Masked Jackson Still Eludes Authorities

t was another close call when the mysterious Masked Jackson led police on a 2-hour chase through Aspen, Colorado Saturday. In another familiar ending, the Masked Jackson slipped away from the authorities, appearing to disappear into nowhere as the police nearly collided with an entourage belonging to celebrity Michael Jackson, who happened to be in the area.

The event followed a similar incident Tuesday when the Masked Jackson was spotted in nearby Glenwood Springs shopping at a Wal-Mart. Police rushed to the scene and pulled over a vehicle fitting the vigilante’s description, but found only pop star Michael Jackson in another case of mistaken identity. Though the singer could not provide any leads in finding the Masked Jackson, he did tell police, “I’m sorry I missed him. It would have been neat to see him in action!�

The Masked Jackson has been an enigma since the first sighting in the mid-1990s in Hollywood, California, when he foiled a liquor store robbery by a pair of L.A. toughs. The police have consistently sought the vigilante for questioning and warned the public, “Please, leave crime-fighting to the law, good citizens.� But the Masked Jackson continued to lend a hand in criminal incidents over the years, foiling three bank heists, busting up a Van Nuys chop shop, and saving a pair of Siamese twins from a burning tenement building. Public outcry has been favorable, but authorities still insist the vigilante must be brought to justice.

In many cases, police pursuing the Masked Jackson have crossed paths with the performer Michael Jackson, leading many to question if there is a connection between the two. The issue was first proposed to Jackson (the pop star) in a 2003 Barbara Walters interview.

“It seems everywhere the Masked Jackson is found, Michael Jackson is not too far behind,� Walters said in the interview. “Michael, I’m going to ask you point bwank: Are you pursuing the Masked Jackson?�

Michael Jackson dismissed the question, describing himself as “a normal, decent man who has been accused of outrageous lies,� and saying the apparent connection between himself and the Masked Jackson are “mere coincidences.�

Internet conspiracies abound, despite the singer’s denial. Some reverse the popular claims and suggest the Masked Jackson is pursuing the child abuse defendant, hoping to catch him in a trap before he can molest another youth. On the more radical end of the spectrum, some claim the Masked Jackson and the King of Pop are much closer than anyone’s admitting.

“It’s obvious who the Masked Jackson is,� alleged a poster on a Masked Jackson fansite bulletin board. “Masked Jackson? Michael Jackson? It’s got to be LaToya! She might even be using his help to get around all those places, and that’s why he’s always nearby.�

Another poster disagreed with the assessment, claiming instead it was Janet Jackson who was the more likely suspect. He cited the circumstantial evidence that Janet Jackson did not attend the Grammys at the last minute, and how the Masked Jackson stopped the theft of the awards with convenient timing. Michael Jackson, who also did not attend the awards, was presumed by the accuser to be waiting out back in his limo to aid his sister.

Webmaster CaptJacko posted an official response on the site index page: “I sincerely doubt Michael Jackson is helping anyone fight crime. He’s a pervert, and he gets off on touching little boys—just a big disgrace for the Jackson family. It’s a shame he can’t be a little more like the Masked Jackson.�

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Omar Bricks here, writing to you from the seventh ring of hell, or as it is known in mapese, Nashville. How'd I get here? What am I doing here? All fair questions. If you come up with any plausible answers, let me know.

It all started, if these kinds of things can ever be attributed to simple cause and effect, with a 12-hour repeat listening of the Eddie Rabbit tune "Driving My Life Away." This was caused, I assure you, not by conscious choice but rather Foghat putting the CD player on one-track repeat when he was listening to the new Counting Crows album the other day and I'll be damned if I know how to switch the thing back. By the way, I won't be held responsible for my dog's taste in music. As long as he limits his crap-listening to the hours when I'm not at home, well, that's his own deal with the devil and not my problem. Most people that visit Bricks Manor are impressed enough that my basset hound knows how to operate the CD player at all, but after I have Foghat make everyone omelets they usually forget about how impressed they'd been by the whole CD thing. Because they're too busy throwing up half-cooked omelets.

To be perfectly honest, I was so wrapped up in working on the development of my latest invention, a pneumatic fly-stunning air cannon, that I didn't even realize the song was on repeat for the first six hours or so. And by then my body rhythms had so completely melded with the song that I couldn't very well shut it off without risking serious epilepsy, so I rode it out until I fell asleep on the floor in a pile of freshly unwashed laundry. When I woke up, the song was still playing, but I don't count those hours in my total even though it thoroughly infiltrated my usual Driving Miss Daisy-themed dreams.

Before you start asking why in the hell I put that song on in the first place, let me explain that it's the only halfway decent track on the disc. The rest is all Bulgarian folk music and European techno, which is every bit as shitty as it sounds. The CD itself came in a Discman I bought for seven dollars at the Salvation Army, I didn't realize there was a disc inside until I got home. Even before this all came up the Discman purchase was revealed as a mistake, since I'd envisioned Foghat using it to listen to his shitty musical tastes in a way that didn't crawl up my own ass like a hungry banana slug. But if you've figured out a way to get a dog to wear headphones, you're handier with a roll of duct tape than Omar Bricks, that's all I can say about that.

Anyway, the song repeated for another hour straight after I woke up, by which time I couldn't even hear it any more, it had so completely rewired my internal landscape. But then the CD started skipping, probably the disc glues coming apart after so many hours of constant spinning, and the skipping music was causing Foghat to freak out, running around and pissing on everything at a slightly higher rate than he normally does. I had to get the disc out of the player with the toilet plunger, though from the way Foghat looked at me there was probably an easier way, maybe a button on the CD player or something. I don't pretend to have a PHD in consumer electronics.

At first it was a relief that the music had stopped, but then I started to feel my insides twist around like two snakes at an orgy, and I began to feel an irresistible compulsion to drive my life away. It was sort of like that scene in Naked Gun where Reggie Jackson gets hypnotized and runs around shooting everybody with a machine gun, yelling "Say hello to my little friend!" It was like my brain wasn't my own, I was just holding onto it while a buddy was in the can. Before I knew it I was behind the wheel and out on the open road, with Foghat riding shotgun. Then I put the shotgun in the back seat because I'll be damned if that dog hasn't been freaking me out with his marksmanship as of late.

All was well out on the open road, except for the fact that I didn't have any Eddie Rabbit tapes in the car, and none of the Mexican oompa-oompa tapes that came with my car were scratching that itch. This distracted me so much I didn't even realize I was driving to Nashville. I'd had some vague visions of Vegas in my head, maybe the sunset strip or Baja California... in all honesty it wasn't that well-planned of an excursion, but I think Nashville is too harsh a punishment for such minor indiscretions.

Everything you've heard about this place is true: it's full of rednecks, everybody moves slower than Ed McMahon getting up off the couch, and everyone's got real shit taste in music. Not to mention the high asshole-to-Bricks ratio. When I cruised the Bricksmobile IV through the pedestrian entrance at the CMA Music Festival, you wouldn't believe the number of assholes who were yelling at me to turn down the Mexican polka tunes. Look, Slocum, you think I'd be listening to this shit if I could get it out of the tape deck? I left the toilet plunger at home and I don't trust Foghat with that shotgun after he tried to use it to open a can of Kibbles 'n Bits back in West Virginia. Don't hate a player just because you weren't smart enough to get around the cover charge, Hoss. You'll get yours when I get behind the microphone on the main stage. Bricks out.

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It's been a rocky road since last year's election. Some would say we live in a different world now, even though we've agreed to keep calling it the same name. It's common knowledge the country has been split in half since the election—and I've, for once, been on the winning side. Eat that, elections of '92, '96, and 2000! But the time for gloating is over, or at least should be in another couple of weeks. The time for healing has begun.

Saying this as delicately as possible, you know who has the healing to do—yep, our liberal cousins. After all, the right's won the election, fair and square, at least as far as all the legitimate courts claim. It's time for the left and the right to come together, come together over where the right is. It's only fair. They got behind the Clinton administration when he won his victory in the '90s.

I don't think the reactionaries on the left have really considered the possibilities of an extreme-right government. Sure, they talk on and on about how many wars we're going to start, how the U.N. is falling apart and our old alliances becoming impedances on our path. You may have to put up with a lot of religious extremism, and moral watchdogs making life damn near intolerable on a daily basis—no enjoyable TV or radio, everything gone from 50 Cent to Spongebob. But look on the bright side. Or, if you're a religious fanatic, Mel Gibson-style, I guess that is the bright side.

Embrace the right side. At the very least, you won't feel guilty for being part of the richest nation in the world anymore. Hundreds of years of oppression, the genocide of the indigenous people, and lest we not forget all the crap we have to put up with about treating women as second-class citizens, and we didn't even start that. Our liberal consciousness, as instituted and maintained by the television set and virtually every other media source, can lay off already—we're right again.

No more feeling bad. It's time to feel good about being American again. Who cares if they hate us when we step on foreign soil? We don't need to go anywhere, really. The soldiers do—by the plane, truck, and boatload. Boy, do we need more soldiers, and quick. But us just normal folks, who have enough money where we don't have to join the military, we can stay safe and happy in our beds for the rest of our life without being exposed to the malice of the non-United States world. We've got everything we want here in the states. What do they have we don't have more of, and made better? History? We've got history. We don't even want what they got. Castles? We got White Castles. The only good thing they had that we didn't was The Office, so boo-yah! Now we've got everything.

I remind you liberals, you had 8 years with Clinton. It's only fair the right have its own 8 years to set everything back to zero. Personally, I think it's kind of fun. We move things a little to the left, then a little back to the right, and therefore keep ourselves in the exact same place for centuries. Which is what we all secretly want anyway, correct? Change is scary. All any of us want is for everything to stay the same from day to day, while we still have it figured out. You've never seen a normal person out in the street yelling for change, have you? It's always the leather-clad homosexual with his face painted and wearing the cornrows. If those kinds of people had their way we'd welcome just about anything people want to do as perfectly acceptable behavior. Next thing, we'd all be dressing like freaks.

I believe that's what happened in ancient Rome. One minute, someone makes an impassioned plea for letting people wear togas with no underpants. Next thing you know, the whole empire's crumbling.

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