John Mayer's hair looks disheveled. Not in the fake "I spend 30 minutes every morning trying to look disheveled" way that those dudes with wallet chains look. No, he looks like he's been sleeping in a car. And not his car. John Mayer looks like a man who wanders around for hours every night, trying car door handles, looking for a place to sleep. John Mayer looks like a man who shits in completely inappropriate places. We're sitting in the boardroom at Cracked headquarters, looking out over the walnut orchard where Finnish immigrant and company founder Johann Krakt first settled 175 years ago. It was from this walnut farm that Johann and his descendants built the walnut, comedy and arms manufacturing empire that you know well today. John is with me because he wants to "set the record straight." Public opinion has turned against him recently, following a series of disastrously candid interviews he's had with other publications. In the great cocktail party that is the American media, the sudden introduction of phrases like "pitching a tent in a vagina," and "my dick is like a white supremacist" have halted the conversation as effectively as a dog throwing up on the table. Today John Mayer is here to clean up after the dog vomit that is everything he says. CRACKED: Thanks for agreeing to meet with us today John. JOHN MAYER: No, it's my pleasure. CRACKED: So I guess we'll cut right to it; how you been dude? You look like you've seen better days. MAYER: It's been a rough couple months. CRACKED: Are we talking drugs here? MAYER: No, it's nothing like that. Drugs are wrong man. I tried coke once and it was a disaster. CRACKED: Yeah? How so? MAYER: I dunno. I was fucked up. I guess I went to the local SPCA and adopted everything in sight. I guess I thought I needed to have an army, right? CRACKED: An army of sickly cats? MAYER: Exactly! So I've got these cats, and I'm training them right? You know, trying to train them how to fight as a unit. And I need you to understand, we're still in the parking lot of the SPCA here. CRACKED: Right. MAYER: And it wasn't going well, as you could imagine. So I started yelling at the cats, calling them faggots and such, like a drill sergeant would. CRACKED: Uh huh. MAYER:

(Heavy sigh) And then I guess a couple of actual homosexuals overhear me, and start yelling at me, and I'm trying to explain to them that I'm actually evoking, very ironically I think, this classic character of a stereotypical drill sergeant, but they're not getting it and are still yelling at me, and I guess one of the cats dies because it was really incredibly ill, and then the cops show up. CRACKED: Wow. MAYER: So yeah. Drugs are bad. No good. How did I get on that story? CRACKED: I don't think I know. I guess this does bring to focus how you can sometimes be a little excessively candid during interviews. MAYER: Right. CRACKED: Because during recent interviews you've said some things that have attracted some negative attention. MAYER: I know. I think a lot of it has been overblown, but a lot of it - most of it - has been me acting horribly. I guess I'd like to clarify a few things. CRACKED: You've talked quite a bit about some of your past relationships with other celebrities: Jennifer Anniston. And Jessica Simpson, as well. MAYER: Yeah, I've definitely seen the business end of a few famous ladies. CRACKED: Do you regret speaking so openly about such personal matters? MAYER: I do. I mean I've always been a pretty open guy, with a sort of "fuck it" attitude. So I don't mind if my secrets get out. But I guess not everyone feels the same way. And I have to respect that. CRACKED: Do you even have any secrets about yourself left? MAYER: Oh tons. Like, did you know that driving a bulldozer into the ocean and running over mermaids is my favorite masturbation fantasy at the moment? CRACKED: No. MAYER: It is. John Mayer's mouth hangs open slightly. I can see in his eyes he's resisting the urge to lick his lips. The temperature in the air immediately drops 10 degrees. I steady myself with a sip off coffee. CRACKED: Moving on. I guess on the subject of offensive language, you've been taking flak for throwing around the "n" word pretty casually. MAYER: I know. I shouldn't have said that. It's a horribly offensive word that I never should have said. I sincerely apologize for that. But some of the things people are saying? These charges that I'm racist are nonsense. I have black friends, and have worked with black artists and colleagues, and like and respect them. And look, Obama is president and I'm thrilled about it. Hell, I hope next time we elect an even blacker guy! CRACKED: Uh... MAYER: I hate cancer patients. CRACKED: What? MAYER: You never see pictures of women having sex with dozens of robots at once any more. CRACKED: I'm sorry, you've lost me here. MAYER: Sometimes people die, and that's terrible. Like that thing in Haiti? I felt so bad for those people. But then you hear about people who are in the hospital and die because they have some disease, and you think,

Well, that's your fault for being in the hospital. CRACKED: John? Are you OK? You're starting to freak me out a little. MAYER: All the best music was made by people who weren't me. I accept that. But if I make OK music and my success allows me the opportunity to stick my entire torso inside an elephant's vagina, I think I'm doing pretty good. CRACKED: You're putting me on, right? This is you pulling some sort of elaborate self-destruction spoof? MAYER: I've been to space. I killed a Chinese astronaut and took his place to do it. You know what Chinese astronaut food feels like when you're fucking a tube of it? Awesome. It feels awesome. Suddenly the door to the boardroom bursts open. In comes another John Mayer, this one more artfully disheveled. The John Mayer who I had been interviewing looks up, eyes wide in astonishment. My gaze flicks back and forth between the pair. They do look remarkably similar. MAYER #1: Oh shit. MAYER #2: You fucker! You've been ruining my life! This man has been impersonating me across the country, destroying my reputation. MAYER: #1: I hate America for its freedom! MAYER #2: RARRRRRRGH! With three quick steps, the new (and original?) John Mayer covers the distance between the two, while the copycat tries to get out of his chair. Classic John Mayer tackles his doppelganger to the ground, where they start to wrestle. With the same size and build, the two are equally matched, each struggling to gain the upper hand over themselves. CRACKED: Oh that is nasty. One of the John Mayers has begun sticking his tongue in the other's ear. It really is nasty. Deciding I need to break this up somehow, I go to the wall where an antique fowling piece rests above a mantle. I remove it from its mount and load two shells into it from the convenient bowl of ammunition stored on the mantle. I close the breach, the distinctive sound immediately halting their grappling. Their attention won, I announce what will happen next. CRACKED: OK guys, settle down. This shit right now? This is just like that scene in

Pulp Fiction, only in this version, it's going to get weird. Four different John Mayer eyes widen at the prospect of something weirder than ball-gagged buggery in a sweaty basement. I'm just messing with them of course - they're perfectly safe. Fortunately for them, Cracked's resident sadistic hillbilly assfiend is out of the office today. CRACKED: Relax, I'm just fucking with you. OK, here's how this is going to work. I'm going to ask you questions, and you're going to answer them. It will be just like a regular interview, except I'll be holding a loaded shotgun the entire time and making sudden jerking movements with it to scare you. Deal? Good. OK. You, fake John Mayer: Are you the fake John Mayer? FAKE JOHN MAYER: Yes. CLASSIC JOHN MAYER: Shoot him! Shoot him! CRACKED: I'm not going to shoot anyone, John. Both John Mayers relax at that. Annoyed, I shift my aim slightly and fire the shotgun, obliterating a small decorative plant. CRACKED: Unless I do. OK. Fake John Mayer: Have you been going around impersonating John Mayer and saying crazy things to discredit him? FAKE JOHN MAYER: Yes. CRACKED: And why have you been doing this? FAKE JOHN MAYER: They sometimes have food at these things. CRACKED: Classic John Mayer, what do you have to say to that? CLASSIC JOHN MAYER: That's actually why I usually go to these things too. CRACKED: Good breakthrough, everyone. OK. Fake John Mayer, will you apologize to the original John Mayer for impersonating him and making him look like a crazy sex-fiend racist? FAKE JOHN MAYER: I am sorry about that. CRACKED: Original John Mayer, will you apologize to Fake John Mayer for him being hungry? CLASSIC JOHN MAYER: That doesn't make any sense. A deafening boom as another plant explodes in a cloud of dirt and shrapnel. CLASSIC JOHN MAYER: I am sorry you are sometimes hungry. FAKE JOHN MAYER: Thank you. I accept your apology. CRACKED: That's good. Now that that's behind us, maybe you two can work together from now on? I'm sure that by combining your efforts you could achieve great things. CLASSIC JOHN MAYER: I don't know. CRACKED: Think man! Think of the possibilities! CLASSIC JOHN MAYER: I guess it'd be good for harmonies... CRACKED: I was actually thinking about some kind of insurance fraud or niche pornography. But no, whatever you feel comfortable with. ________