Who Is George Washington And Why Are They Saying All Those Terrible Things About Him?

Did you know the picture on the dollar bill isn't a picture of the father of our country, George Washington? Did you know Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill John F. Kennedy, but he found out who did by accident? Did you know John Dillinger isn't dead? Did you know-dolphins talk and pass on their history by composing and adding to an ever-expanding epic poem? Did you know Richard Nixon was/is a member of a super-secret organization that is bent on destroying civilization as we know it? And did you know that the name of the organization behind everything is the dreaded and terrifying Illuminatus?

If you'd read the Illuminatus! trilogy (comprising the books The Eye In The Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan, from Dell Publishing Co., $ 1.50 each) by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, you would know the answers to the above questions. Plus know a lot of answers to questions you didn't know enough to ask before' you started.

Illuminatus!is a wild, irreverent, roller-coaster ride through a melange of conspiracies, paranoids, rock groups and music, magic (real and faked), sex (and lots of it), golden statues from Atlantis, telepathy, singing dolphins, monsters, Chthulu, the Dealy Lama (who live in the sewers beneath Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas), Fernando Poo, and a lot more. And what's wild is how everything neatly fuses together.

To even attempt to describe the trilogy is impossible. It violates every known rule of writing (but then, who made the rules, eh?). It switches from third to firstperson; involves past, present, and future tens6s, often in alternate paragraphs; and switches view-point a zillion times during the course of the story. It all makes for some difficult times for the reader, since he/she isn't sure what's going on, but in the end, it becomes a pure, ecstasticjo\ to see it all unfolding before you.

Mr. Shea and Mr. Wilson have blended their wild-eyed talents, meshing them together in a panoramic story that spans all of history, from the very beginning of human life to some indeterminate near future time. In that time, the German rock group the American Medical fnord Association is THE group. But behind the AMA is the sinister Illuminati, who are bent on immanentizing theFEschaton,. And for this purpose, they've scattered several false leads around the world so no one will know their real plan. One of the leads is the outbreak of the new bacteriological warfare germ (Anthrax Leprosy PI) in Las Vegas, Nevada. The only clue is a midget and a runaway pimp. Plus another lead (and all leads are potentially world shaking) is the tension being generated by the Fernando Poo incident. Plus, the Illuminati are robbing the sunken cities of Altantis to finance the operation. All mask the real gathering at the coming Woodstock of Europe: Ingolstadt, Bavaria. And if the event goes off undisturbed, it'll be the end of the world.

And don't forget Fission Chips, super-secfet English agent, who's . determined to spoil B.U.G.G.E.R.'s plan for world domination. (And are they a front for the Illuminati?)

And what about George Washington? It's proven in the trilogy the man on the dollar bill isn't George Washington, but is an imposter named Adam Weishaupt (who founded the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt, Bavaria). He took over George Washington'slife after having fled Austria to escape prosecution. He founded the Order in 1776. Does that date ring a bell, buckeroos?

And what about Lee Harvey Oswald? How come, when it's been proven it's physically impossible to do what he supposedly did, the Government still says he did it? And just why, do you think, did he have that funny looking little sm ile on his face? Did he really know something we didn't?

And John Dillinger? Why did he drop out to become the founder and head of the biggest, best, and most innovative rock record company in the world?

And don't forget Howard the Dolphin. Why did he hate the Illuminati so much?

To find the answers, just schlep down to your local newstand or bookstore and find the books and shell out the money. And if they don't have them, just scream, cry, rip off your clothes, and kick them in the kneecaps, and they'll get them! And you'll be glad they did fnord.

ALL HAIL ERIS!

BIG MAC — THE UNAUTHORIZED STORY OF MCDONALD'S

By Max Boas & Steve Chain (Dutton) ■

It's like a little nation. Run out of a futuristic command module in Elk Grove Village, Illinois; a building where there are.no walls except those surrounding the waterbed and alphawave-monitor-equipped meditation room, its consulates are everywhere. It has its own university, its own little film industry, its own baseball team, a sizeable agribusiness, and it even has its own flag. The nation's inhabitants all speak English — most of them, anyway — and are on the friendliest of terms with American politicians, especially * our previous President, to whom they contributed campaign funds. But, like all nations, it has its darker side — thousands of workers toiling for wages that are considerably below the national minimum wage, kept in bondage to an ideology that would seem strange to many of us. And for all its agriculture, the nation is incapable of feeding its subjects a balanced meal.

McDonaldland began as a grandiose hamburger stand in San Bernadino, California owned by two brothers (neither of whom is named Ronald, incidentally) who were visited by a salesman of milkshake-making equipment one day. The salesman, 52-yearold Ray Kroc, had been an entertainer, an ambulance driver, a radio station executive, and a salesman. When he arrived to sell the McDonalds their mixers; the idea of a chain of fast-food joints was already in his head, but he was thinking hot dogs. When he saw all the innovations the McDonalds had put into their stand, he was sold.

The development of Kroc's empire from that fateful day in 1954 when he went into business with the McDonalds to today's multi-tentaded monster is indeed a fascinating one, full of sleazy financial moves, 1984-ish politics, and odd blunders (the French McDonalds opened featuring something called a "Gros Mec," which, it was soon pointed out, meant "Big Pimp" to the average homme dans la rue) . Kroc himself is the kind of capitalist who had to exist or the Commies would have made him up.

All of which makes it the more unfortunate that Boas and Chain, the authors of Big Mac, turned out Such a poor product. Stupefyingly written, organized like a maze, and filled with irrelevancies (a chapter on Col. Sanders) , it contains the makings of a fine book, but you really have to work to get the substance out of it. Still, it may not be their fault. The jacket says they consumed over 2000 hamburgers doing the research for this book. Perhaps you really are what you eat.

Ed Ward

THE I HATE SEX BOOK

By Billie Jo Starr

(Manor)

If you, like Mrs. Billie Jo Starr, think that sex is the most overrated thing since communism, then The I Hate Sex Book (Manor) deserves a place in your playpen. In some of the most strangled prose ever hacked since the days of morning-after respect and monolith coathangers, Mrs. Starr examines all the facts and myths concerning our favorite international pastime and judiciously discards the facts.

Starting out with basics (Chapter One: The Differences Between The Sexes — While There Are Still A Few Left) and moving on to the all-important subjects like saying no, crying canned tears, and faking menstruation, Billie Jo's consistent advice is notto consent. Her own particular sub-reality is based on such inarguable concepts as the Natural Law Of Female Constancy andBetter Never Than Late. A sexual funeral parlor of "throbbing libidos, full-to-bursting sperm sacs, and a fear of his mother's brass bed." Prostitution and homosexuality are proven to be diseases. Pleasure wears the skull-and-crossbones.

The author's priceless advice to supposedly real women is worth the price of admission alone, thus neatly transcending its own extraneousness. Don't play Russian roulette with your virginity. Nobody loves a sex pest. There's always a live round under the hammer. If your man is a baseball fan, buy yourself a Minnie Minoso T-shirt.

The one area she inadvertently skips over is what to do if it feels good? Oh well, better to be guilty of omission than to be guilty of nothing at all.

Rick Johnson