ondering why your life was thrown into total disarray last Monday? Wonder no more, because you’ve been hit by a "Day Without Amy Grant," an attempt by dedicated Amy Grant fans nationwide to show an ungrateful world what life would really be like without Amy Grant’s upbeat Christian-Pop music.

"Amy didn’t play any concerts, and none of us played any Amy Grant in our homes, in our cars, or even on our personal Walkman devices," explained Darlene McCullogh, an Amy Grant fan and apparently the last human being on earth still using a Walkman.

As an additional part of the demonstration, nobody watched Amy Grant’s NBC show "Three Wishes" in reruns on Monday. Nobody had watched the previous Monday either, though sources were unclear if this was a coincidence or a mix-up over when exactly the "Day Without Amy Grant" was scheduled. Network executives point out this may have been the problem with the show’s ratings dating back to its 2005 debut.

Grant originally came to fame as a teenager in the 1970’s, drawing attention to the then-tiny "inspirational" genre of gospel music by white people, for white people. Grant’s success would bring gospel music to a whiter audience, though this fact was often misheard as "a wider audience" when reported in the music press.

Grant’s crossover success in the 80’s and 90’s came largely from her skill at writing Christian Contemporary music that only Christians realized was Christian Contemporary, with lyrics vague enough to be mistaken for normal vacuous pop by heathen audiences. Likewise, Grant’s videos and concerts mimicked popular non-saved artists of the day, allowing her to sell more than fifteen albums at a time, unlike her CCM contemporaries like Bible Bill Steadfast and The Christian Biscuits.

A mainstay in the Grammy’s "Best Gospel Performance, White or Asian" category throughout the 80’s and 90’s, Grant was frequently rewarded by an organization too busy to find other performers to nominate in the category.

But it was the 1991 hit "Baby Baby" that made Grant a household name and answer to the question "Who wrote that fucking song they keep playing down at the Frogurt stand?"

Last Monday’s demonstration served as further proof of the power of the public to draw attention to underappreciated issues by not doing something. Following hot on the heels of the equally-successful "Day Without Fussy Gay Neighbors" and the "Day Without Fat Chicks," some pundits fear the trend may lead to days without other unheralded items, like seatbelts or underarm deodorant. Many of the same pundits, however, confided to us privately that they liked the "Day Without Fat Chicks" alright, but don’t tell anyone they said that because it’s a real dick thing to say.

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Monday, November 11, 2002
It's the way the stupid world works that the many are always being made to pay for the fuck-ups of the few. Like back when that dildo Jesus ate the apple and created Original Sin, that Angelina Jolie movie where she looks all fat. Thanks, Jesus. Then some dumb kid freaks out and tries to climb up inside a running lawnmower, and all of a sudden only the Indians get to eat peyote anymore. Like they never freak out and set the teepee on fire sometimes. Finally, to put the icing on the ice cream, some primadonna of a lab rabbit gets an eye blister so all of the rest of us miss out on a cute new mascara.

Sometimes this rule works in our favor, like when you get a college scholarship because your great step-grandma once slept with some Navajo guy, but usually it doesn't.

Case in point. Winona Ryder, of Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon fame, gets the bright idea to prop up her saggy-titted acting career by getting caught half-assedly shoplifting some cheap junk out in Beverly Hills. She thinks she's all clever, hiding it in her sacks from Saks, then all of a sudden all of us innocent celebrity shoplifters are taking the heat. What a crock. I didn't spend three weeks painstakingly smuggling a complete set of Martha Stewart Living silverware out of a K-mart piece by piece in my mouth to be compared to that talentless hack. Talentless at shoplifting, anyway, she may be a great film actress for all I know. But I wouldn't know, because I don't watch foreign films. Too much talking.

By the way, her "I was rehearsing for a role" excuse is cute, but you can refer to the court transcripts of the trial for my underage hit-and-run accident back in '88 if you want to see how long it takes a jury to get tired of that line. It's something like fifteen minutes, tops. I was ten; I don't know what her excuse is.

This all reminds me of back when celebrity drug use got a bad name just because Robert Downey Jr. proved to be a lightweight who couldn't hold his heroin. Like that surprised anyone. Hello? Did anyone see Less Than Zero? That movie was supposed to be about a baseball player, only they had to re-write it on the fly since Downey constantly looked like he'd just woke up dead.

While we're on the subject, I thought I'd throw in some free shoplifting tips in case you don't fancy ending up on CourtTV looking like the lost member of the Addams Family. Just don't cheap out on me and say I never did anything for you when I call up and need a place to crash for a few months, okay? First off, it's probably best to avoid shoplifting really big stuff, like beach balls and six-foot stuffed animals, until you get good at it. Marcie McMillan, my co-star from the failed pilot for that underrated crime-fighting girls show Training Bras, was the master. She once shoplifted an entire aquarium, including fake rocks and a sump pump, out of a pet store while she was only wearing a bikini. I still don't know where she hid that thing. Come to think of it, I don't know what she wanted with an aquarium in the first place, but she was probably just trying to go down in Hollywood lore for something other than being in that Rob Lowe video.

But you also don't want to try and shoplift anything too small, either. Jewelry is tempting, but then there's a danger that you'll forget what you took and only find it when you clean out your purse months later while looking for a lighter. Also from my experience, I'd say that live fish are a poor choice as well. They'll suffocate if there's not enough air in your purse, so you need to either cut some holes ahead of time or get a wicker purse, or come to think of it, just don't try to lift fish. You'll never get that smell out, trust me. Marcie had the right idea with the aquarium, but overall I'd say the pet store is more trouble than it's worth for a celebrity shoplifter.

The easiest things to steal are purses and hats, and really convincing Halloween masks. You just put them on and act like you wore them into the store. If they ask why your hat still has the tag on it, you say that you were going to return it once it went out of style, and look at them like they're stupid. If they don't understand the look, give them a helping hand by referring to them as "Hey, Stupid."

Of course, now that Tinseltown skank Ryder has made it a lot harder for the rest of us, we'll probably have to come up with some new tricks. The next time I go into the May Co. with a giant empty duffel bag, I guarantee you I'll be getting some dirty looks. And this time, it won't be because they thought that was me freak dancing in the new Christina Aguilera video. Thanks a lot, bitch.

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Jesus. It's as cold as Hillary Clinton's snatch out there. I know this happens every year, but Good God. Does it really? Like this?

Knock on wood and hopefully I'm not screwing myself here, but is constipation really the big national problem these TV commercials make it out to be? Who are these poor suckers who are getting so desperately plugged up on a regular basis? Granted, you go to the average steak house and the amount of fried batter on the appetizer platter alone is enough to mortar over the San Andreas Fault, but does anyone actually eat all of that crap? You'd think that a couple of heart attacks at the table while eating would be enough to convince the average person to ask for a doggie bag and maybe finish the meal tomorrow at the hospital, but I guess not.

Maybe I'm more of a rarity than I like to think, but I have to admit that just like that Drew Barrymore movie, I've Never Been Constipated. Sure, I've had a few slow days at the lumber mill, as they say, but nothing a Burrito Supreme couldn't fix. And I'm not kidding, that Taco Bell "meat" will clean you out like a fire sale. If you need any kind of medication beyond that, I swear, you must have a prairie dog gummed up in the works down there or something.

Now okay, I have to admit, this isn't all entirely true. I did get constipated once. One time, back in the fifth grade. It was some kind of craft project day at school like we used to have back then. I guess that meant the teacher had a hangover or just that the new issue of Guns & Ammo had come in. Whatever it was, we were spending the day gluing these Styrofoam cups together, and glue-sticking glitter flakes and candies and whatever junk we found on the floor to them to make these bullshit pretend Faberge eggs. You know, the kind of thing a hung over gun freak would think was educational.

Anyway, I had just finished gluing one of these lame things together when Mikey Davidson turns to me, I remember it like it was yesterday, and he says "Hey, did you guys know that if you eat Styrofoam you'll get constipated?" Now, in retrospect, I really have to wonder where in the hell he got that information from or why he brought it up in the first place, but in my eleven-year-old mind all I heard was some paunchy little blowhard talking out of his ass to try to impress everybody, and I wasn't going to stand for it. I called his bluff, and just to prove he was an asshole I ate a whole Styrofoam cup right there, on the spot.

The guys all thought this was great, either that or I scared them and they bluffed it until I was gone, whatever. The important part was that I'd shown up Mikey, and he'd think twice the next time he got the urge to try and bullshit his way into momentary popularity.

As a small sidenote to this story, I was horribly constipated for about a week after that. So a word to the wise: don't eat any Styrofoam unless you want to burst a blood vessel in your eye trying to get your conga line moving. Christ.

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