Kenny Rogers Warns Manilow About Starting Restaurant Chain

Branson, MO - Having just gotten out of the red from what investment experts called the "dumbest financial move by a washed-up country singer in the 1990's," Kenny Rogers is extending some helpful advice to his musical comrade Barry Manilow.

"I just don't want him to make the same mistake I did," says a faded Rogers, "I thought everyone loved chicken and corn biscuits. I was wrong."

In 1991, Rogers mortgaged 30% of his assets to open "Kenny Rogers Roasters," the chain restaurant eerily similar to Boston Market, but with a more sinister, CMT-style kick to it. The current investment malady on the horizon that Rogers is referring to his Manilow's golden donut: "Barry Manilow's House of Pasta."

"What do these investment analysts know?" says a defiant Manilow, "who doesn't eat Pasta! Copa Cabana! For cryin' out loud."

"He doesn't know what he's getting into," insists Rogers, "if it wasn't for Dolly [Parton], I would have lost it all. I'd probably be doing priceline.com commercials opposite Shattner, snorting blow out of ashtrays and pumpin' juke boxes full of nickels at cheap (expletive) bars just to hear the old me croon out one from the glory days."

Manilow doesn't have far to fall until a similar fate as that which Rogers feared could be his. With recent appearances on American Idol and Dancing With the Stars, coupled with some sub-par plastic surgery, Manilow appears headed down the path of ashtray blow and juke-box juicing sooner than later. One unpublished report cited Manilow already coming out of a rehab meeting at the Betty Ford Clinic.

"'Barry Manilow's House of Pasta?'," asks Rogers, "who's he kidding. If Kenny [himself] can't make it in the biz, ain't no way sissy boy can." While Business Week and E! Entertainment Television remained glued to the story, carb bingers across the country are on the edge of their seats.