*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^ IN HONOR OF THIS YEAR's FEEL GOOD BEST PICTURE OSCAR NOMINEE... A N D R E W O F A M E R I C A Re-Releases A CyberClassic Tale (C) 1996 The Author +*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+ ANDREW OF AMERICA says farewell to the Sexiest Man in AMERICA (Originally Released 27 Apr 1994) ANDREW OF AMERICA here, Well friends, I believe that 1994 is just a little bit sadder because we mark the passing of one of AMERICA's sexiest men in history. We will miss his candor, sly wit, striking profile, iron jaw, swarthy sun-baked looks, cunning intellect and his modesty as a classical musician. I am of offering a reverent tip of my cap to none other than Richard M. Nixon. Granted he had his shortcomings. He didn't shack like Jack with Marilyn Monroe. Pat Nixon indeed owned not a mink coat like Jackie Kennedy. He was paranoid of Jews, liberals, blacks, and hippies. He wasn't paranoid of Al Haig, G. Gordon Liddy, the John Birch Society or fundamentalists. He couldn't hold his liquor. He was *not* a crook (had he been a crook he wouldn't have botched Watergate). My Dad (The Rev'd BOB OF AMERICA) lives in Key Biscayne, Florida, sometime get- away spot for President Nixon and his croanies. Dad (getting up there in years) takes me on the Richard Nixon tour of the Key *everytime* I am on the island. It is he who has taught me to see the sexiness that is the 37th President of the United States. *"That is where the old Key Biscayne Hotel stood," sez DAD OF AMERICA pointing out the window of the low milage Chevrolet he promises to give me for graduation. "That's where Nixon met Jack Kennedy after the 1960 presidential elections!" We pause reverently in front of the vacant lot as Dad's Republican heart whirs in time with motor of the Chevy. I guess Chevrolet *is* the "heartbeat of America." How is that sexy? Well, let's just imagine for a moment that in a great moment of patriotic fervor an masculine self-assuredness, Nixon and J.F.K. decided it was okay for men to hug. There's Jack Kennedy in his Wayfarer sunglasses all bronze and tawny and Nixon sporting the same 5 O'clock shadow that would make Don Johnson famous in Key Biscayne for Miami Vice 25 years later... the wind is in the palm trees... the dawn comes up like thunder... they hug. The two men who have been Graeco-Roman wrestling for the most powerful position in the free world pause for a moment feel the sweaty heat of the mat. Tell me that's *not* sexy. *"That is where Nixon's old bungalow stood," pop gestures to fences and sea grapes and rusty NO TRESSPASSING signs. No bungalow. The cinderblock shoebox structure that once housed the man who ended Vietnam, the fine Scotch that fueled his paranoia, and the miles of audio tape that brought down the House of Nixon is no more. How is this sexy? Mon Pere explains, "This is where Nixon would wade out into the Atlantic and go swimming with Kissinger and Billy Graham." My mind paints a technicolor picture postcard over the bleakest part of paradise... There they are... Nixon... Henry K. and Billy Graham greased like pigs with Coppertone frolicking in the crystaline waters of this tropical Eden. Beading jewels of treasure ship surf splash and play a dazzling spectacle of sun and spray like liquid fire- works. Their gazelle like bodies all svelt and saunaed arch heavenward like cathedral butresses as they punt a beachball from one to another as easily as if it were the world. The salty air holds the striped globe aloft, hovering over their heads like the Apollo moonshot photos of this celestial orb as their necks croon upward expectantly. And then as if a string were cut by angels, it wafts featherlike down into the waiting prayerful hands of The reverend Billy Graham. He has the whole world in his hands.... The Rev. Billy holds up the beachball trophylike above his head. He is Atlas. He is *Charles Atlas*! No one kicks sand in his face. "This," he intones like Charlton Heston in *The Ten Commandments* only with a Carolina dialect, "I bequeath to thee." Billy's biceps flex the ball as effortlessly as a pinball flipper to Nixon's receptive grasp. "I draw a line," said Billy the regal and pontifical, "Everything east of the red stripe shall be thine; everything west shall be Kissinger's." And so Nixon went to China, Kissenger to the Middle East and ever since, International Male have sent male models to Miami to pose in swimwear. *Very* sexy. *"To your right," says Dad in his best Snow Bird season tour guide cant, "is the Presidential helio-port pad." I am sure he has misprounciationed that word. We again pause reverently and look at what to the untrained eye might be an abandoned basketball court spiked with sea oats and sawgrass framed raggedly by windsculpted dunes. It must be a copter pad. Everyone knows that white millionaire's can't jump. For a dreamy moment, I think that I hear the rotors of the Presidential chopper swooping down from the clouds *deus ex machina* carrying Nixon/Zeus enthroned on high with J. Edgar Hoover by his side in a red sequined dress and Havana Cigar puffing away obsessively as he plays with the joystick while megaphone speakers pump Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyrie" into the ears of scantily clad Mafiosi basking on the sunkissed stands below. "I love the smell of cocoa butter in the morning," puffs Hoover barnstorming the oil-sheened mobsters, "smells like victory!" But then my vision vanishes: the mafia don't exist and what I mistook for heliocopter rotors was my own heart counterpunctillating against the throbbing Chevy pistons. Sexy nonetheless. *Dad pulls the Chevy into the parking lot of the Key Biscayne Yacht Club. Manuel checks our membership decal twice. He is new. The Chevy is not and seems underdressed compared to the Turtle-waxed Mercedes and New York licenced plated Rolls Royces that flank it. "Richard Nixon is still a member," says Dad with pride in his seersucker suit taunting the tropical heat, "So is Ted Kennedy. They were going to kick Nixon out after the Watergate thing, but decided not to add insult to injury." Ted Kennedy's membership, on the other hand, has never been in question.) "Have you ever seen Ted Kennedy here?" asks ANDREW OF AMERICA. "Once," recalls DAD OF AMERICA. "Kennedy pulled up dockside with some buxom, bikini-clad nymph 40 years too young for him and hopped out of his yacht and into the bar. One of the older club members quipped, `It looks like old Senator Kennedy has taken a new position on off- offshore drilling.'" Alas, you'd never hear stories of Nixon taking seabound sexcapades on a yacht, but then he never drove his car off a bridge either. Richard Milhouse Nixon, 37th President of the United States Sexiest Man in America 1913-1994. "You won't have old Dick to kick around anymore." ANDREW OF AMERICA +*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^+*^ (C) 1994, 1996 ANDREW OF AMERICA. All Rights Reserved. And to my boss Oliver Stone: "Eat Your Heart Out, Baby!"