Strip Club Flag Wars

n the days since the National Tragedy of September 11, when real estate prices in lower Manhattan took a tumble, every business and home in the U.S. has been displaying the American flag in an effort to show their patriotism and shame anyone without a flag into running to their local Wal-Mart or Raley's in hopes of finding some cheap Taiwanese facsimile of the Stars and Stripes. Here in San Francisco, the Flag Wars have erupted between two competing strip clubs within a block of each other, and the fighting promises to get nasty as the weeks wear on.

At the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater, three full-size flags have been flying proudly above the marquee, which announces the latest show as "Red, White and Nude." We spoke with owner Jim Mitchell, who said "Actually, it's more correctly known as the Mitchell BROTHER Theater these days, ever since I shot ol' Artie back in the early '90s and spent a few years in the joint for it. But anyway… yeah, we figured the right thing to do was to fly the flag in honor of all those potential lap-dance patrons that will now never know the pleasure of having a fine peroxided blonde with silicone hooters sit down and try to cajole twenty-dollar bills out of them for a minimum of sexual contact. It seemed like the least we could do, given the circumstances."

To that end, Mitchell installed two flagpoles on either side of the existing one above the marquee, and is now flying the flag in triplicate. "We've got three," he pointed out, standing on the sidewalk in front of the theater, where two of his surgically-enhanced bimbos and a male bouncer were taking a cigarette break. "That club down on Larkin," he added, referring to the New Century Theater, "only has two."

At the New Century, no one would comment, except to say that they were "just as goddamned patriotic as that bastard Jim Mitchell, who can come down here and kiss my red, white and blue ass." This reporter did note, however, that there were only two American flags flying above their marquee, which advertised "Girl on Girl Shows" and "Bachelor Parties Welcome." It also appeared that one of the dancers at the New Century was wearing a G-string with a stars and stripes motif, but it was extremely dark, so it could have been something else.

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OH MY GOD SNOW

That's right, you read the title. Health food is one of the three biggest scams foisted on this country since World War II. The other two were communism and World War II. Communism? Never existed. I mean, give me a break people. An entire nation of folks deciding to give up their personal stuff for the common good? What did they do next; sing a song and all fly up to heaven on wings sprouted out of their asses? I'll believe in communism when you point out to me the first guy standing on a street corner handing out ten-dollar bills who isn't a politician or a guy who believes in the wide-net method of finding a hooker. Not going to happen.

And World War II? Even less plausible. So the entire world went to war after some mousey little German who looked like Moe from the Three Stooges decided he wanted to run the show? Right. Sorry folks, I just don't see it. Maybe if they'd thrown in some charismatic Eurotrash bad guy or George Clooney, I might have put a bid in on that bridge. But not they way they paint the story. So let me get this straight, the Japanese bombed us? The JAPANESE? At least get your facts straight, guys, the Japanese don't use bombs. They use karate. You tell me a story about a bunch of ninjas swimming to Pearl Harbor and chop-sockying some ass, maybe then we can talk. As it is, I give your history a thumbs-down.

Now the latest thing is this health food noise. Since when is there unhealthy food? Food is food, get over it. I'm sure there are some unhealthy things you could possibly eat, but I'd hardly call them food. Rocks, uranium. Maybe light bulbs or little bits of metal, that probably doesn't go down so hot. But you show me a guy calling that stuff food and I'll show you a glory hound gunning for a spot in the Guinness Book. If you can eat it without shitting blood, I say it's fair game.

I mean, think about it. If God didn't want us to eat chickens, why did he make them run so slow? And cows? What in the world else are you supposed to do with a cow? They sure as hell can't catch a Frisbee. If we didn't eat cows, getting anywhere would be impossible, since there would always be a big, stupid cow standing in the way, refusing to move or acknowledge any understanding of basic English. Eating cows was a fact of life in the old days; sometimes you had to eat three cows just to get down the road to check your mail. Eating cows is our natural survival reflex.

And what about dogs? You don't eat dogs? Neither do I. Never mind.

But all this noise about fat being bad for you is the biggest crock of them all. Eskimos eat nothing but fat and they live to be hundreds of years old. Either that or they all look the same and I've been offending Eskimos for years by calling them all by the same three names. I'll look into that and get back to you, it may explain all these dead fish I've been getting in the mail lately. I thought my nephew had signed me up for that Fish-of-the-Month club again. Now I may need to take back what I said about his mother.

A funny related story: A few years ago, one of the food giants created an ingredient named Lofat to fool health-conscious yet lazy and gullible consumers. The ultimate irony was that Lofat was actually high in fat itself, since it was made from the sweat glands of a North Atlantic Fat Whale. But those health nuts never knew the difference: it tasted horrible, so they all figured it had to be good for them.

Not that I want people to stop eating health food. Keep it up, kids, that leaves more real food for people like me to have an evolutionary advantage. I'll see you in the mutated future, fruitcakes.

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I open this column with a firm and hearty, "Thanks, dicks." This is not directed to you dicks reading at home, but to the dicks who neglected to inform me Red Bagel had returned and the commune staff was operating normally under his rule again. I was barricaded in that office since May, fearing swift and brutal retaliation, while at any time someone could have knocked on the door and said I was merely demoted again. True, I probably would have considered it an attempt to lure me out and not believed them, but it was worth a shot.

It's all meaningless what-iffery by now, since I was forced to come out to use a regular rest room after my coffee can filled up, and noticed the staff laughing rather than lunging at me with swords and daggers. When I asked, someone even told me Bagel had annexed the floor above us for his own new office, and I could have the dank dungeon I had made my own since January, if the smell of human waste didn't nauseate me. It doesn't, so I thank Bagel's kindness and take it as a minor promotion for all my good work in his stead.

As you can tell by all this, I'm no longer a big deal around the commune offices. But from what I understand, if the door to the office had been open when Bagel returned I would have been castrated and choked with a frayed electrical cord, so waiting had its advantages as well. After enough time, and self-prescribed morphine, Bagel was back in a friendly mood and decided to merely demote me to King of Dinks, a title which Raoul Dunkin had to relinquish to me.

Some could see it as failure, but I look at it as an inverted success. Sometimes you have to fall back to the bottom of the ladder and start your career over to move ahead. And that's what I'm doing at the commune. Also, as you can see, I was mightily addicted to sharing my thoughts with the readers after months of filling in on Bagel's "Or So You Thought" column, so I decided to introduce my new rotating column "Poop of the Century." True, I wanted a regular semi-weekly feature like Finger or Bricks, but it was Bagel's suggestion I do a periodic column or sit on it and rotate, hence the idea. He was right, too; now that I'm freed of the duties of Acting-Editor I can return to my first love, masturbation—I mean, reporting. Sitting in my smelly office writing columns all day isn't my style, at least Bagel says so.

Unfortunately, the call to write a column is muddled with the call to prove to the world I'm not dead, so that's mostly what this beginner's column is about. It's important I get my Social Security number reinstated so I can find a new apartment and re-open my bank account. Personally, I'd hoped someone at the commune might have mentioned I was in the office and hadn't been killed on the job as the death certificate said, but in fairness, as Lil Duncan said, everyone was extremely busy trying to bust the piñata when the investigators dropped by.

Don't expect this little corner of the commune to be another self-indulgent crybaby's story of the little things in life that piss him off. Let the other columnists engage in that ego-stroking. Ramrod Hurley is interested in tackling the bigger issues of the day, and blowing your mind in the process. That's a lot to do in one column, one particular edition might have more blowing and less issue-tackling, but in general I'll try to mix the two well enough.

I just hope you readers are into getting tackled and blown.

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