rap-art lovers of New York have had their chicken salad shat upon this week with the news that their beloved The Gates of Central Park, a conceptual-art project by French artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude consisting of 7,500 orange gates strewn throughout the famous park, may be in jeopardy. A lawsuit filed by Microsoft headcheese Bill Gates over copyright issues would have the famous art-things torn down from their current location in the park, then re-erected on Gates’ front lawn.

The enigmatic uberdork Gates first attempted to purchase the art installation earlier this month, after seeing it on USA Today and screaming “I want those things!� to the various electronic henchmen whirring about his family’s high-tech Medina, Washington home. But despite being the world’s richest man, and crying like a little girl during the negotiations, Gates was unable to sway the money-hating French.

At first, Gates reacted to the snub by ordering Microsoft engineers to build a replica of The Gates on his lawn. Unfortunately, several of the gates crashed during construction, killing three itinerant laborers. Gates then turned to his current lawsuit, which he hopes to win in the name of the nameless Mexicans killed in that frustrating tragedy.

Surprising all and completely wrecking the commune betting pool, the rismurfulously wealthy Gates granted this reporter access to his heavily fortified Redmond home, which is rumored to hover five inches above the ground at all times to cut down on worm noise, for an exclusive interview.

“Art should be enjoyed by all,� explained Gates from deep within his lair, perched atop the earth’s crust. “And I hardly ever get a chance to go to New York.�

Gates also gave this lucky reporter a tour of this cutting edge techno-hovel, which is completely computer automated with voice activated controls for temperature, ambient music, and air ionification. In addition, the entire house goes apeshit when you say the day’s secret word: “Ziggy Stardust.�

The home is also ringed by a miniature monorail system which delivers food and other essentials to the hard-working frabjillionaire. Looking like a cross between the mechanical rabbit at a dog racing track and the trolley in Mr. Rogers’ house, Gates explained how the monorail system works while he reprogrammed the house’s secret word, due to this reporter’s inability to construct a sentence that didn’t include “Ziggy Stardust� and the resultant epileptic fit suffered by Gates’ dog, Bytes.

The installation of The Gates on the Gates’ front lawn would replace a small placard currently located near the home’s main entrance, which reads “The Gates.�

“It’ll be a bit more high-concept, for sure,� explained Gates, turning a dial to remedy a smell that this reporter certainly didn’t deal. “And I always hated that damned placard.�

The thrust of Gates’ lawsuit lies on The Gates’ visual similarity to the heavily-copyrighted Windows logo, which is some kind of weird little flag thing made of plastic-colored nacho chips. This week’s opening arguments also touched upon the obvious plagiarism involved when the French artists named their epic art installation after the computing pioneer. Gates, whose name is a registered trademark in 397 countries worldwide, has thus far been unsuccessful in applying the same protection in several English-speaking nations, including the United States, where the word also means “a thing to keep in the dog.�

This case is thought to be a slam dunk, however, since Gates has already promised to help the judge install a wireless network router on his Windows PC, a task thought to be otherwise impossible.

When faced with similar challenges to the Gates brand in the past, the Microsoft founder has often struck back with his wallet, including his 1999 purchase of Rodin’s massive portal sculpture The Gates of Hell from the Musée Rodin in Paris. The Gates of Hell currently serve as a thoroughfare between Gates’ home office and bedroom.

No stranger to appropriating popular art for his own uses, Gates drew criticism in 1999 for using the 1977 David Bowie classic “Heroes� to promote some kind of Windows bullshit in a television commercial. Though some were equally critical of Bowie for selling out, most were understanding when it was revealed that the Microsoft honcho had persuaded Bowie by offering to rid his PC of the nefarious Michelangelo virus.

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I return from a pretty fun weekend here, folks. The Divine Miss C has just finished her very first DVD commentary, and I can say without fear of contradiction (unless one of you dildos has actually done a DVD commentary for a film you've been in, which I very much doubt) that it was a great experience.

The film was Li'l Poachers, the fantastic adventure film where the six kids get lost in the Florida Everglades and have to fend for themselves against animals and sub-human Cajuns. It was a lot like that Lord of the Flies movie but without all the depressing kid-on-kid violence and half-naked boys. Like if Disney had done that movie. If you remember loving Li'l Poachers and are saying to yourself, "Hey, wow! Clarissa Coleman was in that movie?" Eat me. Yeah, I was in the movie. You know what else, nutsack? I'm in the commentary, too. So there. You can't keep me down.

The DVD production staff got all six of us kid stars back for the commentary—me, Tim T. Toolkitty, Jeffy Smurtz, Franz Golgannis, Pockets O'Shannon, and Dina Frazell, who played the tough girl back then because you couldn't have lesbians in movies. All of us were reunited for the first time in 15 years. It was too bad the director Chummy Styron couldn't have been with us, but as you probably know he shot himself (to death) shortly after the film opened at number one at the box office. Funny, I guess—despite all that success he still said in his suicide note he had lost hope there was any good in the world.

Once we got re-acquainted with each other and knocked back a few brewskis (would you believe only I thought to bring a case of Coors?) we started on the commentary. We had to stop and start over a few times, believe it or not. It looks (or sounds) so easy when you're listening to the commentary at home, when those two or three guys who do that do it, but it's a lot harder than it seems. It took me a while to get the hang of it. Here's some quick tips I learned.

It's not considered good commentary when one of your fellow actors comes on the screen and you say, "Man, you've gotten fat, Jeffy." Also unacceptable: "You looked better as a kid for sure, Franz." I would almost say that my early attempts at commentary made me unpopular with my co-stars, but I eventually got the hang of it.

The proper way to do commentary, they said, is to let the audience in on how the movie was made. So I made several revelations in my next attempts at commentary, things like, "We weren't really in the Everglades at all," and "I think the director had to do this movie because his gambling problem had become so expensive he couldn't make art films anymore." I had other behind-the-scenes information, too, like when I said, "There's the pirate they put in the movie because the studio wanted to make a clone of The Goonies." Apparently, though, discussing the salary everybody got for the movie is some kind of big fat taboo.

I tried "stories," too, little interesting tidbits that the general public doesn't know. I pointed to a tree on the screen and asked Pockets, "Remember when we used to get really high back there before we had to shoot scenes?" Or telling them, "There's where Dina made a pass at me. I was very flattered." Nobody seemed to like my commentary, truthfully, they kept saying they might have to edit a few things out, but you learn to like getting edited in the entertainment biz, at least if you've been edited as much as I have. I bet more than half of the brilliant things I've said off-script have never been used. Or all of them.

As a bonus tip, they really don't like it when you shout out every time you're on the screen, "There I am! Look!" They also really hate it when you're not on screen and you keep asking, "Wasn't I in this scene? Where am I? Why aren't I in this scene?"

In the end, though, despite the fact my commentary might not even make it onto the disc, I would highly recommend doing a DVD commentary for the experience alone, should you ever get the chance. Yeah! That'll happen.

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I have really done it now. And "it" is not a good thing in this case.

Exhibiting an unusual lack of foresight, I signed away the rights to my and Rascal's likenesses to television producers from way out west in Hollywood. Knowing Hollywood as I do, I expected some sort of daring and intellectual, if fictional, account of our conspiracy-cracking and maybe, just maybe, a few life lessons worked in between our hardline journalistic efforts. Well, needless to say, by my outraged introduction, I got nothing of the sort!

What I got, sir, was nothing but a moronic cartoon, called at this juncture, The Adventures of Red & Rascal. I was mortified. I had to look up what it meant just to be sure, and indeed I was.

Being a cartoon is bad enough, but you haven't heard the worst of it. Apparently in this show, if you can call it that, we are portrayed as quite the buffoons. Like a couple of ninnys, Rascal and I, the cartoon versions, traipse around wildly looking for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, carrying high-powered laser weapons made to subdue either of them, should we catch them. All of which is just plain ludicrous, since current laser technology is insufficient to detain Bigfoot, of course, and if you're going to try to kill him, you'd better have more than a net and a little laser gun, I'll tell you that. Not to mention the show grievously overlooks all the Loch Ness Monster's charity work and simply paints her as a heartless beast. But we're forgetting the larger point, which is this thing makes me look dumb.

I checked with my lawyer, Whistles Goldman, and found out I have absolutely no recourse, since I didn't verify in my contract I wanted complete control of the project. I figured, in my defense, that they knew I was Red Bagel and would want nothing less. But apparently "should've expected it" doesn't count for anything in contract law.

I've spent years building up my reputation and now it all has to end like this. What kind of fear am I going to instill in the puppetmasters who lurk in the shadows if every Saturday morning I'm seen falling hundreds of miles into a chasm and crashing in a puff of smoke? For one thing, they'll have unrealistic expectations on how to kill me, which might not work in my benefit like you'd think. The Red Bagel they all knew beforehand was a clever and cunning adversary, not some disproportionately fat and angular idiot who shouts "Fiddlesticks!" when he's confounded. I shout "Fuck!" and anyone who knows me can tell you that.

I did get a percentage of the merchandising rights in all this, which are worth an estimated $24 million, but what does that mean to me? I've already got so much money I give boxes of it to staff members in lieu of actual birthday gifts. If that doesn't tell you how meaningless it all is to me, I don't know what will. No, the money is nothing to me. My reputation—that's stainless steel, and before now, positively uncorruptible. Not to mention it's going to make Rascal look bad, too, and I will stand for that only slightly more than the damage done to me.

Rascal is a loyal and fearless manservant, always has been since whenever I hired him. Seems like years ago, but the pay stubs don't back that up. Rascal would follow me into the gates of Hell, me safely behind by at least 30 feet, and would only come out when I okayed it. That's how dedicated he is to my service. It breaks what you might call my heart to see him maligned in such a fashion.

Still, I have to admit, that Australian accent they gave him is both dead-on and hilarious. They really did their homework, these Hollywood slimeballs.

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