Prince Charles Didn't Do Shit

ll of England is in a froth this week as rumors circulate about a deliciously dirty secret tucked deep into the cranny-holes of the House of Windsor. What exactly has a former manservant alleged about that most buck-toothed of Casanovas, Prince Charles of Wales? Newspapers all over Britain are bursting at the bylines to gush about this vile and heinous morsel, a tale promised to be so lurid and shocking as to rip the top of your head off and skullfuck to death your children who have still yet to be born.

But one obstacle remains to the commencement of this public orgy of disclosure: nobody can say what Charles is supposed to have done. Nobody; not the press, not your shopkeeper, not even a little talking cricket with an umbrella. Thanks to a lawsuit brought by yet another of Charles' deposed butlers and England's medieval libel laws, the mere mention of the Prince's alleged crime is enough to get a man strung up by his sweetmeats and fed English food intravenously until hell freezes over, or one of the Spice Girls wins the Nobel Peace Prize. In other words: pack your earmuffs, Gary Leon Ridgway.

This strange tale of anonymous denial and dueling ex-butlers has grown bizarre enough to make Charles's possible crimes almost incidental and likely disappointing in comparison, but regardless curiosity dangles an anvil over the cat's cranium with a vengeance this week.

"The Prince of Wales didn't do shit, and any shit it is alleged he may have done, was not done by him, regardless of whatever exactly that shit entails," Charles's private secretary Sir Michael Peat read from a prepared statement. "We won't say what it is he didn't do, but only seek to make it clear he didn't do anything. At all. No matter what you're thinking of, Prince Charles didn't do it. Furthermore, Charles penned this quote he wanted passed on to the general public: 'I ain't done shit, and you sons of bitches can kiss my inbred royal hiney until it shines. Love, Charles.'"

Managing editor for the Times, William Barclay, agreed to speak to the commune after consulting with his lawyers over how the letter of the law looked upon libelous "hints" and "warmer, colder" guidance. After being convinced that no one with a law degree would be caught dead reading the commune, Barclay agreed to evade our questions in an answerlike manner.

Did Charles… fondle a butler?

"No, absolutely not."

Did he have sex with a piece of antique furniture?

"Not that we're aware of."

Fluff a chicken?

"No."

Pork a stork?

"No."

Are we close at all on the sex thing, are we at least warm?

"We're not at liberty to divulge that information."

Nuts. Was that him in Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" video?

"I am certain I don't know."

Further inquiry clarified that the alleged offense did not involve dressing an elephant up like a cheerleader, cannibalizing the corpse of a dead war hero, eating an entire case of crisps in one sitting or drunkenly crashing his car into a whale's vagina. He also never choked on a pretzel, had his body painted to blend in with the London cityscape, or smoked Van Gogh's ear in a hash pipe. It is likely there were several more scenarios in which the heir to the throne did not take part, but this reporter was escorted out the door before he could fully formulate one involving Paddington the bear, marmalade, and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

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Thankfully for you, the eager readers, nobody blew up any giant mammals on the international scene this week and we can finally get down to the nitty gritty dirt band on Omar Bricks' adventures through the afterlife. For those of you interested in the full sensory experience, I'd recommend putting Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" on infinite repeat while you read the column. If you read it at the correct rate of speed I think you'll find things syncing up in some pretty mind-blowing ways. If you're a slow reader or retarded or something, I can't promise it won't make you dizzy or colossally sick, so sync at your own risk here people.

Longtime Bricks fans, or newer fans with the cajones to dig deep into the archives, will no doubt remember back in 2002 when the Bricksmobile went all Casino on me and engulfed half of my neighborhood in flames, blowing yours truly into my neighbor Dale's azaleas. Thanks to the intense charring within the blast radius, some cocky son of a bitch from the fire department decided nobody could have lived through the explosion, and after I loudly agreed the police took that as gospel and Omar Bricks was legally dead. At the time I thought it would just be a funny lark and a cool way to mess with pizza delivery guys, but it turned out to be a real godsend when all my neighbors tried to sue the recently-departed Omar Bricks for fucking up their houses. Wouldn't you know it was their shitty luck that Omar's twin cousin from Cuba who was watching the house indefinitely hadn't inherited any of the vast Bricks fortune.

This was all fine and dandy for months until all my appearance of hard work at the commune finally paid off in the form of a company car, which turned out to be a cop magnet even when Red Bagel wasn't driving it. I hadn't been behind the wheel more than three minutes when a cop pulled me over while I was taking a short cut through the park and told me my license had expired. I guess that's one of the down-sides of being legally dead that they don't tell you about when you're bluffing the fire department. There should be a law, but what are you going to do?

The next day I go down to the DMV to perform the seemingly-simple task of proving I'm still alive so I won't have to walk out in the cold every time I want to go down to the DQ for a scoop. I figured this would be fairly easy, considering that me even showing up at the DMV proves to all but the biggest of idiots that I am, in fact, alive. Being the stand-up supporter of democracy that I am, I decided to make things even easier on the powers that be by standing up on the counter at the DMV, holding up my death certificate, and announcing "Omar Bricks is Dead, Long Live Omar Bricks!" to the huddled masses assembled on the DMV killing floor. Most of the idiots there didn't know what the hell was going on, though one dude did clap for a while. I figured my point had been made, and I was on my way to go home and ring in the new Omar Bricks with a toast of Miller High Life when some closeted DMV dude stopped me at the door and told me I'd have to wait in line like all the others shmoes slouching their way toward the guillotine.

I guess I wasn't the only one there who had been mistaken for dead, though from the looks of most of those guys I should've guessed it. So I wait in line like a peasant, hoping the chick up front will spot me in line, remember me from my column or a police line-up somewhere and wave me away like "Dude, you're obviously alive! Get the fuck out of here!" and I'll be all thumbs-up and ass out the door. Well, any of you who've ever been to the DMV know that kind of magic just doesn't go down, and I was in that line for three fuckin' days. You may think I'm exaggerating that figure somewhat for hilarious effect, but I'm shitting you not, three days. Every time I got out of line to take a piss I was stuck at the back again, if I'd known that was going to be the case I wouldn't have loaded up on Hawaiian Punch and pop rocks on the way over, that shit makes you piss like a Hawaiian grandma or something, every ten minutes like a goddamned glockenspiel.

At some point on day three, weak bladders got the best of all the dorks in front of me in line and I finally won a round of DMV Survivor. I grooved my way up to the counter and laid the smooth on the three-headed DMV beast manning that station, who reached deep into her bag of pain and pulled out some bullshit about how I had to go to the city courthouse and get my death certificate revoked and blah blah blah before I could even talk about getting my license renewed. I briefly considered cracking open a big can of profanity on the whole scene, but a cooler part of my head prevailed and I seamlessly transitioned to Plan B.

You'd be surprised how far a good Scarface accent and a black market birth certificate can get you these days. It was enough to get Omar Bricks' mysterious "Coovan" cousin a driver's license, anyway. So remember Polio fans, if you see me behind the wheel of a car or you're talking to the highway patrol, remember one simple slogan: Omar Bricks is Dead, Long Live Navarro Bricks!

Bricks out.

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Ginger Baker, my long-loving wife, had the brilliant idea of donating our time to charity. I was happy to do it—you know me, anything for a cause of some sort—until I learned donating time was a lot harder than donating money. Then I wanted to give the money. But Ginger promised me it would be worth the time. I'm still waiting for that proof to show up.

We're donating our time to the children, since Ginger believes firmly that the children are our future. I partially agree. I think the adults they grow up into will be our future, but kids will always be leeches taking all our money and time and eating all our food without any compensation. Plus, what about nanotechnology? The nano-things could be our real future, and I bet you dollars to donuts they're not happy about all this wasted time messing around with children.

That said, I had already agreed to volunteer at the schools and couldn't get out of it by this point. Ginger and I offered our help with Health Awareness Day or some such thing. Ginger, being a real estate broker, gave an inspiring lecture about buying property in economically depressed areas, and then sitting on them until the zoning changed to really clean up. Turns out this has nothing to do with health. I wanted to teach the kids about the value of being under-tall, but was directed instead to assist in checking the kids for health problems.

I was assigned to examine the male children for back problems, specifically, a condition called scoliosis. No, I thought it was a new wave British pop band, too, but apparently it's some sort of back condition that comes from forcing kids to sit in cheap rigid chairs for hours at a time. I don't know about you, but looking at boys naked from the waist up too closely all day isn't the kind of charity I had in mind. It's nice to know such jobs exist, though, if you're someone who's been recently turned away from the priesthood. Still, for me, it was dullsville city. And I didn't want to ask to be transferred to the girls' division either. Partly because I'm not a pedophile, but mostly because I would likely strangle the first child I saw with one of those ass crack tattoos that all the young people seem to be ruining their bodies with.

When I did request a transfer, those jokers in the Health Awareness Day Assignment Committee really showed their spots. I was assigned to the Headlice Check—me, Rok Finger! I tried to remind them I'm practically a celebrity (college kids know my name, I promise you that), but there's no special treatment for anyone at Martin Van Buren Elementary, I guess. Or so they say in the school song, which I believe is sung to the tune of Chumbawamba's "Tubthumper." But I bet if Ralph Waite showed up and asked for a job, he wouldn't be fingering the scalps of greasy little kids looking for bugs.

I tried to speed up the process, streamline it, the same thing I do here at the commune when I hand in somebody else's old columns to run as my own. But the school didn't appreciate my new policy, which was to have the kids who think they have lice to wear red hats, while those who didn't think they had lice wore blue hats. I can tell you this, though, in my short amount of time I learned that kids have no idea whether they have lice or not. Virtually every one of them was wrong. It didn't help that we only had two blue hats and three red hats, and had to pass them around frequently.

Still, volunteering wasn't quite as unpleasant as I believed it would be. I did get a free lunch out of the ordeal (pizza square, green beans, tater tots, corn bread, and my choice of milk). And more than that, I got the feeling of being a positive influence in my community. A tax-deductible expenditure of my work hours in my community.

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