American Idle
Deep panned supreme leader
By Vivid writer: Toby Smith
Toby Smith intends to transform his garage into an appreciation society for North Korea's President Kim Jong-Il - if his wife will let him
Posted: 03/12/2009
Kim Jong-Il, North Korea's bargain-basement leader.
I use my basement as a meeting room.
There's an old folding table in my basement and when a meeting begins, I am at that table, keeping order. Lying in front of me on the table is a piece of yellow-lined paper that lists the meeting's agenda.
Around me in a semicircle sit six or seven empty chairs. Nearby stands a water heater. The chairs are for guests at the meetings, but so far there have not been any. The water heater is for hot water in which my wife is forever telling me to bathe.
The table, the empty chairs and I belong to the All-American Fan Club of Kim Jong-Il, the Dear Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. The club is the only one of its kind that I know of outside of North Korea, where I have heard approximately 6,750, 000 similar groups exist. I have invited several American friends to join the AFCKJ, begged them, in fact, but no one has yet shown up for meetings.
I have asked my wife many times to come down to the basement and sit in one of the empty chairs during a meeting. She refuses. When she does appear in the basement, she has an armload of laundry. This always happens during a meeting, almost as if she meant for it to happen. The washer in which she puts the dirty clothes makes a monstrous racket, which causes me to raise my voice several decibels while I am going over old and new business. All of which makes me lose my temper.
As the president, I put a lot of time into the club, far too much time, according to my wife. But I have that time, I argue. I have been unemployed for three years and have zero prospects.
More than once I have written to Mr Kim - "Dear Dear Leader" - telling him of the club and sending him a copy of our monthly newsletter, the Nuke-em News. I have invited Mr Kim to drop in on a meeting, to visit my basement where he will see photos on himself on the walls - on a golf course where he once shot eight consecutive holes-in-one, on a running track where he once ran a mile in less than three minutes, at a banquet table where he is drinking a 71-year-old bottle of Mouton Rothschild and eating a lobster the size of a Mini Cooper.
Mr Kim has never replied to my invitations or commented on my newsletter, and that saddens me. In fact, much of my mail to him has come back from the post office stamped "undeliverable." Other pieces have been returned to me inside U.S. State Department envelopes, with attached notes saying that my name has been turned over to the FBI.
I happen to think that Mr Kim Jong-Il is misunderstood. I firmly believe in my heart of hearts that he means well, but that people don't want to take the time to get to know him, as I have done. Not only have I spent time learning about the man, but I have made every effort to try to look like him. For example, I own 47 pairs of tinted sunglasses. All of the glasses have frames you might remember from the early 1970s. I own five brown, zip-up bus driver jackets, though I wear the same one all day long and refuse to let my wife put it in the clothes washer.
Because I stand almost 6-feet tall, and because Mr Kim is 4 feet 11 inches, or 5 feet 4 inches, I have been trying to shrink myself. That is a lot harder than you might imagine. My wife tells me to quit trying, to wait, that I will shrink naturally as I age. I tell her, "Waiting is for sissies."
I do not have much hair, so it has been difficult for me to duplicate Mr Kim's spiked hairstyle. But I am in the process of getting a hair transplant, which hurts like hell. But as I said, I am not a sissy.
When I hold a meeting, there are certain phrases that I refrain from saying aloud. For instance, I never say "human rights violations," or "oppressive society" or "Tracey Ullman lookalike."
Mr Kim would not like it if I said those things. How do I know that? Have you not heard the words "re-education camp"?
The fan club has its own song: "I Am Missile-ing You."
The fan club has its own slogan: "Don't tell me you're hungry again? You just ate last month."
The fan club has its own logo: A double rainbow, under which Mr Kim was born 64 or 71 years ago.
What the fan club does not have are members.
They will come, I am convinced. As long as the Earth keeps spinning, members will come. When the spinning stops, the club will likely dissolve. I will be very distressed when that happens.
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