TALL UNGAINLY AMERICAN TOURIST TRIPS OVER PIERRE CELIS IN BELGIUM

BRUGES-An unidentified American tourist, reportedly seen all over Brussels in recent days consuming beers at a prodigious rate, last night stumbled over Belgian icon Pierre Celis in a cafe and fell to the floor. While Celis was unhurt and shrugged off the incident other patrons were outraged and seized the hapless man and his female companion, who had seemed unusually irate all evening, and turned them over to authorities. Several bystanders claimed that the American had actually been trying to jump over Celis as part of a bet with his boisterous tablemates, leading him to screan "Dat enkel gekke bespreking!" as he was hauled away.

The affair quickly escalated into an international incident and an emergency session of the United Nations has been called in New York for tomorrow. Belgian officials, which now consider the pair "persons of interest," assigned them code names (De Tijger van Bengalen and Pookie de Hand) and released them to the U.S. Embassy, which acknowledged that "we take this matter very seriously and apologize to our good allies. Belgium has never declared war on another country to our knowledge, and we'd like to keep it that way because, to be honest, their available fighting forces would probably outnumber ours at this point."

Back in the U.S., the White House, which spent most of the day explaining that President Bush misspoke when he originally asked "What's a Belgium?" after being told of the incident, later said that the president had wandered off somewhere but left behind a one-sentence official comment: "Heck of a job, Danny."

Presidential candidates of both parties quickly weighed in as well. Sen. John McCain told a crowd that "Americans are big and awkward and create havoc wherever we go and we will do so for 100 years if necessary. That wouldn't bother me." Sen. Hillary Clinton said that Belgium "sounds like an ideal place for Bill to campaign for the rest of the year," then added "I wouldn't mind having a shot and a beer there myself." Sen. Barack Obama offered to send pastor Jeremiah Wright to accompany the former president overseas but explained that "if he's ever said anything about Belgium in any of his sermons, I never heard a word of it. No, really." And, in a show of bipartisanship, Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis Kucinich released a joint White Paper entitled "Small Is Beautiful: Don't Tread on Us."

In other news, the Patio Opening Party at Northside is still on for Sunday, May 10. In an interview with local cable access personality Linda Ortino, a bartender who asked to be identified only as Sarah said that "I'm looking forward to it and hope it gets a little bit crazy. It's been awfully dull around here since our annoying Thursday night regulars apparently ran away somewhere together...not that there's anything wrong with that."

Speaking truth to power, Uncle Jack signing out.