ock musician and poet Bob Dylan received the ultimate honor Friday night from an unknown fan believed to be under the influence of several chemical substances. For all his years of service in changing the face of modern music, Dylan was knighted in a brief ceremony behind the Homebrew bar and grill that took only a couple minutes.

Dylan, who was performing an unannounced set at the Homebrew promoting his new album, was extremely surprised and delighted by the honor.

"It was very cool," said Dylan. "You don’t get into this life with thought of major rewards like being knighted. You do it for the music, or maybe the money. This is quite a big moment for me and I’d like to thank the drug-influenced guy who bestowed this upon me, wherever he is."

Dylan was on his way to the parking lot of the club with friends when the unidentified high guy stopped him in the alley, proclaimed Dylan the man, and knighted him with a very quick tap on each of his shoulders with an empty Thunderbird bottle, pretending it was a sword. He then pissed his pants and stumbled back into the club. Surprised but happy with the honor, Dylan continued on to his car.

"I thought about trying to find the guy, but I didn’t want to insult him after he had just done this very great thing for me. I was also a bit shocked by it all. Even if you expect this sort of thing is going to happen, some alley behind a club is about the last place you’re ready for it."

Columbia Records, Dylan’s label, has jumped all over the high-press event. New releases of all Dylan’s previous albums are being issued with a royal seal on them under the artist heading of "Sir Bob Dylan."

"Everyone at Columbia has always known America has a special genius in Bob Dylan," said Columbia V.P. of Advertising John Bonlee, "and now people everywhere will know that. The dude on heroin or crack or whatever behind that club knew it, and recognized Dylan for his years of service to the music industry and world as a whole."

Sources report that if the blitzed night club rambler can be found, Columbia Records would like to have him knight Dylan again, just for the sake of press, on a two-hour TV special with friends and fellow musicians playing songs in Dylan’s honor. Dylan, who has written rock ’n’ roll and folk staples like "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man," "Blowin’ in the Wind," and "Like A Rolling Stone," could not verify the possibility of a two-hour TV event, but said he would definitely not want to air opposite Friends and Survivor.

he major news media again claimed victory over the world itself by creating news from nothing. The so-called story this week revolved around a 25-year-dead white boy named Elvis Presley.

Presley, the king of rock and roll, died August 16, 1977, which is news thanks to the lack of real stories this week as fans and the media celebrate the 25th anniversary of his death. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley was the first attractive white person to bring rock and roll to the nation, and obtained the title "king of rock and roll" in some undisclosed media ceremony.

"Elvis touched everyone," said an unidentified modern rock star pretending to be in touch with music history. "He was the one and only. There will never be another like him."

Fans flocked in presumably record numbers to Graceland to see the place where Elvis lived in strange, hermit-like seclusion until his death on the toilet. Presley was extremely popular in his lifetime, though that popularity peaked and waned over the years, ultimately leaving him most popular after his death.

"This here's Elvis week," proclaimed a Los Angeles classic rock station disc jockey named Danger Bob. "Celebrating the king of rock and roll by playing 'Hound Dog' every hour on the hour. Elvis was one of a kind, he invented it all. There will never be another like him."

His legacy in rock and roll already firmly established, Presley added another accomplishment to his resume this week, as he helped provide filler for news programs, networks, and magazines all across the nation, despite being dead for a quarter of a century.

The face and name of Elvis Presley have graced the covers of magazines, news footage, and news websites, as if some new event had occurred to warrant his coverage. CNN has been airing specials covering the history and influence of the King, Time named Elvis their Person of the Week, and VH-1 has even been playing Elvis videos during the rare hours they play videos.

"The news media owes Elvis a ton of thanks. He's saved our hash from the fire once again," said CNN correspondent Muffy St. Clair. "The president's on vacation and unable to supply us with the usual amount of ignorant quotes. The War on Terror sure hasn't gotten any more interesting—nobody knows where Osama bin Laden is or if he's even alive. Hell, even the celebrities are boring this week. What's new? Anna Nicole Simpson? Puh-lease. A dead Elvis is more interesting than an alive her any day."

While the media has been working overtime to bring Elvis back to national attention, the public at large is invariably unchanged.

"Elvis?" said man on the street Carl Ginser. "Yeah, I like some of his stuff. That 'Suspicious Minds' song is kick-ass. I think the Fine Young Cannibals did a cover of that or something. Oh, and he would, like, raise his lip and snarl. And he always left the building and some guy would announce it, I think. I'm not sure why he's on the news so much lately, though. He's still dead, isn't he? Not a zombie or nothing?"

This reporter, for one, is thoroughly convinced he is. However, until Red Bagel agrees to spring for the plane ticket to Memphis and a shovel, we'll never know for sure. But whether he actually breathes or lies very quiet in his grave, thanks to all the needless media sensationalism, Elvis is still alive today in some way.

I can't count the number of times in this life that I've been unfairly accused of being a pessimist. Actually, I probably could, since I'm a capable adult who made it through grade school with little trouble, unlike some people I could mention by name. So perhaps it is more accurate to say I don't care to count the times. If somebody out there is hot to get on my good side, they could run up some figures and leave the result on my desk after working hours today, but otherwise we're just going to have to work from my general estimate of "a whole lot."

Usually the name-calling follows a familiar scenario: Some dewy-eyed dreamer with his or her head up in the clouds will make some unrealistically optimistic statement about his worth as a human being or her newborn baby's chances of surviving its current bout with pneumonia. My reply then invariably inspires a response along the lines of "You know, Doug, you're a real 'glass-is-half-empty' kind of guy." Sometimes this is followed by a physical assault. That's a figure I can actually peg at exactly 107, as the county sheriff's office has done the tallying legwork for me on that one.

What few have the patience or acumen to realize is that I'm not a pessimist at all. Far from it. I'm an asshole. I don't fear the worst in any given situation, I embrace it and wish it upon all those in my immediate vicinity, hoping to be myself passed over in the cosmic game of "duck, duck, goose" called misfortune.

I see the glass as neither half-full nor half-empty. I just want to know who the hell drank my water. I'm not performing a glass-filling service here, people.

Irregardless of the truth, I am continually accused of finding the cloud inside the silver lining and the bucktooth on the beauty queen. In my high school yearbook I was voted "Most Likely to Sue the High School Yearbook," which actually ended up being true. They must have had a couple of Criswells working on the staff there, pretty impressive. However, a couple of Johnnie Cochrans might have come in more handy since they lost the suit and now South El Paso High has been without a yearbook department for going on forty years. Sucks for them.

As for me, I parlayed my windfall from the settlement into the beginnings of a successful 1-900 telephone business, Psychic Kick. You may remember our television commercials from the early 80's. They featured three actors, in heavy makeup, dressed as a clown, a simpleton and a mean pro-wrestling sumbitch, with the three of them together representing "The Fates." During the 30-second spot they would taunt and heckle the viewer into calling to hear what the future had in store for them, for a modest per-minute rate and generous telephone surcharge.

Our "telephone psychics" were actually a bunch of gum-popping beauty school girls moonlighting for two dollars an hour and free tax advice. When a customer would call in, the girls would keep them on line as long as possible, pulling "fortunes" that I had written on slips of paper from a large novelty hat. Most of them contained terrible news, like "You will die alone in Oklahoma" or "Your dog will contract a rare blood-shitting disorder known as diarrheabetes," but somehow the service still became wildly popular.

Some have suggested that the service's great success was due not to my sharply penned fortunes, but more to the fact that the girls, under heavy pressure to keep the Johns (as we referred to callers) on the phone as long as possible, would resort to describing their blowjob technique when they ran out of fortunes to read. This may or may not have been true, but since I didn't pay the girls a red cent in the end I like to think they at least gained some experience toward their inevitable future careers.

Pessimist? I think not. Asshole? That's more like it. I implore you to contemplate the difference as you lie there on your deathbed in the poor house one day, examining the broken shards of your wasted, miserable life. You might learn something for once.

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