United States Acquires Mexico at Swap Meet

merica added a new addition this Fourth of July when it officially signed the papers declaring Mexico part of the United States.

"This is a glorious day for all Americans," said President Bush, for possibly the billionth time. "We have added a beautiful section of land to America's backyard, as well as taking out the 36^th 'surprise Axis of Evil' country. As soon as we finished with Nepal, we were going to fix things up there. That will certainly save us some time."

The purchase of Mexico happened quickly last week when it suddenly became available. Mexico, believed once owned by Spain until it won its independence on Sept. 16, 1821, was actually owned by an American named Merle Switzer. Switzer (1763-1817) was a traveling spice salesman who operated the route between Spain and Mexico. On one of his excursions, he apparently took the papers from Mexico from King Ferdinand VII to settle an outstanding debt; it was believed Ferdinand loved his oregano to excess.

According to Switzer descendent Orville A. Switzer, after Merle retired, "He meant to get down and check the place out thoroughly, as well as inform them he was the new landlord, but just never got around to it. He did have bad knees."

The elder Switzer passed away, he left his property including the Mexico ownership papers to his heir, who then passed it on to his heir. All were oblivious as to the nature of the documents, which were in Spanish, and were only kept because of the clever "Bless This Mess" hand-stenciled message Merle Switzer had written on the back. The frame family heirloom eventually came to Orville A. Switzer, who thought it was time to upgrade to a professional wooden plaque declaring the mess blessed. But when he extracted the document from the frame, Orville, who learned partial Spanish from his daughter's boyfriend, Miguel, deciphered the importance of the document. He then took it to a swap meet.

"I figured, 'Hey, this is Mexico. Everybody knows where it is and it's already pretty much self-maintaining. I ought to be able to get a couple bucks out of it. But I knew they'd screw me over if I took it to a pawn shop, so I asked my friend Arnold to sell it for me at his belt buckle table at Florida's Biggest Swap Meet."

Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and a regular attendee of his state's Biggest Swap Meet, spotted the documents while browsing the belt buckles, asked Arnold Plegg about them, and immediately called his brother on the cell phone. Within a few short hours, with a plea to hold the documents rather than sell them before the president could arrive, George Bush had showed up at the swap meet and paid the $78 out of his emergency presidential expense account.

Once the papers were signed over on July 4, 2002, the president quickly told the American people of their new acquisition in a televised speech that interrupted Court-TV's "Red, White and NYPD Blue" Marathon.

Details were sketchy at the time of press, but emergency sessions of Congress had been called to speculate on the value of Mexico, whether it was possible to re-sell the documents for a higher price, or use the land for some other purpose. When reminded Mexico already had a large population, the president insisted that they'd be taken care of, though he didn't specify if he meant that in the motherly or mafia fashion.

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Like every other American Idol fan, I was sorry to see Sanjaya Malakar go from the blockbuster TV talent show last week. I have to believe anybody with that many A's in his name is destined to be a star, so if it doesn't happen here and now, it'll happen some other time, some other place. Maybe in Bollywood. Mad props to Sanjaya for keeping it going as long as he did. All of us brothers with more looks than talent know what it's like to coast on pre-teen chick love.

I'm not a big Simon Cowell fan anyway. Simon and me go way back. I blew away the competition on American Idol back in the second season auditions, but Simon managed to rig everything against me. I didn't even make it to the show because the prick made some argument about the video from the security camera not being "network quality." I did a cover so ass-blasting amazing of "Hot Blooded" that Foreigner took out a court order that forbid me from ever singing it again, 'cause it made them look like chumps. Simon kept me out of the contest by voting against me, because he was the only judge. I don't know where Paula and Randy were, I guess they were probably in their hotel rooms. Security wasn't understanding enough to let me climb up on their balconies and audition for them, 'cause that dick Simon had me thrown out.

I've been destined to be huge star since I was conceived, and I'm not just talking about the porn industry. I'm talking a cross-media star of unstoppable magnetism and Q-rating power, like Jamie Foxx. You remember him, he was famous a couple of years ago. But mine is the kind of fame that is like a big cosmic secret that only I know about—right now. Soon it's going to be busting out of every galactic orifice there is. Guys will go to see my movie because I'll be running around shirtless in it, shooting terrorists, and girls will snuggle me under their arms on the way to school on the cover of their Trapper Keepers. I'll be shirtless there, too. I'm assuming that anti-shirtless Alamo Cruise legislation will be overturned by then.

When I'm super-famous, I'll have to dress the part, and I'm already way ahead on that front. I have an extensive collection of baseball caps and sunglasses. Some I bought even before I did my American Idol audition, just because I liked them. Like my "Mega-Ninja" hat, or the one that says "Hard Cock Inspector"—imagine being a lady and seeing that coming at you. You know it's a police detective and he's got an extra-hard cock for you. But they probably don't let you wear something like that in Scotland Yard because they make you were those stupid Sherlock Holmes hats, but I think Scotland sucks anyway and don't want to go there when I'm famous.

If I get into a fight with the Pavarottis, too, I'll know how to handle myself. A lot of celebrities like to kick Pavarotti ass because they want to keep their pictures from being taken, but I don't care about that. I just want to kick a lot of ass to show I'm from the streets. But after I kick all the Pavarotti ass, I'll let them take pictures of me. I'll even sign their tits, if they want me to. If they aren't girls, I suppose I'll have to sign something else, but that's going to cost them.

Shit. Why didn't Simon just let me go on the show and let the fans choose me? This "getting famous without really doing anything" would have been so much easier. Maybe I can change my name to Alamo Hilton.

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Few things get the public juices juicing like a good celebrity scandal. Seeing the rich and famous throw up on themselves on the national stage is like an instant cure for our collective Attention Deficit Disorder, sweet candy straight to the brain. The phenomena is so marked, in fact, that inner-city schoolteachers have begun to couch difficult lesson plans in the terms of celebrity scandal, quizzing children on riddles like "If it took OJ three stabs to cut off Nichole's head, how cut-off would her head be after two stabs?" Or, for example, "If car A left Paris going fifty miles an hour, and car B entered Paris going sixty-five miles an hour, how fast would car A be going when it ran over Princess Diana?"

It's the ultimate junk food of the news world, with one celebrity scandal upstaging another almost daily, blowing the old salacious headlines right off the newspapers and proving how quickly the public can forget who stuck his what where. Millions of desperate losers cling to their wretched lives for one reason only: sticking around in hopes of witnessing the ultimate, the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever. And since losers make up the bulk of the commune readership, we're on the case to settle this national quandary once and for all.

So what is the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever? Needless to say, the pack of challengers is thicker than Alabama backhair, and no pedestrian Hollywood fuck-ups need apply. It's got to be more embarrassing than Christian Slater kicking a pair of LAPD officers down the stairs because he was so coked up he thought he was filming Kuffs 2: More Kuffs!. And even more embarrassing than JFK Jr. being egged into a bar bet that he couldn't fly a plane without taking any lessons, and then getting his ass killed in the ocean like John Denver high on asshole powder. And I'm not talking about Jack Paar giving a titty twister to the Queen of England back in 1965 because he thought the queen mother was his buddy Merv Griffin playing a joke on him in drag, either. We're looking for really embarrassing celebrity scandals here.

Right off the bat we can eliminate the first time President Bush met with the UN and tried to buy a hot dog from Secretary General Kofi Annan. That would fall into the "crippling political embarrassment" category anyway and regardless, the president is so far off the public gaffe charts that an incident which would kill a normal politician is, for him, roughly on par with Roseanne Barr farting at a ballgame.

Few things are more embarrassing than accidentally setting yourself on fire, just ask Michael Jackson or Richard Pryor. Even worse is photographic evidence of the same, like the time Samuel L. Jackson's hair caught on fire right before the photo shoot for the Pulp Fiction poster. No one knows if freebase or the highly flammable Jeri-curl wig that Tarantino had on loan from Weird Al Yankovic was the culprit there, but either way moviegoers were left wondering about Jackson's schizophrenic bald/afro hair and if maybe that was his wig on fire inside Marsellus Wallace's mysteriously glowing briefcase.

Getting caught having sex with the wrong person in the wrong place can be even worse than setting yourself on fire, if you do it right. Having sex with any member of Wham anywhere certainly qualifies, as George Michael learned after being caught having sex in the park with George Michael. Hugh Grant kept the English penchant for embarrassing public sex alive when was busted in Hollywood having sex in his car with a poorly-disguised man in 1995, which says all you'll ever need to know about English women.

The last ten years of Robert Downey Jr.'s life would set some kind of "ironman" record for prolonged embarrassment if it weren't for the existence of escaped man-sized Muppet Michael Jackson, who scripts his own life as if he were writing for TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes. But nailing Jacko on a public disgrace is about as tough as falling off stilts in a hurricane, so I'm afraid he's out of the running at least until he gets pantsed by an alien some time next year.

The most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever wasn't Zsa Zsa boxing the cop, Jack Nicholson going Caddyshack on his fellow motorist, or Errol Flynn accidentally having sex with a loaf of raisin bread. Nor was it Kelsey Grammar's tip for the babysitter, Richard Gere's alleged tab at the pet store or America finding out that Milli Vanilli didn't even sing the shitty songs on their album, which technically should have helped their career.

No, I'm afraid the ill-fitting crown belongs to none other than Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman, the children's TV star who was caught waxing his wane in an adult theater in 1991 and fell straight off the face of the earth promptly thereafter. Few celebrity arrests have inspired such "soaring eagle into the jet engine" career-trajectory imagery, and whether the death blow was Reubens being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the resultant mug shot photos where the beloved children's entertainer appeared looking like Charles Manson on crack, the effect was Godzillian. Is that a word, Godzillian? Should be.

Sorry, Pee Wee. I was hoping it would be J-Lo.

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