I have been up eating Stay-Awake tablets for three days, so I am going to be blunt about this: if your CD collection does not include a copy of Dionne Warwick’s Greatest Hits, the Bacharach stuff, then you are either ignorant or too cool for your own good, or both. No doubt you have other character flaws as well, but I am not interested in your problems just now.

I am irritated–this speech is addressed to everybody in America; look for the condensed version to appear spray-painted on elevated trains throughout the country, and written on my back–I am irritated because I should not have to justify my fondness for Dionne’s work with Burt Bacharach. "Anyone Who Had a Heart" is delicate and haunting and beautiful, and if its echo-drenched baritone sax solo leaves you unmoved, then I am afraid that we cannot be friends.

If you have ever watched television in your life, then you are probably familiar with Dionne’s work as Official Celebrity Spokesperson for the now-defunct Psychic Friends Network. She has, of course, been a human shit magnet ever since. Bacharach has since won the affections of space-age lounge fans, but their affinity for the martinis-with-Angie-Dickinson lifestyle he respresents is as unfair to his Warwick-era work as his own subsequent descent into drecksville. Historical note: Burt Bacharach’s body was taken over by a pod person in 1973, when he stopped working with lyricist Hal David and took up with horrible smarm queen Carole Bayer Sager, who is is responsible for shit on wheels like "That’s What Friends Are For." Hal David once wrote a song called "Me Japanese Boy I Love You," but I am guessing that he was drunk or had a concussion or something. I wrote a poem after I hit my head on the microwave. Would you like to hear it? It’s about tuberculosis! Well, perhaps another time.

Anyway, before his long sugary slide into Christopher Cross territory, Bacharach was one of the finest songwriters-for-hire in New York City, one of the best since George "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" Gershwin, and Dionne Warwick remains his most nimble interpreter.

The latest re-jiggered "best-of " set to hit the stores, however, is not worth the plastic it was stamped on, because it is missing not only "Another Night" and "I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself" but also "Lookin’ With My Eyes," which is a catchy goddamn pop song despite its horrible horrible title. What you want is The Dionne Warwick Collection: Her Greatest Hits. You will know it by the mystifying checkerboard-pattern evening gown Dionne is wearing on the cover. Also by the fact that the rest of the cover is purple. It is the ugliest record I have ever purchased. The 24-track Collection cuts off in 1971, just before Bacharach went nuts and starting wearing goofy Bill Cosby sweaters everywhere. You do not need any Dionne Warwick song recorded after 1971. You do not want any Dionne Warwick album which includes a song called "Love Power." That is a good rule of thumb when purchasing any recording.

But you do not care about my advice, do you? You did not want to read my poem, and you do not want to hear about Dionne Warwick, because you cannot stop snickering about those stupid Psychic Friends Network commercials. You all can go to hell. The Psychic Friends Network, may it rest in peace, did not deserve all of the derision you and your jerky late-night talk-show-host buddies have heaped upon it. I say this, of course, because the dissolution of the Psychic Friends Network has left me with one fewer career option. I am looking mainly for jobs that involve sitting around the house answering the phone, but that do not require participation in the sex industry.

Pretending to be psychic is not as easy as it looks, and frankly, as long as I am lacking official celebrity approval, I fear that I will not be able to convince my clients of my legitimacy. Perhaps you would like to sample my psychic wares? Well, I will answer your psychic questions right here. Please begin transmitting: now.

Q: Will I ever get married?

A: Yes.

Q: Who am I going to marry?

A: Frankenstein.

Q: Who?

A: Here is a scene from your marriage:

You: Frankenstein, you can stomp around yelling about bones for another six hours, or you can sit down with me and try to make this marriage work.

Frankenstein: BONES!

Q: Bones?

A: Frankenstein is a cannibal.

That is the best I can do, and I have been practicing on my roommate for hours. By "practicing" I mean that I have been sitting in my closet in the dark, staring into a set of pinochle instructions. "You’re thinking of a number between one and ten," I would call out periodically, "and the number is...twelve! No! Ten! You are going to meet a dark, handsome stranger, and his name will be ‘Dr. Georgie Porgie Pie!’ Your opthamologist will die in a horrible fiery plane crash! All your children are going to marry each other!" Luckily my roommate was not home at the time.

P.S. Burt Bacharach’s 1998 album with Elvis Costello is a thing of beauty, mostly, except for that song about arithmetic. Please stop bothering me.