Sniper Supsects Appear in Court Looking Like Shit

merica's least popular gunslingers since Young Guns 2, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, shocked an unshockable nation Friday, showing up in court looking like a couple of bagboys from an underperforming Food Lion in dumpy orange jumpsuits marked by a palpable lack of panache. Teased by weeks of anticipation and speculation, and frankly expecting more, America scrunched up its nose at the sight of these two decidedly un-dapper Dillingers.

"I have to admit I was a little disappointed," admitted Manassas housewife Thelma Russel. "I thought they might show up in some snazzy three-piece suits with silk handkerchiefs in the pocket, you know. Like Al Capone in that commercial for condoms. Something stylish that suggests they're above it all, you know? The kinds of guys you love to hate, but admire in spite of yourself. But these guys? Sheesh. I wouldn't even leave the house looking like that. Didn't they know they were going to be on TV? I guess it just says something about the state of our criminals these days. Pretty sad."

Muhammad, the supposed mastermind behind the duo's shooting spree, looked like he had failed to master the bathroom mirror that morning, sporting a nappy hairdo to make Kobe Bryant proud. A shaving kit had apparently also eluded him, as well as the fundamental principles of beauty rest. Too many nights spent on the lamb had left his eyes sporting more bags than a Tony Bennett concert, and this reporter suspects the county hoosegow must have been fresh out of cucumber wraps that week.

Muhammad's one "E" for effort came in the posture department, a welcome relief from his partner Malvo's parade of slouches. While Muhammad often looked like he had just sat on a fireplace poker, Malvo had more slouches on display than the 2002 Mets. This reporter had heard it said that Muhammad was able to dominate the young Malvo thanks to the latter's lack of a spine, yet I had no idea they meant it in the strictest clinical sense. This is one boy I wouldn't want to face in the Twister world championships, and not just because he'd probably shoot my ass if I won. I'm surprised they didn't have to cart him into the courtroom in a wheelbarrow.

Malvo's mauve jumpsuit was a welcome contrast to the teeth-clenching Hazmat orange of Muhammad's ensemble, but any chance the teen had of pulling off a courtroom fashion coup ala the lovely Ms. Winona Ryder was dashed by his grotesquely shambolic addition of gigantic white bunny slippers to complete the outfit. I don't know how he managed to sneak those past the prison guards, but they definitely should have put the fear of Mr. Blackwell into that young man, like they're paid to do.

Malvo seems more than happy to provide the much-needed comic relief in this trial, between his footwear choices, hilarious fake Jamaican accent and last month's slapstick falling-through-the-ceiling escape attempt, which was straight out of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Though if this trial is going to be remembered as anything more than yet another case of "Gun-Crazy Loon and His Funny Teenage Sex Slave," they're going to need to dig up another accomplice.

And preferably one who knows that Armani's not a branch of the Italian military.

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Hello, good people. Once again we've got a situation on our hands. I'm sure you don't need me to elaborate what I'm talking about. So I will.

Several weeks ago young hooligans whose names I'm unaware of began dumping their garbage on my lawn. As you may have read in this column previously, I used to run a private landfill out of my home. Apparently this gives the right to Johnny Goodtime and his friend Charlie Havingfun to pour there throwaway refuse on my lawn. No siree bob!

I can't stress this enough: DO NOT THROW YOUR TRASH ON MY LAWN.

Sorry for the all-caps, but I'm just so frustrated, I don't know what to do. As you may have read previously in this column, I only get mad once a year. I call it my annual "stress out," and it's usually without event. Besides that one year I killed a drifter, but I'm sure I don't need to go on about that again; I'll save my regular readers the drifter spiel.

I have but one point: Garbage tossing has to stop! Some people tell me to "chill out" or "relax, five-oh," but I'm serious. I'm sick of tossers. I've put up with way too many fads over my 68 years in this country, like boogie woogie and denim. I won't put up with another one.

A few years ago, several of my sixteen mailboxes were destroyed by thoughtless juveniles playing "mailbox baseball," as they call it. I call it vandalism! Shameless, pricey, and loud. Do they think this is funny? Destroying my mailboxes? Ringing my doorbell and running away? Smearing blood on the bumper of my car to make me think I've hit my own son on another drunken late-night drive home? I guess they do.

It's a sad state of affairs these days. Don't even get me started on those Washington bigwigs and they're shenanigans. I've got too many problems close to home to solve. And I want those little wayward ragamuffins to know I won't put up with monkeyshines no more. The next time I see them approaching my mailboxes or my lawn or even the street on which my house rests, I'm firing several warning shots from one of my firearms in my expansive collection. These warning shots will be right at them! I mean business! No more!

I apologize to regular followers of my dogma for this little rabid sidebar, and hope to get back to my regular column next time. I just have to let the hooligans know judgment day has come.º more columns

It's recently been brought to my attention that the commune has not been appearing online for the last, say, nine months, give or take a full-term pregnancy. I guess the saying is true: you're always the last to know when your stuff stops getting published for the better part of a year. Anyway, spilled milk aside, it's clear wherein the blame for this blunder lies.

Gerbil tubes.

I'll be the first to admit I was the one who discovered the tubes, poking out of the walls in every room of the commune offices, including the shitter. I was scanning the walls with a studfinder, looking for espionage-style bugs, rather than the usual food-stealing bugs we've always had, when suddenly, tubes! Had covert, turtle-fighting plumbers snuck in overnight and installed them? Nope, turns out they'd been there all along. No gold star for the commune staff's powers of noticing.

But still, you can imagine our excitement at this discovery. Finally, a way to file our articles and columns without the constant drudgery of saving and emailing. Pneumatic tubes have always been the way of the future, and it was about time the commune got some, or barring that, realized we'd had them since the early 80's.

And let me just say that filing your semi-weekly columns by pneumatic tube is a joy and a pleasure. You crumple that shit up into a ball and stuff it in the tube, pushing aside last week's column, and say asta-la-deadline, asshole. Everything in life should be that easy, and involve crumpling.

Everything cruised along smooth as shit until last week, when Emil Zender got out of the hospital following months of recovery following a complicated tonsil-removal surgery and burst into the commune offices, apparently after driving straight from Vermont in his hospital duds to let us know the commune wasn't online anymore. We all made fun of him for not using the telephone instead, until he pointed out that no one answers the commune telephones and in fact we have them all in a pile on the floor of Rok Finger's office so we can close the door and not be bothered with all that ringing. True enough. So then we made fun of him for reading the commune.

It turns out the tubes actually run to a pet store down the block, and they were installed in the early 1980's after an earlier tenant's stroke of genius about revolutionizing gerbil delivery. So Big Stiff's Pet Pouch has been the sole benefactor of the last nine months of commune wit, wisdom, and panache. And he was using the shit for guinea pig bedding. C'est la vie, but suffice it to say you've missed some all-time classic My Friend Polio columns while you were gone.

Okay, that's not precisely true. Actually I've been mailing it in since around June, writing about shit I found in the trash and why nobody makes a barbecue big enough to cook a dolphin. So in fact you've rejoined us just in the nick of time.

Oh shit, I forgot to bitch about how lousy my Christmas was. Hurry up and join us next time, because I'm out of room and gotta piss like a fish. Bricks out.

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