King of the Castle.

My goal before I went was simple: I wanted to get a video of myself doing the "King of the Castle" scene from "Borat," while swiveling around in President Bush's chair in the Oval Office.

To make sure I got it just right, I even wrote down the lines in my pocket notebook the night before I flew to D.C.: "Oh la la! Wo wo wee wah. King of the castle, king of the castle. I have a chair, I have a chair. (smacking noise with lips). Oh GO DO THIS! Go do this! King of the castle."

Then I found out that they rope off the Oval Office at night. So I settled for the plain old tour of the West Wing.




Before you get any further, I should probably let you know it's going to make a lot more sense if you first go back and read Part One, the story about when Hunter and I got to meet President Bush in Tanzania last February.

Premier Bush!

This is Part Two.

In the weeks following our stop and chat with George W. Bush in Arusha, Hunter's and my cell phone inboxes were blowing up with text messages. Everyone -- colleagues, neighbors, dudes from basketball -- had seen us on TV shaking hands with Bush. On TVT, Tanzania's national news network, they showed the entire clip, unedited and running well over a minute, of the three of us slapping skin, laughing, getting shoulder slapped, just schmoozin' it up. And in Arusha, where, after eight months, we had become familiar faces to most of the locals, people even recognized us on the streets a few times afterwards, as the dudes who are machizi with the Rais wa Marekani: "Sema wakubwa!" What up big men!

In short, W's visit did wonders for our reps in A-Town Nightmares. People thought we were spies or something. Or just straight kachaa's. All because of that man. George Walker Bush.

There was a cherry on top for me, though, that Hunter didn't receive. Two, as a matter of fact.

The first is that I was not only on TVT that day, but all over the world's television screens. My old friend from Serbia, O.G. Zoka, was lying in a Belgrade hospital bed with a leg injury one day when a familiar face popped up on her television screen. She is the one who brought my CNN International appearance to my attention:


"...'texas proud', ah? what was that ,'king of the castle',ah ? ha,ha...it was so funny, at that time i watched Bush on CNN talking about Kosovo from TZ...i just knew it...i thought, he is in Tz and B is there.... he have to visit american camp...next thing i could see was my best friend from texas have handshaking with the president...haha... alal vera, brate!!!"


Alal vera, indeed.

The second cherry came from someone I'd never even met before, President Bush's assistant, who was there at Emusoi that day. He sent me an email a few weeks later at the request of the President, who wanted him to let me know how good a friend my grandfather had been, both to himself and his father, Bush 41. In fact, the President had asked him why no one had taken me aside and brought me back to the V.I.P. section that day so that he could chat more with me.

I shoot back a reply. As does Bush's assistant. Soon it becomes one of those you-obviously-have-a-Blackberry situations. And before you know it, I come away with an open-ended invitation to come tour the White House if I make it back to the States on time.

The money I made from Ike's Tree Service turned that into a possibility. And just like that, just five weeks after I got back from Tanzania, I found myself in D.C., passing through the metal detectors of the White House security with my own private tour guide from Dallas.




Here are some of the things I learned, besides the stuff about "Kitty":

1) George gets thirsty.

In the two meeting rooms situated in the West Wing, there are long conference tables. You can tell which chair the President uses at each because the backs run slightly higher up than those on all the others. Directly in front of the presidential chair, on the underside of the table, are two buttons: one is for security, to be pressed only when the President is in dire straights and needs Secret Service to enter the room immediately (I see no reason why he would ever need to hit this button); the other is, essentially, a Diet Coke button.

When George gets thirsty, he reaches under the table and surreptitiously presses a button, pretending to be paying attention to what his staff is telling him, when in reality, all he can think is, "Man that Diet coke is gonna taste so good..."

My tour guide had no idea that this arcane tidbit of information would become the most important piece of White House trivia I'd hear all night. There she is, pointing out stuff like million dollar works of art and pieces of furniture used by a Who's Who list of the American presidency, and there I am, asking maybe 10 follow up questions to her passing comment about "The Button."

For example: "What color is the button?" And before she can answer, "Tell me it's red. Tell me, it's red."

She didn't know the color.

"When the President talks about the button, does he ever refer to it as 'The Button'? Does he ever make jokes about 'hitting the button,' and then laugh and take a sip of Diet Coke?"

Again, she didn't know.

When she introduced me to some of the other White House staff, I also began asking them about The Button, first thing after shaking hands and exchanging names. I was taking notes in my little Marble Memo. They didn't have any answers to my questions, because my questions weren't about the Norman Rockwell paintings, or the security policies, or the history of the White House. Just about Diet Coke, and the color of the button that George presses when he gets thirsty as a result of all that talk about weapons of mass destruction, or the housing market, or the pennant race in the AL Central.

"Like I said, the only gross domestic product that I know of is Diet Pepsi. That stuff tastes like aluminum cans, man."

I wonder if he's ever hit the wrong button and had a fleet of Secret Service agents come running into the room, guns drawn, only to find that the President's glass was empty.

"Sorry bout that. But hey, how bout you bring me somethin to drink while you're at it."


2) George likes to color.

He uses Sharpies to write. Just Sharpies. All the time. I saw a copy of a speech he'd given recently, all marked up with his notes and annotations -- "Next time, ask for lime with Diet Coke" -- in the thick black line of a permanent marker.

Look closely.

I wonder if he likes the way they smell.


3) George likes to exercise.

He's the anti-Michael Moore, in every way. For at least an hour every day, according to my tour guide, the President exercises. No matter what. No matter what. Gotta get that cardio in.

This didn't surprise me; I'd heard things to that effect said before. And when I met him in Arusha, I was struck by how powerful a physique the guy had. If geopolitics were determined by how well every country fared in a tournament of their leaders putting on the gloves in a ring, I'd still put money on Washington to come out on top.

"To set a good example for our nation as to the importance of physical fitness," is the reason the guide gave for the hour-a-day exercise policy. I looked over to a blown up, framed shot of Vice President Cheney shaking hands with some foreign leader.

"Right," I said.


4) George's dogs like to bite.

Especially Barney.




This was out in the Rose Garden. Barney is quite a ferocious animal. Watch the video I took, and watch the white ball. Also, listen for the sounds.

Apparently he recently dug his teeth into the ankle of some foreign dignitary, and as a result, the presidential dogs have been banned from the West Wing.


5) Derek Jeter shamed Bush into throwing from the mound before Game 3.

You can't walk anywhere in the West Wing without seeing a big, blown up photograph, beautiful stuff, framed and stuck on a wall in some hall, or in some office. These are pictures taken by White House photographers, and are not published for the public consumption. Most are of the president, but not all. There are some amazing shots in the collection. But none compare to the one of W chatting with Derek Jeter, who is standing with bat in hand, before the start of Game 3 in the 2001 World Series.

Here is how my friend -- a kid that played lacrosse with me in high school but who I hadn't seen for years, until I happened to run into him at work ... in the West Wing -- described the story behind that photo.

Jeter: "You given any thought to where you're gonna throw from tonight?"

Bush: (lying; he'd been practicing for weeks from all sorts of locations) "No."

Jeter: "Well I just wanted to let you know, in this city, at this field ... we throw from the mound."

And what does Bush go and do? No only does he throw from the mound, but it is a perfect strike, right down the middle.

Back when he was Jamie Moyer's age

And the crowd went wild.


I did receive a consolation prize the next day, when, as chance would have it, my friend Miguel's dad was being sworn in as the Executive Director at the U.S. seat for the Inter American Development Bank. The Oval Office was off, so I settled for the seat of Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the IADB.

(These pictures are here just to show the only places you're allowed to take them.)