Inside California Blat: The Manic Mage of the Mojave

California Blat is a hero of the road.
He’s totally out of his tree.
He rides the desert in his pickup truck
And he’s a Presidential wannabee (poor boy),
A crazy Presidential wannabee.

As the Troll Party Candidates’ Debate draws near, we bring you a profile of the most enigmatic character in the race - the legendary Hippie Outlaw Magic-Man of the Desert, California Blat.

Those who knew him, back when he was just plain Blat, would never have believed he’d turn out the way he did. Blat often made wild claims about his parentage: for example, that he'd been found in the hold of a trading ship just arrived in New York Harbor from Samarkand (easily disproved since Samarkand is about 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean); or that he’d been born on a 12-foot sailboat in a storm off Cape Horn; or that a European noblewoman had left him on a convent doorstep with a note saying "Be kind to my precious child and see that he never grows up to be a vitamin salesman."

In reality, he was born into a family of accounting clerks and copy-paper salesmen in Hammond, Indiana. In his teens he spent most of his spare time reading books like Think and Grow Rich but there’s no record of his ever actually having done either. He did become a vitamin salesman in spite of his mother's plea. But he was not a very successful one; he was always complaining about "the rat race" and bragging how he could do better if only this horrible screwed-up society would let him. According to one of his customers, Kestrel Fire-Spirit who manages Fire-Spirit’s Holistic Emporium, "I could sense his bitter, negative aura a mile away. It always made me want to curl up into a ball and lick my toes like a kitten."

It was while on his sales rounds that he met RALPH, who was just putting a copy of The Morning After on his windshield. Their first conversation started rather inauspiciously, with Blat shouting, "Get the fuck away from my car!" But it ended at the nearest bar, and a few days later, it resulted in Blat joining RALPH’s campaign as his hand-picked Vice-Presidential appointee.

It didn’t take long for Blat to become disillusioned again. When RALPH went on a speaking tour, the VP-designate took off on his own and hit the road, being was arrested for wandering through restricted parts of the White House and thrown out of a nightclub in Nashville on the way. Brought to heel at last, he appeared doomed to a life driving RALPH’s campaign van and picking up his dry cleaning.

But early last August, while RALPH was speaking at a campaign stop at an industrial facility in Smallville, Kansas, an explosion splattered the air with color and, in Blat’s own words, " in the confusion I could for a moment have sworn that I saw a carbon copy of myself, fleeing the scene in horror and looking, if I may say so, downright liberal!"

The rest, as they say, is history. California Blat surfaced in LA very soon after, preaching love for all the world, and quickly became a hero in the deserts of the Southwest for rescuing strangers in distress. Alarmed at his defection, RALPH sent the Moment-Men to nail him, but they wound up becoming his devoted disciples.

California Blat’s advantages are obvious. He has a magic baseball cap that dispenses $$$, which could probably save the economy single-handed. He has been seen to teach Rottweilers to line-dance, turn himself into a vulture, and stand in a hail of machine-gun fire without getting a scratch. If he has nothing to say, he can take out his National guitar and sing.

Beyond that, though, we don’t know what his position is on key issues. When a reporter asked him about his policies recently, he merely took out his guitar and sang (to the tune of "Heartbreak Hotel"):

I haven’t got positions
Don’t care for all that stuff.
I only know I love the world
And that should be enough,
Cause I’m a mighty hero,
(A mighty hero)
And RALPH is just a zero,
Yes he is.

Maybe the upcoming debate would be a good opportunity to find out what (or if) he really thinks.