Commentary: Joe Bob's week in review

Uday and Qusay, the pig-Latin sons of Saddam Hussein, tried to shoot their way out of a palace as they were besieged by Special Operations forces, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, Apache helicopters, A-10 Warthogs and fighter jets. When it was all over, they were dead eatmay.

The Eiffel Tower caught on fire, but quick-thinking Parisians put it out with insults.

Ben Curtis of Kent, Ohio, a total unknown ranked 396th in the world who had never played in England before, won the British Open with the only sub-par score for the four rounds, holding off four of the world's best golfers on the final day: Thomas Bjorn, Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods and Davis Love III. The tournament was played in Sandwich, in the county of Kent, the namesake of Curtis' hometown, where he will be married next month. He has about three weeks now to win the lottery before going back to Mount Olympus.

Jugglers, tightrope walkers, acrobats and trapeze artists with the Moscow State Circus have been ordered by the European Union to wear hard hats while touring Europe this summer. European regulations require all workers employed at heights greater than the average stepladder to wear protective headgear -- but the Russian performers held a meeting and decided to defy the law. Especially incensed was Goussein Khamdouleav, who performs somersaults without a net on the highest indoor tightrope in Europe (45 feet). He pointed out that the helmet could slip, impair his vision, or throw off his balance. He obviously doesn't understand the meaning of the word "Brussels."

Idi Amin, the former strongman president of Uganda, lapsed into a coma, no doubt brought on by excessive guilt over those 200,000 people he accidentally killed and tortured in the 1970s.

The 11th Earl of Sandwich has set up a business to sell sandwiches. It was the fourth Earl of Sandwich who invented the sandwich during an all-night gambling session when he stuck a hunk of meat between two pieces of bread. The first Earl of Sandwich Cafe will open -- where else? -- at Disneyworld. The obscure eighth Earl of Sandwich scandalized the family by eating salads exclusively, but no one talks about that anymore.

Corpulent pornographer Al Goldstein had his harrassment conviction overturned by the New York State Supreme Court, which ruled that the prosecutor had stated 40 times in his summation that Goldstein had lied. (Attorneys are not supposed to testify or make conclusions.) Goldstein had left obscene phone messages on his former assistant's voicemail and depicted her in the pages of his magazine as . . . well . . . as just about everything you can accuse a woman of being.

The Artist Formally Known as Prince bought a $10 million mansion in Toronto, apparently because he's fed up with an American music industry that so far won't distribute his new album, "News." He has plans to sell the album directly through Amazon.com, but does he realize he'll now be required to double every song in French?

Congressman Pete Stark of California stood up at a meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee and addressed chairman Bill Thomas of California in the following way: "You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake, I said you are a fruitcake." At that point Thomas summoned Capitol Police, claiming he felt physically threatened. When police arrived, they scratched their heads and turned the matter over to the House Sergeant at Arms, who also scratched his head and did nothing. Democrats had been complaining about how Thomas was running the meeting to discuss a pension bill, especially when he wouldn't give them more time to study a text they had received just the night before. To head off a quick vote, the Democrats walked out to discuss the bill in the library. Stark lingered behind, had the confrontation with Thomas, and the cops were called. After the gendarmes left, both Democrats and Republicans rushed to the House floor to denounce one another. By the end of the day, they had exhausted all pastry expletives.

An auction of an Elvis Presley tooth failed to attract the minimum $100,000 asking price on eBay, snaggling the dreams of Flo Briggs, a Fort Lauderdale hairdresser who normally collects celebrity hair -- she has strands shorn from George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and John Lennon -- to promote her salon. The dental artifact was scaring off the electrolysis clients.

Scenes from our secure republic:

· Southeast Airlines announced plans to install digital video cameras throughout the cabins of all its planes in order to record all faces and all activities of all passengers on all flights and keep the information for ten years. The company may even use face-recognition software to match faces to names, creating a handy little database for resourceful divorce lawyers searching for information about just who sat next to Daddy on that business trip to Cancun.

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Joe Bob Briggs is the pen name of John Bloom, who writes several columns for UPI. Contact him at [email protected] or through his Web site, joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.