It’s over! Carmine’s column canceled, replacement sought

I’m madder than Hawkeye Pierce when B.J. Honeycutt refused to say goodbye over the fact that my column will no longer appear on BrooklynPaper.com even though I am nowhere near jumping the shark, and now my poor readers — and that means you, sir — will be left out in the lurch!

Look, you all know that for the past five years or so I’ve garnered huge Nielsen ratings as the number-one draw on BrooklynPaper.com every Sunday morning, when millions of Brooklynites sit down with their cup of coffee, bagel, and laptop and read about all the terrible and great things that happen in Bensonhurst while you were away.

But for some reason — call it stupidity — my editor now thinks its time for the paper to move in a different direction — one that is decidedly Screecher-less.

Now I know exactly what you’re thinking: “Carmine, do you mean to tell us that we’ll have to somehow go on without your sage guidance, sending us down a infinite spiral that will invariably end with us lost somewhere in New Jersey or — worse — Staten Island?”

Well, the short answer is “No,” because as I’ve stated before my ironclad contract with Courier Life Publication states that stack of columns I’ve pre-written and have stored in my safe behind the portrait of my sainted mother will be printed for up to five years after my death, which I and my doctor can assure you isn’t coming anytime soon, based on my latest blood work.

But nowhere in the contract signed in said blood does it state that the words I work so hard to get on paper must appear on The Brooklyn Paper website, which apparently uses no paper at all, despite its lying moniker.

Still, I wasn’t going to go down without I fight, so I enacted the santa clause in my contract that allows me to pick my own replacement — even though you’ll still be able to read me on BrooklynDaily.com every Saturday! Nobody messes with Carmine, Carmine does the messing!

So who will it be? Who will boldly go where only Carmine has gone before?

Will it be Jim from Cobble Hill (if that really is your name!), who hates my column so much that he has to read me every week just so he can offer up his latest snide — and virtually anonymous — comments? He keeps saying Brooklyn can do better, but is he willing to step up to the plate?

Or what about John Wasserman — if that really is your name — who can’t wait to read my column every week along with the photographs written by my pal Bill Roundy?

Or how about Gary Buiso, a former editor of mine who now writes for the Post and falsely claims to have given me my voice?

Or maybe some weird mash-up of Wasserman and Buiso? Say Gary Wasserman?

Look, the fact is, if you want to be the next Carmine, you’ve got to get past me, and that means sending in your best column that you’d like to see published every Sunday in this very place.

And you’ll have to be willing to work for less then they pay me, which is saying something because it ain’t that much.

You can send you entry in a vanilla envelope to:

Replace Carmine Contest

The Brooklyn Paper

1 Metrotech Center North, 10th Floor

Brooklyn, NY 11201

Or, if you’re cheap like me and don’t want to waste a stamp, e-mail it to “ReplaceCarmine@cnglocal.com”

And to keep people motivated, I’ll keep writing in this space until we find a replacement.

So for now, screech at you next week!