An up-and-coming record company executive goes to a nightclub hoping to discover the next Boz Scaggs or Agnostic Front. He strikes up a conversation with a Britney Spears lookalike, one thing leads to another, they go to his apartment and…

And he wakes up the next day with his head bandaged. As his fingers explore the gauze and surgical tape wrapping his noggin, he is overcome with an unbelievable realization. A realization so dark, so morbid, that he frantically runs out of his apartment and into the street screaming.

“My ears! They’ve stolen my ears!”

The Net is rife with stories like this. Urban legends that seem plausible at first, but rarely stand up to intense scrutiny. After all, it’s a well-known fact that music industry pros have the best ears on Earth, ears that can cut through the static and discover talent like The Verve Pipe and Marco Antonio Solis. Without their ears, record execs are nothing, and might as well go back to filling Slurpee cups, flipping burgers and asking customers if they want to “supersize their fries.”

But ear harvesting? We don’t think so.

“They seem so real!” is often the first response upon hearing one of these tall tales. That’s how urban legends spread. Like booking agents hiding under cars at the mall, music publicists driving their SUVs in reverse on Long Island freeways at night, sans headlights, or last year’s claim that Marilyn Manson played the kid in The Wonder Years. These days you just don’t know whom to trust.

What to do? Question the next email that claims that the service charges paid on tickets for the Bahamadia or U2 help pay for iron lungs for asthmatic roadies in Romania. Challenge the Web site that says it has proof that the Backstreet Boys owe their success to secret underground stem cell labs. And while we’re at it, you can ignore the right wing talk show hosts that still blame last year’s cancellation of the Diana Ross & The Supremes tour on Bill Clinton.

Yes, the Internet is a wonderful thing, but if we are to continue placing our trust in the bits and bytes streaming across the endless electronic corridors of copper and fiber encircling this planet, we must constantly be on the look out for bogus claims masquerading as facts. We must see through the charades that claim Ronald McDonald is a member of Insane Clown Posse, that Elton John once worked as a pro wrestler in the 60s under the name “Bo Bo Brazil,” or that Clear Channel Entertainment has acquired Heaven, lock, stock and halo, and is charging $500 per soul for passage through the Pearly Gates. It’s just not true.

After all, everybody knows that you can get into Heaven for much less than that. The $500 is for gold circle seating.