alling the jurors who acquitted Robert Blake last week “low-grade retards,� District Attorney Steve Cooley’s post-trial sour grapes rose to a level rarely seen in our modern, politically correct era Thursday during a 40-minute interview with reporters. Cooley delivering a rambling, profanity-laden tirade punctuated by “Fuck Yous� personalized for each member of the twelve-person jury, each one more cutting than the last.

“This was an open and shut case,� fumed Cooley. “What did they think, that Blake really forgot his gun in that restaurant exactly at the exact same time somebody decided to shoot his batshit grifter wife in the back of the head? I’ve heard little autistic kids come up with better lies than that. I hope none of those jurors have children, sheesh.�

“God! I can’t believe how stupid you people are!� Cooley continued, as if the jury was assembled in his presence. “What did I have to do, put a black cowboy hat on the guy? This was one evil, wife-killing dude! Was his wife not pretty enough? Maybe if the papers hadn’t used those pictures of Bonny shoplifting that watermelon we might have got some jury sympathy. I can’t believe they were all huge fans of Our Gang.�

“Did he really say ‘a pack of inbred monkey-fuckers’?� asked legal expert Chelton Baines. “I hadn’t heard that part. Wow, that’s strong language.�

After the formal interview ended, Cooley continued his onslaught over drinks with this reporter at a nearby bar.

“I swear, this human bungwipe made O.J. Simpson look like Tom Selleck in An Innocent Man,� griped Cooley further. “Or if you haven’t seen that, think of the guy from that Harrison Ford movie.�

“Did you see that juror in the first row? Was he actually eating paste during the trial? Somebody told me it was mashed potatoes, but who brings a jar of mashed potatoes for a snack? That guy was four genes short of a wardrobe, no doubt.�

An assortment of legal experts, however, contend that while Blake was definitely guiltier than a morbidly obese fox in a chicken processing plant, attorney Cooley may have, in legal terms, “screwed the pooch� in his handling of the prosecution.

“Aw, settle down, Steve,� countered Blake’s attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, in a separate interview not held in a bar. “The fact of the matter is, Steve bungled this case. Sure, MENSA wasn’t beating down these jurors’ doors, and many of them had to have basic legal terms like ‘trial’ explained to them numerous times, but I don’t think anyone was ‘clinically brain-dead,’ to use Steve’s term. I mean, what did he expect after parading all those junkies, snitches and piles of walking human shit up onto the witness stand? I’m surprised he didn’t subpoena Jose Canseco or Scott Peterson. What, were Benedict Arnold and the boy who cried wolf too busy to drop by?�

“Playing ‘Blame the Jury’ is the oldest cop-out in the Lawyer’s Handbook,� agreed smug attorney Nelson Arbuckle, waving a copy of the Lawyer’s Handbook. “Everybody knows the jury is just a blob of stupid putty that you need to mold into a coherent mass of guilty-voting.�

“Anybody who doesn’t know that doesn’t deserve to wear the Lawyer’s Ring,� concluded Arbuckle, brandishing a gaudy turquoise ring on his pinky finger.

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T'was the night before Christmas, and all through Bricks Manor, not a creature was sleeping, because my neighbor's house was all the fuck on fire. I shit you not, communauts, this was one bizarre-smelling Christmas. I barely saved the fireworks I keep buried in my lawn, and Foghat took a big black Christmas shit after gorging himself on some kind of half-melted attic insulation. This Christmas wasn't lacking Santa, just sanity.

As the most plausible recorded version of that night's events goes, Omar Bricks had just settled down for a long winter's nap with his trusty basset hound Foghat at the foot of the bed, watching for gremlins, when from out by the lawn there arose such a clatter, I jumped up and screamed "What the fuck??" like a pissed-off ninja. Away to the window I flew like The Flash, not as fast but just as naked. Or was that The Streak? One of those guys. And anyway, yeah, the new house they'd just finished building on Dale's old lot was way the hell on fire.

For a second, brave thoughts of dashing in heroically and getting all my shit out of there whizzed through my brain, like a half-remembered action movie. Then I realized the flames were like forty feet high and that camping gear was borrowed anyway. Sure, I'd left some boxes of crackers and shit in there too, but they were probably all brown on one side due to the raging inferno that was lighting up the neighborhood like the Griswalds' Christmas decorations. And in all likelihood, eventually I would get more crackers.

So instead, Foghat and I broke out the lawn chairs and took in the show while those fire department nuts went all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the roof and shot us dirty looks for not sharing our toasted marshmallows. I think we had the entire fire department for three counties out there by the end of it, those guys get on their walkie-talkies and word gets out like it's a high school kegger. Most of them were just standing on the front lawn, trying to piss out the fire with recycled lite beer, so in all likelihood those guys actually had come from a high school kegger. But just the same, some of those guys were handy with a disposable camera, meaning Foghat and I did get some killer keepsake shots posing in front of the inferno plus some action shots of us dragging drunk-assed firemen away from the blaze like we were David Bowie-sized heroes.

So all in all, it was a good time and not a bad way to spend your Christmas Eve. That is, until the next morning, when I start getting calls from some crackpot arson inspector because the wiseass finally found my missing camping stove in the smoking wreckage. What a dickhead. Like I'm going to burn down an entire house just so I can collect the insurance settlement on a shitty Coleman propane stove. That dude must've got his arson license out of a box of Honey Smacks.

Tragic as my losses in the inferno may have been, I did have the satisfaction of being proved right in the public arena. That'll teach Martha Stewart to try and tell me you can't slow cook s'mores by setting a crock pot on fire. Once those arson vultures had dug out what was left of my crock and we cracked it open like a dinosaur egg, Foghat and I chowed down on the best s'mores this side of Valhalla. Shank that, Dragon Lady.

And truth be told, I had been a little sad after they finished building that house so fast, taking away my personal playground and cash cow, or as I came to call it, The Money Pit. No more guided tours or selling rolls of fiberglass insulation to tourists as souvenirs, no more crashing through unfinished walls like the Kool-Aid guy to the glee of neighborhood kids, and no more re-living the nail gun scene from Lethal Weapon with Foghat at two in the morning. Talk about your cold shower letdowns.

But now, by the grace of God, or at least the God of crock-pot fires anyway, I'll get to live it all again like some kind of glorious re-run. 2005 already looks like it's going to be an Omar Bricks kind of year. And regardless of what those contractors have been saying, I give them lousy odds at keeping the mysteriously destructive "neighborhood vigilante" out of the construction site this second time around. The trick is that you don't have to break into a house if you can fool the construction guys into building it around you after you're already inside.

Bricks out.

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Let there be no mistake: I love my new wife, Felchyana, but she's starting to get on my nerves. Being a veteran of two marriages and three wars you'd think I might be familiar with this growing feeling of spite I'm experiencing, but it's not the case. She must be one of these "modern women" I keep seeing represented on sitcoms and the like. I can't say I approve, good people.

I finally got the chance to take us away on a honeymoon. You may recall the expense of the wedding and bail for bachelor party attendees left me a little strapped for cash. Tied down screaming to a medieval wooden rack, actually. But fate intervened, and after correctly guessing the number of jellybeans in the jar at Red Bagel's annual commune picnic I achieved a great windfall. It was apparently the loudest windfall ever since I won some sort of contest three states away, and the prize money was enough to take my blushing new bride off on an extravagant honeymoon.

You would think that enough for any woman, right? Wrong! Not for Felchyana. We had a quarrel over where to go on our honeymoon, the first argument we've ever had. If you discount all her attempts to get out of the wedding. I wanted us to see beautiful Niagra Falls, even though I don't approve of the racial epithet in their name. Felchyana wanted us to visit Leavenworth Penitentiary, judging by her frantic pointing to the picture in the paper. Well, you can see this is an almost insurmountable difference of opinion, but we decided to compromise. I locked her up inside the apartment and went to Alabama.

It was quite a wonderful tour through primitive culture, good people. After hearing our beloved Editor describe it with such vivid detail I was anxious to see what it was like and see all the great tourist spots—the world's smallest library, the place Red Bagel slept, so on.

Imagine my surprise to return home and see it had been taken over by the Russian mob! Well, okay, it wasn't that big a surprise. But it was quite a shock to see Felchyana apparently involved in some manner. There were four or five large men surrounding her, the shortest of which said his name was Yogi and persistently called me "dude." He instructed me that he was Felchyana's cousin and would be taking care of her while she was in the states. He said he was happy I had married into the family seeing as I was such a man of means—I would say the throw pillows worked in making the apartment look a lot more upscale. He also warned me that if I hurt her in any way he would break my legs into splinters, if he could find them. He found that addition particularly funny.

So, like the hired hand who agreed to clean up the rhinoceros cage, I'm in much deeper than I ever imagined. Felchyana has been strutting around the apartment like she owns the place lately, ever since those mob fellows gave me their friendly warning. She even cries less than she did after we were just married. Chalk it up to falling into routine, maybe she's even happier with things this way, but it feels like the spark is gone.

Not that I'm giving up. You know me, good people, I'm in it for the long haul—thirty years or death, whatever comes first. And there's a certain amount of truth in that old wives' tale about people being different from each other. Felchyana is no Arvelyn, that's for sure, but obviously I wasn't happy with Arvelyn's attempts to kill me and backstabbing bed-jumping. So maybe everything will work out for the best. It will require a little bit of change on my part, like not locking my wife in our home when I leave at any time, but if other people can learn to do it, so can I.

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