LUDIC LOG

The struggle within Nick's traveling companion, bandmate, roomie, best friend, and partner in crime, Percival McKenzie, is a much more subtle and delicate one: it is the struggle of one who wants to be considered serious but also wants to act ridiculous. In the great tradition of radicals from the dawn of civilization to the present day, Percy envisions a great new world where it will no longer be incongruous for a sincere political philosopher to use the nom de plume "Percy McJizz". Unlike Nick, Percy is not constantly angry; the best he can muster is a sort of really deep irritation, sometimes going as far as an appalled dismay, and he can only keep that going about 75% of the time. As the ego to Nick's id he is something of an abysmal failure: rather than convincing Nick not to do bad things, he usually ends up making half-hearted attempts to get Nick to do them later when he's not around, and then secretly wishes he could be doing them himself. He is not so much the Great Mediator between Nick and the rest of the world as he is the Great Unindicted Co- Conspirator.

Percy has been described by different people with varying motivations as "ratlike". Physically, he is less like a rat than a sort of foul-tempered hamster; he is, while not exactly fat, certainly more well-fed than your average wharf rat. Beneath a beery stomach and an unhealthy, subterranean pallor lies a certain brutal strength; and like a rat he is cunning, clever, quicker than he looks, and very hard to get rid of. He is a good six inches shorter and an even better twenty pounds heavier than his pipelike bandmate. His brown eyes, with their tendency to skitter nervously around in their sockets as if looking for an escape route, are distinctly rodential. But when the conversation turns (as it inevitably must) to the topic of Mr. McJ's hair, the animal metaphor begins to run absolutely amok.

The hair is a menagerie in and of itself: it has inspired observers to compare Percy to "a horse"; "a rooster"; "a rhino"; "a weeble-wobble"; "a unicorn"; "a rat" (naturally); and "a punk rock Ed Grimley" (this from a local music reviewer; it sent Percy into such a rage that he actively plotted revenge against the critic for several weeks until said critic was snatched up by a big-city paper and packed off to Dallas, which Percy considered punishment enough for anyone). Percy's head is almost completely shaved; the sole outposts of follicledom are a small "tail" at the base of the skull which even he describes as ratlike, and the alarming explosion of black curl flying out in all directions from the very front, obscuring an otherwise impressive widow's peak and causing him to be forever known as "the guy with the big fluff of hair in the front". Percy stubbornly clings to this ridiculous haircut with a fiercely dogmatic fury; he erroneously claims that given the poor quality of his hair this style is the most flattering of a bad lot.

"Hey Nick, did you know that there's a can of Meisterbrau in your glove
compartment?"

"Uh uh. Do I get off up here?"

"No. Wait until the 48th Street exit and go out University Drive. Can I have this? How long has it been in here?"

"How long have they been making Meisterbrau?"

"Er...get off here. It shortens to one lane, so get over! Get over! Go right as soon as you can. Man, I'd just throw this out the window but they just completed repairs on this freeway."

"Give it to me."

"No! You're gonna throw it out the window!"

"It was your idea in the first place, man."

"I didn't want to do it! I just said that if we...oh, fine. Here."