rip-off artist.”
“And I was, at one time, highly profitable at my trade. By my calculations, you owe me seventy-three thousand million U.S. dollars.”
“What?!” I shrieked.
“Get the money from him, gentlemen,” Dr. Clement Okon sighed before his eyes closed.
The militants dragged me through the labyrinthine halls again, this time depositing me in what appeared to be a dining room. They sat me down at the head of the table and surrounded me while the Tweed Brothers sat down near me.
“Now,” the gray one said, “how shall you propose getting your money to us?”
I sat back and thought for a moment, then stumbled on an idea. “You know what? You might not have read about this, but I was recently forced to close the doors of my record label, Kelleystein Recordings, and as a result of that I needed to liquidate all of our available assets, which totaled around $75 billion—or ‘thousand million,’ as you foreigners say.
“Unfortunately, if I were to just dump all of this money out of my account, I’d incur a 10% penalty for making such a large cash withdrawal. Now…how can I avoid that?”
“I…” the shorter one began, then trailed off. He glanced at the other gentlemen and both shrugged.
“You know what might work? If you give me Dr. Okon’s routing number and passport information, I could transfer the money directly from my account and avoid that fee completely. How does that grab you?”
“But Father told us not to give out his account information to anyone, no matter—”
“Fellas,” I said, putting my feet up and adjusting my abundant package, “we’re all friends here. I’m sure you know the good doctor would want me to have it. After all, how else will he get his money?”
The shorter man looked reluctant for a moment, then his face softened. He nodded wisely. “You are a true man, Mr. McDürchstein. We will provide you with the information you need and drive you to Algiers to make the transfer.”
“Excellent.”
The Tweed Brothers disappeared through a door at the other end of the dining room. It took them a few minutes to return; when they did, they had a passbook, passport, and several bank statements.
I gestured to the militants. “Is it really necessary for Hustle and Flow to accompany us?”
One of the militants raised the gun a bit, but the gray fellow shook his head softly and said, “We trust you, good sir. Come with us.”
I followed them back out of the cabin and into the Jeep. After an hour, I could see the lights of Algiers in the distance.
I made my move, first head-butting the shorter brother, in the passenger seat, and shoving him out of the moving vehicle. When gray tweed slammed on the brakes, I slid my arm around his neck and squeezed, putting him into the sleeper hold made famous by Nancy Kerrigan.
The car idled forward as he lost consciousness and his foot slipped off the brake. I shoved him aside and leaped into the passenger seat—then I was on my way.
Since Algeria is on the African continent and therefore not a complete wasteland, I was able to get a cell signal in town. I called Margo and found out where they were staying, in the back room of a bar on the southwest edge of town. She said she’d be meeting a man there in the morning about transportation to Tokyo. I suggested she step things up because we needed to leave the country as quickly as possible.
The banking information was labeled Banque d’Algérie. I found a branch in Algiers, examined the amount of money in the passbook, and withdrew the 830,000 American dollars Dr. Clement Okon had in his account. I decided not to tell the others about this windfall just yet. I figured we should wait and see if we survived the trip out of Africa.
Written by Girth McDürchstein on August 9, 2007 11:22 PM
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