Economy Fine, According to Poll

n a recent poll of Enron CEO's, the American economy was said to be doing "just fine right now, just fine."

Enron CEO and acknowledged Ponzi-scheme expert Ken Lay, queried while attending a White House get-together with his butt-buddy George W. Bush, the alleged president of the United States, put to rest rumors that the economy was about to go south, or was, in fact, already in the tank.

"That's a lot of horse shit," Lay said, laughing heartily. "I mean, sure, a few thousand people have been laid off recently, and maybe one or two of 'em are going to have to sell their boats or their vacation houses, but from where I sit... ha ha, excuse me, I just find this very amusing... from where I... ha ha ha!... from where I sit... oh, dear god, this is too much..." Lay chortled convulsively for a few minutes, then paused to wipe tears from his eyes. He took a few deep breaths with the aid of what appeared to be a large canister of nitrous oxide, and shook his head vigorously. Finally somewhat composed, he continued, "From where I sit, the economy is just peachy-fucking-keen! Ha! Ain't that right, Cracky?"

Lay then reached over to smack the alleged president hard on his backside, which caused him to nearly drop the glass pipe and butane lighter he had been holding up to his face, and to cough and choke on the voluminous clouds of acrid smoke that billowed from his mouth and nose.

"Oh, yeah. Whatever you say, Kenny," Bush said, once he had regained his composure. "Kenny's my main man," he went on, "whatever he says, you can trust it to be truthorious."

When asked if he thought most other Americans shared his rosy view of the current economy, Lay said simply, "Ha! Who gives a flying fuck? What color are their parachutes?"

To which Bush chimed in, "Yeah. Joke 'em if they can't take a fucking."

Lay then stared hard at his compatriot for a few long seconds, and finally commented, "You know, you really are a fucking idiot, Cracky, just like everyone says."

"Shut up!" retorted Bush. "Am not!"

The two then engaged in a slap fight that lasted nearly ten minutes, with Lay appearing to get the best of Bush by feinting with his left hand and repeatedly connecting with his right on Bush's cheek.

Asked for further comment on the state of the economy, Lay just waved his hand in dismissal and chuckled some more.

Signaling that the interview was concluded, Bush then turned his attention back to the glass pipe and lighter, ignoring both Lay and this reporter.

The event was a simple Saturday morning gathering that featured Colin Powell doing a sprightly tap dance for the guests, followed by John Ashcroft demonstrating some of the latest torture techniques on a group of unnamed Middle Eastern detainees and a ritual deflowering of all the underage daughters of the White House staff. Brunch was served, and it was a hearty Texas-style repast, composed of hearts of retarded felon salad in a balsamic vinaigrette and baked Mexican baby head with truffles.

Cheney Comrade Injured During Hunt for Bin Laden

Arizona Border Patrol Installing Landmines

Serial Killer’s Neighbor: “He just wouldn’t shut up about serial killing.”

Heather Graham’s Career Found Dead in Apartment

The streets are more dangerous than ever. This is not only the basic premise for every movie Charles Bronson made in the 70s and 80s, it's an undeniable fact. And since I've been bored the past couple of months, I decided to see what I, Rok Finger, could do about it.

This is not simply about my bicycle being stolen right off my lawn. I don't even need the bicycle, since I have a car. I merely didn't want the neighbors kids to have it since they never took care of it—coming home, casually abandoning it right there on their lawn. They deserved to have it confiscated under neighborly authority. No, I'm going to clean up the streets for the kids, for they are the future of America. Not the neighbor kids. I want to make that clear—I'm only doing this for other kids.

One day, Ginger and I might have kids. She turns ghost white at the mention of it, and sobs uncontrollably, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. And I want these streets to be safe for them… little Rokina and Walter Payton II. If I can make the streets safer through a little violence and intimidation, all the better.

Of course, don't expect the government to work with me on this, especially not at a local level. My first attempt to make the streets safer was thwarted by the police and fire departments, who immediately came over and moved all the heavy furniture away from my neighbors' front and back doors. They wouldn't even leave the boards covering the windows—"fire hazard" this and "illegal confinement" that. Cut crime off at the source, I say. But if that option wasn't available to me, I had other ways to skin a cat. Oh, you can't skin cats by the way. Police are practically domestic terrorists organizations, if you ask me.

The first thing you really need to do if you're going to oppose crime, assuming you can't acquire cool animal-like super powers, is a good intimidating costume. My wife, Ginger, came to my rescue with a fantastic military man outfit just in my size. As you realize, since children are not allowed in the military in this country, I cannot always find camouflaged fatigues in my size. Actually, if children were allowed in the military, I probably wouldn't even have to be out there doing this. But as I said, Ginger made me this snappy Green Beret outfit, only the beret is actually red. She made it for the bedroom, but I say it's good enough to wear outside. And you can see the fear creep into the teenagers' faces when I stomp up and down the block looking like a smaller John Wayne.

Knowing the streets is the first step in protecting them. Actually, the costume thing is the first step. But knowing them is important as well. I patrol these streets three to four times a night, or five times, if the infomercials are too boring. It's worked wonders, since I now know all the neighbors' routines and which have very fast dogs that will chase you away from their houses, even if you're wearing very stylish camouflaged fatigues. It's required paying dues, since my house has been robbed three times this past week while I've been doing my patrols, but nothing is won without sacrifice. Except perhaps Powerball.

Come to think of it, I could reduce the likelihood of being burglarized and speed up my patrol times if I had a snazzy bike to do my patrols on. I could get it done in, like, three minutes flat. I'm that fast. And I have seen a fantastic bike just like my old one laying out on the neighbor's lawn next door. It might just be time for me to confiscate a bike in the name of justice again. Until next time, fight the good fight, people.

º Last Column: The Other Wedding of the Year
º more columns

It's a question that I get asked on a nearly daily basis, and understandably: just what in the hell was wrong with American music in the 1950's? History has it that the 1960's were the decade of recreational and experimental drug use, citing such examples of delusionary flakery as Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, The Beatles' I Am the Walrus and Gregg Allman's hair. And while I wouldn't argue against these as prime examples of pharmaceutical excess, they pale mightily in comparison to the near-psychotic mutant trend of late-50's doo-wop music. John Lennon may have envisioned Mean Mr. Mustard dripping from a dead dog's eye, but even this game of Clue gone horribly wrong looks downright pedestrian next to a jabbering psychopath questioning who exactly put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong.

Like a drugged-up visitor from deep space, doo-wop appeared seemingly out of nowhere, holing up in the chests of America's great pop stars in the late 50's and early 60's. From this parasitic enclave it communicated with the world through a bewitching combination of di-dits, bompa-bomps, ding-dangs, shooby-doos and doh-dohs. Why did it come, and what was it hoping to communicate to us? Nobody knows, though our best guess is that it had to do with seeking therapy for a stuttering problem.

The earliest known recording of the mutant doo-wop style was the Orioles' 1948 tune It's Too Soon To Know. During the recording of what was, by all reports, a fairly normal song, lead singer Sonny Til suffered the massive variety of nervous breakdown and began singing rhyming gibberish vaguely related to his ex-wife winning custody of their home and the recent transmission failure of his Oldsmobile. Fearing for their own lives, the band continued to play and discovered to their dismay that when they had finished the take they were at the end of their studio time. As was a common practice at the time, the record company had only secured them ten minutes of recording time to record and mix the song, and they'd had to sell bass player Johnny Reed's virginity in the process as they were obligated to pay for the studio time themselves.

Low on options and wary of bat-wielding record company thugs, the band played it cool, acting as if the recording session had gone fine. The record was released as-is by record company execs who were so outside of the loop that they once released a recorded armpit fart as a single, snookered by an engineer with a sense of humor. Back in that day all of the record companies were so desperate for a hit they would release anything, sometimes even recordings of other records held up to a microphone, as the execs in charge all listened to marching bands and had no clue what the record-buying teens of the day were into. They seldom listened to the records they put out, which led to the infamous "My Ding-a-Ling" scandal of 1972.

It's Too Soon To Know wasn't a huge hit, but it sold surprisingly well considering the totally bugshit nature of the vocals. It also proved to be heavily influential for a young aspiring songwriter named Richard Lewis, who crashed his car into a grocery store the first time he heard it on the radio. Many say Lewis never recovered psychologically from the incident, but he did go on to form The Silhouettes, and pen the 1957 mega-hit Get a Job. That song introduced the stuttering, nonsensical vocal stylings that came to be known as doo-wop to the world.

Some purists and historians have argued that Get a Job was only a hit because Lewis' uncle owned the Junior Records label and made sure the song was played on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, which guaranteed it would be a hit among the easily-led youth of the day. Others might disagree, but the success of the 1959 hit Dog Barking in the Back Alley seems to lead credence to the theory, since the rare sound-effects single likely would not have reached #1 if it had not been featured on American Bandstand earlier that year.

Whatever the reason, Get a Job was a smash single, and Americans were quick to concede that if it's what everyone else was listening to, then they were into lyrics like "Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma" and colossally embarrassing bass singers, too.

Other bands smelled the money train and were quick to follow, solidifying doo-wop as a legitimate musical movement and a bad name for a hair salon. Not long after, The Marcels released the doo-wop manifesto Blue Moon in 1961, daring America to make sense of their statement of purpose: "Bom bom ba-bom ba-bom ba-bom bom ba-dang a lang lang a ding a dang ding Blue Moon…"

But by late 1961 doo-wop was beginning to lose it's luster, beginning with Barry Mann's hit Who Put the Bomp?, at which point fans began to suspect that the magic was gone and that doo-wop artists were just bullshitting them now. What began as a street movement had been exploited to the limits of credibility, and all of the bomps and sha-na-na's had begun to ring hollow.

By 1964 doo-wop was a mere ghost on the American musical landscape, as record-buyers turned away from the bubblegum of their youth and embraced the British Invasion of more vital artists, replacing their embarrassing Shep and The Limelites platters with the more mature pleasures of Manfred Mann's Do Wah Diddy Diddy. The rest, as they say, is history.

º Last Column: Make Mine Nougat
º more columns