Shock and Awe: Bagel Sweeps "Yitmotties" for Umpteenth Year

edia bitch and shameless self-promoter Red Bagel surprised retards everywhere with a "shock and awe" sweep of his own commune awards, the "You the Man of the Year" things. Even my own surprised ass could not be reached for comment, it was that unexpected.

In addition to his regular "Yitmotty," which already had his name engraved on it before the voting started, Bagel swept all the extended bullshit categories and ended up taking home several of the awards, although all others were smaller, like if you got them in a Happy Meal or something. Those other categories included "Conspiracy Cracking," "Website Publishing," "Brave Adventurer," "Girl Beddin'," and every other thing Bagel thinks he does reasonably well except farting the Macarena song.

"It was a great honor, and a privilege, to be recognized in so many different areas," Bagel might have said, had I interviewed him. "Lord knows a man is only as good as his staff, and anyone can tell you I'm no good. It's lucky I took this thing home without somehow impaling on it or winding up in an emergency room with it shoved half up my ass.

"In conclusion, I am a blithering idiot."

Quite an impressive list of nominees were submitted by commune staff members this year, including George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Legalos the Elf, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Jackson, Great White, Jared the Subway Queer, Roy Horn, Arnold Schwarzenfelder, and Howard Dean. From the confidential vote tallying sheet, lifted from Bagel's office while he was off taking a dump, we can see Bagel voted for no one other than himself for any category. Big shockeraroo there.

"I don't know, Ted, is it just me? Has there never been a worse boss in the history of the world?" said an inside source at the commune. "The guy is just apeshit crazy and I think it's time someone did something about it. If we were in Nam or a Nam movie, we'd have fragged him years ago. Either way, I can't believe I'm still working here. Let's face it: Log any time at the commune—you know this—and you might as well put 'Unhireable' on the top of your resume. This entire office is like riding a Slip 'N' Slide to hell."

In response, I assured him, "At least you don't have to write the friggin' 'Yitmotty' shit again this year, Raoul Dunkin."

Among Bagel's other accomplishments in 2003, he exposed the conspiracy behind 64-bit processors, Kim Jong Il, the Columbia disaster, and SARS. Not stopping there, Bagel also printed extremely humiliating information about his staff, including a drag queen site featuring once-beloved commune reporter Ted Ted. Not that Bagel or anybody else has a spot-clean record and has never done anything at all embarrassing in their past, and a little heads up would have been nice so all friends outside of the commune could have been warned and shit. But thank you, Red Bagel, for fucking up so many lives with so few words. Imagine what the esteemed commune Editor could have done if he hadn't been gone for half the year on some pseudo-homosexual frolic with missing-and-assumed-dead columnist Sampson L. Hartwig.

"Yeah," added Ted Ted, "you the fuckin' man."

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Dear commune:

Quick! I'm playing poker and I can't believe the winning streak I'm on. What beats a flush?

Joel Harmonica
Marshall, GA


Dear Joel:

If you're talking about Flush, the refreshing carbonated drink with the real taste of prunes in every drop, nothing beats a flush. If you're talking about poker, a royal flush beats a flush, and somehow that bastard Murray used up all his luck for the next century 'cause he's got one. We suggest changing the game to 52 Pick Up and darting out of there with whatever money you got.

the commune

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Dear commune:

Coming from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, Todd Rundgren has always leaned toward a sound more British-influenced than from his area of origin. A self-taught guitarist who has since learned every other instrument involved in rock music, Rundgren started in bar bands and found success in the music business.

Initially Rundgren found success working behind the scenes, as a sound engineer and producer for artists ranging from The Band to Meat Loaf. But a gifted songwriter with influences like Laura Nyro and The Who, Rundgren was already on a course to find his own fame. He's charted continuously through his music career since the 1970s, but never has found the acclaim of more famous musicians. Perhaps Todd Rundgren will always remain a master producer and underground figure in the world of American rock 'n' roll.

Richard Pelt
Viola, IO


Dear Richard:

Does anyone even want to talk about the commune anymore?

the commune

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Dear commune:

I am outraged! This web publication is complete and utter nonsense. I've tried to keep an open mind, I entertain the wild theories of alternative news sources quite a lot, I like to think of myself as someone who challenges the status quo. But your "news" is just half-assed research and unconfirmed rumors. Did you think the American public was too dumb to notice?

All updates of the commune have been so poorly done, yet this latest was the weakest yet. Is your editor Red Bagel really presenting the idea that President George W. Bush is the grandfather of former President George Herbert Walker Bush, and has traveled through time to prevent a society of robots from destroying his past? It's all really too much. Not only is it just plain ludicrous, much of it is plainly a distorted plagiarizing of James Cameron's Terminator films. With this kind of man in charge of your publication it's no surprise the rest of the reporting follows such a shoddy standard.

Get your act together.

Lucy Johannsen
Moulon Rouge, LA


Dear Lucy:

Your letter is very insightful, well conceived, and makes extremely valid points. As such, I can't say we have any experience in answering such a letter. Wow. Yep, that's something.

Our best response at this time is that you should take your big fat business elsewhere, shorty. What's that? Yeah, we went there. Shorty. As in not tall, not at all, shorty. Short stuff. Short stack. Short pie alá mode. Take your letter and shove it, shorty.

the commune

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Editor's Note: the commune is not responsible for the state of slang. We, too, miss old proper English which has been so sadly replaced by the rap lingo. And we do mean old English, like the kind spelled "olde English." Yea, 'twas a proper time twixt Roman times of yore and most modern h'ppenings.

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Dorothy said there's no place like home, but I would say that wartime Yugoslavia can't be all that different. No, dudes, I'm not a homebody. My thoughts don't turn to charming holiday gatherings around the fire with the ones I love since it usually involves a lot of alcohol and the fire involves the firecrackers someone tried to light by cooking them in the oven.

I would say my family's strange, but that's everybody's family. My family is homicidally manic-deppressive—there, that at least sounds more original. Seriously, my family is always happy when I come back to Bellmont for Christmas, but catch any of them on the right day and they're happy when the mail shows up. They're fundamentally unhealthy enablers of every drug habit you could name and they derive pleasure from each other's pain. Which is all fine, since that's how I am, but it's real dangerous to put us all in the same place.

First, there's my dad, Fozzy Coleman—dad somewhere got the impression that he was black, and even more odd, that he's Ike Turner. Dad rules the house with an iron thumb, an iron thumb being some gardening device he got for Christmas 20 years ago that spreads mulch. My favorite holiday memory of dad was that year we converted to Judaism. Mom made soggy cornbread and accidentally poisoned the turkey gravy with make-up remover, and when dad found out he was so pissed he threw the menorah like a trident and it stuck in the wall. The bright side was that it worked so well we use it to hang the Christmas stockings still.

Then there's my mom, who's great when she's sober, if you can be there during that time from 8 to 8:15 a.m. When she gets drunk she says all the things normal moms only think, like, "I had plenty of chances to drown you, Clarissa," and, "By my calculations, you still owe us about $359,000—oh, what, you thought the room and board were free rides?" My mom's name is Bunny, but dad always calls her Bunny Coleman like it's one word. Like, "Bunnycoleman, who ate all my fucking French toast?" Or, "Get my bath ready, Bunnycoleman."

It's hard to complain about my brother and sister, they're not really to blame for anything—between having my parents for their parents and having my shadow to live in all their lives, it's amazing they aren't screwed up.

My brother, Randy, doesn't let us call him Randy anymore since he joined that cult in the compound next door to mom and dad. At least he didn't have to go far to get brainwashed. He prefers to be called Toot now, and he's actually pretty nice, the nicest one of the bunch. He curls up in a ball and chants whenever mom and dad fight now, he tells them they have bad Chaka Khan or something, some kind of karma rip-off the cult made up, and the worst thing he does is steal from mom and dad to give to the cult so they can build that glass temple of theirs. Which is all fine by me, I never take more than $20 home when I go anyway.

My sister's a bit more peculiar. She never had the looks or talent to be an actress like me, so she was driven into this weird-ass obsession with grades and scholarships and stuff. She went to Harvard like that Good Will Hunting guy and majored in lawyering. Now she works for the ACLU and writes books on feminism in her spare time, really spaced-out shit. She doesn't come home too often, actually, but she sends self-help books and fruit baskets.

I guess, more than anything, this time of year is about forgetting your family is clinically sociopathic and learning to keep your temper in check long enough to sit down for a single Christmas dinner. To gather around the tree, open up crappy presents, and pretend you like at least one of the things. To sleep in your old room and act like you don't hear your dad getting nasty with your mom, shouting, "Take me to town, Bunnycoleman!" in the room right next door. But at least when you hear that, you know it's just another ten minutes until everyone gathers in the living room around the kitchen fire and opens their presents. And that's as much family as anybody gets these days.

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