Welcome to the bungle

It’s the biggest shocker of 2007. Brace yourself. Are you sitting down? Axl Rose and his latest incarnation of Guns N’ Roses have cancelled their planned January 10 performance at Arco Arena. Axl, of course, is widely hailed as a respectful and timely entertainer who wouldn’t dream of missing a gig, starting a riot by cutting one short or refusing to play because someone wouldn’t let him drink beer on stage. “How could this have happened?” irrelevant-music fans from all over greater Sacramento are asking themselves. For their sakes, some theories:

1. Axl needed time off to care for his ailing grandmother.

2. Fans have come to expect show cancellations, and Axl didn’t want to disappoint them.

3. More fisticuffs with Tommy Hilfiger knocked loose his hair extensions.

4. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth really got to Axl; now he’ll just cancel a show a month in advance, rather than letting fans pollute the air by driving to an arena where he won’t show up anyway.

5. He was discovered by a team of physicians to have been medically unconscious since 1994.

6. Only nosebleed seats sold tickets; fans reportedly were afraid to get too close a look.

7. Vince Neil sobered up long enough to remember that he said he would kick Axl’s ass 15 years ago, and finally has.

8. A recent survey reported that most people would rather pay $37.50 to sit in an empty arena than listen to Axl try to hit those high notes.

9. Axl rode a pink unicorn off to some fantasy land where people are actually eager for the release of Chinese Democracy.

10. Axl heard there’s a G’N’R cover band coming to a downtown club this week, and figured they would sound better than his G’N’R cover band. (There isn’t, but they would.)