ccompanied with shock and outrage expressed by nampy-pamby New Age P.C. thugs across the country, the world learned last week of a group of ambitious and driven Northbrook, Illinois high school girls who take a genuine interest in school spirit and extra-curricular activities.

The "powderpuff football" game held Sunday, May 4, took on a decidedly un-powderpuff nature when the senior girls corralled the juniors into a group and began to splatter them with mud and human feces as part of a friendly hazing tradition. How they knew it was human feces and who identified it was not available information and asking the question only brought angry scowls from Cook County officials.

All girls involved reportedly knew the game would involve a hazing of the future seniors, but crybaby juniors alleged they had no idea the level of cruelty would be so high. Apparently kids today only know about initiation what they see on family-friendly high school shows like Seventh Heaven or something. This reporter would suggest girls on their way to a future initiation view fine hazing films like Full Metal Jacket or A Few Good Men. All in all, a typical end-of-school ritual gets a few more bruises and broken bones than planned, but anyone worried about our teens being slackers who let the future of America dribble down their legs while they watch Seventh Heaven found the news of the harsh initiation quite refreshing.

But the reaction of the PTA-whipped local school board and county officials? Criminal charges have been promised for the outgoing seniors involved in the incident. One group, however, has not lost perspective on the incident: Former Glenbrook North High School alumni.

"Sure, everybody knew what happened the last week of school," said Mitzi Burbank, class of 1993 and president of the Glenbrook North High reunion committee. "But everyone looked forward to it, like a rite of passage. Well, the juniors didn't. But they looked forward to it when they were seniors, the year after. It was tradition, and it was just so incredibly important to the students. Well, the seniors."

Class of 1995 Glenbrook North graduate Cindy DeSousa agreed.

"Oh, yeah, it was hell getting through it. I don't think we had any feces involved when I went through 'the gauntlet'… l'see, eggs, whipped cream, silly string—no, I think they missed the feces. But it sounds like a real sharp idea. Those girls really wanted to stand out from past classes!"

Other graduates, while admiring the girls' severe hazing, aren't admiring the incident's severity. Like Sue Gorton, class of 1955.

"I suppose it was bad, by today's standards," said Gorton, "but we had real wars and bloodshed back then, too. Hell, I know three or four juniors who didn't make it to senior year after their initiation—two went missing and one had a severe head injury that kept her in a coma until Woodstock. And we didn't just limit it to incoming senior girls either. We would haze some of the black students as well. They didn't go to our school, but that didn't mean we couldn't haze them."

Current Glenbrook North student and Class Treasurer Taylor Wick expressed support for the hazing as well.

"It's important to the social order to keep the hazing alive. If we don't have traditions to mark the change from underclass to ruling class, then it all starts to fall apart. Pretty soon people wouldn't even care what part of town you live in or what kind of clothes you're wearing. You know what they call that? Anarchy."

ollowing Tuesday's announcement by Elton John that he and Bernie Taupin would collaborate on a Broadway musical based on Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire books, it was universally realized that a Broadway musical could be based on anything, no matter how stupid the idea. The notion, first proposed by the Broadway versions of Beauty & the Beast and The Lion King, inspired longtime commune reporter Ted Ted to announce Saturday he would create a musical based on the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.

The Blair Witch Project, a documentary-style horror film featuring three Burkittsville, Maryland students' frightening encounter with a terrifying local legend, did not seem like an especially good musical show to Ted Ted, who was insistent on proving his point that people going to Broadway will sit through anything. Though not yet completed or started, the musical is in what Ted Ted describes as the "brainstorming" pre-production period, where he thinks of how to break up the movie into a two-act show and comes up with some dumb songs based on incidents in the movie.

Early work points to inclusion of a title song, sung by the Blair Witch character who does not appear in the original film, tentatively titled, "I'm the Blair Witch!" The song will be in the vein of the "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" song from the good cartoon version of the Dr. Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas and not the pitiful Ron Howard/Jim Carrey movie version.

Also being considered for the Blair Witch Broadway play is a song for the scene where two of the young filmmakers are searching for their friend, which will probably be called simply, "Josh!" and be very much in the tradition of South Pacific or something really gay like that. Plans are also being developed for a long, sonorous ballad titled something like, "I'm So Scared" to be belted out by the lead female character.

The musical will probably not be very good, promised Ted Ted, but it will sell out instantly and run for a very long time on Broadway due to Ted Ted's plan to cast has-beens or one-hit musical wonders in the lead roles. Initially being considered for the three roles are Debbie Gibson, Jordan Knight, and Jesse Camp. Not being ruled out is the idea of inviting the three has-beens from the original film to reprise their roles in the Broadway show.

"The idea stems," explained Ted Ted, "from my deep, unrelenting contempt for Broadway and the shallow shells of human beings who put any trendy piece of garbage on the stage because idiots who think it makes them hip to be seen going to Broadway or who jump on big Broadway bandwagons will pay to see it. I utterly loathe and despise Broadway people, the lowest of the already-low grade of showbiz people."

Broadway people could not be reached for comment, given that Ted Ted did not bother to try.

A little bird recently asked me what it felt like to do 50. I answered that question with this question: What does it feel like to eat a bacon cheeseburger through a straw, dickface? That was right before I hit the little bird in the mouth with an encyclopedia. Actually, that analogy doesn't work unless I mention that the little bird was Boner Cunningham. You probably already guessed that from the encyclopedia he's always carrying around so people will think he can read. But no matter who the little bird was, nobody suggests Omar Bricks shops for chicks at the geriatric ward. Not if he wants to keep his teeth.

Only later when Griswald Dreck asked me the same question and I almost hit him with a framed picture of Dame Edna did I realize what they were both talking about. Really? I've written 50 Polio columns? Holy shit! A quick count of the notches carved into the edge of my desk confirmed it. Damn. Damn times fifty.

It seems like just yesterday that I was scouring the net, looking for columns I could pass off as my own. Come to think of it, that was yesterday. But I tried that shit back when I started working at the commune, too, and it didn't work any better then. Turns out everybody's heard of that old bag who writes Dear Arbys.

Though the official record may show 50 Polio columns published, the actual number written is probably double that. It may seem natural as shit now, but early on it took this Omar Bricks a while to find his "voice." As a matter of fact, the first ten My Friend Polios in a row were all rejected for one reason or another. The first few were because the commune already had a movie reviewer, and they didn't like the way I compared everything to Jaws. To which I still say you can kiss my ass. I still think Working Girl is like Jaws in an office building. Whatever.

My next attempt was rejected because they said you can't just write a column about how you deserve a blowjob. Apparently Rok Finger had already milked that tit dry years ago. I tried another column using the voice of this hilarious Latino character I had created but the commune bigwigs thought our apparently huge Hispanic readership would be alienated by the antics of Frankie Hotpants. I think the real problem was I was typing in an accent, and the milkfed silver spooners around here couldn't make out a word of it, so naturally they assumed I was using the column to take potshots at them in Latinese. Which I was, but they had no way of knowing that. Pricks.

After that I tried my hand at a "reality" column, just typing up everything that was happening around me as I wrote the thing. That turned out to be easy as shit to write, but made me enemies around the office faster than an Amy Grant concert tee shirt. Like the new guy was supposed to know everybody here was so secretive about their cock fighting and underground jai-alai tournaments.

My big breakthrough finally came one day in the parking garage when I was welding a giant metal dick to the hood of Red Bagel's car. Sure, I'd known it would be a hilarious gag for weeks, as I made arrangements to get the tools and had some kid in a high school metalshop class make the dick. But in the actual moment of pulling it off, by the pale glow of that arc-welder, I realized that this was the shit My Friend Polio should be all about. And a column was born.

Of course, that actual column never ran. Bagel immediately sacked the guy who he thought dick-welded his Camry, and I figured best let sleeping dogs lie dead on that one. But it didn't matter, the seed had been sewn. Or whatever the hell you do with seeds, it was planted and shit. At that point, nobody could have predicted what would come in the next 50 My Friend Polios, unless they were following me around all the time and taking notes. Then I guess they would have had a pretty good idea.

Bricks out.

º Last Column: You Don't Know Dick About Tennis
º more columns