Congratulations Billy Idol!

Your peroxide hair, your sneer, your cheekbones. You established good looks for a generation, a movement. Your wannabes have long populated the subcultures you helped to established, feebly aping at the combination of cool disregard and respect you managed effortlessly for so many years. But you’ve fallen out of the public eye more of late. Showing up in the Wedding Singer was a big deal for your fans, and really who could blame them? You’ve been off raising kids you fathered with all those weird looking hot chicks we all never got to fuck in the eighties or some shit, leaving those of us who used to rely on you to our own devices.

Today those devices will include taking an entire building full of people hostage until you agree to arrive via plane and play a brief, casual concert for the hostage-takers and the hostages alike, so that everyone can enjoy Billy Idol’s music together one last time before they’re dragged off to jail for the rest of their life or shot in the face, as sometimes happens in hostage situations.

You’ll refuse to do it at first, but then the queen will show up in her queenly hat and ask you really nicely and, since you’re British, you’ll have to go do it. You’ll hop on her helicopter, reminding her of how rusty you are, and she’ll say pish posh or whatever it is that queens say and try to boost your confidence.

It won’t work.

You’ll arrive at the office complex where the hostage situation has developed a nervous wreck, strung out on a lack of sleep, too much coffee and not enough contact with whoever the fuck you spend all your time with these days. You’ll chew your lip, look around nervously and then walk into the office complex, where you’ll be greeted with great accolade, even though you’ll be wearing your dad clothes. The hostage situation will just be so excited to see you, they won’t be able to contain themselves. They’ll give you a microphone and tell you to just have fun, and you’ll do your best, apologizing for how rusty you are.

You’ll start in to Rock the Cradle, doing your best to make an acapela version of it happen, but it’ll come out all wrong and everyone will know it. Still, you’ll soldier through, for England and the lives at stake and just to prove you still got it, pulling off a mediocre performance that leaves everyone feeling a little uncomfortable and more than a little silly that they took a whole bunch of people hostage to see a concert that you really didn’t want to perform.

They’ll apologize to you profusely and surrender to the police unceremoniously, walking out without you. The queen will give you some sort of fancy cross and thank you and all of those fans will realize that, great as you were, you’re older and different now, and they need to stop worshipping you and find their own lives at last. Or, at the very least, take anger management classes so they don’t try to resolve all of their various conflicts using hostage taking anymore.

Congratulations Billy Idol!

Congratulations on Flipping the Van!

Storm’s been a brewing for a while. Everyone’s just been waiting around for shit to change, for the world to get better, but not you. You’ve had just about enough, thank you very much, and you’re fucking sick of it.

So when you visit the corner store and they’re out of both Whatchamacallits, Corona and Lucky Strikes you’re going to jump across the country and smack the clerk in the fucking mouth when he asks if you’d like Marlboros instead. Then you’ll kick him and leap back over, shouting at the other customers to follow you.

You’ll storm out of the store and the customers, not wanting to miss whatever you’re going to do, will follow. The lot of you will spill out into the street and, following your lead, walk across the street to McDonalds where you’ll kick in the door, mob in tow, and storm up to the counter.

Ronald McDonald will be there, inexplicably polishing a glass. When you and your posse enter he’ll look up, like he’s ready for anything, like whatever shit you’re about to bring he can take it.

Clown boy will be wrong though. You’ll slap your hands on the counter, get his attention and he’ll say “Yes?” in his best What the fuck are you doing here? voice.

Your mouth will get real tight and you’ll pause for a moment, like you’re thinking about what you want to say to him, and then you’ll shake your head like you couldn’t find the words. In your mind you’ll be listing off grievances about how he treats his workers, children, and customers. You’ll want to scream that he’s ruining America and our image in the world.

You’ll want to say so much, but you know that almost anything at all would be too much. So you’ll punch him in the face, jump over the counter and kick his supine form for about a minute before you spit on him.

“Fuck you,” you’ll say as you turn to hop over the counter and your mob, except for a few people who rush the counter to get free burgers while McDonald is down, will follow you back out into the street.

When you get back out you’ll walk around aimlessly for a while, trying to remember if anywhere nearby sells Lucky Strikes and considering your rage while your new mindless followers await your next order.

You’ll want to tell them to rebel, to go off and change their own lives so you can do some good with your power. But you’ve realized words won’t work too well for you today, and that there are better ways to echo through history.

After this realization you’ll wander a little more, stopping briefly to rob a Dairy Queen and supply your followers with ice cream. You’ll all leave smiling and the employees of the DQ, except for the gagged and bound general manager, will join your merry band.

You’ll barely be halfway through your blizzard before you find the perfect opportunity for your lesson: a television news broadcast crew.

A male anchor will be standing there in front of a school, talking about how kids are killing other kids at other schools. He’ll have perfect teeth and hair, a fake tan, and a super expensive suit that still somehow looks cheap.

A camerawoman with a huge harness on will be filming him, surrounded by PAs and ACs all of whom will look tired as fuck of his shit. They’ll look like they’re waiting to be called to arms for rebellion.

So when you walk right up and punch the anchor in the face, which the camera gets awesome footage of, by the way, they’ll immediately feel bound to you. They’ve all wanted to do that for years, they just haven’t had the courage.

They’ll all gather round the anchor with you and kick him while he’s down. He’ll die later from his injuries, but if it makes you feel any better he barely gave any money to charity and he once had sex with a twelve year old Thai girl at a coke party.

And once you start pushing against the van they won’t need a single verbal command to know to join you and shove as hard as they can. And when that van flips over and shears off its own broadcast tower you’ll know that the first shot of the revolution has sounded.

Another news crew will pull up across the way to get some footage, but once you and your boys turn your attention towards them they’ll speed off so fast you could swear they’d been driving the Delorian.

Get used to the power. The next few months are going to pretty fucking wild for you.

Congratulations on Flipping the Van!

Congratulations on Becoming a Successful Song Parody Artist!

Today your music career will start with a bang when you replace the majority of the lyrics to a contemporary pop song with the word “butt” and sing it on a train. You’ll catch the attention of a low level music executive, one who still rides the train and only has one mistress, and he’ll give you some studio time to produce your incisive social commentaries masked as song titles with bodily functions in them.

We can’t really get too deep into the details here, since we partied pretty hard last night and are having a rough day today. We can’t remember much after we were collectively thrown out of a TGI Friday’s, let alone uncover the particulars of your asinine fate, so just do your thing and everything will turn out great.

And congratulations on becoming a successful song parody artist. If you really want to blow everyone’s mind, parody other song parodies. They’ll be all “Daaaaaaamn.”