What's he building in there?
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens can’t have a desk because Ray Stevens has managed to accidentally burn down every house he’s owned since 1964 because he keeps trying to light a grill in a carpeted rumpus room.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
False. Ray Stevens lives in a modest hovel below America’s biggest ball of mud off Highway 66 en route to San Antone.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is still trying to buy back his childhood shed after accidentally losing all his money to a man claiming to be a genie during the Jordanian leg of his Ahab the Arab tour.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is the embodiment of the ancient evil that loomed across America before Columbus even brought cholera and genocide from the Old World. Every 27 years Ray Stevens appears in the form of fear incarnate and lures a child into a sewer where he devours their innocence, leaving only their velcro shoes outside a storm grate as evidence.
Lee Tipton to Edward, me
Ray Stevens is wearing a rice hat, pulling another instance of himself across the Great Wall of China on a rickshaw, as the two of him rhyme “wang” with “mang.”
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just confused having an idea with rhyming “Guantanamo” with “yo-ho-ho” and then that with his digitally-modified baritone singing “da-dope-do-do.”
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is currently wearing a referee’s uniform, standing next to a “Illegal Immigrant Olympic Long Jump Event” sand pit he set up that starts on the US side of the border and ends on the Mexican side, firing a starter pistol wildly into the air, then dejectedly rhyming “hopeless” with “George Lopez.”
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is reticulating the final splines on his “Americasville” in Sim City 3000.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is filming his Krautrock single Trans(nationals), which is a static shot of him playing a Mexican homebrew of Dig Dug. He is shrugging playfully as he loses on purpose.
Lee Tipton to me
Blog post: “Ray Stevens: What is He Doing?”?
John Semley to Lee
Ray Stevens is trying to Google his name into significance and happens upon a blog post that he doesn’t get is making fun of him. In the adjacent room, a breakfast steak sizzles knowingly in a flat iron pan.
Edward Petrenko to Lee, me
Ray Stevens is pointing to a chart that shows one large taco at the top with arrows pointing to dozens of smaller tacos below it, then pointing to another chart that is just an American flag with tiny tacos instead of stars. He then folds his arms, looks at the camera, shakes his head, purses his lips, and shrugs his shoulders.
Lee Tipton to Edward, me
Ray Stevens is superimposing his own head over every instance of Wile E Coyote riding a rocket.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is on ancestry.com, trying to trace back his lineage to an oak tree that predates the Iroquois.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is shamelessly asking an Asian friend of his if it would be possible to “reprogram” Pac Man to make him look like Carlos Slim, and to “reprogram” the dots to look like American jobs. His Asian friend then reveals himself to be Ray Stevens. Their magic carpet then takes them far, far away, to a land without race, where all Ray Stevenses can live in honky-tonk harmony.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is in his Texarkana ranch house, reinforced athletic socks kicked up on a coffee table book of compiled Elvis Sightings; drifting into a mid-afternoon siesta he not only doesn’t deserve but resents the name of.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is taking all 13 of his flat-faced, softball-playing daughters to Olive Garden, to steal fake grapes as pre-emptive props for when Sarkozy loses an election.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is regaling a total stranger with an anecdote about drinking Barbisol on a dare.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is watching Airplane! on a TV with spoilers.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is trying to twist all the yellow and green blocks off a rubicks cube.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is having it out with the 3rd generation Latino contractor who is trying to rationally explain why putting Maserati doors on Ray Stevens’ bedroom is going to be tricky.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just keeps on driving south down the I-90, knowing this string of Waffle Houses will give way to an IHOP eventually.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens’ fourth marriage has fallen apart, upon his discovery that Jo-Anne was two transsexual Democrats in a trenchcoat.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is ceremonially burning his Culpepper flag comforter, because its laundry day at the Stevens Compound.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
I’m supposed to do my TL post tomorrow and have nothing. Can I use these? Credit all around obviously.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Yeah man that’s what I’m feeling.
Ray Stevens is branding his name into the federal building
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
that federal thing was a half finished thought. let me think on it
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Go nuts – stealin’ our jokes, like a regular Carlos Mencia, or generic sillygal Jimmy Grant!
Lee Tipton to Edward, me
Ray Stevens is distributing the last 32 minutes of Bad Boys 2 on so many CD-Rs
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is alive and well and living inside anyone who has ever purchased a hot dog at a ballpark. Ray Stevens got Johnsonville Brauts.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
I’m actually really quite pleased with us
Edward Petrenko to Lee, me
Ray Stevens is writing his fifth frantic complaint to the makers of Wooly Willy, demanding they send him enough iron filings to be sculpted into both a beard and a turban on the same Willy.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens just signed a multi-hundred dollar endorsement deal with Spitz and Ray Stevens is regretting not grabbing another handful of Spitz from the loose bag on the CEO’s desk.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens just figured out a way to absorb smokeless tobacco through his eye by plopping two Skoal Bandits under each lid and making himself cry a little bit.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just remembered that his jail sentence ended two years ago, and he doesn’t need to hide cigarettes in his butt anymore.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is wondering if he can make himself disappear by tucking his denim shirt into his blue jeans and leaning against his Ford F450.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just used a Gator to tow his golf cart to a lawn mower repair shop to have a kegerator installed in the trunk.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is watching “wrasslin’” on the tee vee and don’t you goddamn dare bother telling him to pronounce it any different.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is hosing Ozzie’s piss off the Alamo with a shaken up tall boy of Billy Beer
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is drinking a 2 litre of Mountain Dew: Code Red out of the bottle, sitting in a lawn chair at the bottom of an empty swimming pool.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is the first and only Jungian Archetype discovered by the Butthole Surfers
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just accidentally signed his anonymous petition for a Ray Stevens U.S. postal stamp “Ray Stevens.”
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just yelled “yee-haw” as he drunkenly dove out of the way of a Conestoga wagon barreling down on him at speeds of seven furlongs/fortnight.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just woke up from a bender in a silo that had been welded shut from the outside, and had to carefully talk himself out of panicking by reminding himself that, in spite of it all, this is still America.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens has ruined his last eight meals because he has refused to admit to his live-in stepdaughter that the leafblower has no place in the kitchen.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is mixing sugar into the gas tank of his riding mower with a wooden serving spoon, prepping a few Oklahoma juleps for the greyhound racetrack tailgate party.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens puts on a Washingtonian powdered wig before he addresses a Tea Party rally, while he grudgingly plunks down eighty-five cents in full view of a toll road’s security camera, and in the afterglow of times he believes himself to have sired another child.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is…WASHTUB BASS SOLO!!!!
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just threw up on the front yard, in full view of the neighbours, then proceeded to clean it up by lighting a trash fire on top of it.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is inconsolably incapable of making love to his wife in the wake of Jimmy Dean’s passing.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens just got red in the face for the first time since 1974 after trying to chip a golf ball over the roof of his bungalow and driving it right through the bay windows.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is lying to the Associated Press about how close he was with Jimmy Dean.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens, despite countless attempts to remind him not to, still responds out loud to any question a radio commercial asks him.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is trying real hard not to think about the outboard motor he found sitting in his sunroom when he snapped into consciousness this afternoon.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens has returned to touring after spending fifteen months recovering from eating fried baloney straight out of the pan, as all his plates had been destroyed shortly after his discovery of skeet shooting.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is writing the dictionary people to try and get a cross-hatched illustration of his 3/4 profile next to the phrase “Fuck A Duck,” which he may have known wasn’t in the dictionary, had he ever read or seen a dictionary.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens’ back pain has reached a new all-time high and his comedic confidence an all-time low after alienating every masseuse in the phone book with excessive “towelhead” jokes, deliberate farting, and using a slide whistle to draw attention to his gathering erections.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is wiping his tears with instructions for setting off a Roman Candle after sleeping through the annual 9/11 Memorial Fish Fry at the local firehall.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens gives ninety percent of all his income to his local Methodist church in a frantic attempt to atone for walking into a synagogue one time, after mistaking it for the trampoline store he was looking for.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is standing by the microwave, watching the 7-11 ham & cheese log warm from the inside out, ‘cos baby, that’s America to Ray Stevens.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Had to leave on account of work, but this is my favourite email chain ever.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is responding to the nacho sombrero by joylessly eating 65 sliders off the brim of a Stetson.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is slated to play every role in a pop-up book about the Federal Reserve.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is more conflicted about Israel than anyone else in America.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is shocked to find out there’s 15,000 battered housewives in America and he’s still eating his plain.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is dabbing at the brownface makeup on his collar with a denim serviette
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens has flushed all his elastic bands down the toilet, now that he’s realized you can castrate a bull with a bolo tie.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is gunning a Dodge Charger through the screen of a drive-in playing Frida in slow motion.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens isn’t engaged in any sort of high-speed pursuit, but he still smirks every time he crosses county lines.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens doesn’t need no police constable telling him that wife surfing isn’t a sport, godgummit.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens doesn’t believe in global warming, but he still blames it when his stills burn down.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
I am putting these on terminal laughter now.
-Carlos Mencia
