There’s a place off I-84 near the Connecticut border where a Shell station, a pawn shop, and a defunct mini-golf course form a sort of spiritual triangle. I like to call it the Temple of False Promises. The wind there smells like wet pennies and broken spirits1, and if you squint just right at dusk, you can see the American Dream flickering like a dying gas station sign.
It was never supposed to end like this. But then again, maybe it was.
They sold us the Dream in high-fructose installments—two-car garage, cherry pie, a little house with plastic siding and a kid named after a Civil War general. The ads promised freedom, but the fine print read monthly payments apply. The suburbs were supposed to be utopia, but what they built were cul-de-sac terrariums filled with slow panic and chlorinated despair. I once watched a man mow his lawn for three hours just to avoid talking to his wife. That’s what the Dream became: ritualized maintenance of illusions.
We traded in revolutions for rider mowers. Soul for vinyl siding.
You want a metaphor? Fine. Picture a bald eagle, majestic and pissed off, stuck in a laundromat dryer, spinning endlessly with a pack of Marlboros and a deflated football. That’s your Dream now—whirling, scorched, full of static and leftover change. Occasionally it shrieks.
The thing is, no one told us the Dream had a half-life. It began melting somewhere between the moon landing and the invention of Cheez Whiz. And now it festers in the fluorescent guts of strip malls, its ashes swept under shag carpet and stained Formica. You can smell its ghost in the carpet of every bank lobby, taste its absence in every TV dinner. It's a glint in the eyes of game show contestants who scream for cash they’ll never see. It’s neon, baby—bright on the outside, buzzing, but hollow as hell inside.
And then there’s the noise—always the noise. Radios playing soft rock eulogies. Ad jingles that sound like corporate lullabies. Politicians stammering through smiles like malfunctioning mannequins. Everyone talking, no one saying anything. Truth drowned in a vat of Coca-Cola and tax returns.
But here’s the real kicker—the Dream isn’t dead. No, that’d be too merciful. It’s undead. It lurches on, zombified, reanimated through commercials and campaign slogans. They drape it in flags and feed it slogans, but it’s rotting from the inside. You can see it in the eyes of the clerk who scans your frozen peas, in the teenage boy lighting firecrackers in a Walmart parking lot just to feel something.
Hope still exists, sure—but it’s been repackaged into self-help books and diet plans. It’s sold in pill bottles and motivational calendars. It’s made to fit in your pocket, plug into your wall, and never ask questions. Dream responsibly.
So what do we do? Burn it down? Maybe. Or maybe we throw a party in its honor. One last backyard barbecue for the Ideal. Invite the neighbors. Get drunk on generic beer and let the kids set fire to the bounce house. Raise a toast to the myth that raised us, conned us, caged us—and laugh as it dissolves into static and stars.
The Dream is gone, kids. But the nightmare? That’s ours now. And if we’re lucky, we can learn to dance in it. Underneath the neon shadows. Where the truth finally glows.
—Buzz Drainpipe Filed somewhere between bourbon and despair, 3:12 a.m.
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1. “Polished Gods: The Cult of Celebrity in the Age of Hollow Mirrors” Crease Magazine, Winter 1970
2.
I was at a Hollywood party once—late ’60s, uphill from Sunset, back when Quaaludes were still called “relaxation” and people thought cocaine made them charming. There was a woman there who claimed to be dating both Jim Morrison and the ghost of James Dean. I believed her. That’s what fame does—it distorts time, gravity, even death.
The cult of celebrity isn’t new. Hell, Caligula made his horse a senator. But America industrialized it. We manufacture icons the way Detroit makes cars: shiny, loud, and meant to crash. They’re not people anymore—they’re vessels for projection, fantasies wrapped in skin. Elvis stopped being human around ’57. By ’68, he was just a sequined avatar of national confusion.
We no longer seek gods—we elect them, then crucify them on gossip columns. Marilyn’s tears. Brando’s belly. Judy’s pills. There’s no privacy, only PR. Fame isn’t earned—it’s absorbed, like radiation. The audience doesn’t love stars. They consume them. Then they move on, hungry again.
We’ve built altars to our reflections and wonder why we feel empty. Fame is the American Dream’s funhouse mirror—everyone wants to be seen, but no one knows what they look like anymore.
2. “Banana Peel Revelation: The Velvet Underground at the Electric Circus” Filed Somewhere Between Ego Death and Exit 9, 1969
Lou Reed came on stage like a librarian who’d just quit mid-shift to start a cult. Sterling Morrison looked like he’d been born inside an amplifier. Maureen Tucker kept the beat like she was trying to ward off ancient spirits. And John Cale—well, he wasn’t there, but his ghost was in every shriek of feedback.
I was on something. Maybe acid. Maybe the absence of meaning. Either way, the music hit me like a drugged sermon. “Sister Ray” went on for 20 minutes, 200 years, three marriages. It felt like the sound of New York vomiting itself up in slow motion. A beautiful, sloppy purging of polite society.
There were strobes. A woman in a wedding dress danced with a mannequin. Someone passed out on my feet whispering “Nico is the future.” I believed them. When Lou snarled, “Heroin,” the crowd didn’t cheer—they nodded. Not approval. Understanding. It wasn’t a performance. It was a seance. A ritual. A warning.
By the end, my ears were bleeding metaphorically, my soul smelled like burnt vinyl, and I understood the Velvet Underground for what they truly were: sonic terrorists with poetry in their holsters.
3. “The Alligator in the White House” Crease Magazine, Summer 1973 (censored version)
Richard Nixon isn’t a man. He’s a reptile in a suit. Cold-blooded, blinking sideways, eating democracy whole and belching up flag pins. Washington D.C. isn’t a capital—it’s a circus tent pitched on a swamp, and Nixon is the headline act, juggling scandals and breathing lies like fire.
Picture this: a giant stage. Velvet curtains. Spotlights. A cast of sweaty men in bad suits delivering monologues full of denials. The audience? You. Me. The entire country, popcorn in hand, watching as reality melts into satire. The Watergate hearings were just intermission.
Haldeman, Ehrlichman, the whole gang—supporting players in a political Grand Guignol. But Nixon? He’s the main event. Growling from behind a podium, jowls twitching, paranoia leaking from every pore. I saw a lizard tail flick beneath the Resolute Desk once. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe it was prophecy.
Democracy isn’t dying in darkness—it’s being broadcast live, with commercial breaks. The American experiment now wears a trench coat and a wire. Truth is staged. Lies have lighting cues.
By the time the curtain falls, the theater is on fire and no one’s sure if it was part of the show.
Here’s the uncut, fully feral version of “The Alligator in the White House” by Buzz Drainpipe, as it appeared uncensored in Crease Magazine pulled from shelves after two days.
The Alligator in the White House (Uncut) By Buzz Drainpipe, summer solstice, 1973, written in a Motel 6 with no air conditioning and three working typewriter ribbons taped together
Let me tell you what I saw, and you can decide if it was a dream, a political metaphor, or just the last gasp of a democracy hallucinating on fumes.
Richard Milhous Nixon is not a man. He is an alligator wearing a Nixon suit, tail tucked into his trousers, reptile eyes twitching behind the facade of patriotism and Brylcreem. I saw him once on TV, during one of those God-forsaken press conferences where the air gets thick and the truth starts to peel. The camera glitched and for half a frame—swear to God—I saw the scales. Gleaming green under studio lights. The man blinked sideways.
And I knew. I knew.
We didn’t elect a president. We invited a swamp beast into the Oval Office and gave him the nuclear codes.
Don’t you feel it? The whole country smells like mildew and formaldehyde. The Constitution is curling at the edges like an old pizza menu. You turn on the TV and all the anchors are sweating, blinking Morse code for “help us.” Meanwhile, Nixon just smiles that waxy gator grin and says he’s not a crook. And he’s right. Crooks are human. This thing is other.
Watergate? That’s not a scandal—it’s a ritual. Blood sacrifice via subpoena. The plumbers weren’t fixing leaks. They were carving sigils into the fabric of reality. Every erased tape, every missing 18½ minutes, was an incantation. He’s not hiding guilt—he’s feeding off the confusion. That’s how reptile gods work. Chaos is nourishment.
Washington D.C. is a fever dream on its fourth cup of scotch. The Capitol dome’s just a cracked eggshell now, and inside? An embryonic version of America, twitching and unsure if it should grow wings or teeth. The Senate? Puppets. The House? Haunted. Kissinger? A warlock in a cheap suit who eats peace treaties like communion wafers.
Meanwhile, the beast plays piano in the Lincoln Bedroom, claws clacking on ivory, belching foreign policy through smoke rings of sulfur and cologne.
There is no leadership. There is only performance. No ideology—only appetite.
The people? We’re the audience and the meat tray. Nixon gulps down protest signs like cocktail shrimp. He slurps up war budgets like gravy. Every journalist he devours becomes another molar in his grinning jaw.
Somewhere in the Rose Garden, the flowers have stopped blooming. They watch now.
And when the whole thing finally implodes—when the alligator shuffles offstage, belly full of secrets and souls—we won’t get justice. We’ll get a rerun. A reboot. The beast never leaves. It just changes costumes.
So sleep tight, patriots. Keep saluting the stars while the stripes slowly constrict.
And remember: if you smell the swamp, it’s already too late.
Buzz Drainpipe Filed while wearing a tinfoil hat and an American flag as a cape, July 4, 3:33 a.m.
Buzz Drainpipe Reviews: Soap Opera (1975) by The Kinks
Let’s get this straight—Soap Opera isn’t an album, it’s a televised nervous breakdown set to pub rock. Ray Davies, bless his whiskey-scarred throat, decided sometime in the mid-'70s that the best way to stay relevant was to completely lose his mind in front of a camera. This thing isn’t just a concept album—it’s a meta-concept, a rock opera wrapped in tinfoil and stage makeup, performed with the wide-eyed sincerity of a man who’s been awake for three days arguing with his toaster.
The plot? Who knows. Something about a rock star becoming a regular guy, or a regular guy dreaming he’s a rock star. Maybe Ray Davies just wanted an excuse to sing about toast and trousers. “Nine to Five” opens like a novelty song for depressed accountants, and “Rush Hour Blues” sounds like The Kinks doing a soul revue at a butcher shop grand opening. It’s glorious. It's madness. It's deeply British.
But here’s the thing: Soap Opera swings between farce and tragedy with the grace of a drunk ballerina. “You Make It All Worthwhile” is pure pop sincerity, soaked in showbiz schmaltz, while “(A) Face in the Crowd” feels like the morning after glam rock died. The band is tight, the production’s weirdly theatrical, and Ray’s performance? He’s not singing—he’s acting, baby, chewing scenery like it’s his last meal.
Buzz’s Verdict: Soap Opera is the sound of a genius melting under the stage lights, and somehow making it sing. It’s kitsch, it’s camp, it’s cracked—and it might just be a masterpiece. Four out of five drainpipes, and a standing ovation from the shadows.
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