ormerly Canadian funnyman Jim Carrey surprised the easily-removed pants off of Hollywood this week with the revelation that burnout poster boy and O.J. trial superstar Kato Kaelin never actually existed, and was merely one of Carrey’s comedic creations. The news of this unprecedented ten-year hoax has left the world shocked, stunned, and shockastunnated.

The ditzy, bleached-blonde Kaelin shot from freeloading, couch-sleeping obscurity in 1994 after his wealthy patron, former football great Orenthal James “Breaking Up is Hard to Do� Simpson, murdered the hell out of his ex-wife Nichole and a helpful neighborhood waiter. Called upon to testify in the hit trial that followed, Kato captured the hearts of Americans everywhere with his surfer boy antics and vacuous charm. Few then anticipated that the inevitable breakup would come this hard, or this ten years laterly.

Testifying in an unrelated trial this week, Carrey claimed that he couldn’t have stolen Al Jolsen’s “ass-talking moron� bit since he was sleeping on O.J. Simpson’s couch the week Jolsen’s grave was robbed in 1994, which led to the unraveling of a raveled-up tale of confusing hoodwinkery the likes of which the world had not seen since that funny movie where the kids try to get their divorced parents back together through devious guile.

According to Carrey’s testimony, leaked to the press through a conveniently left-open window, he first developed the Kato character for the sketch comedy show In Living Color in 1992, but was rejected on the grounds that he was too creepy and that Keanu Reeves had already been doing him for thirty years. Undeterred, Carrey continued to develop the character independently, naming him Kato after a mistaken memory of the 70’s television program Kung Fu (whose main character was named Caine) and following the lead of his hero Andy Kaufman by traveling around Hollywood in-character as Kato during 1993.

Hoping to eventually spin the character into a series of Kaelin-centered gross out comedies, starting with the Yuletide fun of Kato Saves Kristmas, Carrey eventually found lodging with ex-footballer Simpson by a stroke of luck, since the Simpsons needed an unreliable layabout to watch their kids while they were off being rich. Not long after, Carrey was caught in a dilly of a pickle when Simpson decapitated his ex-wife and “Kato Kaelin� was called upon to testify.

Rather than paint his own career with the sickly stink of O.J. trial faddery, Carrey opted to ride that lightning for all it was worth, and the rest of the story went down in Access Hollywood history.

“This whole thing just got terribly out of hand,� mock-sobbed a repentant Carrey on the witness stand, barely stifling a serious case of the giggles.

While the possibility for a punishment for Carrey has been discussed, including a sentence requiring the comedic actor to write “I WILL NOT MAKE A MOCKERY OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM� 10,000 times on the courthouse chalk board, the consensus seems to be that many in the legal profession remain enamored of Carrey and his zany antics, and their fondness for his work in 1997’s Liar Liar may likely override any calls for indictments on perjury or impersonating a bonehead.

Ordinary Americans have yet to prove so forgiving. In the wake of the news’ breakery, angry consumers returned thousands of dollars of Kato Kaelin merchandise to stores, demanding refunds or at least a nickel off on that poster of the Madonna-Britney Spears lesbo kiss.

Strangest of all has been the reaction of Brian “Kato� Kaelin’s parents, who just this week finally calmed down from the O.J. hysteria enough to realize they’d never had a son.

But most visibly-upset has been Simpson himself, who in a televised interview from his Florida tax shelter Saturday expressed his deep feeling of hurt at his freeloader’s betrayal, and called for the courts to award $33 million in compensatory damages for his hurtedness, made payable to Fred Goldman.

ans of democracy were delighted to hear the form of government appeared to be working in Ukraine, a former member of the Soviet Union, though they were somewhat sheepish to admit it had been fairing poorly here in the United States, the oldest practitioner of democracy in the world.

On Friday, the Ukraine Supreme Court threw out the results of November's runoff election between Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, backed by the Kremlin, and opposition leader Viktor Yuschenko. Upon closer examination of the last names, Americans may realize these are not the same person. Meanwhile, in America, George Bush continued to smirk and make angry threats to the rest of the non-Western world as he eviled-up his cabinet with a few more additions. Challenges to the legitimacy of Ohio's electoral votes for Bush in November's election remain unheard as of press time.

Supporters of Yuschenko claimed the election was rigged in favor of Yunukovych, part of the current president Leonid Kuchma's administration. Yuschenko challenged election results in favor of Yunukovych in the Ukranian Supreme Court based on incidents of fraud in 8 of Ukraine's 25 election districts. The Ukranian Supreme Court agreed a possibility of fraud had occurred, and ordered another election to be held to decide the new Ukranian president.

During his first election in 2000, candidate George W. Bush claimed victory in the presidential election even as the popular vote demonstrated his loss and many districts were held up to questions of fraud or illegitimate results. The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recount of districts in dispute, effectively handing the presidency to the former president's son and Washington insider.

Outgoing Ukranian president Leonid Kuchma described his country's predicament, claiming, "Ukraine that existed before the election no longer exists. It has been split up into two sides with absolutely opposite opinions." Once again, Kuchma was speaking about his own country, and not the United States.

American president George W. Bush, fresh from his own narrow and controversial victory in November, warned Russia not to involve itself in Ukranian affairs, stating, "Any election, if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence." Presumably all interference in a free election should come from groups of conservative vote challengers and election lawyers.

Ukraine's Viktor Yuschenko delighted in the country's Supreme Court ruling, as polls have him well ahead of his opponent in another election. Yuschenko said Friday, "Freedom and truth are returning to Ukraine following today's decision." Voters in America were at least pleased to finally find out where freedom and truth ended up after abandoning their own country.

When asked to compare the happenings in the free Ukraine and the recent elections in the United States, most people we asked were curious as to what the hell Ukraine was, while others asked us to leave them alone, as they desperately wanted to get home and watch a Tivo'd episode of The Apprentice they've been saving all week.

Can you believe my neighbor Dale is moving away? Shocked the hell out of me, too. You can never see these things coming. One day, his house collapses into the earth in a mysterious freak geological event, and then the next thing you know, all of a sudden he's throwing in the towel and going to stay with his aunt in Seattle.

It's not like his house was unlivable. Sure, none of the stuff was where it used to be, and most of the rooms had been re-arranged, but there were still plenty of pockets of breathable air in that place. You give me some climbing gear and one of those foil space blankets and I could have made that place livable in ten minutes. It's a good think he didn't take me up on that boast, however, since what was left of the roof caved in last Wednesday and flattened what would have been my main living-cave. Nobody ever said spelunking was without its risks.

Then I get a notice that they're going to be coming over to bulldoze what's left of the place, so could I please get my camping gear out of there. Apparently the city got its tidy whities in a real quake over what would happen if some kids went in there to play and got trapped. I tell you, some people just have to invent things to worry about. I'd already made $300 bucks charging neighborhood kids admission to the "Nuclear Test House" and hadn't had a single problem. Except for that kid that got trapped when the upstairs bathroom fell into the downstairs bathroom, but I'm sure he crawled out of there okay. Kids can fit through any opening the size of their head or bigger. It's an adult like me who was really taking a risk going in there.

Nevertheless, they took my cash cow out behind the barn and shot it last week, knocking down the few remaining parts of Dale's house that the earth hadn't swallowed up already. And I'll answer the obvious question before you have to ask it: Yes, the wreckage site did make for an awesome BMX jump course, and I made another $500 off of that before they came and hauled all the debris away.

After that it was just an empty lot with a hole in it, and I was having a hard time figuring out how to turn a buck on that. That is, until I sat down and read a copy of The Giving Tree that one of those kids left behind in the shanty after some of the live swinging electrical cables scared him off. Talk about the perfect book at the perfect time. I had The Giving House sitting right there across my side-lawn, and I was almost too big a fool to take advantage of it. That's when I put up the signs for the skate park.

Turns out the "Bricks 'n Chikz" skate park was fairly short-lived, and not just because I didn't think of the fact that none of the skate park walls were really rounded, so kids just kept slamming into the basement walls and breaking their skateboards and faces and stuff whenever they tried to do any tricks. Nope, I had to tear down the wall murals and take out the cash register early just because some Einstein-o-Trump actually bought the crumbling hole in the ground and set up plans to build a new house there. I guess it's like they say, location means everything, and there's obviously a line of suckers a mile deep just itching for a chance to live next door to Omar Bricks.

But don't take this setback to mean that your old friend Omar has failed to learn the lesson of The Giving House. Far from it. As soon as they get some of the framing and electrical up, I'm going to be giving moonlight tours of the Bricks Building Museum and Gift Shop for ten bucks a head. I'll be goddamned if the kids in my neighborhood are going to grow up without any culture.

Bricks out.

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