he heads of MGM Studios, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner Entertainment, Disney Enterprises, and Universal City Studios called a press conference today to announce a dramatic restructuring of the way movies will be released and promoted in America. The announcement was the final step in a ten-year plan designed to cope with Americans’ shrinking attention spans and the prevalence of Attention Deficit Disorder among American teens, who drive the movie industry.

According to the studio heads, movie trailers will now replace full-length feature films in American theaters. Trailers, the previews for upcoming films that until now were shown for free preceding the main feature, have grown over the last ten years from one minute in length to the four to five minutes of today. While trailers once served to whet an audience’s appetite for a film with only a slight tease of what was to come, they had been gradually expanded over the years to tell the film’s entire story in capsule form. Purists criticized the dumbing-down of the medium and the spoiling of surprises, thought to be the handiwork of inept studio execs. But today’s announcement revealed it to be part of a larger master plan, with major studios gradually weaning film-going America off of the old system both by making the trailers complete experiences in and of themselves, and making modern feature films so unbearably long that watching only the trailer instead would seem like a reasonable alternative.

“This is the completion of a logical progression,� stated Columbia Pictures head Amy Pascal. “For years we’ve been faced with the problem of how to deliver an audience their favorite stars doing the things that made them famous, without all of this plot and writing getting in the way, and without taking up so much of a movie theater’s valuable time. Now we can get the seats filled, get the stars up there on the screen for a few quick one-liners and an explosion, some T&A, whatever, and a few minutes later they’re out the door, buying tie-in key chains and hats and what have you. Filmgoers interested in a more immersive movie experience will still be able to watch the entire film in the Deleted Scenes section among the Special Features on the DVD release. It’s perfect.�

“It used to be, you see the trailer, you get hooked, you go see the movie,� continued Pascal. “If for some reason the movie leaves you wanting more, you go buy the book. Way, way too much work. Now, you eat the sandwich, you get hooked, you go see the trailer. If you still want more, you can watch the whole movie on the DVD, if you’ve got that kind of time. So watching the movie is like what reading the book used to be. I suppose you could still read the book after that, which is the equivalent of what used to be having written the movie yourself, but we prefer if you just start over and buy the sandwich again. Or ride the ride.�

Studios are currently in debates over what to call the new, three-minute long versions of the films, since Americans may still be resistant to shelling out eight bucks to watch anything called a “trailer.� Among the front-runners are “The Ritalin Cut� and “The Director’s Bad-Assed Niece’s Cut.� Others prefer renaming the full cut of the movie “The Marathon Cut� while giving the 3-minute version an appealing tag like “The Buzz Cut� or “Flavor-Blasted.� Still others argue in favor of Reader’s Digest magazine’s offer to sponsor all new films as “Reader’s Digest Condensed Classics,� though some think that a title like “Reader’s Digest Condensed Classics Presents Adam Sandler in The Hockey-Loving Retard� will lose teens who forget what they’re doing before they get done reading the title.

s Pepsi’s heavily marketed new nasty blue cola starts hitting store shelves this week, Coke is putting the finishing touches on its own new soda: Pepsi Coke. The new cola, subject of heated rumors for months and developed under the code name Cokesi, is a Pepsi-flavored version of its Coca-Cola Classic brand, and will appear in regional markets in August.

The apparent coincidence of the two launches is a familiar trick in the ruthless cola wars, in which the business world’s two most famous and petty rivals are forever scheming to one-up and stink-finger each other. Pepsi is hoping that its own blind stab in the dark, Pepsi Blue, a berry-flavored cola described as “what it would taste like if fruit could scream,� will be the aorta-spurting death blow it has been hoping to deal to rival Coke for decades. Naturally, Coke wants its hunk of the spotlight as well, and has little interest in “being stomped into asshole powder,� by rival Pepsi, as the industry jargon goes. With the release of new Pepsi Coke, Coca-Cola hopes to hit Pepsi right where it lives, namely in producing Pepsi-flavored sodas for the national market.

Coke’s tactics are not new in the industry. The last time Pepsi tried to re-invent the wheel by making it a different color, Coke responded quicker than the producers of the 1988 comedy Vice Versa. Pepsi’s Crystal Pepsi, a clear cola that tasted like a robot had pissed on a box of Nerds candy, was quickly one-upped in 1992 with Tab Invisible from Coke, a move that confused consumers and sent them back to drinking water.

Hoping to not only match Pepsi, but match them twice, Coke is also hedging its bets by releasing its own new berry-flavored blue drink, Fanta Berry, ensuring that Pepsi Blue won’t be lonely during its short slide into pop-culture trivia obscurity.

Stan Villanowski, a Coke spokesman and terrific liar, denied that Fanta Berry is being launched in response to Pepsi Blue. “Pssssh. Who told you that? What an imagination. Fanta is the No. 1 fruit-flavored soft drink in the world,� he said. “Plus, it comes in those cool cascading dispensers that make it look like Fanta is already being digested. Fanta Berry is a logical extension for the Fanta brand, bringing balance to the Fanta Univerise.� Besides, the drink will also be more of a cobalt blue rather than the “dirty antifreeze blue� of Pepsi’s new cola, he added.

Fanta, sold in over 70 flavors at failing fast-food chains in over 188 countries, was relaunched this spring as a national brand in the U.S. and is sold in four flavors: orange, strawberry, grapple and pineappleberry.

Pepsi appears to give less than two shits about the new Coke brand. “It seems our idea ‘blue’ them away,� said a Pepsi spokesman, Harvey Pearsons, pausing expectantly for a laugh that never came.

If we’re going to have to choke down blue Fanta when the fifteen year-old vegetable behind the counter puts it in our Icee cup on accident, then will we at least have the consolation of seeing how they work in a blue Fantana — a new member of the fruit rock group created for Fanta’s ad campaign?

“There is a Fantana that represents the four major flavors of the Fanta brand,� Mr. Villanowski said. “They’re not the only ones on the island of Fantana, however, so it wouldn’t surprise me if a berry Fanta eventually joined the Fantanas here in the U.S. for their New Year’s jam with the Cokeanistas and TABBA,� Villanowski continued, getting a paranoid look in his eye. “I’m buying up all the tickets I can so I can scalp them when the time of the concert grows nigh. Then, with that money I can finally quit this lousy job and move to New Zealand, where the Fantanas would never think to look. And I’m bringing lots of bottled water.� Mr. Villanowski continued much like this for about three-quarters of an hour, cutting patterns into his tie with a pair of scissors as the commune news gradually inched its way closer and closer to the door.

You meet some interesting people riding the bus. It's a lot easier to make friends on the bus than it is in a car, since in your car, most of your interactions with other drivers involve shouted sexual boasting or frenzied calls for bloodshed. On the bus, it's way more laid back. Everybody knows they're not getting anywhere any time soon, so they relax and take the time to read the paper, huff paint or strike up a conversation with their fellow riders. It's easy to make friends swapping stories about how your car blew up and the fire department is suing you for money you don't have.

One of my bus friends, let's call him Manny, works as a security guard down at the laundr-o-mat. Raise your hand if you didn't know laundr-o-mats had private security professionals in their employ. Me neither. The national rate of tube sock theft must have gone through the roof since the last time my dryer caught on fire. Anyway, funny thing about Manny is that he used to be on TV. Well, a TV anyway, his brother's TV. His brother Miguel would hook up his new video camera to the TV and direct little Columbo mysteries for Manny to star in, written by their little sister and some guy they found living in their storage unit.

You should have seen the shows, they were pretty fun. Though truthfully that's more of a tease on my part than anything, since it would be impossible for any of you to ever see them. Miguel didn't know he could tape the shows while they were shooting, since he hadn't got that deep into the video recorder's manual at that point. So it were strictly a live event. Usually we just watched Miguel and Manny in the room, since what ended up on the TV was so jerky and poorly lit that you'd rather eat raw oysters on a roller coaster than look at that for more than about four seconds.

But still, it was cool that Manny was on TV, at least until he got a big head about it. After a couple of shows, Manny started demanding his own bedroom and a cheese tray and everybody else kind of lost interest in doing the show. Finally Manny got tired of waiting for the writers to barf up another mystery for him to solve every week, so he went out into the real world to find some real mysteries to solve, which got him his ass kicked at the speed of light.

When Manny got out of physical therapy, he decided that being a security guard would be the best way to get paid to solve mysteries, or at least watch soap operas all day. Plus, they let you carry a walkie-talkie. Regular folk are harshly ridiculed for walking around with walkie-talkies on their belts (unless they're also carrying ray guns), but not security guards. Therein lies their power.

Manny and I have this game we play called "Stealth," where we sneak up and scare the crap out of each other at the most unexpected times. Manny's not very good at it, usually it's just me stealthing Manny most of the time, but he did get me good one time when I came home one afternoon and found him having sex with a prostitute in my bed. That's Manny though, just when you're about to count him out it turns out he's got an ace card ferreted up his ass.

On Manny's first day on the job at the laundr-o-mat I wanted to bring down the granddaddy of all stealths on him, so I went there the day before and snuck into one of those big dryers before they closed the place. I hung out there all night (thank God for flip-books), and when Manny came to work the next morning, I waited quietly until he walked close to the dryer. Then, "Booya!" I stealthed his ass something fierce! It must have been some kind of world-record stealthing because Manny banged his knee brace on a change machine and he went down like a giant sack of shit. I've never laughed so hard in my life. I think I also set an Omar Bricks land speed record getting out of there when Manny came back after me with that screwdriver. Sweet flaming Jesus that was funny.

Turns out Manny's got a lousy sense of humor, so guess who can't ride the bus to work any more. It's definitely for the best though; did you know you can take a taxi to work? Talk about moving up in the world, your own seat and everything. As far as I'm concerned, the unwashed masses can have their precious bus, they don't know what they're missing.

So it's time to break out the jealous mugs, boys. Omar Bricks has got a private driver! Yeehaw.

Bricks out.

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