mboldened by the recent broad-daylight swiping of legendary Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s famous paintings The Scream and Madonnas from Oslo, Norway’s Munch Museum (which is a terrible place to wander into stoned, but a hilarious name for a museum regardless of whether you pronounce it “Munch� or “Munk�), thieves in New York this week made off with The Turd, a controversial piece of conceptual art that was until very recently housed in the Museum of Modern Art in downtown Manhattan.

Upon hearing that there had been a daring daylight heist at the MoMA, terrified museum officials initially feared the worst.

“I almost shit my pants,� admitted curator Vaughn Cammels. “They could have made off with a Van Gogh, Monet or Picasso, priceless artworks which never could have been replaced. Those first few seconds were like a mini-nightmare.�

The missing piece, valued by museum officials as “impossible to sell,� consisted of a white porcelain turd on a dinner plate. Some museum employees were relieved to find out that R.H. Hiddelstein’s obscure piece of protest art from 1982 had been stolen, rather than one of the museum’s many easier-to-appreciate masterworks. Though understandably distraught over the theft, many have been looking at the bright side, pointing out that they can finally clean that spot on the wall. For years, few had dared to move The Turd, because none could tell if it was really porcelain or just a real turd painted white.

When asked what police were doing to catch the crooks, police chief Harold Almney insisted that the case had been given appropriate priority and that the police would start at nothing to bring these crooks to justice.

“The Turd is a crucial piece in understanding the development of modern sculpture,� explained art historian Checky Brazelton. “Without it, we would never have been blessed with any of the several related masterpieces that followed, including Bradnell’s Lung Chunk or Dolenski’s Snot on Toast. This is a major loss for the art community.�

“The what?� queried a surprised Lindsay Sommers, an intern at the MoMA. “Somebody stole that thing? I was using it as an ashtray on my breaks.�

Irregardless of the opinion of some part-time art critics, the artist Hiddelstein has been distraught since learning of the theft, vowing not to rest and planning to leave work on his latest sculpture-in-progress, the man-sized Shithead, on hiatus until the bandits can be brought to justice.

“You cannot understand my pain unless you have ever lost a child,� explained Hiddelstein after this reporter suggested he could knock out another piece comparable to The Turd if given twenty minutes and a plate of bran muffins. When asked if he wasn’t just being pretentious, Hiddelstein answered with a piece of interpretive dance that was way over the commune’s head.

When asked why the thieves left numerous priceless works of art hanging on the walls while making off with Hiddelstein’s obscure piece, authorities speculate that the thieves may have been either huge Hiddelstein fans, complete art novices, or just absolute morons. Others have speculated that the thieves came for a Van Gogh or Monet, but panicked when the non-silent alarms went off and grabbed The Turd in a hurry on their way out the door, so as not to leave empty-handed. However, a thorough inspection of the dumpsters outside surrounding buildings failed to lend credence to this theory.

“This is the new face of modern art theft,� explained face of modern art theft expert Carson Faulkner. “It’s brash, in-your-face, and usually pretty stupid. No longer are we living in the days of your father’s art thief, a suave motherfucker squeezing in through some high window with suction cups sewn into his gloves, limboing his way through a maze of laser tripwires and slipping a priceless masterpiece out if its frame using a high-tech black-market silica spray. Now it’s just a couple of retards barging in with a shotgun and making off with whatever’s easiest to carry, even if it’s a worthless piece of modern shwag or the trashcan over by the men’s room. It’s sad, really.�

Until new leads materialize, local authorities are scanning art auction listings for mention of the sculpture, and keeping an eye on eBay in case the thieves get really desperate. While there are several turds currently for sale on the auction site, and liberal examples of bad modern art, none yet appear to be the missing piece.

m-mmm! Sweet thing, the ratings turned upside down on the Olympic Games from Athens this week, when the IOC voted on new rules allowing contenders to compete nude. It bolstered a flabby start to the Olympics for NBC, and turned the games into a ratings giant as the week went on.

Upon seeing the dry audience response to the Athens games, NBC petitioned the committee for nude competition, anything to pull the crashing Olympics out of the fire. IOC President Jimmy Goldstein approved the decision right away.

"Now it's just like olden times," said Goldstein, straightening his thin tie. "Way back when, the Greeks used to do it nude. Hell, they did everything nude. Which is why I like the Greeks. But now the Olympics is finally the way it was always meant to be. Bare-ass naked."

Some Olympians were quick to reproach the decision, especially the chubby Eastern European weightlifters, but most came around for a shot at winning the much-sought Olympic gold. NBC has continued showing the Games, much to the chargin of the FCC, with the charge that the human body is a beautiful thing. Still, the Games have been shown on a five-minute delay, so that censors can blur or edit out anything that really, really isn't a beautiful thing. The network has already taken the liberty with such events as Olympic wrestling, when hairy German Gustav Werner pinned oily Italian Antonio DiScuza around his sweaty lower body.

"Sure, you get a little bored watching something like archery or sailing," said Pinewood, Minnesota Olympic viewer Sally Nedhurst, "and the shot put made me laugh until I was sick. But if you think I'm going to miss one minute of the swimming or gymnastics, you're out of your mind!"

Indeed the gymnastics, always a highlight of the games, were a ratings powerhouse for NBC. The network received record ratings as American Paul Gilbert executed a beautiful dismount to take the gold, and uneven parallel bars favorite on the Chinese team Hong-Chu Xy eliminated himself with a misfire that resulted in severe testicular damage when he banged the bar unexpectedly. Slow-motion clips of the tragedy were available, but no men at the network could bring themselves to air it.

It hasn't been all gold for the Americans, though, as 100-meter runner Isaac "Chubby" Walker was disqualified for living up to his namesake during the track and field event. It's also been a disappointing year for the American basketball "Dream Team," who seem particularly impressive every time they take the court, but find themselves limited in their dunking ability without the use of protective cups.

Conversely, it was a good year for the Brazilian women's softball team, who came from behind to bounce, bob, and claw their way up to the top ranks in the sport. In addition to winning the gold in the event, they've all also been romantically linked to Colin Farrell following their rise to stardom.

The IOC will benefit from America's favorable response to the nude Olympics as well, since the network has promised in advance to split revenue from a DVD release of the Olympic games, as well as a separate release, tentatively titled: "The Olympics: Too Hot for Primetime."

It's always heartbreaking when somebody you care about goes missing. Like your kid gets eaten by gypsies or your husband falls off a boat or some shit, I don't know, all that Lifetime movie of the week noise probably blows hard. But hard as that may eat it, what really pokes a stink finger into the plum pie is when a band you're really into disappears with no explanation, without even the courtesy to go down in a spectacular plane wreck that's easy to remember when you're wondering about when their next album is going to be coming out.

Now that the story's been appropriately set-up and all, I can slap the beef on the bun: my friend Jake bet me ten bucks last week that I couldn't bring Guns N' Roses out of hiding to make another album. It was a tall order, sure, since the band is likely trapped in a series of cages somewhere, decorating the home of some Panamanian drug lord by now. But ten bucks is ten bucks, and more importantly, there was the Bricks pride on the line. The last time that happened, I ended up getting busted at customs with a mouth full of endangered condor eggs and a recipe book for omelettes in my back pocket. So you just know I wasn't going to just let this slide over some hair band that got lost on their way to a string of career-ending drug overdoses.

Before I even start to tell the story, let me make it clear that I'm not some desperate, obsessed GNR fan who was willing to risk it all because I can't sleep at night wondering what could have come after The Spaghetti Incident. That's Jake to a tee, but he's got allergies that prevent him from going on any kind of band-reuniting adventure. Me? Would I piss on the band if I found them on fire? Probably. If I had to go. But I wouldn't stand there chugging apple juice just to make it happen. I thought the band was fine, and I'll admit that "Welcome to the Jungle" single-handedly made the few hockey games I've been to tolerable. But Omar Bricks prefers a bit less cock in his rock, and regardless, these last few years I've been leaning toward less-predictable musical enjoyments, like bootleg tapes of shootouts at jazz clubs or insane people playing the Autoharp. Hey, like they say, whatever floats your boat, and I'm courteous enough not to point out the fact that your boat's floating in shit.

Once the bet was made, I headed straight out the door of Jake's house, which I think weirded him out a little since we were supposed to hang out. But Omar Bricks wastes no time when it comes to winning bets. If Slash or Duff or that blonde drummer dude were tied up in the trunk of a car at that very moment as it crept across the Mexican border under the cover of night, then every second could count. Plus, Jake's kind of a dork and it was a good excuse to get out of spending the rest of the night drinking lukewarm beer and playing Cock Rock Trivial Pursuit. When that's the alternative, every second really does count.

I started my search at the most likely place: the morgue. You know you need an appointment at that place? No shit, you can't just walk in and start opening drawers like they do in the movies. Fuck that bullshit. I decided you only really need an appointment if you're too fat to wriggle in through the window in the bathroom. I guess that's a disincentive to keep out the necrophiliacs, since I don't think anybody could fit through that little window with a hard-on.

In case you were ever wondering, you can see some shit at the morgue. You ever seen that movie Stand by Me? Well fuck that, this place is like the McDonalds of dead bodies. They've got them lying all over the place. And you don't have to walk half a day or bond with any little kids to make it happen, which is a bonus.

Lesson learned on this whole adventure: I pulled a boner by trying to go the legal route the first time around, signing in and all that, and completely ruined what would have been an awesome recreation of the Nuremberg trials using cadavers dressed in outfits from the janitor's closet. Even though I'd gone to the car for a ballcap disguise before wriggling through the shithouse window (brilliant, since everyone knows Omar Bricks never wears ballcaps), the jig was up pretty quick when the security guards came in and found all those dead bodies sitting at desks in the back office and Heil-Hitlering and all that, since they recognized me from the scene at the check-in desk and it didn't matter how still I stood or if my cadaver impression was like vintage Pacino.

I did finally escape after hiding in a drawer for about an hour until the coast was clear, which was about five minutes too long since those things don't vent farts very well at all. And my flight from the pseudo-law came at a high cost: I'm pretty sure I left my prized "Nagasaki" baseball cap in that corpse drawer. I've thought about going back to check the lost and found, but I figure they're just waiting to throw a net over the first guy who shows up at the morgue asking about a lost and found. Pretty much any reasoning you'd have would be net-worthy, I'm thinking.

The other day I ran into Jake and he asked me how the hunt for GNR was going. What a dick.

Bricks out.

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