oming hot on the heels of February’s “Black History Month� bacchanalia, the U.S. government threw a surprising ceremony last week commemorating March as “Black Histrionics Month,� celebrating the overly dramatic and frenetic behavior famous to the black stereotype. American actor Cuba Gooding Jr. was tapped to inaugurate the memorial month, in a nod to his lifelong efforts to keep the stereotype alive.

“You know you want to hear it! Show me the money! Show ME the MO-NEY!� Gooding screamed to the assembled crown, before turning three consecutive backflips and tearing off his shirt. Gooding thrilled whites everywhere with his comfortably overblown black antics.

Before he could be shouted off the stage by self-respecting blacks who for some reason decided to attend the ceremony/travesty, Gooding Jr. ran through a terrifying recap of the last 50 years of black movie stereo types, leaving the audience either horrified or hilarified, depending on the color of their skin.

“Lordse, we got to have a doctor! I don’t know nothin ‘bout birthin’ babies!� clowned Gooding, simultaneously over the top and under the bottom. “Bitch! I will kick the bulimia outta yo’ ass!�

The well-publicized ceremony has also drawn unwanted attention from Latinos, the country’s largest minority group, who are upset that they don’t have their own month. When asked about this discrepancy during a recent interview, President Bush was clever.

“No Latino History Month?� asked Bush thoughtfully. “Why, that’s because every month is Latino History Month!� The president smiled slyly, impressed by his own deft maneuvering.

Prominent Latino leaders, however, find such statements to be caca.

“We want our own history month,� explained Latino community leader Hector Villanova. “And not some bullshit that’s all about the Alamo, either. We’re not falling for that again.�

The attention drawn to the new black month two-for-one has caused America’s racial shit to hit the fan at a high rate of speed as a dizzying array of other races have demanded their own months. Early reports indicate that some pushy races have even demanded two months, in order to even the playing field in the impending race race. Asians, Norwegians, East Indians and even the Irish have all chimed in with their hunger to make sure the black man doesn’t have anything special for himself.

Native American groups, on the other hand, have taken the high road, explaining that they’d rather take a pass on reliving their history and would be satisfied with having the whole of Las Vegas declared a multi-tribal reservation.

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Good people, whatever I said last week, optimistic it up by about 200%. I am feeling much, much better. Maybe it's the smell of fresh cauliflower cooking on Camembert's stove, maybe it's the neighbors and their loud enunciation of Shakespearian dialogue through the walls. Or maybe it's the fact my disruptive energy has crashed into a train of good vibes, as Lee says, and that's what I'm leaning toward.

Lee has yet to be wrong about things like this. It's Lee's opinion that somewhere along the line, in the past year, I've had a burp of negative karma that has totally blemished my natural green. Why? Quit asking me. Ask Lee. He's the genius that knows all of this stuff.

I just asked Lee and he said he's not quite sure, it could be any number of things. Most likely it revolves around my moving my office into the commune headquarters, where as before I worked out of my Dodge parked in front of my house. That was just to be a temporary solution until I could build an addition onto the house, then the addition I built would not stand up and frequently collapsed on me and the cat. I decided it was either hire a professional builder of additions or move into the commune offices, so I did the latter.

And there was the problem. So Lee says. There is a vortex of anti-vurga here that affects some people the wrong way. Namely me and Lee. I'm not quite sure what vurga is or what it's for, but Lee assures me he had not made it up and it exists, and mine is being scratched, picked at, violated, and rubbed raw by the anti-vurga vortex I spoke of before. Well, I don't need to hear any more. As soon as possible I'm moving out of the commune offices and making an office at home.

It will be difficult, I'm sure, saying Camembert and my apartment is too small is an understatement, an understatement so large it will not fit in our miniscule apartment. I could not even squeeze it into the space between my bed and the radiator that frequently sets the bed on fire. But what else can I do? Bagel and company won't shell out the money to buy me space across town, they've already tried to sell my space on numerous occasions to tourists. I'll have to make room in the apartment, according to Lee.

Lee suggests that with a matter of such urgency I can afford to make space in the apartment. He said I should diagram the entire apartment on a piece of paper and sort out what can be moved where, and I should do it as soon as I get home. But he won't help, he has meditation this afternoon and doesn't want to get riled up.

Frankly, I don't see what I'm supposed to move and where I should move what I move. There's my bed, my television set-up, my grand piano, my standing closets, my sitting closets I usually refer to as drawers, my portable bathtub, the game of Twister—it's been out so long I'm certainly not going to put it away now, I'll just want to play again tomorrow—and the vaulting horse. Not to mention my workout space. A finely-planned house of cards it all is, I move one piece and everything tumbles down. I definitely cannot fit a desk, computer, and second workout space into my room.

Camembert's room! Of course, why didn't I think of it before I sat down and wrote all the above out? I'll simply annex Camembert's room and make it my office. It might be hard to convince Camembert at first, but he'll come around. I'll put a positive spin on it, that's what Lee always suggests. People are suckers for positive spins, he told me right after borrowing the money for that ass-reduction surgery that was so vital to his five-year plan.

Camembert will be more than happy to give up his room once Lee explains it. He loves Lee living on our couch so far, I heard him telling Lee so yesterday. As it is Camembert's room is a bulky waste of wheelchair rolling space, safety rails and bars and Camembert's personal effects. I can make his bed into a bunkbed and everyone will be happier, it will be like camping. As long as I get the bottom bed for I don't have to roll out of bed and land on that dangerous wheelchair at three in the morning.

I'm starting to look forward to this. Lee's right, a positive spin makes any disaster seem much more tolerable.

º Last Column: Win A Dream Date With Camembert
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The good news here in the commune offices is my court case has resulted in a nice out-of-court settlement. The bad news is… well, I'll get to the bad news in due course.

Frequent readers of my column, or actually anyone who read the last one, will remember that I was taking legal action against the author of the play based on my life, without my authorization, Ching! Ching! I Owe Fred Scarsdale A Lot of Money. My lawsuit was on the fasttrack toward a big fat payoff for the commune, and me in particular, when we found out the author of the play was none other than black sheep of the commune family Raoul Dunkin. Now, insiders and outsiders with insider contacts know that Raoul Dunkin was the first reporter hired when the commune made the jump from publishing on the back of pre-published pamphlets to the internet, where the overhead was considerably lower and the journalistic standards likewise lower. Which made it all the harder when he and his money-hungry blade backstabbed me and his brethren by running off to become a hot-to-trot M-TV veejay.

Apparently, M-TV and Dunkin were a poor match from the get-go and even the coveted 3-5 a.m. timeslot couldn't make him a star. He pink-slipped that job and ended up writing plays off-off-Broadway, specifically the Vlanch Community Theater in Vlanch, Pennsylvania. Which is where I saw the Fred Scarsdale bit. Cut to September of 2002, and a very pissed-off Red Bagel demanding compensation. Now we're talking settlement.

Dunkin always was bad at numbers. Would you believe over 30 people saw his play and he still ended up deep in debt? If over 30 people ever read an edition of the commune, I, Red Bagel, would be rolling in money like a pig in shit. Instead of rolling in shit like a pig in shit. Dunkin's big mistake, as far as I can tell, was paying all collaborators involved in real money instead of skeeball tickets and coupons. He also doesn't seem to have heard of government loans and frivolous lawsuits.

Needless to say, Dunkin could not pay the compensation I demanded, and in fact ran up even more bills thanks to hiring that pricey Bar association-approved "lawyer". Way to go, A-hole. All that money flushed down the drain and you still settled the case with yours truly, the lawyerless commune's fearless editor-in-chief.

All that said and done, as part of the settlement Dunkin is coming back to work for the commune for a while. You tell me who the real loser is! Bludney Plud? I suppose we can all agree on that.

So welcome, dear reader, to a bold new era for the commune. Well, not really. Welcome to an era that reeks of a bold old era. Dunkin is back with his passable news coverage, and yet I'm not firing Ramon Nootles, his replacement I took on staff when the extra coupons I saved allowed me to expand the workforce. At least not yet—he's the kind of reporter who seems to benefit from a healthy fear of the guillotine.

Nobody could be happier about Dunkin's return to the staff, at least I've decreed that nobody can be happier. Dunkin, to his credit, is putting up the appearance that he's not totally miserable, and that's appreciated.

By the way, we have no plans of removing the "Let's Promote Raoul Dunkin!" game as of yet. Let's just see where this is going for a while. The numbnuts does have a history of abandonment, and we may forgive, but we never forget.

º Last Column: I Want Compensation for the Play Based on My Life
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