"The Truth" Goes Unrecognized at White House

ormer heavyweight champion Carl "The Truth" Williams visited the Bush White House recently, at the invitation of Secretary of State Colin Powell, and no one there seemed to have a clue as to who he actually was. "The Truth" got the grand tour, meeting with the president, the vice president and many members of their respective staffs, yet all expressed puzzlement as to who he might really be or why he was there.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "The Truth" looked very much a like "a guy I once hired to put up some sheet rock in my basement, and a couple times we would go off into the little closet down there to smoke crack and give each other handjobs, but other than that, I can't place him."

The president himself was similarly disinclined to speculate on the identity of his guest. "How the hell should I know?" he asked. "All them fellas look alike to me. He's not the guy who delivers the pretzels, is he? Because if he is, I got a few words of ornerification for him."

Vice president Dick Cheney, when asked if he recognized "The Truth," responded by saying that it was possible that he did, but that it would endanger national security and the ability of future vice presidents to effectively do their job if he admitted it. He went on to say that if "The Truth" were to accompany him to an undisclosed location, perhaps they could discuss the matter further by the side of a warm fireplace full of shredded documents.

Mary Matalin, Cheney's spokesperson, came closest to recognizing "The Truth" when she admitted that, "after studying him closely, he does look very much like that guy that fisted me and my serpentine husband up the ass without Vaseline one afternoon last November, but I can't be positive without James here."

Mr. Williams said that, despite the lack of recognition, he very much enjoyed his tour of the First Residence. "Muthafuckahs be livin' large here, y'all!" he was quoted as saying when the Secret Service escorted him out by way of the South Lawn. "Word, dawg, place be almost as happenin' as George Foreman's crib. Sheee-it."

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I don't write this column to alarm people, but anyone planning on a sleepover at my new neighbor's place might do well to catch up on a little of this CNN breaking news: bring a titanium neck wrap and your Visa card, unlucky campers. I have it on very good authority from my dog that this dude is a vampire.

Granted, I haven't known the man long enough to make a definitive call on the whole vampire identification, but Foghat is rarely wrong in such matters. True, he did think the mailman was a body-snatched pod-clone copy of our old mailman for about six months last year, but that was only because the guy had started going to one of those fake-and-bake tanning salons that's half tanning beds and half a video store. And you don't have to be the exorcist to know that shit just don't look right.

Astute readers might pick up a little inherent Bricks bias in that statement, owing to the failure of my "Omar Bricks' Tan-o-Mat" a few years back, and that's true enough. I still think buying out an old Laundromat and replacing all the fluorescent ceiling lights with tanning bulbs was a great idea. Where else can you get a luxurious, Caribbean tan while getting something productive done at the same time? And who wants to waste hours sitting in one of those giant George Foreman grills wearing speed-swimming goggles like some kind of creepy-ass Matrix baby?

Not me, nor my investors. But it turned out in the end that I should have invested a little more into the science end of the whole dealio, since it turned out spending too much time under those tanning lights can bleach the pigment out of your skin fast enough to turn Bernie Mac into an albino. At least that's what happened to the dude I hired to run the place, I don't remember what color he was when he started there, but by the end he could do that disappearing Preadator shit in white rooms and snowstorms. Plus, somebody on the city council said something about the Tan-o-Mat causing low-level cancer in anyone who even walked by the sidewalk out front. So it's probably a good thing that the business wasn't very popular for the three weeks that it was open, and in the end our "bring your own water" policy was really a business-killing hidden blessing.

But none of this has anything to do with my new neighbor, who's about as tan as an Irish spelunking enthusiast. I haven't seen too much of him, to be sure, but he has been popping in lately as they've been putting the finishing touches on his new house, like the roof and an exterior wall to close in the room where I've been throwing all my garbage. It's a pretty nice house; I have to say, though it's a little cold at night since they still haven't got the furnace fixed from when I was using the water heater to ferment homebrew. But it's definitely a big improvement on Dale's old house, which had a security system and smelled like burnt oatmeal all the time.

Ever since I got the undead tip from Foghat I've been trying to confirm the dog's suspicions, which is a project in and of itself. I considered quitting my gig at the commune to dedicate more time to spying on my neighbor, but in the end I realized that vampire identification just doesn't pay like it used to. So I've had to rearrange my home schedule to allow time for scouting runs around the vampire house with the huge mirror I found in the Goodwill donation bin tied to the roof of my new Panamobile.

It's a pretty sweet set-up, actually, I've got my side-view mirror angled up at the mirror bungee-corded to the roof, which is pointed at the guy's house, so if he ever comes outside while I'm making a pass and the mirror doesn't snap off and kill the guy, I'll get a pretty convincing visual confirmation. That is, if the weight of the giant oak bureau that the mirror's a part of doesn't collapse the roof of my car first.

But like they say in birth control class, timing is everything. Bricks Out.

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The list of sins I committed in a previous lifetime must still be rolling out somewhere, without end in sight. I can find no other explanation as to why I'm back here at the commune. I'm not sure if I feel more like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now or Al Pacino in The Godfather III, but either way it's probably some Coppola movie that doesn't quite work.

You read that right: Back at the commune. My second dramatic exit, and my second crawling-on-all-fours return. There's no good explanation, other than fate driving by in a bus and waving its dick out the window. My fatal error was assuming I could leave this den in iniquity and make a clean break. I improperly assumed just because they hated me they wouldn't ever want to work with me again and get no satisfaction out of sabotaging my career. Guess who's the jackass, guys?

I should have done something sooner. I could see it coming like a freight train, how I was being set up for permanent commune employment. You see, the rest of these misfits, they're perfectly fit for working at the commune. They lack ambition, sensibility, any degree of talent—and while I'm being just plain insulting, they never pick up a check either. But I had a future, a rosy future I could practically smell. Well, I can smell it now, too, and it's more fertilizer than flowers. Over the years, Bagel and his co-conspirators torpedoed my reputation in the non-commune world with ridiculous insinuations I created the "reporting style" here at the commune, a style which is just shy of pure fiction, to tell the truth. I know a lot of commune enthusiasts are going to be outraged to hear that, but if you're a commune enthusiast, let's face it, you have bigger problems to confront.

My "involvement" with the commune reporting style is strictly like that of the involvement of a witness at the site of the Hindenberg disaster. "The humanity" indeed. What started as a joke memo about a funny Clinton story I had heard became the first published commune story I did, and apparently that loose corroboration of the facts and incessant needling of Republicans was just what El Capitan Bagel wanted. Yes, I have to admit, there's a "moron bias" here at the commune. Made by morons, edited by morons, all under the watchful eye of moron number one. Facts? You'll find more Vitamin D in a commune story than facts. Sad to say, but if we're being honest with ourselves, you'll admit you had some suspicions since day one. I say "you" because I'm well aware, despite our preposterous ratings numbers, there's only one commune reader, and we love you here, Emil.

If you're wondering how I can write such inflammatory things about the organization I've just come back to work for, I remind you, being fired from this nightmarish existence would be a blessing in disguise. I have always tried, despite my rocky relationship with the commune overlords and staff, to maintain a polite "work face" to get me through the day. My reward? A slew of titles that have insulted everything from my income to my penis size, crude insinuations about my mother and even my cat on the men's room walls, and being sent on numerous stories where my death was an expected outcome. These motherfuckers play hardball, in short. But I've had it. No more Mr. Nice Dunkin.

Red Bagel's hat is absurd. There, I said it. Consider it the first in many brutal doses of truth I will be handing out, in between the reporting assignments that put me in jeopardy. I'm back, commune, and this time, it's personal.

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