ll it took was one crying 10-year-old boy spotted bolting out of a prominent federal office, wearing what appeared to be darkly-stained lederhosen, to signal a surprising new twist in the ongoing war against terrorism.

Citing a need to "keep American boys on their toes and pure from the effects of Islamic terrorists," Attorney General John Ashcroft, in an impromptu press conference yesterday, unveiled a plan to teach young men from the ages of 8 to 15 how to recognize the signs that they are being, or are about to be, recruited, seduced and/or molested by Muslim fanatics. In an unprecedented gesture of self-sacrifice, and sweating profusely as he spoke, the Attorney General said that he has taken it upon himself to personally teach "as many boys as I possibly can."

"You've got to get them young," Ashcroft said. "Otherwise, there's no telling what kind of corrupting influences they may have had that will keep them from realizing the terrible tragedy that potentially awaits them at the hands of these fundamentalist zealots. That's why I'm making it my personal mission to educate these fine, young, trim, well-proportioned… uh… boys."

"It's a known fact that these terrorists are bound and determined to infiltrate our society and subjugate our way of life by forcibly introducing our youth to the Homosexual Agenda," Ashcroft went on to say. "Why, just look at the pictures we have of them—most of them walk around every day in these long white dresses! You can't tell me these fellows aren't a little light in their loafers, or sandals, or whatever it is they wear on their feet. Maybe kicky black patent leather pumps, who knows?"

The program apparently involves hands-on demonstrations of the types of Arabic buggery that Ashcroft claims is widespread throughout the Middle East, and that poses a significant threat to the well-being of male American youth. "We show them—and I mean we show them good—just what those terrorists have in store for them if they're not careful. After all, you know what it says in that fake Bible of theirs, the Also-ran—excuse me, I mean the Ko-ran—'in sexual congress, for children, a woman. For pleasure, a boy.' It also goes on to say, 'for real pleasure, like you've never had before, an overripe melon,' but we'll leave the melons alone for the time being. Better, we think, to concentrate on the boys."

When asked about the actual methods of instruction, Ashcroft said, "We simply follow what it says in the real Bible—you know, 'Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.' We also like the passage that says 'Thou anointest me with oil.' In fact, we're ordering up dozens of cases of Crisco for this project, with the money coming out of the Homeland Security budget. I'm envisioning a number of one-on-one, or maybe a few two-on-one sessions, as many as I can fit into my schedule, with as many young, nubile, half-dressed… er… boys as we can recruit, here in my private, comfortable, tastefully-appointed office."

The Attorney General, when asked if he had a list of boys who might qualify for this training, replied that he had approximately 600 young men in mind to get the program off the ground, but that he would not reveal any names, on the grounds of national security. "You think I want to hand Osama bin Laden a ready-made list of American boys to pursue for his evil, filthy machinations? No sir. No sir. We're keeping this list private, and that's that. Just me and Ari and Karl. Not even the president has access to those names. No sir." Ashcroft then mopped the considerable sweat from his brow and called an end to the press conference, ignoring the muffled wails heard far down the corridor from his office.

he first Smoka Bowl held in San Clemente California ended in humiliation for the football team from Karmel City University of California, as California State University at Barnsley, who proposed and financed the Smoka Bowl, defeated KCU 105-7.

Coach Tag Thompson of Karmel City University spoke well of his opponents: "They played a good game. We had a long, tough bus ride. And I mean a long bus ride, folks. But in the end, I guess they wanted it more. And a few of our star players were, uh, detained in Las Vegas along the way. I thought we played well, at least for some of it. But Barnsley's a tough cookie to crack."

Barnsley started fast out of the gate, scoring 49 points within the first thirty minutes of the game. Another touchdown was then scored by KCU's Auggie Dugan for Barnsley, who inadvertently went to the wrong locker room before the game started, put on the wrong jersey, and played the first half of the game without realizing he was on the opposing team.

Coach Fred "Hookah" Smith of the Barnsley Boo-Yas was proud of his team, and Dugan. "We worked hard for this one. We planned the Smoka Bowl, we scheduled it, financed it, invited KCU down, then we abstained for a good long week from, you know, everything, and the training paid off. We were bound and determined to win a game before the year was out, and we stuck to that goal and were rewarded."

Barnsley and Karmel City Univeristy are not renowned for their athletic abilities. Both schools are coincidentally the leading schools for alternative agriculture in the state of California. They are also a hotbed of political activism, with the largest club of Young Green Party Members and opposing such invasions of privacy as mandatory drug testing at the workplace and schools.

Coach Thompson of the Karmel City University Herbs could only guess at what led to such a disparity in scoring between his team and the Boo-Yas.

"Well, we had a long, long bus ride, like I said. It was only about four hours but seemed like 20. I'm not really sure, you can't say whether this should have been done better or this or whatever. It's not that we didn't play well, hell, just look at Vance McGoohan. What a trooper! That kid threw up on himself right after catching the ball and ran it all the way for that touchdown we made. No one could touch him. At least no one tried. But that's heart."

Coach Smith of Barnsley was ecstatic over the results, and hoped to see the Herbs up against the Boo-Yas at the next Smoka Bowl in 2003, or "whenever, it's all cool."

I don't tell this to many people, unless they ask, but it's long been my dream to be part of some kind of rock-band family, like the Partridges. Or Fleetwood Mac. I mean, how much ass would that kick? Most kids are sitting at home, eating porkchops or some bullshit in front of the TV while mom and dad barely tolerate each other and daydream divorce scenarios in their heads, The Love Boat reflecting off their glassy eyes. But you, the rock-family kid? No way, you're on tour and television and crap. Your family's got groupies and your dad's doing monster lines of coke all the time. Damn.

Before you go and get me all wrong, and think Omar Bricks has gone full-blown gay on y'all, remember that I'm not talking about Hanson or anything here. I'm not talking about clones or Siamese twins or whatever the hell they are. I fully support their right to just go somewhere and die, like everybody does. I'm talking about a real full-on family. Only not all shitty like the Partridges, I'm thinking more a family that could kick some ass. Like if Glen Danzig was your dad and Freddie Mercury was your mom. That kind of family.

I called up a record executive I know from jury duty to run this idea by him, see if it climbed naked up the flagpole and dropped trou, as the saying goes. He said he didn't know I had kids. Which should have been obvious, as anyone who knows me can tell I don't want to die all the time. I told him not to worry about the family part of it, I was sure I could scare up some orphans or some shit, or even some faux-parents if the demographic was to skew that way. I don't think the Mamas and the Papas have been up to anything lately, they're so far behind the music they can see up its ass like a cat. Still, even at that, he wasn't sure if the idea had wings. We argued back and forth for a few minutes about whether Wings rocked or not, then I think my phone card ran out because I don't remember saying goodbye.

The one thing he said that did stick with me though was that if the idea were going to work, it would have to have some spin on it. Like if it was an Asian family. People can't get enough of Asian shit these days; it's like having a cartoon without having to pay some greedy art school snobs to draw it for you. Plus they're always saying hilarious shit like "I rove you rong time!" like Scooby Doo and people eat it up.

I figured this was probably some pretty solid advice, since Dave knew his shit when we were on jury duty, like you're not supposed to answer the questions the lawyers ask out loud. It's different from being in an infomercial audience that way, but they don't explain all that when you're sitting down in the bleachers and then they act like you're the only asshole who didn't read the jury duty book or whatever. You can get those guys back though, you just tell 'em L.A. Law sucked and the look on their faces is priceless.

So I decided to go the Asian route with my Rock Family. It all has to start with me, of course, so I had to change my name to something believably Asian. My stage name, anyway. And even more than that, it would have to be Asian as shit to overcome the fact that I look whiter than Eminem crossed with the bailiff from Night Court. So people would see me on TV and be like "Naw!" but then my Asian name would flash up on the screen and they'd feel like stupid asses for doubting and hope nobody heard them.

I ran through a few different options, most of which turned out to be copyrighted by dirty joke books, but before long I settled on the winner: Woon Fat Leung. Shit yeah. I liked how it was undeniably Asian, yet at the same time implied I probably knew some serious karate or else had a gun that never ran out of bullets. Plus it sounded cool. That's a lot of work for one name to do, so it definitely beats a normal slack-ass name like Omar Bricks, which is badass and all, but by itself only implies that I don't have tits.

So now the hard work is done, all that remains is finding some adorable little Asian kids who can play the drums, guitar, bass, keyboards and sing… but I've got the tambourine nailed down. If one of those little kids turns out to be a tambourine virtuoso he's going to have to be my understudy or else ready himself for one serious "Devil Went Down to Georgia"-style tambourine battle, since I'll likely be twice his size and I play dirty.

If you happen to know any interested Asian kids, or come to think of it, a Bricks-aged Asian chick who could pass for the mom and doesn't play the tambourine, send them around the commune offices. Only tell them to stay away from Ramrod Hurley's office, I think that guy's having some kind of Vietnam flashback in there and all he needs are some little people in pointy hats coming around to totally fuck his mind for good.

Bricks out.

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