neaking up on an enduring place in music history like an albino in a snowstorm, the platinum-selling English grunge band Bush has dropped completely from public memory in record time, a study found Tuesday. Previous record holders The Escape Club could not be reached for comment, as nobody could remember who was in the band or what they looked like.

Bush rose to fame behind the success of their 1994 album Sixteen Stone, which sold over 15 million copies worldwide and settled hundreds of bets over how long it would take alternative rock to turn into Def Leppard. Bristling under the weight of overwhelmingly poor reviews and tired of not being taken seriously by anyone over the age of fourteen, Bush donned indie producer Steve Albini like a credibility hat for the release of their second album, 1996's Razorblade Suitcase. Despite sporting an title that Spinal Tap thought was artsy, the album was another critical failure, sending the band into a deep prettyboy funk. They returned in 1999 with The Science of Things, an attempt to succeed where U2 had failed, by half-heartedly aping popular trends in techno music and alienating every last one of their fans.

Bush drew massive ire from music critics and hipsters on both continents for their 2000 release We're Nirvana, then promptly dropped off the face of the planet when the record-buying public lost its taste for generic bands copying good bands and developed a passion for homogeneously generic bands and rich white teens pretending to be angry and black.

Tuesday's report included a poll of over 3,000 households, none of whom could recall the grunge quartet in any meaningful fashion. Polls of the commune staff and random yokels on the street provided similar results.

Professional man-on-the-street Rodney Brown came the closest to remembering the band with his comment "What was their big song? Crazy Train?"

Others were not so lucky. commune reporter Lil Duncan feigned memory of the band with her claim to have toured with Bush as a groupie in the mid-90's, but her stories of wild debauchery and pharmaceutical excess quickly revealed the band in question to actually have been Scottish uberdorks The Proclaimers.

Other staff members confused the band with similarly forgotten, yet not completely eclipsed pop acts such as The Crash Test Dummies, Fun Lovin' Criminals and Frente.

"I got it. They were the ones with the two drummers, and the guitar player would always get naked for the last song," convenience store clerk Rasham Levin nodded with barrel-scraping conviction.

Whoever the members of Bush were could not be reached for comment as of press time.

ext Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the Sept. 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a day of tragedy that made Americans pause from their normal lives and rally together in support of the victims. In addition to fears of new terrorist attacks on the anniversary, most Americans are uncertain how to commemorate the event. Already, however, most are expected to resume their habits of complaining about the smallest of problems.

"I hope they give us the day off at work," said Texas cell phone salesman Bob Whiterich. "It's like a national tragedy and crap. How are people supposed to work on a day like that? And if I knew I could take a couple of vacation days Monday and Tuesday and head to the beach with the family."

Most companies and government agencies have decided against imposing a holiday, feeling the anniversary would be spent better keeping businesses and services functioning as normal. Even plans for restricting air travel on Sept. 11^th have been declined, feeling the statement to the rest of the world, including Muslim extremists believed to have launched the attacks, is a stronger exclamation of solidarity and a country affected, yet not shaken in their resolve by terrorism.

Mark Turnskit, a 42-year-old UPS driver and volunteer fireman in Piermont, North Dakota, however, thinks that is bullshit.

"It's bullshit, man," said Turnskit. "We need a day to remember the importance of it all and stuff. I have a lot of friends back east, in Ohio. A cousin of one of them was married to a firefighter and I think he may have been in the World Trade Center disaster and stuff. I haven't talked to them in a long time—I don't write letters and all, you know, and I don't have their e-mail address or anything. The worst part is not knowing."

Added Turnskit, "I'm a firefighter, so I know what it's like. I could have been in that place just as easy as all the guys who were."

California telemarketer Steve Gerber has made no change in plans for Sept. 11^th. "What is that, a Wednesday? I don't imagine I'll have time to think about the loss of lives and how great it is to live in a country that is still the most secure and wealthiest on the planet. Maybe some time in the evening, after work, if there's something on the Discovery Channel talking about it or—aw, shit. West Wing is on that night, right?"

"I would take a minute or two to stop and think about life and death and all that," said Howett, Tennessee factory worker Milt Darling, "but the Dodge has been crapping out on me a lot, lately. I'll probably have to worry about getting a ride to work. Life's so fucking unfair, man."

Decatur, Georgia realtor Shari Cartier summed up the feelings of most Americans on the subject: "It will be a dark day. This has been the greatest tragedy in history of all time. Something like 6,000 people died—that's more than died in Vietnam, you know. But, c'mon, I got my own life to worry about. Those damn Peel St. properties aren't going to move themselves. And the kids can't take themselves to karate."

The most significant commemoration of the day, outside of New York and Washington, D.C., is likely to come from Perkins, Nebraska, where button collector and local crackpot Vernon Heston is planning on building a scale model of the World Trade Center towers out of Popsicle sticks. Although, according to Heston, if the price of Popsicles continues to skyrocket, the whole thing will be scrapped.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Seems like everybody's sorry for something these days. Sorry for having the same exact car as me and parking it in the same supermarket parking lot. Sorry for having the stun gun set so high. Sorry for naming their gay bar "The Crank Shaft," even though that sounds an awful lot like a bike shop to anyone who doesn't have a copy of the latest gay code handbook. "Sorry for breathing audibly while you were trying to urinate, Mr. Bricks. Thank you for pissing in the pocket of my good dress pants to show me the error of my ways."

Seems like we've got quite a lot of sorry sons of bitches in the world these days. If they're not sorry for mowing over the donuts I left out to cool on the lawn, they're sorry for misleadingly naming the town Hempstead despite their almost total lack of interest in hemp products. "I'm sorry, sir, but you can't ride your bike on the escalator." The hell I can't! Did you see that wheelie?

And a lot of good it all does me. Why don't you shit out an apology onto a ten-dollar bill for me then, if you're so sorry? At least then I could put it toward a new go-cart to replace the one that was destroyed when you put up that new fence in your back yard without telling me. You could have at least painted it white or some color that shows up better in the moonlight.

But no, as usual, this world is all talk and no action. As if an apology is going to resurrect my streak of consecutive blocks driven without touching the brake pedal. And to be gut-wrenchingly honest, sometimes I doubt the sincerity of some of these apologies, or at least the degree to which they're heartfelt. Was that guy really sorry that his wife gave birth while I was trying to enjoy my McMuffin? I wonder. And I think I might have detected a hint of sarcasm coming from that blind lady when she apologized for blocking my view of that new Victoria's Secret billboard downtown. I don't know where she got off, it's not like I force-fed her all the cream cheese bagels that made her ass so freakin' big as to obscure a billboard. And I can't have been the first person to point that out to her.

I've been thinking about it, and I think I'm going to get myself a donation jar, like all the hard-luck cases and fast food restaurants have. Now put down your lawn darts folks, I'm not saying I'm going to go in and lift one that's full of dimes for cystic fibrosis or anything terrible like that. I'm going to buy one. Probably. I might have to ask some of these people where they shop at when their beggin' jar gets worn out, if there's some store tucked away somewhere I haven't bothered to look. And if there's more than one, then which one is the high-end jar store, since I want a pretty swanky jar so that nobody will confuse Omar Bricks with a common bum or street freak.

Once I get the right jar, then we'll see who's really sorry and who can put their money where their mouth is. If somebody's really sorry, they can hit me up with a ten spot or whatever they're comfortable with and I'm compensated. Bingo. If they're not, and they're really just being sarcastic, well then they're not very likely to pony up for the "Sorry Jar" since that's a level of extreme sarcasm you don't find too often in this country. You have to fly over to England for that kind of shit. Either way I win, in some manner of speaking.

So anyway, yeah, that's it. Sorry the column wasn't funnier. Ha, bet you wish you had a jar now, eh? Bricks out.

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