002 was a banner year for news. As long as the banner said, “BO-RING!�

Yes, as we reach the beginning of a brand new news year, we look back on 2002 with more than a slight Elvis sneer of derision, like a party guest finally leaving with a heavy hangover and leaving our sofa and rug stained with vomit. 2002 may go down in the history books as, “The Year of ‘…Anyway…’�

Like a half-assed sitcom following Friends and preceding ER, much of 2002 felt squashed in-between two major news periods. Following hot on the heels of the events of Sept. 11^th and the bombing of Afghanistan that heralded the War on Terror, things settled down into a dreary boredom in 2002 as Americans waited for big news events that still have yet to come—the bombing of Iraq, a resolution to the North Korea situation, and any evidence Osama bin Laden is alive or dead. All original and fascinating news is being greedily reserved by the newsmakers, as if they’re holding out for a news sweeps week.

Early 2002 was host to the Winter Olympics, the globally-conceded most boring of all Olympics, in the globally-conceded most boring state in the union, Utah. Thank whatever you call a God for the much-covered flap when ice-skating Canadians David Pelletier and Jamie Salé were robbed of their rightful gold medal by a sly-footed French judge, or your only memories of it would be a gaggle of fruitcakes slapping a puck with a stick in the atrocity called “curling.�

Much of the early news year was limited to the images of Enron’s senior staff shrugging before a Senate sub-committee with a less-than-convincing “I dunno,� followed by footage of a shrapnel-filled site in downtown Israel as the violence that made the Middle East famous escalated to ludicrous heights, until an all-out assault on Yassir Arafat’s bunker broke the boredom very briefly. There was also Ray Brent Marsh, the Georgia crematorium owner who tossed the bodies in the lake and passed the savings on to you. Thanks to Marsh, along with multiple kidslaughter defendant Andrea Yates and the hockey dad who loved local sports a bit too much, the first few months of 2002 news were occasionally livened up by local heroes.

An historical Oscar win for Best Actor and Best Actress by African-Americans Denzel Washington and Halle Berry helped draw attention away from the fact the Hollywood community now considers Opie the Best Director in its midst. Even the biggest celebrity murderer of the year was only former Little Rascal Robert Blake, leaving Court-TV to wait patiently for the shoplifting trial of Winona Ryder.

Summer gave everyone a little hope for a brighter news year when nine miners faced certain doom, trapped in a mine shaft, and no one was happier when they were retrieved alive and healthy. Then the week ended and everyone went back to bitching about terrorism and the tumbling stock market.

As the rate of insane presidential utterances concerning Iraq increased, Americans hit the peak of the news year when a series of sniper attacks across America finally put an end to superfluous Elvis coverage. However, it wasn’t enough to save a pisser as a news year, and after the sniper suspects were arrested America quieted once again. Republicans received a boost from a record low-voter turnout off-year election and Trent Lott’s ill-conceived pro-segregationist remarks embarrassed the Bush administration, something that is truly hard to do.

News pundits have a great case for 21^st century to be the most boring yet, but the commune news is quick to remind everyone 1901-1910 was a pretty crappy decade for news and the 20^th century didn’t heat up until the sinking of the Titanic and World War I. We can make this one even better, just keep working at it.

Muslims Protest Violent Cartoons by Fucking Shit Up

Cheney Comrade Injured During Hunt for Bin Laden

Stealers Wheel Win Super Bowl, Says Heavily Accented Man

Colin Farrell Claims Responsibility for Groin Injury That Sidelined Kwan

In all the other hubbub since the year began, I may have forgotten to mention my old bassist roommate Lee returned. He arrived shortly after Christmas, when his plan to storm Tokyo with techno rock failed miserably. It's okay, though, because he has started a Christian rock band. It makes sense, if you think about it, since he believed he died in the car accident years ago and is now reincarnated as a street preacher.

Surely you don't expect me to mention every minute detail that happens in my life, so sorry if some of this stuff comes as a surprise. I had originally planned this column, in fact, to be an update of how the X-M radio purchase was going when Camembert suggested I write about Lee to my "loyal reader." Camembert thinks that's funny. Ever since he started dating Girl Elvis he thinks he's a hoot, there's no other word for it.

Back to the Lee story, good people. Lee is back, yes, and he believes he's a street preacher, out to promote the gospel, yes, all this is true. And as I said, he's started a Christian rock band which operates out of my basement. I'm obviously too busy trying to make my A.M. radio station profitable to consider all of this too seriously, but apparently it makes Lee happy.

I wish I could say Lee has been easier to live with since coming back, but it's not the case. You may recall old Lee was something of a pain in the posterior, constantly making fun of me, never paying his portion of the rent, and spending most of the day high. It's more of the same now, except he has sworn off drugs, he's too polite for everybody's taste, and he's convinced we're all damned to hell for our behavior. Same ol' Lee, except for he's mostly different.

It may hardly be worth mentioning, I can no longer tell, but Lee has developed an unhealthy fascination with TV's Scott Baio as well. Ever since finding out he was a kind gentlemen with conservative politics, Lee has thought him quite a role model to adopt. And of course, for Lee, that kind of thing naturally leads to obsession and death threats, the usual circumstance in life where you become convinced you're the celebrity and the celebrity himself is an impostor taking your place—we've all been there, I tell Lee, but just because Carroll O'Connor won't take your calls doesn't mean it's your mission mandated by God to kill him. Lighten up, fella, I tell him.

In one ear and out the other, with new Lee. Old Lee at least would have lit himself some doobage and "chilled" for a while, realized he was perhaps getting ramped up about something silly. But new Lee wants to move forward with the "kill Chachi" plan immediately. Honestly, Lee, nobody has time for all this nonsense. I've got X-M radio options to consider, those take up more than half my week alone. Then there's running the radio station, not to mention the five minutes it takes me to write my commune columns for the next two months. If you're jumping out of the closet and dry-clicking your gun every ten minutes, shouting, "Now who's in charge, Charles?" a man will never get anything done.

My first instinct is to ask Lee to move out, but you know as well as I do, I'm not capable of that kind of cruelty. Except for to Camembert. Maybe Girl Elvis can be persuaded to do it for us, she's never thought much of him, I can tell that much. She's already threatened to call the police on him, but I tell her his band's cover of "In the Ghetto" may be bad, but it's hardly illegal. Heck, kids, at this point I might even kill Scott Baio myself just to get on with the world. I don't have time for another caper at this point, I'm stretched way too thin.

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There was a midget named Fidget and a carcass named Marcus and when it rained the two would sluice through the juice that ran down from the hills and take all the pills they found on windowsills. They would tell each other stories of Reginald Voorhees and the liquor he'd sick up when the moon's in full bloom. And in a rented room they'd zoom zoom zoom around the bed on bicycles and tricycles and roller skates that were Michael's. But since they were two and their feet were few they had to switch off and swap off and top off and trip off to keep it all in motion like a Laotian promotion. Sometimes they would crash and from his bubble bath a doctor named Proctor would shout all about it. He'd bang on the wall and make the Velcro balls fall and threaten to wet them with disappearing solution that would make them go away like a bay on the day the ocean turned to lotion.

But he never did.

On the twelfth day of May, which was May eleventh because of a quirk in the work of the calendar constructor and the fickle heart of a tart the day after he'd… uhm, plucked her. But on the twelfth day an elf may or may not have got sick with elf rot and feeling all hot and brimming with snot stumbled and bumbled and flopped in their room, spelling the doom of their womb of zoom zoom. So, forgetting to groom in the gloom like a tomb, Fidget and Marcus packed up their belongings with no wish of prolonging this awkward encounter, Fidget's Geiger counter going off like sentient meat at the meat counter, because it was broken, just a token from Hoboken. But in their rush and bluster and fluster, they packed up the elf and an old feather duster from up on the shelf that had been sitting there for twelve years all by itself.

And they were off like a shot, but a shot shot quite slowly, all tumbling and rolling like the gun was too oily, like watched water boiling or temp workers toiling or a sloth bent on soiling your favorite bandana. And man, Marcus ate a banana like Princess Diana driving to Montana—it took forever, so you know he didn't do anything quickly. So sickly as the elf may have been, and prickly as Fidget was when wearing all tin (and forget that side-note, it's too long a story and hoary and the end's much to gory and it cribs half of Glory, so just accept he's dressed in tin), they still got going like throwing a Boeing: Way slow.

But once they got moving the UV rays worked in their favor and they savored the flavor of a kiwi Life Saver they passed all around the car and the trunk, but the taste was all sunk after the elf got his chunk. So they pulled right straight over and kicked the elf to the curb, thinking a blurb in the paper better than this Elvin bedwetter, but he bounced! Not just once, and not twice, he bounced like rubber dice or like mice on dry ice, up the street, up the block and off of the clock and the dock and a rock and a Varsity jock as he tried to talk to a girl named Burl and the world began to unfurl as the elf binged and bopped off the top of a cop and a chop shop and a mop and a sign that said STOP but the elf did not stop. He dinged off the wing of a bird and a spring and a turd and a smear of milk curd that had spelled the word nerd.

The elf continued to zip and volley off the side of a trolley and the tip of a collie and your sister Molly. He bounced and he smashed off six tons of trash and an ounce of pounce decanted from a cat. And a hat and a rat were smashed just like that as the elf let out a yelph that he couldn't help himself. And yonder and way by the end of the day the whole damned world was broken and curled and beat-up and crimped and neutered and wimped and a high-flying blimp was the only thing skipped.

And that's where I sit as I write about it on the scraps of a strap that used to wrap maps. But our gas it has passed and our blimp is wrinkled and limp so won't you give us a hand or a small scrap of land or a righteous ska band? On second though, skip the ska band, we should probably just land.

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