Pikachu Swag!

Merry Sanchez, exhilarated on Thanksgiving morning, bounded up the six flights of stairs to his hovel, with visions of holiday festivities dancing in his mind's eye! For Thanksgiving is the day that generous Sanchez invites his friends over to his home, hauls the boxes upon boxes of unopened promo CDs up to the roof, cracks the jewel-boxes with a claw hammer, and everyone has a grand old time hurtling the aluminum minifrisbees down at the intersection and watches them bust on the asphalt! It's a tradition that sentimental Sanchez has carried on every November since his career as an all-pro audio-pundit began! The invention of the Ancient Rite of the Tossing of the Compact Discs began when superrespected Sanchez was asked to submit his top 10 CDs of the year to some zine or other. Stymied Sanchez was, of course, at a loss, as he doesn't bother to listen to the records he reviews. So clever Sanchez decided he would rate the CDs simply on the basis of how spectacularly they shattered upon encountering the ground! That first year?mawkish Sanchez recalls wet-eyedly?Dionne Farris came in at number one for landing square in the back of a pickup truck, while Alice in Chains came in at number two for crashing right in front of a Domino's delivery guy on a bike, who swerved into the wrong lane and almost got run down by an oncoming Buick! Noting that both aforementioned records were Columbia product, satisfied Sanchez has savored the savvy of Donny Ienner ever since!

Not only this, but the good Lord had granted humble Sanchez a wonderful item with which to lead off his holiday column?Paul McCartney is dating an amputee! Supersly Sanchez discovered this while slurping his borscht at Veselka?he noticed that some suckerish lone diner had headed off to the bathroom, leaving his copy of the Globe on the table. Criminally minded Sanchez held the tabloid on his lap when the guy came back to discover the harsh realities of the law of snooze-you-lose; this fellow certainly had snost and lost. Rapt Sanchez devoured the piece about the multimillionaire Liverpudlian's one-legged squeeze. The woman, 31-year-old Heather Mills, a former model (go figure), was hit by a cop on a motorcycle in 1993. Sympathetic Sanchez is very glad that the woman lives in England, where CHiPS reruns aren't quite so common as on this side of the Atlantic. Sanchez, too, is traumatized by the sight of Erik Estrada, but only because Sanchez's teeth are wide-gapped and snaggly, making the smooch of Sanchez not unlike running one's tongue across a defective kalimba. But Sanchez digresses. Sanchez noticed that four incredulous NYU girls were gaping at the sight of Sanchez reading the magazine hidden under the table and giggling?for from their perspective it appeared that pervy Sanchez was staring into his crotch and guffawing as beet-colored soup dribbled into his facial hair. Elsewhere in the Globe, recent brain-surgery patient Annette Funicello complains that Judge Judy is "too mean," and a story titled "First Lady's First Lover," claims that "the man who made a woman out of Hillary" happened to be a "Jim Carrey look-alike."

And so superhappy Sanchez skipped home, jaunted up the stairs, opened the door, and was assaulted by the sight of his Sister sitting?regal as Jay-Z in his Scarface reenactment of Mariah's "Heartbreaker" video bubblebath scene?absolutely buried in bootleg Pikachu merch! A poorly embroidered Pikachu cavorted on a cap pulled down over her eyes, her mouth was muffled by a Pikachu scarf, a line of can-can dancing Pikachus made their way up the arms of her long-sleeved t, over which she wore a short-sleeved t depicting a Pikachu bounding from his red and white Pikachu ball. Pikachu headbands were wrapped around her pants' legs like so many zebra-striped fluorescent bandannas up and down the jeans of Bret Michaels! And the sofa on which the Sister of Sanchez smugly sat was crowded with plush stuffed Pikachu toys of varying sizes, all set up to be staring at the door.

Instantly the source of the dough was as plain as a bite of a Beatles melody in a Noel Gallagher song to shattered Sanchez; "'WHO DARES INTRUDE ON THE ARMIES OF THE SISTER OF SANCHEZ,' booms the power-mad Sister of Sanchez!" the power-mad Sister of Sanchez boomed.

"The Sister of Sanchez has heartlessly stolen the only thing Sanchez has in the whole of his hideous little world!" wracked Sanchez screamed back. "HIS COMPLIMENTARY PROMOTIONAL RECORDED PRODUCT!"

The Sister of Sanchez lifted her Pikachu lid slightly to show her eyes and blinked at superdestroyed Sanchez, who realized that there were more plush stuffed Pikachu toys at the edges of his peripheral vision. In fact, there were Pikachus on the dresser, the television, the television stand, the haphazard stacks of VHS tapes, and on the shelves around the entrance to the apartment. Ambushed Sanchez was surrounded. "How could you?" Sanchez yelped.

"'I am inexplicably driven to medicate myself and the ocean of pain within me with a restful round of retail,' the Sister of Sanchez sniffles," sniffled the Sister of Sanchez, who then removed her Pikachu hat and sang sweetly to the ceiling; "Tell me why-ee?" Then the Sister of Sanchez shook it off. "'You ought to come to the suburbs for the parental experience anyway,' the Sister of Sanchez blithely says with a wave of her arm," waved the Sister of Sanchez blithely. "How can Sanchez stand the holiday commuter crowds in this fragile state?!" hoarsed Sanchez.

The Sister of Sanchez jingled a key in Sanchez's face. "'There was enough cash left over to rent a Lincoln Town Car,' she said, jingling the rental-car key in Sanchez's face."

Supa-sucka-fied Sanchez was of course Shanghaied into driving the boatlike vehicle while his Sister smoked pinners and repeatedly rewound and sang along with a cassette tape of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." Sanchez was numb and wordless by the time he sat staring at his yams?the yams are really all that interest superpicky Sanchez in the Thanksgiving genre of foods?and so of course was assaulted by his Ma with cheery attempts to engage him in a conversation. "I watched a fascinating documentary on VH1 about this guy?such terrible things that happened to him?he was in this band called Crush, and his Dad was Australian, and he got into this accident and had to have extensive facial reconstruction surgery?what was his name?" the Mother of Sanchez blathered, trying her hand at feigning a shared interest with Sanchez. "Billy Joel couldn't say enough nice things about the fellow. Oh yes, I remember! Chris something?Chris Gaines. It's people like that that make you think that awful facial hair looks good on you, too, isn't it?" Psychologically pulverized Sanchez shoved a forkful of yam into his maw. That's when the Sister of Sanchez leapt up from her seat, unbuckled her belt, and flashed a fraction of ass upon which the eyes and pointy, bent ears of a yellow cartoon animal were revealed. "'Lookit my new tattoo,' the emphatic Sister of Sanchez exults!" exulted the emphatic Sister of Sanchez.

NEXT WEEK: a thorough Sanchezian dissection of the ex-Slacker King's epic shrugging off of genderlessness in favor of an ersatz Stax-horn-laden electrocockrockery opus titled Beck's Had Sex. Sanchez's copy of which, not incidentally, got sold by his Sister, too.