ock musician and poet Bob Dylan received the ultimate honor Friday night from an unknown fan believed to be under the influence of several chemical substances. For all his years of service in changing the face of modern music, Dylan was knighted in a brief ceremony behind the Homebrew bar and grill that took only a couple minutes.

Dylan, who was performing an unannounced set at the Homebrew promoting his new album, was extremely surprised and delighted by the honor.

"It was very cool," said Dylan. "You don’t get into this life with thought of major rewards like being knighted. You do it for the music, or maybe the money. This is quite a big moment for me and I’d like to thank the drug-influenced guy who bestowed this upon me, wherever he is."

Dylan was on his way to the parking lot of the club with friends when the unidentified high guy stopped him in the alley, proclaimed Dylan the man, and knighted him with a very quick tap on each of his shoulders with an empty Thunderbird bottle, pretending it was a sword. He then pissed his pants and stumbled back into the club. Surprised but happy with the honor, Dylan continued on to his car.

"I thought about trying to find the guy, but I didn’t want to insult him after he had just done this very great thing for me. I was also a bit shocked by it all. Even if you expect this sort of thing is going to happen, some alley behind a club is about the last place you’re ready for it."

Columbia Records, Dylan’s label, has jumped all over the high-press event. New releases of all Dylan’s previous albums are being issued with a royal seal on them under the artist heading of "Sir Bob Dylan."

"Everyone at Columbia has always known America has a special genius in Bob Dylan," said Columbia V.P. of Advertising John Bonlee, "and now people everywhere will know that. The dude on heroin or crack or whatever behind that club knew it, and recognized Dylan for his years of service to the music industry and world as a whole."

Sources report that if the blitzed night club rambler can be found, Columbia Records would like to have him knight Dylan again, just for the sake of press, on a two-hour TV special with friends and fellow musicians playing songs in Dylan’s honor. Dylan, who has written rock ’n’ roll and folk staples like "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man," "Blowin’ in the Wind," and "Like A Rolling Stone," could not verify the possibility of a two-hour TV event, but said he would definitely not want to air opposite Friends and Survivor.

he major news media again claimed victory over the world itself by creating news from nothing. The so-called story this week revolved around a 25-year-dead white boy named Elvis Presley.

Presley, the king of rock and roll, died August 16, 1977, which is news thanks to the lack of real stories this week as fans and the media celebrate the 25th anniversary of his death. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley was the first attractive white person to bring rock and roll to the nation, and obtained the title "king of rock and roll" in some undisclosed media ceremony.

"Elvis touched everyone," said an unidentified modern rock star pretending to be in touch with music history. "He was the one and only. There will never be another like him."

Fans flocked in presumably record numbers to Graceland to see the place where Elvis lived in strange, hermit-like seclusion until his death on the toilet. Presley was extremely popular in his lifetime, though that popularity peaked and waned over the years, ultimately leaving him most popular after his death.

"This here's Elvis week," proclaimed a Los Angeles classic rock station disc jockey named Danger Bob. "Celebrating the king of rock and roll by playing 'Hound Dog' every hour on the hour. Elvis was one of a kind, he invented it all. There will never be another like him."

His legacy in rock and roll already firmly established, Presley added another accomplishment to his resume this week, as he helped provide filler for news programs, networks, and magazines all across the nation, despite being dead for a quarter of a century.

The face and name of Elvis Presley have graced the covers of magazines, news footage, and news websites, as if some new event had occurred to warrant his coverage. CNN has been airing specials covering the history and influence of the King, Time named Elvis their Person of the Week, and VH-1 has even been playing Elvis videos during the rare hours they play videos.

"The news media owes Elvis a ton of thanks. He's saved our hash from the fire once again," said CNN correspondent Muffy St. Clair. "The president's on vacation and unable to supply us with the usual amount of ignorant quotes. The War on Terror sure hasn't gotten any more interesting—nobody knows where Osama bin Laden is or if he's even alive. Hell, even the celebrities are boring this week. What's new? Anna Nicole Simpson? Puh-lease. A dead Elvis is more interesting than an alive her any day."

While the media has been working overtime to bring Elvis back to national attention, the public at large is invariably unchanged.

"Elvis?" said man on the street Carl Ginser. "Yeah, I like some of his stuff. That 'Suspicious Minds' song is kick-ass. I think the Fine Young Cannibals did a cover of that or something. Oh, and he would, like, raise his lip and snarl. And he always left the building and some guy would announce it, I think. I'm not sure why he's on the news so much lately, though. He's still dead, isn't he? Not a zombie or nothing?"

This reporter, for one, is thoroughly convinced he is. However, until Red Bagel agrees to spring for the plane ticket to Memphis and a shovel, we'll never know for sure. But whether he actually breathes or lies very quiet in his grave, thanks to all the needless media sensationalism, Elvis is still alive today in some way.

Few things on this earth are more vile than a topped-off pair of Pampers with the space-age plastic ass all pooched out from an unfortunate run-in with some cruel infant's monstrous movement. Of the things that are more vile, a packed diaper exploding on a porch in the hot Texas sun and mayonnaise sandwich day at the old folks' home are the only two I'm permitted by law to mention here. But there is one creaky sunken battleship from the annals of viledom that I can resurrect here, just to see retired parents get that far-away look in their eye and that fire-away feeling in their queasy gut. An invention that will live in household infamy for all time:

The cloth diaper.

What few remember, and even fewer believe, is that before the disposable diaper came along, babies, the elderly and the fabulously lazy shat their days away in low-tech cloth diapers, not much different from the shammy you use to dry your car today. Actually, smell that shammy before you use it again, just a tip. But the kicker, the part that will really roast your oats is this: because of shortages caused by over-harvesting in the shammy forests of South America (as documented in Dr. Seuss's whistle-blowing novel, The Lorax), you couldn't just use the things and then throw them away. You actually had to find some way to wrap your mind around washing these horribly soiled crimes against nature, and then press them into service once again. I know, I know, and let me be the first to say it: history is gross.

The man who liberated us all from this ammonia-scented hell was an unassuming young fuddydud named Arthur Ringbaum. Ringbaum was a fast-rising idea man in the Proctor & Gamble Company, and at the crisp young age of 32 had already enjoyed numerous well-advertised successes. He had invented the three-dollar enema, and it was his idea to shoot rabbits out of a cannon to make sure makeup was safe. Ringbaum would have been known as the MacGuyver of product design, excepting for the fact that the show didn't exist in that day, and its star, Richard Dean Anderson, was but a quizzical swelling in his father's Sunday school trousers at that point.

But it would have been an apt comparison nonetheless, as Ringbaum was famous within the company for turning executive incompetence and planning blunders into hot, in-demand products. Legend had it that when presented with hundreds of decapitated horses' heads from a recent train accident, Ringbaum created the hobbyhorse, which became a huge success after the dead horses' heads were replaced with stuffed-felt facsimiles.

None of his past successes would prepare Ringbaum for the fame and adulation that the invention of the disposable diaper would bring him in the early 1960's. He became a worldwide celebrity who was loved universally, except for the people who mailed him soiled cloth diapers pinned to harsh notes questioning why he didn't think of it sooner, dammit.

In early April of 1960, Proctor and Gamble executives were faced with a dilemma. They had a huge amount of plastic left over from the poofy plastic chef's hat craze that had failed to take off as expected the year before. Fearful that they might have to resort to feeding their families big bowls of shredded plastic, the executives turned again to Ringbaum, who was still riding high on the success of his "meat thermometer," a regular thermometer made more profitable by the addition of the popular word "meat" to the packaging. Ringbaum took one look at the thousands of surplus plastic hats and he knew it. They were screwed.

But while having his ass kissed in London later that week, Ringbaum stumbled across an idea that was just crazy enough to work poorly. He rushed back to Proctor & Gamble headquarters and ordered to have all of the plastic hats filled with confetti left over from the planned parade to celebrate the success of the chef's hat division, which, for obvious reasons, never took place. After punching a few thousand leg holes and debating for months over the product name ("Snugglers," "Growlers," and "Ass Wraps" were all considered, but ultimately rejected), Pampers were released to the general public. They were an instant hit, and after print ads clarified that they were for use on babies, sales really took off.

The original Pampers had to be duct taped onto the baby's skin and only did their job for about forty seconds, but the prospect of never having to wash a nasty diaper again, not to mention the convenience being able to fling a bag of putrid scat onto your hated neighbor's roof on a moment's whim in the middle of the night, won over consumers regardless. Over the years the diaper has been improved in countless ways, with its absorbent core gradually refined to contain tissue, cardboard, pulp, liver & onions, and ultimately a super-absorbent chemical gel that will one day destroy us all.

What was a happy story for parents the world over turned out to be a sad one for Arthur Ringbaum himself. He never again reached the dizzying highs of his success with the disposable diaper, and his subsequent inventions such as the Vacuum Corral, the Coin-Eating Pope and the Couch Potato met with limited public interest. In 1988 he was shot dead outside his Maryland home by a West Virgina woman who had just the week before found out about disposable diapers. Sadly, he never lived to be old enough to enjoy the ultimate fruits of his labor, if it's not too disconcerting to refer to adult diapers as fruits. The New Jersey Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste currently has plans in the works to open a new landfill in his honor.

º Last Column: Take a Tip From Me
º more columns