American Media Can Shut Up About Harry Potter Any Time Now

pokespeople for the American media-consuming culture spoke Friday, sending out the word that we hear what you're saying about this Harry Potter phenomenon and the American media can lay off for a little while already.

Besieged by reports about the success of the hugely popular Harry Potter books by British author J.K. Rowling, the American public has recently been assaulted with constant unwanted information about the film Harry Potter and the Soceror's Stone, released Nov. 16, 2001 to monstrous audiences, making it one of the most successful movies of 2001.

"What are we, five?" said spokesperson for the American public Ralph Mackie.

"Yeah, okay, just shut up about the shit already, okay?" pleaded spokesperson Nancy Shumaker. "I know all about the movie and I don't give a rat's ass. I don't have any kids or nothing, what do you want me to do? Am I really supposed to care?"

Spokesperson John Umala empathized. "I just was starting to enjoy not hearing about friggin' Survivor every five seconds, then I'm blasted at every angle by terrorism. Can't I get a minute of peace without being slammed with over-hype on anything?"

When questioned about any possible chance of shutting the fuck up about it, executives at Warner Bros. declined to comment. No guarantees to stop talking about it for at least a minute were made.

The corporate-generated media hype is possibly the largest since 1999, when nearly every facet of the American media refused to give Star Wars: The Phantom Menace a rest, will you?

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The other day I found myself sitting on the roof of my house, throwing outdated eggs at some old women who were taking their daily afternoon walk up the sidewalk across the street. One particularly well-flung egg ricocheted off the oldest woman's temple, striking a nerve cluster and causing her to completely lose bowel control in an extremely messy fashion all over my vegetarian neighbor's lawn. And the thing is, when the detox van showed up to take her to the drunk tank, all I could think was: "You know what? I think Ginger and Mary Ann were lesbians."

Practically all my life I've been nagged by the question of why anybody would want to get off of Gilligan's Island in the first place. They had great weather, a lagoon, plenty of food, and last but not least: two fine pieces of ass in Ginger and Mary Ann. Damn! You can bet your mini-skirted dollar that Omar Bricks would have been starting his own civilization in that sandy paradise. The tiny gene pool would surely have necessitated some serious wife-swapping, and you've always known Omar is down with that. Unless it involved either of the Howells, but my grade-school understanding of biology tells me that contingency wouldn't be very useful for procreation. The Professor on the other hand… well, that would be just for fun.

Now, I'm not saying everybody would like it there at first. I'm sure there were sand crabs and no TV and other hassles, and I'm sure everyone would get tired of the Professor constantly bitching about not having any outlets for his hair drier.

And of course the pickings were pretty slim romance-wise. I'm sure Ginger was saving herself for some high class sugar-daddy to snatch her up before her looks went, and I don't blame her. Once she hit the island, her only prospect in that area was Mr. Howell, and that meant finding some non-suspicious way to bump off Mrs. Howell. But she was a resourceful girl, I imagine with time she would have worked out some kind of coconut car bomb or at least a shiv, or she could have cut a deal with the cosmonauts, or the Russians, or even those apes in that one episode. Hell, with a couple of well-placed innuendos, she probably could have gotten Gilligan to skin Mrs. Howell alive.

Ginger definitely would have out-cat-fought Mary Ann for Thurston's withered affections, so that leaves the Skipper, Gilligan and the Professor for Mary Ann to choose from.

Now, everybody knew the Professor was gay, so he's out of the running straight away. No pun intended there. He was also sweet on the Skipper, and it probably would have been in Mary Ann's best interests to avoid going toe-to-toe with the one mug on the island who knew how to make plastic explosives out of coconut mash. And it's not like the Skipper was anywhere near worth it either, he's so goddamned fat the last Willie he saw was Gilligan. And with a name like his, she probably wasn't exactly chomping at the metaphorical bit to become Mary Ann Grumby, or even Mary Ann Skipper, depending on whether or not it was a formal occasion. That leaves Gilligan, who's a total nimrod but at least she could crush his spirit and mold him into a decent lapdog-style husband who would kiss her ass for thirty years and take her to the opera.

So that leaves us with everyone paired off pretty nicely: Gilligan and Mary Ann, the Professor and the Skipper, Mr. Howell and Ginger, and Mrs. Howell face-down in the lagoon. Who wants to go back to city living when they're living the sweet life island-style? Not this cast-away. So the only thing that makes sense in the context of the show, with everyone wanting to leave so badly and all, is that Ginger and Mary Ann must have been big-time fuzzbumpers. I'm talking about skinny-dipping in the lagoon, secret rendezvous by the cave, and lots and lots of coconut milk being poured over naked bodies. I can just picture it now…

Nope, still picturing it. Come back in five minutes.


Now I'm sure some sensitive types will take offense at my theory, calling it all sorts of bad voodoo. But I'm just telling it like it is, or rather like it must have been. I challenge any of those politically-correct drones out there to present a competing theory that makes as much sense. I mean, what the hell do I know about how a woman's mind works? Maybe they were waiting for the Harlem Globetrotters. Bricks out.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I'll start this story off by saying I don't know how I got to Las Vegas. These things just happen, and you either roll with the punches or you pull on a t-shirt that says "BIG, WHINY BITCH" and play the part. Since I was already wearing a pretty stellar Midnight Run tee, I decided to do Vegas like I'd gone there on purpose.

First thing's first, I've got to say the 9/11 tribute at New York, New York that you've been hearing about is a definite can't-miss. Every night at 9:11pm they fly a remote-control plane into the "twin towers" wing of the hotel and set off a shitload of fireworks and explosives, and Omar Bricks isn't ashamed to admit he got a little choked up standing on the sidewalk with all the other Vegas losers, clapping and cheering as the hydraulic towers went down and they shot some spare change and clothing fragments into the crowd and some of those Cirque du Soleil freaks did backflips off the roof. Leave it to Vegas to remind us what it's all about.

As far as the other casinos go, I still say the Mirage hasn't been the same since Roy had his nuts bit off by that tiger. Now they're advertising "Sigfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat," which sounds like about as much wild fun as a hysterectomy. I do understand the pussy move to less-threatening stage animals, but I don't think it's working out too hot since when I wandered into the show, one of the dolphins had just pulled Roy into the tank and was thrashing the shit out of him while Sigfried half-heartedly slapped at the beast with an oar. Funny shit, but probably not what Roy'd had in mind when they cracked open the full-body cast before the show.

I hear they're thinking of trying out ground sloths next, since that's one of the only animals Roy isn't afraid of now, but I'll bet you ten bucks one of those things finds its way into their hotel suite in the middle of the night and beats the shit out of Roy in slow-motion while he's sleeping. I tried to get the Mirage to give me odds on that, but they're not taking any more Roy-abuse action until he gets out of the hospital, out of respect and all that noise. But I'm thinking the Luxor might take my bet, those Egyptian hardasses have held a grudge against the Mirage ever since the Luxor-Mirage employee rumble back in 1998. I think they're understandably upset since the gaming commission ruled that they couldn't keep the Mirage employees as slaves after winning the rumble.

Speaking of the Luxor, I spent the better part of one night trying to sneak into the hotel pyramid's elevator, since I heard the crazy fuckin' thing goes sideways, down into the center of the earth. You know Omar Bricks had to see how that shit goes down. Too bad for the lame-ass truth: Turns out they guard that thing like the Pentagon men's room, you can't even get in without a room key or a much better grasp of the Vulcan neck pinch than I can take credit for. I won't lie and say it's the first pyramid Omar Bricks has been thrown out of, but at least in this one they let me out on the ground floor.

I've always thought that Vegas is basically large-scale mini-golf with beer, though they'll usually kick you off of the mini-golf course for bringing in hookers. Advantage: Vegas, there. This time I decided to test my theory and golf the strip, like in that video with the guy who sings like Elmer Fudd. You kind of have to make up your own par, since it's not posted, or if it is, the sign's been plastered over with titty posters and plans to build a new casino on the sidewalk in front of some existing casino. That's the downside of a town with no rules: the course etiquette blows.

Now nobody would claim Omar Bricks is a world-class golfer, maybe the class of the commune offices, but that's like winning a beauty pageant in a burn ward. Mainly I just swing hard and wait to laugh, if you hit the ball hard enough, something funny is almost guaranteed to happen. Especially if you're blindfolded, sounds are even funnier when you have to imagine who's making them. So I don't know where this cop got off suggesting that I was the one who hit a golf ball into the penthouse at Caesar's Palace. If I had that kind of aim, I'd be shanking that shit on ESPN. Not to mention having Nike paying the big bucks to put their logo on every piece of clothing I'm wearing and shaving it into my hair, like Tiger Woods. I don't know how golfers get away with that shit; if porn stars had those kind of commercial cajones they'd have condom brand logos tattooed on their balls.

Long story short, I had just hit a nine iron up the Eiffel Tower at the Paris when a cop asked me if I had a permit to hit golf balls into a crowded hotel. The dude scared the shit out of me since I'd just been ignoring him standing there; I thought he wanted an autograph or advice on grips. I showed him my ski pass from Vail Mountain, which usually gets the job done since most people don't like to read. But this guy was some kind of bookworm freak and he figured out the pass didn't say anything about playing the Bellagio fountain as a water hazard, so I spent the rest of the day ducking the cops and hitting the casinos in an oversized Ronald Reagan mask.

If you do go to Vegas some time soon I'd recommend checking out the Treasure Island boat show, if you can throw a baseball hard enough you can spend your Saturday night being chased by guys dressed up as pirates, which is good for at least a few months of local fame. A word to the wise though: those phony fucks don't hold themselves to any kind of real pirates' code when it comes to street fighting, and they're not above calling in some hard-hitting showgirls when the going gets rough. Bricks out.

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