I Apologize To The President. Please Don't Ban My Books. [Mar 16, 2003]

Hello, friends, readers, and lovers both former and current. I've returned to your screens just in time, for soon American bombers will rain almighty death upon the infidels and not kill any civilians in the process. Thank goodness my return is today, and not, say, tomorrow. In this important historical moment, when four world leaders have just spent the weekend partying away their differences on the island of Ibiza, the opinions of Internet pundits could spell the difference between proper interpretation and tragic misinterpretation of meaningless semantics. If the world is staggering toward endgame, you'd better get the details right. As always, I'm the one you can trust.

Many thanks to the spectacularly untalented Rob Diener for filling in while I worked a very special kind of rock n roll voodoo on the citizens of Austin, Texas, during the South By Southwest music festival. I would definitely say that besides Willie Nelson, Supergrass, Mudhoney, Cat Power, Yo La Tengo, Hot Hot Heat, and Camper Van Beethoven, my band, The Neal Pollack Invasion, was among the 750 best-known festival acts. As yet, the local press hasn't published a review of my show, because they're afraid of getting put on my infamous blacklist, but one website dared post a picture. Doesn't that look like fun? Don't you wish you'd been here?

Sadly, my time at SXSW was not all blowjobs. While performing at a festival pre-party on Tuesday night, I made some unfortunate statements about President Bush between songs. Anyone who's met me will tell you that I would ordinarily never say anything like: "Texas, huh? Yee-haw, motherfucker! Man! You guys gave us President Bush! Thanks a lot, you bastards! Hey! Did you hear that President Bush is a faggot who likes to fuck babies up the ass? Did you know that? You should be ashamed!"

I did say it. But I was drunk, and also stoned, and also on cocaine and ecstasy. So at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. But because the music press is comprised of vipers who like to nip at the ankles of my career, my comments were widely reported and soon they spread over the Internet like a mysterious pneumonia. On Thursday, the ripples turned into waves, and then into a giant wall of water that threatens to destroy us all unless Tommy Lee Jones can figure something out in time.

A bookstore in Kansas City held a protest, encouraging everyone in town who's read my books to come toss them into a raging fire. The seven people who showed up were pissed-off and righteous. By Friday, radio stations across the country weren't mentioning my name at all, and I was mysteriously absent from all television. Bookstores in other cities followed Kansas City's lead. In Portland, I was denounced at Powell's by members of the Punk Porn Coalition For War. In San Francisco, 1500 people showed up at City Lights because they'd heard a rumor that I was going to give a reading and also because they thought I was Dave Eggers. No one attended the book-burning at St. Marks Bookshop in New York. That would have been SO 1998, and besides, Fischerspooner was playing in the secret basement of a club with an unpublished address in Greenpoint or maybe Red Hook.

What I'm really trying to say is that I'm sorry. President Bush is not a homosexual who fucks babies, at least as far as I know given the tight controls that the White House has placed on the media. I would like to retract my statement from South By Southwest, and instead offer this alternate statement:

"I believe it is the right of every American, especially after a few beers, to call the President a pedophiliac. However, I must admit that this particular President probably does not molest children. My big mouth has gotten me into trouble one time too many. Therefore, I retract everything I said and beg you to buy a copy of my new book, Beneath the Axis Of Evil, the story of a man who believes he is a messenger of God, which makes him arrogant, ignorant, and strangely paranoid. Then he will kill us all. It's fiction, of course."

I think this new statement will appease the press and the America's growing class of angry literary hipsters. Next time, I'm just going to say, "I love George Bush. I love America. Now I'm gonna play an uninformed song that uses fear-mongering to justify an ill-advised war."

That won't cause me any problems.