Posted October 27, 200618 yr Paul McPike, a 30-ish grocery store employee from Medford, OR, placed himself firmly in the latter category this week when he filed a lawsuit charging that Green Day's "American Idiot" album is entirely made up of songs that he wrote when he was in high school. McPike says that he used to regale his high school pals with the "original" versions of "Jesus of Suburbia" and other classics back in 1992, and believes that some devious ex-pal surreptitiously recorded one of his performances and traded them to Billie Joe Armstrong and co. for 30 pieces of silver (or at least unlimited access to Green Day's backstage deli trays). A U.S. District Court Judge seemed to take McPike's pile of evidence (which consisted entirely of a copy of the album [American Idiot] and a claim that the lyrics sung on the album don't match those in the sleeve notes) with a barrel of salt, but suggested he could file a more detailed copyright infringement complaint in the future. An interesting suggestion -- and one that jogs our memory of the elementary school writing class where we wrote that line about "buying a stairway to Heaven"
