That's when your heartaches begin

There is no sadder day than the one in which a man must sell his Elvis, and so our hearts are with you now, Governor B. It hasn't been easy, these past many months. They've knocked you down, stepped on your face, slandered your name all over the place, but selling your Big E is the cruelest cut of all. Life-sized, life-like, and like life, soon gone. "I'm all shook up," said the man affectionately known as Blaggo. "That Elvis was a gift from my mother, God rest her soul. She's not dead, but she's dead to me... Well, I suppose 'I'm dead to her' might be a better way to phrase that, but anyway you look at it, a part of me is gone - the part that had a giant Elvis." Rod Blagojevich may indeed have loved his Hillbilly Cat, but he had an odd way of showing it, keeping the plaster pill popper locked away in a Chicago storage space on which he had never paid rent. In his defense, Boyer-Rosene Moving & Storage had a 'Governors Get In Free' policy until January 2005. The King and other possessions were auctioned off yesterday to pay for back rent. Keith Rich was the lucky purchaser of Sir Swivel Hips, which he plans to give to his mother as a present. The $20,500 winning bid was seen as proof positive that the economic downturn has not yet gone far enough. "Dust to dust, mother to mother," mused the misty-eyed former Governor. "Despite the sentimental value, I'd never pay that kind of money to get it back, even when my ordeal is done and I'm raking in the big celebrity bucks. I can always watch my own imitation in front of a mirror, and besides, my mom just stole the damn thing from the front of a Generous George's Pizza Parlor."