Since they were once as well-loved as the Knack, Pink Lady, or Clara Peller, you may know quite a bit about the Beastie Boys. You've read that one of 'em used to date Molly Ringwald, probably heard that Mike D. is the Mikey of LIFE cereal fame, and might have the uncomfortable suspicion that Ad Rock is an actor. What you may not be aware of is that these guys are Milken-like financial conjurers, effortlessly spinning dimestore lanyard into Fifth Avenue dukey rope. As MCA says, "You give my man Mike D. two dollars, and in no time, boom-boom-boom, it's out on the street, turned over a hundred times." Why, Professor Griff might even say it's in their blood. In an uncharacteristically generous mood, both Mike D. and MCA shared some of their secrets, presenting this detailed plan for parlaying our millennial scandal sheet into a powerful entertainment empire.

MIKE D.: Now let's say we want to jack up the MOTORBOOTY press run, right? The first thing we need to do is pull in some quick funds. Piece of cake.

MCA: That's when you get the Cowbird Game goin' on.

MD: What you do is, go down to Florida and steal a chimp.

MCA: Then you get a small can of blue paint--maybe a little mettalic sheen--and you paint the chimp. Pull its arms off and add some wings. Make it look exotic-like.

MD: Put the chimp in a cage and go to where the rich hang out, like the Upper East Side in New York. Make up a name for the chimp. This is a rare...

MCA: ...Ethiopian Cowbird. Her name is, uh, Dwight.

MD: And all of a sudden...

MCA: ...Bing-bang-boom--turnin' over Cowbirds--cash money.

MD: You're selling those Cowbirds for two, three hundred dollars.

MCA: Then you hit the Diamond District.

MD: That's right. The jewelry district. Then you can really rock it, because the people up there are already in a buying mood, and they don't want to miss out on a bargain. We'll look like bums, so they'll just assume it's a stolen bird. Then, straight up from Cowbirds, you get into trading for guns.

MCA: Guns for blow.

MD: That's kind of inseparable. The Cowbirds, the guns, the blow. That market is the same people. Now what can we do with MOTORBOOTY? You guys have a couple of people doing everything, so what we'll do is diversify, right? That's when we'll start to get all the money from all the different areas other than the magazine. You guys will be selling more 40-o's than Ice Cube. Oh man. It's like boom-boom-boom!

MCA: In the back of the magazine you'll catalogue all the stuff to send away for...

MD: Start doing a little advertising here and there in the magazine. The MOTORBOOTY Tour Jacket.

MCA: Sell a couple kilos of blow and before you know it--BINGO!

MD: BOOM!

MCA: Move a couple of keys. Send D. out on the street for you for a couple days, and pretty soon you'll be tradin' guns for blow.

MD: And after the guns for blow thing, that's when you get Tom Wu and his money making techniques involved. Tom has a TV campaign going. He may as well be his own network, that's how much time he buys. Tom's pitch is, "If you don't have the guts to get rich, you deserve to stay poor."