he whole nation wants to do their part to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but a Madison, Wisconsin man is doing so much he makes all the other volunteers and charity donors look like dried puke. For Albert Pohl Martinson hasn't merely taken in three or four family members or refugees from New Orleans: He's taken in a whole jazz band.

"I just wanted to do what I could," Martinson told a deluge of fawning media standing on his front lawn. "So I said I would take in the first group of refugees I could. I sent them bus tickets and had them carted up here immediately. And then, being a good citizen, I called the local news to make sure they were informed."

However, Martinson didn't stop and giving the 5-man combo all the food, shelter, and clean water they needed; he also bought them sparkling fresh instruments so they could take their mind off their troubles.

"I've always enjoyed the real music and culture of working-class people," said Martinson, a retired advertising sales manager. "Not particularly jazz, more the rich and textured Delta blues. Some jazz, I guess… this Dixieland stuff isn't really what I thought I was getting when I agreed to—you know what? It doesn't matter. I'm just trying to give back something to a community that has lost so much."

Martinson, upon opening his front door to go back inside, was greeted with the jovial and unrelenting blasts of trumpets playing, "When the Saints Come Marching In."

"Oh, goody—they're still playing!"

Martinson is not the only one opening his home to those in need from the disaster—only the best. But across the nation, many Americans are staking out their piece of great historic tragedy. Like Amy and Morrie Callum of Albany, New York, who took in New Orleans legendary jazz guitarist Halo Jones.

"It's horrific to see all the death and destruction left in Katrina's wake," sobbed Amy, while her husband nodded perfunctorily. "I had to do something. Like everyone else, I was thinking, 'What can I do? Little ol' me?' But I didn't let that hurt me. I got on the phone. I called disaster-relief people. I told them, 'Get me a jazz guitarist.' And they did."

Sure thing, less than a week later, Jones arrived via cab with his trademark Yamaha acoustic.

"He loves to play that thing," said Morrie with a smile. "Honestly, he won't stop playing it."

Still, there are others. Few who have given to disaster relief groups can match the sheer generosity of Ketcham, North Carolina strip club owner Paco Wiley, who opened his home and his club to 13 refugees from a New Orleans brothel, including 12 high-priced prostitutes and a madame, Ms. Louise.

"You've got to remember these are people like you and me," said Paco, wiping his forehead with a lacey pink bra, in one of his rare public appearances outside his club. "You have to give them back their independence. Give them back their dignity. So immediately, rather than just give them charity and let them live off my contributions, I put the ladies to work for me. It's all in the name of relief, folks."

And we spell relief with media coverage—oodles and oodles of media coverage.

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Like the Bible story, Rok Finger is resurrected from the dead. Stand slack-jawed pointing all you want, good people, but of course, I only mean I'm back using my old-fashioned moniker instead of the new and improved Godfrey Bellmont name I was just getting used to.

Apparently the FBI considers it a "security breach" if you tell anyone about your new identity or being involved in the commune. I swore to them I told no one, only the commune readers, which statistics say are close in percentage to no one, but it wasn't good enough for them. They shanghaied us in the middle of the night, throwing us in laundry bags and tossing us into the back of a van and carting us off to another safe house. Though, actually, Camembert did say he was just asked to accompany them to a new location, so I wonder if that guy was even with the FBI.

But no matter. I didn't even spend too long at the new safe house, or the new identity they established for me afterwards. The FBI allowed me to choose my own new name and apparently there's another "Ben Affleck" out there getting a lot of attention, and oddly, more death threats than I ever got as a witness against the mob. Again, bagged and vanned, only to wind up with another secret identity in a new undisclosed location.

Would you believe the name Ted Kaczynski was already taken? I wouldn't want to be that poor son of a bitch. I got a lot of interesting mail, though, even a bunch of returned packages I didn't get a chance to open, but the FBI declared the new name a security leak and moved me quickly to another house.

I actually began to like my next name, Omar Bricks, but I began to get a lot of angry men showing up on my doorstep complaining about how I defiled their sister, daughter, or lawn maintenance vehicle. I was still determined to bear it out, but I began getting calls from the Daredevil Adventurer's Society complaining their dues were 9 years late, and repeated requests from the Car of the Month Club to pay off my supposed balance. Enough was enough, and that was quite enough, so I abandoned that name.

For the sake of anyone else looking to make a name for themselves in the Witness Protection Program, I'll save you some time by saying don't bother with these names: Sammy Gravano, John Gotti Jr., Robert Mugabe, Abraham Lincoln, Sharon Tate, Tommy Chong, Sid Vicious, Martha Stewart, Charles Taylor, Jack Ruby, Slobodan Milosevic, and William McKinley. Not all received threats of bodily harm, but all had more than their share of problems and I wasn't quick to trade Rok Finger's for them.

All this was quite interesting, if for no other reason, I found out the FBI has a limited warranty when it comes to Witness Protection. Earlier this past week they threw themselves into laundry bags, tossed themselves into the back of a van, and disappeared in the night with no other explanation. Camembert said he believed I had taken more than my fair share of new identities, and since I was adamant on giving up my column anyway, they didn't believe it was prudent to waste their time creating another one for me. Which is just as well. I was born a Finger, I'll die a Finger, and perhaps very soon. I still have my mob problem to solve.

Fortunately, I still have my new home in Tempe, Arizona. It is a bit arid, and the commute to commune offices in New Jersey is a bit trying, but it's easily safe from the mob. I would like to see how the mob would even guess I, Rok Finger, now live in Tempe Arizona.

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It's about time someone came out and said it, good people, and I will be the first, if you ignore the looming headline: We've been too lenient on those Russians!

What inspires this angry anti-red rhetoric, you ask? Nothing, none of your business. It certainly wasn't related to my decision to remain just friends with Russian bride Molga. It's just time someone reminded the rest of the world Russia hasn't changed their ways at all since the fall of the Soviet Union.

In the 1950s Stalin convinced the world everyone in Russia was living a perfectly happy, Wizard of Oz-like life. At first I was skeptical; but after that minute, I decided it looked good enough to try. That was my first attempt to visit Russia, and though I shouted unsavory thing about the Department of Foreign Affairs at the time, I now realize they acted in my best interest. It's plain from all that footage that turned up after Stalin's death that everything is dreary and ugly over there—they don't even have color. All this talk of the red menace I didn't quite expect so much gray.

I'm not afraid to step on politically correct toes, even mash them until the nails flake off and become bloody and swollen and bruised. I'll come right out and say it: The Russians are weird. It should be obvious, people, they kept that nasty shellacked body of Lenin in the Moscow equivalent of the town strip mall for years. You'd think somebody would wonder what that curious smell is and bring up the suggestion of burying him, but no, not the Russians. And don't get me started on the way their awful cock rock bands completely ape everything off our awful cock rock bands. That bugs me to no end.

Then in the 1960s Kruschev goes on an on about how the Soviet Union will bury us. Fat chance, you can't even bury one crusty Russian cadaver, I don't see you digging 200+ million holes in the cold hard Siberian ground. They brag about sending the first man into space, but everybody knows they never got him back so it doesn't count. Then by the time the 1980s roll around they claim to have enough nuclear weapons to compete with us in a nuclear war, and now it's common knowledge they only had one jeri-rigged nuke put together with duct tape and Play-Doh. Yeah, that will help—we threw all that Star Wars money away on nothing.

If there's one thing that should be clear about the Russians by now, they can't tell the truth. They get a kick out of lying like I get a kick out of netted briefs—it's something they'll never admit to, but it thrills them like nothing else. Whether it's backtracking on a treaty with Hitler which he had good intentions of keeping or if it's an ex-KGB Russian mafia tough disguising himself as a woman on the internet to get a free plane ride over to the states courtesy of a short, handsome-challenged, sex-starved columnist. Hypothetically. What I'm saying is, don't trust 'em. Not now, not ever.

Incidentally, since I apparently have a few lines to spare to this column, I would like to make an announcement on behalf of Boguslaw Sadowski, the friendly cousin to fellow commune columnist Boris Utzov. He is seeking to start up a business involving the numbers and invites you to invest start-up capital, with extremely good odds you will receive a big, big return.

Boguslaw is quite a charming new foreign friend. In exchange for my recommendation to help him with his new business, he will help me find Camembert, who has recently turned up missing from our apartment. Boguslaw is nearly 100% sure Camembert will be in the same condition as when he disappeared.

º Last Column: I've Met the Alleged Woman of My Dreams
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