Hollywood Not Optioning Nebraska Bank Robbery

oney, the verdict is in and Hollywood is saying a resounding "Mmm-Mnnt!" to a Nebraska bank robbery in which five were killed and three were left scared out they ever-lovin' minds by three hold-up men.

The robbery happened in Norfolk, a dead town with no night life whatsoever, when the three hold-up men shot four bank employees and one civilian like they were last year's fashions and crashed through the wall in a balls-out kaboom to flee the scene. Another customer was winged in the shoulder in true Hollywood style. Police chased down the robbers in a sweet-ass manhunt that reminds this reporter of her early years. The governor authorized the use of Black Hawk helicopter in a show of force that certainly won my heart.

Yet with all of this grade-A material, don't wait for Hollywood to put this on your local theater screen.

"Frankly, most of it plays great," said Universal Vice-Vice President Armio Durkness, "the daring daylight robbery, the guns and the explosions and the Black Hawk helicopter—God, I'm wet over the Black Hawk helicopter. But the shooting of four bank people? And the customer? Bad move, guys. Makes us less sympathetic to your character. We're passing for now."

Apparently our fearsome threesome have a Master's degree in domestic terrorism, but a big fat failing grade in media savvy.

"Man, it could have been great," said MGM Studio Exec Dandelion Waters. "Three buddy bank robbers in the western United States decide to pull off that one big heist and the evil, corrupt governor—metaphorically speaking, of course—wants to bring them down so he can get re-elected. Sends out every cop in the state, even a super high-tech Airwolf-style chopper. Then they had to go and ruin it by blowing away people. Nobody wants to see that on their news and they definitely don't want to pay to see it at the theater."

Three men were arrested in a town about 76 miles away, but it could not be certain if the men were the ones they were seeking or just a couple of boy-toys doing an honest day's work. If the latter is true, this reporter needs to investigate personally.

The action and romantic notion of robbing a bank in modern America, minus the bring-me-down of the murders involved, is a dangling piece of candy that Hollywood may not resist entirely. Although reaction is slow and moviemakers aren't jumping on the wagon just yet, there is talk that maybe the story can be salvaged, with some Hollywood-sized adjustments.

"If they can make a big scarefest like the O.J. Simpson stuff into a movie, we can certainly work enough magic with the more ample material we have here," said Mike Oliphant, a stubble-faced producer at Miramax who smells like he works out often. "We dump the murders right out, that's a given—do a little more background on the characters, maybe make them three childhood friends doing it all for the memory of a friend who died too soon. You know, cancer, AIDS, that West Nile stuff is big right now. I'm starting to like it. Kind of a 'our last big shot to take the brass ring.' It's do-able."

The real story is being sought by many moviemakers right now, but only to see if there's any usable gold nuggets within. If not, Tinsel Town is famous for making their own brand of gold dust.

"If people wanted reality, they'd watch the news," said Dreamworks consultant John Dorfenfoof. "Or maybe not the news. Definitely not Fox News. But they'd watch something. Not movies."

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There's nothing more ugly than a fat man in banana-colored jams. That's just a fact of life. Sweet canary-colored Christ, is that a hard fact of life. This having been said, I admit there are more tactful ways to spread the word about this eternal truth than screaming it through a batch of megaphones you've got welded to the roof of your car like some kind of old-timey politician on a budget.

But may all the world's unfortunately-dressed fat men be my witness when I say I didn't set out this morning to malign the portly and ill-coutured via electronic amplification. I just wanted to test out the six-megaphone behemoth I had recently added to the roof of Bricksmobile III (formerly known as the Bagecudda) for purposes of thinking out-loud while in commute. Needless to say, that unfortunate fat bastard surprised me by appearing on the sidewalk in the middle of one of Omar Bricks' famous stream-of-consciousness clusterfuck rants, which led to me inadvertently screaming "Sweet Grandma Moses, did you see that fat fucker's pants?!?!" at the top of my lungs for the benefit of most of the greater metro area. If I'd had more time to think about what I was broadcasting at the decibel equivalent of two jet engines exploding in a stainless-steel men's room, I might have made it less obvious which fat fucker I was talking about, saving that jams-wearing butterball a fair measure of public embarrassment.

Of course, as should surprise nobody, Omar Bricks was man enough to admit his mistake, which I did by flipping a bitch across the median and heading back to apologize to the yellow-legged monstrosity whose dignity I had shitcanned with my ear-piercing insensitivity.

This time around we were heading in opposite directions, so I only had time to yell "Sorry, fatass!" before my window of opportunity was gone. Anything I'd said after that would have appeared to be directed at this gang of Latino guys hanging out on the corner, who didn't look like they had any kind of sense of humor about loud, public affronts to their manhood. Not to be prejudiced or anything, maybe they were a sensitive barbershop quartet or something, but those didn't look like barbershop tattoos to me.

In the split second that I saw that big yellow blimp's face on the way back, I couldn't quite interpret the look he was giving me, but it for sure wasn't the look that says "Don't worry about it dude, and thanks for having such an unbelievable assload of class." It seemed more like a mix of "Why me?" and "Fuck you," so clearly he'd misunderstood my message and thought I was just buttering him up as the set-up for a really devastating critique of his wide-load fashion sense.

Needless to say, Omar Bricks just couldn't let that injustice stand, so I threw the Bricksmobile in reverse and made my way back up the sidewalk to re-apologize. I'd barely megaphoned a heart-felt "I'm sorry for drawing attention to your big yellow ass, chunky" when the dude took off running like he'd never heard of social etiquette.

Most people aren't familiar with the proper technique for driving backwards up a city sidewalk; they think you should take it slow and steady to make sure you don't hit anything, careful to remember that turning left makes the car go right, etc. Actually, that's the most dangerous thing you can do, you're in real deep shit if you honestly think you're going to keep all that crap straight. It's much safer to put the hammer down and let the G-forces steer your car for you, the sidewalk and surrounding buildings will direct your car far better than your eyes ever could, trust me. But most people don't know this, so they overreact and dive out of the way when they see your car bearing down on them, accelerating into the low 60's with a mangled shopping cart bent across the trunk.

Jimmy Jams was apparently from the overreactor's school of backwards-sidewalk driving, because he hit the shoe-leather expressway like a big fat Lamborghini running on NASA fuel when he saw the Bricksmobile take out that kiosk of newspaper vending machines en route to apology. I knew I was going to have to think fast to set this whole thing right.

"Really, you're not that fat," I offered charitably over the megaphones. "Anybody would look bad in those pants."

But the rotund runaway kept on sprinting, even after I blurted out "My bad" on the car's horn in universally-understood motorist Morse code. Some people just can't be reached, especially after you wipe out into a fruit stand and your homemade bank of megaphones snaps off and flies through the window of a nearby deli.

I think he got the message though. And even if he didn't, I imagine the sprint for his life helped him drop a few pounds, so I figure I'm karmically in the clear on this one either way. Bricks out.

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Hello and welcome to day four of Operation Jerkhunt, the pet project of a neighborhood group I recently organized to hunt down the freakish scum who stole my neighbor Hamms' Winnebago and, once they'd had their vile fun, dumped it in the Potomac River to conceal the evidence of their truly heinous crimes against the retired. That's the story the vigilante group is working from anyway, I personally know better but am in the unique position of being unable to correct their misconceptions without revealing the fact that Omar Bricks was the one who borrowed the Winni and, through no fault of my own, drove it into the Potomac with a half-naked record store clerk in the shower. "Drove" is actually entirely too strong a word, since in truth there was a giant stuffed carnival bear behind the wheel at the time, and the Winnebago actually rolled downhill backwards into the river thanks to the stuffed bear's poor understanding of parking brake procedures.

I have a rock-solid alibi since I was in the Winnebago's shower at the time, as can be backed up by a half-naked record store clerk named either Darlene or Danielle. That was a large part of the problem, actually, since when you're already wet and in the shower, it's not as obvious as it would otherwise be that your mobile home is steadily sinking into one of America's greatest rivers. So by the time you put two and two together, it's way too late to organize a team of pack mules to pull the Winnebago out of the river before someone's collection of rare "road music" LPs is damaged by the river water, silt, and various beaver activities therein.

So far we've had little luck tracking down the vermin, though we have concluded conclusively that there's no way in hell he could live in our neighborhood. In fact, it was likely a woman, possibly crippled, from remote Eastern Europe, making retaliation all but impractical. There is a moral victory, however, in knowing the truth, and I know that Hamms has appreciated my help and the fact that he can sleep well at night now, knowing that Omar Bricks is keeping an eye on his house and assorted goodies.

Our previous misunderstandings about my frequent trespassing in his bathroom, burning down his house while it was being built, having him arrested twice on charges of necrophilia, and taking a shit in his garden and blaming it on my dog now well behind us, Hamms and I have moved on to a beautiful new phase of our friendship. Namely the first phase after someone's been your enemy before and now you think they're okay on a provisional basis. Like I said, truly a beautiful thing.

He's had me over to his house for beers twice now, once that he knew about, and I can clearly see the roots of a lifelong friendship taking hold. Or at least as long as he's going to live, which from the looks of things should only be another seven months at best since Hamms is older than Bob Hope. But Omar Bricks is pretty good at seven month friendships. Any longer than that and you hit the dreaded "Seven Month Itch," when your friend inevitably finds out that you used their precious Hummel figurine collection for a pyrotechnic-heavy one-sixteenth scale recreation of the Spanish Civil War or that you're the one who's been painting all those crude sexual figures on their bathroom walls at night.

But those first seven months, or five, man. That's the beautiful part. Bricks out.

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