Strip Club Flag Wars

n the days since the National Tragedy of September 11, when real estate prices in lower Manhattan took a tumble, every business and home in the U.S. has been displaying the American flag in an effort to show their patriotism and shame anyone without a flag into running to their local Wal-Mart or Raley's in hopes of finding some cheap Taiwanese facsimile of the Stars and Stripes. Here in San Francisco, the Flag Wars have erupted between two competing strip clubs within a block of each other, and the fighting promises to get nasty as the weeks wear on.

At the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater, three full-size flags have been flying proudly above the marquee, which announces the latest show as "Red, White and Nude." We spoke with owner Jim Mitchell, who said "Actually, it's more correctly known as the Mitchell BROTHER Theater these days, ever since I shot ol' Artie back in the early '90s and spent a few years in the joint for it. But anyway… yeah, we figured the right thing to do was to fly the flag in honor of all those potential lap-dance patrons that will now never know the pleasure of having a fine peroxided blonde with silicone hooters sit down and try to cajole twenty-dollar bills out of them for a minimum of sexual contact. It seemed like the least we could do, given the circumstances."

To that end, Mitchell installed two flagpoles on either side of the existing one above the marquee, and is now flying the flag in triplicate. "We've got three," he pointed out, standing on the sidewalk in front of the theater, where two of his surgically-enhanced bimbos and a male bouncer were taking a cigarette break. "That club down on Larkin," he added, referring to the New Century Theater, "only has two."

At the New Century, no one would comment, except to say that they were "just as goddamned patriotic as that bastard Jim Mitchell, who can come down here and kiss my red, white and blue ass." This reporter did note, however, that there were only two American flags flying above their marquee, which advertised "Girl on Girl Shows" and "Bachelor Parties Welcome." It also appeared that one of the dancers at the New Century was wearing a G-string with a stars and stripes motif, but it was extremely dark, so it could have been something else.

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Let the word come down from the Mountaintops, which is Red Bagel's nickname for the commune offices: Clarissa Coleman needs work. Sure, anyone who knows me knows I want work, but now I need work. My legal troubles are finished now, you may have seen the segment on Court TV or read about the out-of-court settlement in the paper, or The Guinness Book of World Records, the page on outrageous payoffs. Damn Jerry Nascar, that's all I'm saying. As for you-know-who, the nice lady who filed the lawsuit, I'm not legally allowed to mention her name ever again. So let's pretend I'm referring to someone else whenever I use the word Skankabitch.

Getting back to work, which is what I'm here for, let's just say the settlement is bad enough, but I've got legal fees by the buttload. Before all this, work was just some way to have fun and a shortcut to fame. Now it's do-or-die. I'm not having luck finding too many high-profile film and television roles to pay the bills—of course, that was the story before Skankabitch sued. So now I have to shorten the list of stuff I won't do even more. It's a talent clearance sale—every one must go.

It's a great sale for producers of weird shows. C.S.I., you listening? I'll even play a dead body. Bullets fly through my head, shatter brain and bone and crap—it looks like it hurts, but I'll try anything once. Any shows where I have to wear a prosthetic piece or a mask or anything, I'll do it. Put me in a gorilla suit, who cares? I don't even need any speaking lines. I'm eager to work. None of it can be any more humiliating than playing the ukelele with Taco on Conan O'Brien.

I turned down a reality series last year, before this bullshit came along. If you're one of those producers of Help! I'm a Celebrity, Don't Give Me a Sexually-Transmitted Disease I'm ready to talk contract terms now. Maybe you'll get on the air this year if you get bigger star power than Willie Tyler and Lester. So put me on the show. I'll call house meetings and everything, pretend like my feelings are hurt and stuff. I watch all those freak shows.

Not everybody's a producer, I know. Some people aren't involved with the wonderland that is television, not officially, but that shouldn't stop you. You want to make a funny home video? Have your kid swing a croquet hammer, hit me in the nuts—I don't have nuts, of course, but for a good-size paycheck I'll act like I have nuts. Rig a house to fall in, I'll make it look like it all happened by accident, I'll even make the funny noise so the video people don't have to do that. Or we'll sing some duet like Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond, I'll make them really believe you don't bring me flowers no more. Hell, I'm not picky. Don't send the video in, let's just make it for your own entertainment, you and your friends. We'll recreate all your favorite episodes of Who's Your Daddy?.

It's not limited to shows either. I can do the stage. We'll put on a burlesque act, like they used to do in France when it was classy and cool, or like they do now in Alabama. I do tame shit, too. I'll sing the Fabulous Thunderbirds at your daughter's Bat Mitzvah. I can do birthday parties, private Labor Day telethons, whatever your big deal is. Have a friend who's in the hospital and think it would be funny for a celebrity to visit them? Let's do it. Let's make it happen.

What I'm trying to say is, I need money, and I'm not picky. Just in case I didn't make it obvious. And just to save anybody else the troubles I've gone through, don't ever hire Jerry Nascar as an attorney. He knows dick about the law, like the judge says, and his "Thirty Minutes or it's Not Free" offer is trickier than it sounds.

I have to go over to Nascar's office right now. I'm doing a commercial for him to help pay off the legal bills.

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With all the fervor about cloned cats and cloned pigs and cloned sheep burping too much methane gas into the atmosphere lately, we've almost forgotten to consider the inevitable future of sci-fi bullshit come true: human cloning. Fertility researching eggheads have announced that an impotent husband's DNA sample fuel-injected into his wife's attention-starved egg can result in her giving birth to an exact clone of the husband, lousy slacking-off sperm and all. No shit! And word on the street is that human cloning has already occurred, and that they're a boy band named O-town. I've never heard of them, but I wouldn't put it past whoever would be in charge of that kind of thing.

Some are calling this the next frontier, as they talk into women's leg razors painted black and make strange hand signals to their other dorky friends. Personally, I think they've jumped the gun a bit: I say the real future is in celebrity cloning. What woman wouldn't pay through the nose to have her son turn out like Robert Redford instead of her boring husband, who's a nice guy and all, and has a great head of hair… on his back! Yeeeeick. I think the number may run in the millions.

Because of this, you have to assume we're going to see a booming market in confiscated celebrity biological material in the future. You won't be able to go to a benefit for Tibetan date rape victims or a boat show without seeing people fist fighting like wild dogs over discarded celebrity eyelashes and toenail clippings. Mark my words, eBay is going to have to create three different categories for nose hair alone.

I mean, what kind of loser spends her time pouring over old issues of People magazine for blurbs about Brad Pitt when, with a dash of ingenuity, she could have a little Pitt growing inside her? Then she's just a wig of Chinese women's hair and a name change to "Jennifer" away from being shot dead in the shower whilst clutching a Ginsu, making that beautiful dream complete.

Finally we won't have to put up with the disappointing progeny of celebrities any more, sucking their way through life and failing to live up to the talents and all-around fabulousness of their revered parents. No more eagerly waiting, with baited breath, for them to show some glimmer of hope that they'll be just like their parent, only young and sexy again. No more crushing disappointment in them turning out spoiled, odd-looking, untalented and arrested for drugs in an unexciting fashion.

In this brave new world, once Brad Pitt is too old and fat to titillate our feminine sides, we can just turn our attention to the eldest Mini-Pitt clone, who will just be coming into his prime hunky years without having to get his cock stuck in A River Runs Through It to get our attention. Thank God.

Granted, few celebrities will welcome being replaced by a younger version of themselves who they can't control or smother with unwelcome affection after a lifetime of childhood neglect, like they do with their kids. Undoubtedly it will become the in-vogue thing to see celebrities walking around in ridiculous baggy moon-suits to prevent having any of their DNA stolen. Photographers will swarm around anyone they see in a moon suit until they read the ID tag on the lapel and realize it's just Buzz Aldrin.

As a result of this, the majority of stars will request that they be replaced in their movie roles by computer-generated facsimiles of themselves, since except for a few isolated examples, most roles would require them to take off their moon suits. And fat chance of that, lest some intern on the set has dreams of selling lip skin he scraped off of coffee cups on eBay. Understandably, this will give new meaning to the term "phoning in a performance," though of course the lingo will be updated to the techno-chic term "downloading." "Did you see J-Lo in the new Farrelly Brothers movie? Boy did she suck." "No shit, she must have downloaded that one while she was having her butt waxed."

Obviously this will cause a huge shake-up in the Hollywood power structure, with whiz-kid programmers coming into high demand and replacing acting coaches to make sure that even CindyCrawford.exe can turn in a convincing performance as something other than an overpaid bimbo. Granted, there will still be problems, like CatherineZetaJones.exe conflicting with all of the other software, MarlonBrando.exe being too large for system memory and RobertDowneyJr.exe showing up all corrupted and with the wrong drivers. But I have great faith they'll iron out all of these problems in time to make another great buddy cop picture, which is what it's all about in the end.

In the mean time, Omar Bricks has a trend to head off at the pass. If you hear in the news next week that some mustachioed mystery man has made off with cells from Balthazar Getty's stomach lining, just smile knowingly to yourselves and wish me good luck on my yacht shopping. Bricks out!

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