study done by friends of this reporter and other keen observers everywhere released stunning findings this week: Hip-hop artists, young and old, are now officially safer doing the hard-core gangsta stuff they rap about than being in a studio, awards show, or in any way involved with show business.

The study, mostly performed on couches in front of TV sets or while reading newspapers at desks in the office, listed a number of occurrences in the past month and other events in recent history that, though anecdotal evidence, lend great support to the theory rappers are getting fucked up way too much in the music business, actually making it less safe than the hard-ass streets they struggled for years to get out of.

Among the more notorious public incidents was the stabbing of a man Nov. 15 after he punched gangsta rap founder Dr. Dre in the face. A fellow hip-hop artist on Dre's label, G-Unit member Young Buck, was arrested for the crime Friday, while some speculate the beating was put on Dre by huge motherfucker Suge Knight, who has long had a falling out with his former label artist.

Both the punch and the stabbing didn't occur in Dre's famous neighborhood of Compton in Los Angeles, but in Santa Monica at the Vibe Awards, where Dre was receiving a lifetime achievement award. On the streets of South Central L.A., there's reason to believe Dre might have been better protected and not in such close proximity of rivals like Knight, also attending the show.

The very same day as the stabbing, Wu-Tang Clan co-founder Ol' Dirty Bastard dropped dead in the studio after complaining of chest pains. The Roc-A-Fella rapper's cause of death had yet to be determined, but he had recently served time on drug-related charges and was famous for his notorious history with drug and alcohol addiction. Had he been on the streets of his hometown of Camden, New Jersey, the possibility exists he might have been thrown into rehabilitation early enough to give him a chance against the physical deterioration that well may have killed him.

Excluding the famous shooting deaths of Tupac Shakur in 1996, and Notorious B.I.G. in 1997—which some have claimed as revenge for 2Pac's slaying—rappers have been getting brutalized by assaults and murder attempts in recent years, most frequently by others in the hip-hop business. Among other incidents, the shooting of Eminem protégée and Young Buck's G-Unit homie 50 Cent, the murder of Lost Boyz member Freaky Tah, and perhaps most saddening, the 2002 killing of old school rap group Run D.M.C.'s Jam Master Jay, a serious sucker-slayer who could really cut a record from side to side. Two years later, his murderer remains at large, and the police, as usual, clueless. Rest assured, if a member of ultra-white Bon Jovi got clocked outside the studio, New Jersey police would have descended on the crime with a swarm of teary-eyed uniforms, all humming "Living Under a Prayer" in slow monotone.

While the independent study refused make further comment on its own findings, this reporter is more than happy to do it for them: Rappers, Jesus Christ, get out of the business, save yourself. Pick up a guitar and learn to play bar rock. You don't see Hootie getting shot at every other week.

n a move that market analysts hope will save Christmas for the pharmaceutical industry, American drug giant Pfizer has launched a new marketing campaign this month to promote Heroin™, the company’s revolutionary new “wellness� drug.

Pfizer’s first ad, aired during a particularly painful recent episode of Joan of Arcadia, opted for stark minimalism, featuring a still shot of a satisfied Heroin™ customer, slumped over a very clean toilet, married with the slogan “Heroin™: The Other White Powder.� In addition to establishing their brand in the marketplace, this first ad served to differentiate Pfizer’s new product from rival Glaxo-Wellcome’s Angel Dust™.

Other early ads, run during football games, select MTV programs, and really sad chick flicks, have also been deliberately vague, aiming to raise brand awareness without mentioning the medication’s effects, enabling Pfizer to sidestep governmental regulations requiring pharmaceutical ads to disclose all of a drug’s side-effects. This tactic is especially shrewd with a product like Heroin™, since it’s tough to find a nice way to say “back-alley cocksuck� or “deadly constipation.�

While some consumer advocates have complained in the past that such direct-to-consumer marketing is predatory and harmful, drug companies like Pfizer argue that it’s actually very profitable.

“When there’s just some spaghetti-spined M.D. standing between customers and our products, consumer education becomes more important than ever,� contends Pfizer spokesperson Dennis Tanner. “Consumers shouldn’t have to trust that some kooky doctor is looking out for their best interest. They need a name they can trust, like Pfizer.�

Heroin™ is being marketed as a revolutionary “wellness� drug; one that Pfizer claims will “knock aspirin on its ass� and “make Prozac look like dogshit.� Rather than prescribing numerous non-Pfizer drugs to treat an array of patient maladies, the pharmaceutical giant hopes doctors will turn to their new wellness drug as a cure-all, one that leaves patients with a euphoric sensation of well-being, regardless of whether they are suffering from general anxiety, cancer, or baldness.

“That’s the miracle of Heroin™,� explained Tanner. “It doesn’t matter what’s wrong with you. From erectile dysfunction to agoraphobia, Heroin™ makes it all better.�

Due to FDA hang-ups regarding such a revolutionary new treatment, Pfizer has opted to avoid the usual years of getting-monkeys-high testing usually necessary to release a new drug. Instead, the drug giant has followed the lead of Merck’s Crack™ and AstraZeneca’s LSD™ by bypassing the usual established network of doctors and pharmacists, and is offering the drug through a network of authorized Pfizer representatives nationwide.

“Heroin™ will not be available in stores, but instead through a special network of independent distributors. It’s sort of like Amway,� claims the company’s latest ad. “Ask your dealer about Heroin™.�

According to my idiot neighbor Dale, a watched pot never calls the kettle black, or rust never sleeps, or something. The point of it being (I think) that you have to take the initiative if you don't want some weird German dude with no body hair eating your lunch. Because it's a dog eat dogfood world out there. And I have to admit that his confusing point really hit home for yours truly, and it gave me indigestion. It's clear that Omar Bricks has rested on his laurels far too long. It's time to build an underground city.

According to this issue of Omni magazine, which my neighbor Dale got a subscription to because for some reason he thought it was going to be full of cheesecake pics of the girls from those Robert Palmer videos back in the 80's, but it's actually all about science and bullshit future predictions, but according to Omni we're all going to be living in underground tunnels in, like, five years. That's because you can only fit so much shit on an acre of land, but if you tunnel down to the center of the earth, that's like five acres or something. Way more room. So it's basically free land, the kind of thing this country hasn't seen since the Gold Rush or back in the day when people would run around grabbing trees and lakes and crabs, yelling "Mine!"

Now you know Omar Bricks is going to jump the gun on that inevitability, sure as futuristic shit. So I immediately drew up plans to add an extension to my house—straight down. I figured it would be bitchin' to make another mirror image of my entire house underground, just the kind of thing to freak people out and make for some righteous "Dancin' on the Ceiling" video re-creation hijinks and whatnot. But then I realized that even if I pulled that off, I still wouldn't have a pool, so I decided to tunnel under my neighbor Dale's house as well, since that lazy fucker hadn't even read his own magazine. His loss is my real-estate gain. And from there, who knows? We could have a real Omarpolis on our hands in no time.

The more I thought about it, it became clear that I should probably start Project Dig under Dale's house, since it was his magazine and everything. All I needed to start was some kind of crazy-ass digging machine, since Omar Bricks has never been good with a shovel or backbreaking physical labor. I was drawing up plans for a complex Bricksmobile modification involving a gigantic diamond-tipped drilling cone piloted by test monkeys (just for the shit of it) while I waited in the drive-thru lane at Arby's, when the divine inspiration hit. Why waste precious Bricks-hours and other people's diamonds building a Digmobile that was just going to sit in the garage and collect dust when I was done, when I could just hire the crew of this Arby's to do the same thing for a day's wages? They all looked like strong, able-bodied men and boys, with hardly a green card between them. It was brilliant.

The sell took some doing, since I don't speak any Spanish, and one guy kept trying to give me curly fries, but within minutes I had Arby's entire workforce in my trunk, heading back to the Bricks Manor to make suburban history. Did I feel a little guilty about the whole thing? Of course. That guy behind me in the drive-thru lane probably sat there for hours before he realized nobody was coming to take his order. But you don't make history without some sacrifices.

After liberating a half-dozen shovels and a wheelbarrow from my other neighbor Mitch's garage, Project Dig started smooth like a shaved baby's ass. Those guys could tunnel like the Vietnamese, only without the distracting hats. Though it turned out Dale was a little smarter than I gave him credit for, since he rigged the land under his house with all kinds of crazy booby traps and shit, trick pipes blocking the way that spray ice cold water when you try to hack into them with an axe, electric cable shock traps, and a huge underground tank of shit I don't even want to know where he bought.

But rest assured that Omar Bricks and Team Dig went all Tomb Raider on that bullshit, and the dig went silky smooth until we got to the other side of Dale's house, when that unreliable fucker's foundation collapsed, caving in the tunnel back to the base camp behind us. Luckily for us, those Mexicans dig faster than I can breathe, and we came aground in Dale's neighbor's garden like some kind of gopher from hell. I don't even know who lives in that house, since the only time I'd ever been over there was the time Foghat came home drunk one night and passed out in the wrong doghouse, and some asshole woke me from a dead sleep like he was absolutely certain it was my dog that barfed on his garage. Some people.

So in the end, a valuable lesson was learned. You have to tunnel more than six feet deep if you plan on digging under a house that's full of heavy shit. Wiser and dirtier, I paid off the Mexicans and bought their silence with the promise of a ride back to Arby's.

True, the cause of underground living was set back a bit that day, but future underground-living generations will no doubt benefit from the knowledge gained. They won't have to suffer though having their neighbors' houses collapse into the earth, sending shockwaves through the ground that knock over their favorite Darts Champion trophy back home, cracking the top corner a little. But all the pioneers have to suffer; it's a fact of life. If that's what it takes to be remembered forever, then Omar Bricks says "Hey, fuck it."

Bricks out.

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