"Oh, mannn. This's gotta be the worst. A year ago, I was, like, doing so great, and now I get pushed into this classical marketing thing. I gotta admit it; it's a demotion, dude."

"Yeah, man, same with me. Total bummer. After I had consecutive double platinum releases with The Vermin and then with Asphalt, I figger'd I could do no wrong. I mean, I was making Homicide Records millions—where'd they be without me? So I made one mistake? I deserve this, now?"

"So, how'd that happen, anyway?"

"Well, you know, Asphalt was all dopers, so I scored some ketamine for them, and they all went into a K-hole and never came out."

"So?"

"So it was o.k. at first. I mean, we put them on stage supported by wires..."

"The critics called them marionettes."

"Yeah, but, I mean, the audience was cool with it—really dug it, in fact. It was the Road Kill tour anyway, and when maggots started crawling all over 'em it was, like, authentic."

"I heard the smell was pretty bad."

"Yeah, that's what put the law on us. I mean, how was I supposed to know that it was illegal to be transporting corpses around for entertainment purposes? What kinda law is that?"

"Yeah, well, at least you don't face no jail time like I do."

"Oh, that thing with Lance Sterling?"

"Yeah. I shouldda known there was gonna be trouble when he quit The Convict Boys to go solo, but I wasn't even officially his manager at the time. Sure, Psychotic Records was paying for the hotel and amenities, but I wasn't even there."

"So how many counts of statutory rape are you an accomplice to?"

"Well, four of the girls were under fourteen, but then there was that video they took with the chihuahua."

"Bummer."

"My lawyer says he can get me out of it, but it's gonna cost money..."

"Which we ain't gonna make working in classical."

"I dunno. I been thinking—if we can pull off a classical hit someway, we'd both be back on top with our own labels."

"Right, but how we gonna do that? I mean, nobody's listening to this stuff."

"It's all in the marketing, dude. Gotta make it edgy."

"Yeah, right. Edgy classical. Gonna use scenes from that chihuahua video as art on the CD insert?"

"That's not such a bad idea, but I was thinking more along the lines of, like, kiddie porn."

"Mannnn, we'll have the law on us again."

"Not necessarily. What if we had a photo in each CD that was so blurry that you couldn't tell what it was, but you put out the rumor on the Internet that it actually was kiddy porn."

"Hmm. Might work. But whadda bout the music? What music we gonna use?"

"What're you talking about, dude? I mean, who cares about the music? We just use some old tapes from the back catalogue—the older the better, so the company don't have to pay nobody no royalties. The old geezers like the old lo-fi recordings better anyways."

"Well, that's a good idea, but I been thinking. See, most of this classical stuff's pretty lame, right?"

"I'm hip it is."

"So we just take parts of each symphony or each choral or whatever..."

"Just the good parts."

"Right. That way we can get, like, ten or twelve opera symphonies on one CD. It don't cost us no more, but it's bonus value for the end user."

"Cool."

"And then, the one cool piece of classical music is this thing... lemme see, I wrote it down... yeah, here it is... something called The Carmina Bonanza. They use it in movies all the time. I figure that's the coolest piece of classical music, and it'll sell, so here's what we do. We digitally mix the Carmina Bonanza in with all these other lame classical pieces, and now we have Beethoven's Carmina Bonanza, Bach's Carmina Bonanza, Shakespeare's Carmina Bonanza."

"Rambrand's Carmina Bonanza! I can get the top DJ from Brooklyn to mix it it."

"Not only that, but I got these pics from the files of that old classical guy they useta have..."

"Whatever happened to him, anyway?"

"Who cares? They fired him, I guess. He was old. Anyway, here's pictures of what those old classical dudes looked like..."

"Yahh! Looks like my dad."

"Yer dad looked like this?"

"Well, not exactly. He just got that mean look on him when, y'know, I'd be in my room listening' to some jams, and he'd keep buggin' me about mowing the lawn and stuff. That's what he looked like then."

"Whatever. Anyway, I took these over to the art department and had 'em, like, retouched? And look at these new versions."

"Cool!"

"Yeah, I figger we call the album Scarlatti Scarface. Here's another one—Gangsta Mozart. Notice how we got his hands throwin' 'forks down.'"

"Huh?"

"You know—forks down; the universal symbol for gangs in The Folks. Ain't you never been in no gang?'

"Uh, sure I have."

"Here's another one. Vicious Verdi, the Godfather of Mob Opera. I thought we'd include a 32-page booklet of photos of mob killings with the CD."

"Cool! Say, how'd you, like, know all these guy's names?"

"Uh, they's written on the back of each pitcher."

"Dude, that's a fine idea! I mean, edgy! Pushing the envelope! How 'bout if we get a promo tie-in. Free classicals for all inmates doin' life without parole. Then we could do VH1 interviews of them talking about their favorite classics. What they listened to when they killed people."

"Awesome!"

"See, this classical music can sell; it just needs a couple a marketing geniuses like us."

"You know it, dude. I think we got a hit on our hands. We're gonna go straight to the top with this one. It's our ticket back!"

"Yeah, I can't wait to get out of this classical department back into real music."