California Rocks Most-Polluted City List Yet Again

loud and proud Southern California rocked the American Lung Association’s annual list of American cities with the worst air pollution yet again in 2004, with the region bringing home seven of the top ten slots in the report. Despite stiff competition from such air-polluting powerhouses as Houston, Texas and Detroit, Michigan, area residents insist their confidence never faltered that So. Cal would once again bring home the gold.

“Booya, bitch!� gloated local resident Tyrell Dipps between coughing fits. “Smog!�

Area residents were so confident that California would dominate the competition, in fact, that most of the anticipation leading up to the study concerned which part of Southern California would out-pollute all others, a matter of considerable local pride. Emotions ran high in the weeks leading up to the report’s publication, as area residents waged a war of words in this yearly competition between the various So. Cal regions, each hoping to take home the ALA’s “Black Lung� trophy for having the nation’s foulest, most unbreathable air.

“Bakersfield can suck my dick with their pansy air, man! You come down here you gonna get asthma, baby!� enthused Los Angeles resident Hector Villanova, while idling three cars simultaneously on his lawn.

Residents of the air-polluting upstart Bakersfield region relish their underdog status, dreaming of one day knocking Los Angeles off of its hazy brown perch in the national rankings.

“L.A.’s time has come and gone, man,� insisted Bakersfield resident Arlo Vipatna, reclining in a parka with his home’s air conditioning unit running full tilt. “Ain’t no way they gonna hold Bakersfield back, not with all them movie stars they got driving those little electric fag cars down there and shit.�

“Damn right,� agreed Arlo’s brother Uday, feeding from a disturbingly large bowl of chili. “I got your greenhouse gasses right here, yo.�

Numerous other Bakersfield residents were caught up in the excitement as well, spraying aerosol cans into the sky and setting fire to piles of tires in between bouts of wheezing and frequent breaks to sit down for a while.

When the rankings were finally released, Los Angeles was a familiar sight at the top of the list, with the surprise dark horse region of Visalia-Porterville sneaking in at number two. A clearly stunned Bakersfield ranked third, slightly ahead of Fresno, who didn’t know there was a contest and just has really shitty air. Houston, Texas was the lone top-five entrant from the other 49 states; a slot some think was wasted on them since Texans don’t believe in air pollution. The California cities of Merced, Sacramento and Hanford rounded out the top ten with Knoxville Tennessee and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, the last two Southern cities likely having some kind of BBQ cook-off the week the air quality measurements were taken.

American Lung Association officials assure the commune they plan to check in on Texas and Tennessee soon to make sure neither of the states is currently on fire, since the aberrant presence of non-Californian cities in the list’s top fifteen likely points to some kind of catastrophic Southern brushfire no one from any more-newsworthy states has yet noticed.

espite anxious protestations from the Iraqi public upon hearing the president’s quote, George W. Bush vowed this week to push Iraq “out of the frying pan,� in response to a week full of bad news for the U.S. occupation forces. In the face of a continuing bloody standoff in Fallujah, record U.S. and Iraqi casualties in the month of April, and evidence that U.S. soldiers abused prisoners in Baghdad, citizens from across Iraq are telling occupation forces “Thanks anyway, but please stop helping us so much.�

This latest development is discouraging news for U.S. officials, who were encouraged by poll results last week showing that the Iraqi public feels their lives are slightly less horrible now than they were under Saddam Hussein’s rule. According to the poll, 32% of Iraqis prefer the George W. Bush regime to the Hussein regime, opting for the excitement of unpredictable daily bloodshed and abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers, which locals rate as not quite as bad as the torture of Hussein’s Fedayeen militia. 28% of Iraqis polled instead preferred the predictable oppression of the Hussein days, while the remaining 30% said you could flip a fuckin’ coin.

Upon being reminded that Saturday was the one-year anniversary of his now-darkly ironic “Mission Accomplished� speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush reminded reporters that he’d never specified exactly what mission he was referring to, and that the one he was thinking in his head was most definitely accomplished, no problem. Bush also stressed the necessity of ousting Hussein, explaining that “a madman cannot be trusted in a position of power.� Even Bush’s harshest critics nodded along with this statement from the president, though many admitted that they were thinking of a different war-crazy madman at the time.

Bush also expressed “deep disgust� over the images that surfaced on CBS’ 60 Minutes II last week, which show U.S. soldiers dressing up Iraqi prisoners in embarrassing Halloween costumes and forcing them to perform in poorly-written variety shows. Bush’s apparent revulsion to the photos was odd, considering he had reportedly known about the images for weeks, indicating that he was disgusted mainly by the fact that the pictures got out to the voting public.

While some Iraqis consider the U.S. occupation a nice change of pace in that their abusers are now white rather than the same old Arab thugs they’ve had for generations, many express concerns that without the stabilizing influence of Hussein’s regime, Iraq will descend into years of bloody racial and religious conflict. The president’s chosen figure of speech in his most recent statement did little to quell these fears.

“Is like... how you say? Out of cooking pot and ass is on fire? Is like that,� explained grocer Jalal al-Batayneh. “Things bad before, yes, but now? Oh shit.�

Mechanic Zainab Akram Kalaf agreed. “We Iraqi have saying, ‘I used to have sunburn, now am on fire.’ This is like trade of Saddam for Bush.�

“Once was screwing pooch,� added schoolteacher Ali Thaib. “Now pooch screwing me, this is saying. You have this saying?�

Residents of the embattled Iraqi city of Fallujah indicated similar sentiments through flag-based signals from apartment windows to the few binocular-toting reporters willing to get within ten miles of the city-shaped deathtrap.

In spite of the worsening situation in Iraq, president Bush has vowed to stay the course with his thus-far botched stab at nation-building.

“We’ve got to get this country out of the frying pan,� Bush explained, gesturing like a chef with his hands. “Once we do that, no matter what happens after, they’re better off. Because think about it, what could be worse than being in a frying pan?�

Few things get the public juices juicing like a good celebrity scandal. Seeing the rich and famous throw up on themselves on the national stage is like an instant cure for our collective Attention Deficit Disorder, sweet candy straight to the brain. The phenomena is so marked, in fact, that inner-city schoolteachers have begun to couch difficult lesson plans in the terms of celebrity scandal, quizzing children on riddles like "If it took OJ three stabs to cut off Nichole's head, how cut-off would her head be after two stabs?" Or, for example, "If car A left Paris going fifty miles an hour, and car B entered Paris going sixty-five miles an hour, how fast would car A be going when it ran over Princess Diana?"

It's the ultimate junk food of the news world, with one celebrity scandal upstaging another almost daily, blowing the old salacious headlines right off the newspapers and proving how quickly the public can forget who stuck his what where. Millions of desperate losers cling to their wretched lives for one reason only: sticking around in hopes of witnessing the ultimate, the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever. And since losers make up the bulk of the commune readership, we're on the case to settle this national quandary once and for all.

So what is the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever? Needless to say, the pack of challengers is thicker than Alabama backhair, and no pedestrian Hollywood fuck-ups need apply. It's got to be more embarrassing than Christian Slater kicking a pair of LAPD officers down the stairs because he was so coked up he thought he was filming Kuffs 2: More Kuffs!. And even more embarrassing than JFK Jr. being egged into a bar bet that he couldn't fly a plane without taking any lessons, and then getting his ass killed in the ocean like John Denver high on asshole powder. And I'm not talking about Jack Paar giving a titty twister to the Queen of England back in 1965 because he thought the queen mother was his buddy Merv Griffin playing a joke on him in drag, either. We're looking for really embarrassing celebrity scandals here.

Right off the bat we can eliminate the first time President Bush met with the UN and tried to buy a hot dog from Secretary General Kofi Annan. That would fall into the "crippling political embarrassment" category anyway and regardless, the president is so far off the public gaffe charts that an incident which would kill a normal politician is, for him, roughly on par with Roseanne Barr farting at a ballgame.

Few things are more embarrassing than accidentally setting yourself on fire, just ask Michael Jackson or Richard Pryor. Even worse is photographic evidence of the same, like the time Samuel L. Jackson's hair caught on fire right before the photo shoot for the Pulp Fiction poster. No one knows if freebase or the highly flammable Jeri-curl wig that Tarantino had on loan from Weird Al Yankovic was the culprit there, but either way moviegoers were left wondering about Jackson's schizophrenic bald/afro hair and if maybe that was his wig on fire inside Marsellus Wallace's mysteriously glowing briefcase.

Getting caught having sex with the wrong person in the wrong place can be even worse than setting yourself on fire, if you do it right. Having sex with any member of Wham anywhere certainly qualifies, as George Michael learned after being caught having sex in the park with George Michael. Hugh Grant kept the English penchant for embarrassing public sex alive when was busted in Hollywood having sex in his car with a poorly-disguised man in 1995, which says all you'll ever need to know about English women.

The last ten years of Robert Downey Jr.'s life would set some kind of "ironman" record for prolonged embarrassment if it weren't for the existence of escaped man-sized Muppet Michael Jackson, who scripts his own life as if he were writing for TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes. But nailing Jacko on a public disgrace is about as tough as falling off stilts in a hurricane, so I'm afraid he's out of the running at least until he gets pantsed by an alien some time next year.

The most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever wasn't Zsa Zsa boxing the cop, Jack Nicholson going Caddyshack on his fellow motorist, or Errol Flynn accidentally having sex with a loaf of raisin bread. Nor was it Kelsey Grammar's tip for the babysitter, Richard Gere's alleged tab at the pet store or America finding out that Milli Vanilli didn't even sing the shitty songs on their album, which technically should have helped their career.

No, I'm afraid the ill-fitting crown belongs to none other than Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman, the children's TV star who was caught waxing his wane in an adult theater in 1991 and fell straight off the face of the earth promptly thereafter. Few celebrity arrests have inspired such "soaring eagle into the jet engine" career-trajectory imagery, and whether the death blow was Reubens being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the resultant mug shot photos where the beloved children's entertainer appeared looking like Charles Manson on crack, the effect was Godzillian. Is that a word, Godzillian? Should be.

Sorry, Pee Wee. I was hoping it would be J-Lo.

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