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Omar Bricks has never believed in oil changes. I've always been one to say "Get it right the first time, jackass." Why waste time and money filling your car with shitty oil you're going to regret 3,000 miles down the road? Do the homework now and you won't have to pay some grease monkey rip-off wages to siphon out your shitty oil and spit it in a bucket a few months from now.

There's a whole industry that preys on this kind of short-sighted thinking. Lightning Lube, The Oil Slick, Carp. That last one has some letters missing from the sign, I'm not about to guess what the full name is supposed to be. Because if it turns out to be Carpenis or something great like that I'm going to be embarrassed that I've been calling it Carpals all along. And then there's The Change, which I thought was a clinic for pre-op transsexuals until I went in there to buy Ramrod Hurley a birthday present last year and they tried to lube my chassis.

But Omar Bricks isn't fooled, at least not by the oil-change places that aren't named like sexual reassignment chop shops. I'm not about to waste my hard-earned cash swapping out perfectly good oil, so I buy the good stuff up front. From Wal-Mart, I'm not sure what the brand is called. It's got a bunny on it.

And this all worked fine and good for years until last week, when I had to take the Bricksmobile IV into the shop because it was belching flames again and this was getting me written up for a ticket every time I'd drive past an elementary school and some kids would coincidentally catch on fire. The cops never had a shred of proof, of course, but if you're a lazy cop and you've got some dude driving an unpainted foreign car with a flamethrower for a tailpipe through the same neighborhood where you've got kids on fire, it doesn't take long to figure out who to pin the frame on.

So I took the Bricksmobile IV down to Ricky's, one of the only shops in town I trust, after the only other place I trust, Bill's, burnt to the ground in a freak accident while I was idling outside the day before. Quervo, the guy who owns Ricky's, dropped the bomb and told me I'd been putting Nestle's Qwik in my engine instead of oil, and as a result the whole thing was fucked, in a delicious-smelling kind of way. Turns out I'd never owned a car long enough for the disadvantages of using chocolate syrup to lubricate your engine parts to become evident; I'd always managed to blow the car up or drive it into a swimming pool before the chocolate folly caught up with me.

So, although it went against everything I believe in, I told him to go ahead and change the oil just this once. Put in the good stuff, you know, but don't break the bank. Anything with an animal on the bottle was cool.

At first I thought Quervo might give me some shit about asking him to work on some weird-ass Panamanian brand of car with license plates from an ATV, but he was cool about it. Or at least he seemed cool, he talked a lot but it's not like I speak Spanish. That reminds me, I really need to find an English-speaking auto shop some time soon. Preferably one built with a lot of asbestos.

Bricks out.

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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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