The Shocker Round Table: What Is Michael Flynn Up To?
By Louis Keene, Chris Alarie, Alex Siquig, Lena Ryan, Damon Agnos, Emily Lever, Jacob Israel Chilton
You remember Michael Flynn, the corn-fed, paranoid, doting disgraced dad who resigned at the behest of the Pentagon after just 24 days as Donald Trump’s national security advisor, presumably so that he could more fully dedicate his life to defending his son, also named Michael Flynn, from bullies on the internet. Senior had just admitted to being on the Turkish government payroll without registering as a foreign agent — yes, he had been a lobbyist for Turkey and national security advisor at the same time — and junior was deleting reams of bad tweets when we last saw the Michaels Flynn.
But where is he/are they now? Is he collecting pieces of flair for a faceoff with Sheriff David Clarke? Is he going through a Chapo phase, or has he taken up guitar? The Shocker’s best and brightest weigh in on the fate of our fallen warmonger…
Tommy Losurdo: Michael Flynn is currently deep undercover, creating strife among the Turkish triumvirate-in-exile — Fethullah Gülen, Enes Kanter, and the Noid — and disrupting their plots to overthrow benevolent master Erdoğan.
Alex Siquig: Sometimes, when he’s taking a break from all that shit, Michael Flynn likes to chill at Olive Garden. He’s always alone. It’s usually about three in the afternoon when he rolls up in his Saturn. His jacket’s wrinkles have wrinkles. The scene plays out like this over and over again: he runs a twitchy hand over his goblin dome. A bald spot, which for so long he controlled with absolute authority much like the Ottoman Empire once held sway over the entire Middle East, is gaining momentum. He is wearing off-white socks that peek out from his too-short slacks, all bunched up. He’s eating slimy shrimp pasta with officer corps efficiency. He berates his server, a nice woman with a limp named Kim, for not being sufficiently aggressive in regards to re-upping his flat, bubble-free Diet Coke. He is reenacting his own version of the Shiite-Sunni split with breadsticks. “Ali, you dumb fuck,” he mutters as he smashes one breadstick on the table again and again. He thinks about how it should have been him named Mad Dog. The famous Barenaked Ladies song begins to play. He doesn’t know this tune but enjoys it. Being doomed doesn’t look like anything in particular but then you look at him and start to think maybe it does. Then he goes home and watches TV.
Bob BBQ: Michael Flynn has been on Netflix a lot, watching 1990s blockbuster films like Face/Off, Phenomenon, and The Family Man. He’s been finding comfort in the bygone theatricality of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta’s neon-lit hamminess. Big Stars doing Big Performances in absurd, hypothetical scenarios that begin with irony but ramp up into sentimental moralism; Frank Capra on very mild acid. When Hollywood stopped churning a dozen of these out annually, that’s when Flynn’s grip on the culture begin to falter, despite his material power within society growing and growing. He is trying to return to this fictive womb in the wake of his exile from the presidency. The uncanny satire that is his life has moved so fast for what feels like so long now that it will break through, he is hoping, into the plane of gooey resolution. Michael Flynn, finding Daddy nowhere else, is looking for him in cinema.
Fred McRiff: His search for Daddy having reignited his own sense of fatherly responsibility, Michael Flynn is committing an ever escalating series of crimes so he can get arrested and do a Prison Break for his son, but Trump keeps pardoning him.
Jacob Israel Chilton: Having taken a break from all his 3-star (not to mention 2-star and 1-star) generaling, and having at last discovered prestige TV, Michael Flynn has realized that the leads of all the classics are alphas who have sons named Junior. (He always thought he was doing it right, but now he KNOWS.) So he’s watching as many episodes of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad as he can find on YouTube, using the variable speed option to double-speed his way through to the finales to find out how his story will no doubt end.
Alex Siquig: Let’s never forget the strange plotline in Breaking Bad that centered around Walt’s son demanding to be addressed as “Michael Flynn” which was weird at the time, but feels downright scummy now.
Lena Ryan: Michael Flynn is looking into laser tattoo removal after realizing the prison map he’d gotten inked on his back is just Pregnant Waluigi.
Chris Alarie: Michael Flynn works at the Trader Joe’s in Culver City. The manager, a MAGA hat guy, is the only person there who knows who he really is. All of his younger, distinctly apolitical coworkers think he’s named Steve and he is thankful that none of them recognize him. Every once in a while, sees a flash of recognition on a customer’s face and becomes flush with a confusing mixture of emotions. On the one hand, of course they should know who he is: a three-star general, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama, National Security Advisor to President Trump, and, of course, a lobbyist for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On the other hand, all of those positions came to ignominious ends.
Once, a middle aged woman in a “I’m Still With Her” shirt narrowed her eyes, pointed at him, and said, “I know you. You’re, you’re…” But before she could complete her thought, he knocked over her bottle of Gourmet Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar. He excused himself and said he was going to look for a mop but instead he went out back and punched a dumpster until his hands bled. He ended up missing almost two weeks of work after that. By the time he came back, he had grown a pathetically thin mustache that he hoped would disguise his identity.
He shares a one bedroom apartment with his son, who sleeps on the couch. He had gotten his son a job working in the stockroom but Flynn Jr. was fired within a week for keeping a handgun and anabolic steroids in his locker. Now the younger Flynn just hangs out on the couch all day, smoking hash oil and getting banned from various bodybuilding forums. Once, the father walked into the apartment to find his son masturbating to an interview with Tim Allen about the return of Last Man Standing. Flynn Jr. has been unsuccessful in his attempts to convince his dad that they should leverage their notoriety to start a QAnon themed podcast, mistakenly believing that: 1) the absurd conspiracy theory is true; and 2) his dad might know who Q is.
Sometimes the elder Flynn blames his idiot son for their predicament. Other times he blames various figures in the Trump and, especially, Obama administrations. But he saves most of his ire for Hillary Clinton. His anger toward her borders on obsession and he can be found muttering, “Damn right, lock her up” several times a day. Occasionally, in the evening, drinking a bottle of Trader Jose Light Mexican Lager and watching the sunset from a chair on the front patio of his apartment complex, he thinks, “Maybe it really is all my own fault.” In these moments, it seems so possible that he will finally reckon with himself and with the grave consequences of his actions, that he will realize that his defining personal attribute is not strength but, weakness, and that his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that weakness led him into a life of horrible deeds fueled by an unearned sense of aggrievement. And if he were to embrace this realization, perhaps it would be possible for him to accept his punishment and even find some ways to make a small amount of restitution for his evil. But he is never able to go beyond this small inkling of self-knowledge and realization, collapsing back to his default paranoia, islamophobia, and vaguely-defined-but-seething hate. Rather than taking solace in the fact that America does not punish the crimes of its leaders and elites, sparing him and his son from what they truly deserve, he will remain in Culver City, rueing his fate as the scapegoat, living a life in dull exile.
Also, he has hemorrhoids, lol.
Damon Agnos: What is Michael Flynn up to? About 6’1”. (Believe it or not, he’s still growing!!)
Louis Keene: Michael Flynn is working on the third act of his screenplay, still. It’s a vehicle for his son’s nascent acting career.
Emily Lever: According to sources familiar with Michael Flynn’s work in progress, his magnum opus is an unfilmable screenplay for an autofictional auteurist drama in which the thinly veiled stand-in for Flynn is described as “a Kirk Douglas type.” The work, despite a few oddly haunting dramatic flourishes, is overall a mediocre mishmash of Tom Clancy, 24, and The Patriot. Muslim people are depicted throughout as dissembling, bloodthirsty villains — except for the noble Turkish politician who appears at several key moments in the plot. The screenplay, which in its current draft boasts a staggering 4000 pages, is titled No Regrets.
Damon Agnos : [pressing earpiece] I’m receiving word that Michael Flynn has just trademarked the term “Flynnsanity.”
Alex Siquig: [pressing bigger earpiece] Yes, all he does is Flynn, folks.
Louis Keene:
