Polio at 50

A little bird recently asked me what it felt like to do 50. I answered that question with this question: What does it feel like to eat a bacon cheeseburger through a straw, dickface? That was right before I hit the little bird in the mouth with an encyclopedia. Actually, that analogy doesn't work unless I mention that the little bird was Boner Cunningham. You probably already guessed that from the encyclopedia he's always carrying around so people will think he can read. But no matter who the little bird was, nobody suggests Omar Bricks shops for chicks at the geriatric ward. Not if he wants to keep his teeth.

Only later when Griswald Dreck asked me the same question and I almost hit him with a framed picture of Dame Edna did I realize what they were both talking about. Really? I've written 50 Polio columns? Holy shit! A quick count of the notches carved into the edge of my desk confirmed it. Damn. Damn times fifty.

It seems like just yesterday that I was scouring the net, looking for columns I could pass off as my own. Come to think of it, that was yesterday. But I tried that shit back when I started working at the commune, too, and it didn't work any better then. Turns out everybody's heard of that old bag who writes Dear Arbys.

Though the official record may show 50 Polio columns published, the actual number written is probably double that. It may seem natural as shit now, but early on it took this Omar Bricks a while to find his "voice." As a matter of fact, the first ten My Friend Polios in a row were all rejected for one reason or another. The first few were because the commune already had a movie reviewer, and they didn't like the way I compared everything to Jaws. To which I still say you can kiss my ass. I still think Working Girl is like Jaws in an office building. Whatever.

My next attempt was rejected because they said you can't just write a column about how you deserve a blowjob. Apparently Rok Finger had already milked that tit dry years ago. I tried another column using the voice of this hilarious Latino character I had created but the commune bigwigs thought our apparently huge Hispanic readership would be alienated by the antics of Frankie Hotpants. I think the real problem was I was typing in an accent, and the milkfed silver spooners around here couldn't make out a word of it, so naturally they assumed I was using the column to take potshots at them in Latinese. Which I was, but they had no way of knowing that. Pricks.

After that I tried my hand at a "reality" column, just typing up everything that was happening around me as I wrote the thing. That turned out to be easy as shit to write, but made me enemies around the office faster than an Amy Grant concert tee shirt. Like the new guy was supposed to know everybody here was so secretive about their cock fighting and underground jai-alai tournaments.

My big breakthrough finally came one day in the parking garage when I was welding a giant metal dick to the hood of Red Bagel's car. Sure, I'd known it would be a hilarious gag for weeks, as I made arrangements to get the tools and had some kid in a high school metalshop class make the dick. But in the actual moment of pulling it off, by the pale glow of that arc-welder, I realized that this was the shit My Friend Polio should be all about. And a column was born.

Of course, that actual column never ran. Bagel immediately sacked the guy who he thought dick-welded his Camry, and I figured best let sleeping dogs lie dead on that one. But it didn't matter, the seed had been sewn. Or whatever the hell you do with seeds, it was planted and shit. At that point, nobody could have predicted what would come in the next 50 My Friend Polios, unless they were following me around all the time and taking notes. Then I guess they would have had a pretty good idea.

Bricks out.

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