Choose Your Own Adventure: Presidential Rally Speech Edition

You are the POTUS. Your hands are larger than other people’s eyes perceive them to be. This is your cross to bear, but you bravely wave those hands to a half-filled auditorium as you stand on stage and tell yourself, No problem, the other half must be grabbing hot dogs. Reading the crowd, you decide to ignore the flashing teleprompter. Instead, as the last notes of The Village People’s “Macho Man” echo through the hall, you look out to this half-sea of eager faces and say the first thing that pops into your head.

“How ‘bout this mixtape? Right? #1 hits. All of them. That I picked. I could listen all night. I don’t sleep. I just—"

To riff on your musical genius, go to A.

To riff on ghost peppers, go to Z.

A.

“I have a way with music. The Village People are lucky that Ms. Allen, my music teacher as a kid, got hit by a car. Because if she didn’t, my songs would be playing tonight. But I couldn’t do that to them — the cop and the Indian and the leather and the hard hat. They were nice young fellas when I met them and I said, ‘Don’t worry, Villagers, I’ll stick to real estate.’ Even though Ms. Allen said my voice is ‘like a gossamer.’ I’m told those were actually her last words there, lying on the street: ‘Donald Trump’s voice is like a gossamer.’ I wasn’t there, but that’s what people who were there tell me.”

To riff on FLOTUS’ fear of being buried alive, go to B.

To riff on ghost peppers, go to Z.

B.

“I read the top-secret reports all night long. Stacks of them. To the ceiling. The First Lady gets afraid. I tell her, they won’t fall on you. But that’s a fear of hers. ‘Buried alive,’ they call it. Very bad. Anyway, I speed read very fast, maybe the fastest, so the piles of top-secret papers get very low and she can sleep. But the stuff I read? About the monsters and horrible things? It would keep you up nights if I told you. Which I won’t. Because I don’t want to ruin this very perfect, tremendous time we’re having together.”

To riff on the classified information you read, go to C.

To riff on ghost peppers, go to Z.

C.

“You want to know about the top-secret monsters and horrible things I read about? Well, I can’t pronounce ‘Cthulhu.’ Who can? But there’s also nice ones. Like Atlantis. I thought it was just a resort island. Turns out it’s a country under the ocean. And the people who live there — I met them — like giant Sea Monkeys, these people. Their females, they’re actually very attractive. Like an 8 out of 10. And that’s what being president is like — reading top-secret papers, quickly, all night long. Luckily, I don’t get nightmares.”

To riff on your inability to have nightmares, go to D.

To riff on ghost peppers, go to Z.

D.

“I tell people I never get nightmares. And whatever it is you call not-nightmares. They feel very sorry for me. They say, how can you not have nightmares and not-nightmares? Because, sir, your imagination is so unlike the past, present, and future of imagining things. Like Einstein’s or Jesus’ imagination, but lots more action and sex. Their words, not mine!”

To scat “Macho Man” by The Village People, scat “Macho Man” by The Village People.

To riff on ghost peppers, go to Z.

Z.

“I get scared sometimes. I’m not different than anyone. Except ghosts. Never believed in them. Ghost peppers? Different story. They terrify me. You know, if you eat a whole one you die? Yes. Some kid at Camp Woocheepee, he ate one. We never saw him again. I just remembered that. Jimmy Poole. The things you remember standing up here. Whatever happened to that kid? How did we even get our hands on a ghost pepper? Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just an acorn stuffed with coyote poop. Or maybe we double dared him to swim across the lake at night, naked, and stole his clothes and tossed them into the campfire and forgot he couldn’t swim. Whatever it was, it did a real number on him. Speaking of numbers. How ‘bout those #1 hits?

You lose your train of thought and return to the beginning of your speech.