Last week theater critics across the U.S. published their reviews of the new Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, directed by Julie Taymor (The Lion King, the recent film adaptation of The Tempest) and featuring songs by U2′s Bono and the Edge, despite the fact that the $65 million production doesn’t officially open until March 15. But since Spider-Man has been in previews since November 28, with its opening delayed at least four times since February of last year, and because full-price admission is being charged for these “work in progress” performances (tickets can cost up to $275), critics rationalized that the public should know what it’s paying for.

A tangled mess, apparently. In his February 7 review Ben Brantley of the New York Times wrote, “‘Spider-Man’ is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst,” while the Washington Post called it “a shrill, insipid mess,” the Los Angeles Times said the stunt-filled show “can’t find its bearings as a circus spectacle or as a rock musical,” and the Chicago Tribune declared that Taymor’s production suffers from “a problem that has similarly ensnared far humbler new musicals: an incoherent story.” New York magazine’s Scott Brown had a more positive reaction, describing Spider-Man as “hyperstimulated, vivid, lurid, overeducated, underbaked, terrifying, confusing, distracted, ridiculously slick, shockingly clumsy, unmistakably monomaniacal and clinically bipolar.”

See what I mean? “Vivid.” Not bad!

To give credit where credit’s due, Taymor’s never been shy about swinging for the fences — The Lion King‘s worldwide gross of nearly $4 billion since its premiere in 1997 has shown that her creative risks can pay off handsomely – and U2 wouldn’t have become the biggest band in the world if Bono and the Edge had stayed in their anthem-rock comfort zone for 35 straight years. Still, they’ve got their work cut out for them with Spider-Man, which is why I’ve come up with a list of suggestions in the hopes that they’ll be able to salvage their creation by March 15 … or April Fool’s Day … or a year from now … or whenever this show finally “opens.” In the meantime, the poor bastards will have to make do with sold-out performances most nights of the week.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger may be itching to get back on the big screen now that he’s no longer governor of California, but since former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is also looking for work, how about hiring him to play the Living Pharaoh, a minor villain from the Spider-Man comic books? Don’t be surprised, though, if he says he wants to quit the show during previews and return to the Middle East, then shows up on opening night and claims, “I’m still the Pharaoh. I’m just delegating authority to my understudy.” He has a history of this sort of behavior.

• Also from the world of politics, former congressman Christopher Lee (R-NY), who recently resigned from office, would make a great addition as the Incredible Hulk. I mean, have you seen that photo of his rippling six-pack that he sent to Julie Taymor? Yeah, so it was intercepted along the way by a different woman, who thoughtfully reported it to the proper authorities — in this case, the gossip website Gawker.com — but now, more than ever, Lee understands Spider-Man‘s moral: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Granted, Representative Lee didn’t exactly abuse his power when he attached that photo to an e-mail and misrepresented himself as 39 instead of 46, but he sure did abuse his abs — I mean, look at those beauties!

• Eric Massa, the Democratic congressman who, like Lee, represented western New York until resigning almost a year ago after being accused of sexually harassing male members of his staff, can play a new villain named the Tickler. (Extra security will be needed for the cast and crew.)

• While we’re on the subject, a little onstage nudity never hurt anybody. Are Tony Award winners (and comic-book-movie veterans) Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson itching to get back to the Great White Way this year?

• And speaking of things that do hurt, Spider-Man‘s preview audiences have observed some hair-raising technical glitches since the end of November, including stunt double Christopher Tierney’s 35-foot plunge into the orchestra pit when his flying harness snapped. Earlier, during rehearsals in October, stunt double Kevin Aubin broke both of his wrists when a catapult effect went awry.

(With any luck, both performers have health insurance, something Spider-Man’s alter ego, freelance photographer Peter Parker, presumably lacks. Think through your repeal of that universal health-care package carefully, Congressman Boehner, or “Mr. Spidey Goes to Washington and Kicks Your Ass” may send a touring production to your town.)

Obviously, no one wants to see an innocent stuntman get hurt, but rubbernecking is a part of human nature, so why not give the audience what it pretends it doesn’t want and drop actual celebrities from the ceiling of the Foxwoods Theatre? Call it community service for repeat offenders like Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Mel Gibson, all of whom could stand to be scared straight, and though I wouldn’t say WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange is a celebrity, the U.S. government has informed me that he qualifies as one for the sake of this sideshow attraction.

• You know what? Forget the flying harnesses and wires. Put failed senatorial candidate and ex-witch Christine O’Donnell on the theater’s payroll and let her work up some spells to make the actors playing Spider-Man and the Green Goblin levitate. I hear she could really use the rent money.

• James Franco costarred as Harry Osborn, Peter Parker’s mood-swingin’ frienemy, in the three Spider-Man movies released between 2002 and 2007, after which he reenrolled at UCLA to earn his undergraduate degree in English, then moved to New York to attend Columbia University’s MFA writing program, NYU for filmmaking, and Brooklyn College for fiction writing. Now he’s going after a Ph.D. in English at Yale and taking classes at the Rhode Island School of Design while also opening art exhibits in Berlin, writing a collection of short stories (2010′s Palo Alto), directing short films and documentaries and entering them in festivals, making guest appearances on General Hospital, and cohosting the Oscars on February 27, where he’s nominated for Best Actor for 127 Hours, which is apparently the number of hours in a day on the planet where Franco lives.

Raise your hand if you think he should rewrite the script for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. (Don’t really raise it. I can’t see you, remember?) Much of Franco’s graduate work centers on adolescents already, so he knows the mind-set of an insecure teenager like Peter Parker, plus he can probably churn out a first draft faster than it took me to recite his academic credentials. Hell, if he wants to paint the sets for free and try his hand at punching up Bono’s lyrics, I say let him — cheap creative labor is hard to find.

• I have an alternate option: For the past four years IBM has been developing a multimillion-dollar supercomputer named Watson, whose sole purpose is to beat puny humans on the game show Jeopardy! Look, if that thing’s not going to cure cancer, then put it to work rewriting Spider-Man. Then again, if the show’s producers were to pay IBM $5 million only to have Watson churn out a three-hour musical about a newspaper employee named Peter Parker who’s really an alien from the planet Krypton, there’d be hell to pay.

• There are two legitimate superpowers in the world right now: China and Justin Bieber. The former will be needed to bankroll the many changes necessary to make Spider-Man a triumph — I think another billion should do it — and the latter should be drafted to take over the role of Peter Parker and ensure that this show breaks even by playing for years and years, or least until the 16-year-old singer’s anti-puberty medication wears off. Now that he’s lost the Best New Artist Grammy, which is almost always a career jinx, the Bieber be unstoppable. (Esperanza Spalding, I’m sorry for your loss. I mean, your win. I mean … yeah.)

• Since no one seems particularly enamored of the title Turn Off the Dark, I’d like to suggest that a contest be held to create a new one. Users of Twitter, the popular microblogging site, have already brainstormed some humdingers, including:

• “Spider-Man: More Like ‘Turn Up the Suck’! LOL … Anybody Got a Spare Student Ticket? I Really Want to See It. Tweet Me Back”;
• “Spider-Man: OMG Once I Found a Spider in My Tub and I Was Like Eww Gross”;
• “Spider-Man: Did You Kill It? They’re Good Luck So I Hope Not”;
• “Spider-Man: Is That True?”;
• “Spider-Man: Helloooooo! #SpiderSuperstitions”;
• “Spider-Man: Is Tobey Maguire Gay? No Judgment, Just Curious”;
• “Spider-Man: You’re So Vain You Probably Think This $65 Million Broadway Musical Is About You”;
• and, almost as enigmatic as Turn Off the Dark, “Spider-Man: I Can’t Believe I’m Eating Lunch at Arby’s for the THIRD TIME THIS WEEK.”

• According to Billboard.com, Australian soft-rock duo Air Supply are collaborating on a jukebox musical based on their canon of hit love songs, which includes “All Out of Love,” “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” “The One That You Love,” and “Lost in Love.” But what if they take the rock-musical reins of Spider-Man from Bono and the Edge? Already, future hits like “Caught in Your Web of Love,” ”Spider Love Is Better Than Muskrat Love,” and “Title TBD (But It’ll Probably Have the Word ‘Love’ in It)” are dancing through my head!

Air Supply’s Russell Hitchcock, who met musical partner Graham Russell in the early ’70s in an Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar, says he has no interest in acting in the group’s musical “unless there’s a part for an old man by the fire or something.” Well, what if the producers of Spider-Man set you on fire instead, Mr. Hitchcock, and send you running up and down the aisles of the Foxwoods Theatre in a flame-retardant Human Torch costume? You can’t deny that it would literally reignite Air Supply’s career.

• In the process of casting Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Taymor and the show’s producers broke a long-standing theatrical tradition: they failed to hire movie stars. Last February, in an article about Broadway plays that are revived more frequently than others, the New York Times‘s Stuart Miller wrote, “Most producers say that if George Clooney, Harrison Ford or Meryl Streep wanted to star in a show, even if a previous production had closed a year earlier, they would find investors.”

Okay, so Spider-Man isn’t a revival, but if reviews could kill, it’d be in serious need of resuscitation by now. So bring on Clooney as Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson, Ford as Peter’s uncle Ben, and Streep as his aunt May. And if they refuse to play ball, just show them Mel Gibson’s new full-body cast.

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Last week Captain Owen Honors, commanding officer of the U.S. Navy’s USS Enterprise aircraft carrier, was relieved of his duties after Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported on videos he’d made for the ship’s ”movie night” in 2006 and ’07, including one in which he used the word “fag” to insult a fellow officer. Boldly going where no earthbound Enterprise captain had gone before, the fellow officer was played by Honors via the magic of editing and camera tricks.

The Navy’s message is clear: self-deprecating meta-comedy and impressive low-budget production values will not be tolerated in today’s military.

Or, if you want to look at it from the civilian side of things, it’s good and right to support the troops who protect our freedom, but let’s not go nuts supporting their freedom of speech.

In the video described above, which can be viewed at Wired.com, Honors, dressed as a “cool” Air Force aviator, calls Honors, dressed as a “nerdy” Surface Warfare Officer, a “fag SWO boy.” But he’s using the gay slur the way kids in Little League use it, before they have any real clue what homosexuality is — or, for that matter, who Peter Sellers and Dr. Strangelove are.

On January 5, one day after Honors’s dismissal, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “Are Americans Wusses or Just Fond of Trash Talk?” in which Jeffrey Zaslow writes that “linguists are noticing that our word choices [regarding issues of human weakness, such as 'wuss'] are often unwittingly rooted in sexism or homophobia.” Late last month Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell called the United States “a nation of wusses” after the NFL postponed an Eagles-Vikings game on account of snow, but when asked if he knew the origin of the offending word — a combination of “wimp” and “pussy” — he admitted he hadn’t a clue.

“There are those who believe a word ought to always mean what it always meant, but that’s not how language works,” Michael Adams, an English-language historian and author of Slang: The People’s Poetry, told Zaslow. “Words like ‘wuss’ and ‘wussy’ can end up de-vulgarized after awhile.”

A word like “fag,” on the other hand, is by no means devulgarized or any less charged in today’s culture — unlike “gay,” it doesn’t have a sex-neutral meaning unless you’re a smoker who lives in England — but it’s hard not to think that if the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban hadn’t been repealed last month, Honors would still have his job. Does it matter that when Honors’s aviator alter ego calls his SWO alter ego a “fag,” the SWO returns the compliment with his middle finger? The SWO’s masculinity is being challenged, but not his sexuality. It’s the difference between, say, “homosexual” gay and “my parents are chaperoning the dance” gay.

Wait, why does that sound familiar?

Oh, right, it’s because back in September, in the wake of anti-bullying protests from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Universal Pictures yanked its initial trailer for The Dilemma, the new Ron Howard-directed comedy starring Vince Vaughn that opens this Friday. In the retracted (redacted?) trailer Vaughn’s character pitches his auto-design company’s new engine by stating, “Ladies and gentlemen, electric cars are gay. I mean, not ‘homosexual’ gay, but — you know — ‘my parents are chaperoning the dance’ gay.”

Look, I understand how “fag” can raise anybody’s hackles, but why does the sexual orientation of Herbie the Electric Love Bug constitute anti-gay bullying? Honestly, the worst stereotype perpetuated by The Dilemma is that guys who look like Vince Vaughn and Kevin James end up with women who look like Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder.

I’m guessing this film won’t be shown as part of the Enterprise‘s new “zero-tolerance movie night.” (The revised, anti-”gay” — but not anti-gay — trailer for The Dilemma features Cee Lo Green‘s big hit of 2010, “Fuck You,” as background music, though it’s the radio-friendly version of the song, which is titled “Forget You.” Coincidence?) But does this mean Anderson Cooper has finally come out of the—

On second thought, it’s probably best that I don’t wade into those waters, which now seem almost as treacherous as the ones the crew of the USS Enterprise have sailed into near Iraq and Afghanistan. But then, that’s their job. And as Bruce Fleming, an English professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, wrote in an op-ed piece for the Washington Post last Friday, “The military’s mission is to exert force and possibly kill people. It cannot work within the rules of civilian office culture.” In other words, running out of staples can be a bitch, but running out of ammo is something else entirely.

Fleming added, “Yes, the captain uses a slur [in the video], but not to make fun of gay people. Everything depends on context — in this case, the insular confines of a ship at sea.” Honors’s videos, after all, were produced for sailors — who, from what I’ve been told, traditionally like their language on the salty side — not the general public back on dry land.

“Since his dismissal,” reported the Baltimore Sun‘s Susan Reimer, “several thousand sailors have risen to support him on Facebook and in the media, including gay and female sailors. Not only did they find him an excellent leader, but they thought his movies were funny and good for morale.”

Not everyone on board the Enterprise liked the videos, however. (Remember, comedy is subjective. The Hurt Locker may have won Best Picture last year, but I didn’t laugh once.) Honors mentions in the video posted at Wired.com, in the guise of his “alternate personality” aviator, that some Enterprise crew members made anonymous complaints regarding “inappropriate material” in his videos, which included jokes about masturbation in close quarters and co-ed showers on the ship.

Fleming stated in the Post that his empathy for Honors’s situation “comes from 23 years as a civilian professor at the Naval Academy, living daily the increasing divide between military and civilian culture. I think you have to take a stand about coarse stuff such as this, and mine is not the captain’s. I had a gay brother who died of AIDS, so I start each semester by telling the midshipmen they may not, in my classroom, criticize something as weak or unconvincing by calling it ‘gay.’ Their whole generation does so, so it’s spitting in the ocean, but you have to start somewhere.”

Much like the military’s demotion of Honors, GLAAD and Anderson Cooper’s attempts to wise up Hollywood may just be a drop in the ocean when all’s said and done. But it’s a free country thanks to officers like Honors, so why not allow them to go a little bit overboard when entertaining their privates? (That one’s for you, sailors. Make me proud!)

Similarly, I appreciate NewSouth Books’ intention to keep Mark Twain’s novels Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer on squeamish schools’ reading lists by publishing them in new editions that change the word “nigger” to “slave” in each of 223 instances. But as Twain himself once said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.”

And when the misunderstood context of one word sinks the career of a dedicated military officer with a somewhat irreverent sense of humor — never mind the historical context of a word used in service of a classic story that decries slavery and racism in 19th-century America — that’s no laughing matter, either.

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A recent report in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science states that music-derived chills, “sometimes known as aesthetic chills, thrills, shivers, frisson, and even skin orgasms … involve a seconds-long feeling of goose bumps, tingling, and shivers” in response to a piece of music, “usually on the scalp, the back of the neck, and the spine, but occasionally across most of the body.”

The report, written by researchers from the University of North Carolina, theorizes that the personality types most likely to receive skin orgasms are those possessing the trait of “openness to experience.” The researchers conducted further studies by giving these personality types a few glasses of peach Chardonnay and assuring them their song selection would be gentle.

“The scientific explanation for chills,” explains Brian Alexander at MSNBC.com, “is that the emotions evoked by beautiful or meaningful music stimulate the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which controls primal drives such as hunger, sex and rage and also involuntary responses like blushing and goosebumps. When the song soars, your body can’t help but shiver.” And shivering is always preferable to raging, unless you’re shivering because you’ve locked yourself out of your house in the dead of winter, in which case you’re going to be raging.

Handel’s Messiah has been known to give churchgoers multiple skin orgasms at Christmas Eve services (why else do you think the pews are so packed?), and when I asked Johnny Mathis for his autograph in an airport bar five years ago, I made sure to let him know that “your Merry Christmas album never fails to give me skin orgasms.” Boy, you should’ve seen the look on his face. When he said, “Please don’t touch me,” I knew it was only because he’d already been touched by my words.

Naturally, there are some personality types that don’t care for music or skin orgasms. According to USA Today, Dr. Tom Coburn, the junior U.S. senator from Oklahoma, has issued a report he calls “Wastebook 2010,” in which he argues that federal funding to the tune of $615,000 to digitize Grateful Dead concert tickets and T-shirts for the band’s archive at UC Santa Cruz is — get this! — wasteful. So much for my plan to ask Congress for $1 million to properly archive Kanye West’s first one million schizophrenic tweets.

Thanks to generous helpings of LSD, I bet the Dead’s fans had plenty of intense skin orgasms at thir concerts over the course of 30 years. But because of rising ticket prices over the past 15 years, more and more concertgoers have decided to stay home and give themselves skin orgasms for free rather than pay their favorite artists to do it for them.

The Associated Press reported earlier this week that “North American concert ticket prices rose from an average $26 in 1996 to a peak of $67 in 2008, an increase four times faster than inflation,” while Billboard says concert attendance was down almost 25 percent in 2010. ZZ Top has pledged to drop their 2011 prices below this year’s average of $55, but are fans still willing to let the Texas trio make love to their ears? Honestly, would it kill these guys to plug in the Norelco once in a while? And who told them a throw rug is an acceptable substitute for a shirt? Put forth a real romantic effort, ZZ, and maybe I’ll let you back in my music bed.

One band that still gives me skin orgasms is Wheat, whose 2003 album Per Second, Per Second, Per Second … Every Second was voted the best album of the past decade a year ago today by a majority of me. Earlier this month Brendan Harney, the band’s drummer and cofounder, e-mailed me about their new holiday single, a rendition of Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” backed by an original titled “It’s Snowing, I Love You.” Yes, at this late date the A-side should probably be retitled “(Did You) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” but that’s my fault, not Wheat’s. I asked Harney if he would give me $1 million to post their songs before Christmas, but apparently he’s just as much of an anti-pork zealot as Senator Coburn.

And although Wheat may not be ready at this point in our artist-fan relationship to hear about my complete skin-orgasm history, I do think honesty is an important quality to have during the holidays. Otherwise, how would Johnny Mathis be able to separate me from all the other fans he’s met over the years?

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
It’s Snowing, I Love You

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On August 9 a passenger on a JetBlue flight from Pittsburgh to New York City allegedly disobeyed flight attendant Steven Slater’s request to remain seated until the aircraft had reached a full stop at JFK Airport. The passenger had already cursed at Slater before takeoff and accidentally hit him in the head with the door of an overhead bin during an argument about her carry-on luggage.

Slater vented his frustration over the plane’s PA system at the end of the flight. According to the New York Post the 39-year-old yelled, ”To the f**king a**hole that told me to f**k off, it’s been a good 28 years!” He then deployed the plane’s emergency slide, grabbed his two carry-on bags and a couple of beers from the beverage cart, and slid down to the runway.

Despite his controversial math, which implies he’s been an indentured air servant since the age of 11, Slater was instantly hailed as a hero by many on the Internet. Still, to others, including myself, his actions were inexcusable: Only two beers? Talk about going out with a whimper … (As reported by the Post, Slater is a recovering alcoholic, so some will say my criticism is inexcusable. Fair enough. Say, how about you buy me a beer and we hash out our differences?)

Air travel has a stellar safety record — the average American is 2,200 times more likely to die in a car accident than a plane crash — but it’s still fraught with tension, not to mention f**king a**holes who think they know more than everyone else on the plane. So what’s the best way to defuse all that tension before passengers board the plane? Alcohol, of course! And what’s the best way to ensure that you become a f**king a**hole like all the rest? Oh, right — alcohol.

Like it or not, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems, as Homer Simpson once said, will soon be more widely available in airports. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 6 that plans for “a 1,200-square-foot liquor store inside baggage claim” at Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport are under way; Vino Volo, a San Francisco airport wine-bar chain, hopes to have 50 locations across the U.S. by 2015; and Chicago’s Department of Aviation will allow bars at O’Hare and Midway to operate 24 hours a day, “and authorized licenses for as many as 17 stationary pushcarts to sell beer and wine around the clock.”

Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley initially proposed the ordinance in late June at a City Council meeting, explaining to local reporters, “Many times, people enjoy to have a drink. Is there anything wrong with that?” No, there isn’t, but judging by the mayor’s grammar, he was already buzzed when he arrived at the meeting.

The city’s aviation commissioner, Rosemarie Andolino, added in a press release that the ordinance would “provide the highest level of service to the traveling public” — you know, like recovering alcoholics who might not want Budweiser offered to them from a bar on wheels at the crack of dawn — “while providing opportunities to generate additional revenue for the city.”

Ka-ching! Thanks to the Windy, Wobbly City, we’re reminded once again that money is the other cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

Chicago is facing a $654 million budget deficit in 2011, and therefore will do whatever it can to make up the difference. After all, its two airports missed a huge opportunity back in April, along with every other airport in the U.S., when they failed to provide 24-7 bottle service to passengers left stranded due to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, the ash-cloud-producing volcano in Iceland whose name is so impenetrable you might as well get drunk before you pronounce it, because you’ll be slurring your speech either way.

Luckily, with these new airport liquor laws in place, America will be ready the next time Eyjaf— … that volcano erupts; if my calculations are correct, all heck should break loose sometime around 2257. You and I will be long gone, of course, but municipal budget crises and overpriced Bloody Marys are forever.

However, if airports truly want to provide the highest level of service to customers, shouldn’t they set up FAA (Flying Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings right outside each departure and arrival gate? Yes, it’d be a bit of a buzzkill for responsible drinkers such as myself, but as long as these support groups don’t get in the way of my keg stands, I say live and let live, because we’re all in this together.

Seriously, have you seen the prices the airlines are charging these days?

Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that “airlines collected $1.3 billion from fees for checked baggage and reservation changes in the first three months of this year, a 13% increase over the same period in 2009,” while the Associated Press noted that last year they collected a total of $7.8 billion in revenue “for so-called ancillary fees … up a staggering 42 percent from 2008.” On August 1 Spirit Airlines began charging passengers $45 at the gate, $30 in advance, for any carry-on bags they wish to store in the overhead bins.

The airlines say the tax-free revenue offsets high fuel costs, but airfare prices for June and July were 22 percent higher than last year, according to an April report on Bing Travel’s website. So, let me see if I’ve got this straight …

a) Fuel prices are high.

b) Airline raises ticket prices and charges customer to check his or her bags, which helps pay for fuel.

c) Customer, who wants to forget how much he or she is paying to get from point A to point B, mutters wearily, “I need a drink …”

d) Airport provides requested drink to customer, in turn raising revenue for city services such as public transportation.

e) After seven more drinks, customer loses title to car in ill-advised bet with airport shoeshine guy, increasing his need for services such as public transportation.

f) Demand for automobile fuel decreases, as does cost of fuel, bringing airfare prices back to reasonable levels and, with any luck, reducing the number of f**king a**holes who make life miserable for airline employees like Steven Slater.

g) Alcohol restores order to the universe (again).

Granted, if you and I were both drunk right now this logic of mine would make more sense, but it’s obvious why Mayor Daley’s been in office for more than 20 years — figuratively, he may end up driving people to drink, but if they’re not literally driving themselves anywhere while drinking, isn’t that in everyone’s best interests?

In conclusion, please enjoy to have a drink.

Now, as an added bonus, here’s a fun drinking game you can play on any commercial aircraft, especially once the booze starts flowing more freely on the ground before takeoff:

* If a passenger sitting next to an emergency exit opens the exit right before takeoff so he can vomit, drink!

* If you ask a flight attendant to hold your hair while you vomit and he/she doesn’t laugh, drink!

* If the pilot enters the cabin and asks a small child, “Would you like to see the cockpit, son? In fact, would you like to fly the plane? Captain Dave had a three-cocktail lunch and needs a little shut-eye before we land,” start praying, then drink!

* If you receive an encouraging text message from Peter Buck, the R.E.M. guitarist who was arrested in 2001 after going into a drunken rage on a British Airways flight and allegedly telling the pilot, “You’re just a f**king captain and I’m R.E.M.,” make sure you brag about it first on Twitter and Facebook, then drink!

* If you find yourself sitting next to a person who refuses to turn off his or her phone until the flight attendant’s third warning, drink! And if you are that person, then it’s probably time you reevaluated some of the decisions you’ve made so far in life.

* If you’re kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight for being too fat to fit in a seat, as Cop Out director Kevin Smith was last February, drink! Then sue.

* If you’re surprised to find that the in-flight movie is being shown in 3-D, guess what? It’s not. You’re hallucinating. How’d you get those pills past security anyhow? Look, just breathe, okay? Breeeeathe … that’s it … As long as Shrek doesn’t turn into an angry, digitally animated hijacker, you should be fine. Now drink!

* If you find yourself paying attention to the flight attendant’s demonstration of safety procedures for the first time in years but you’re suddenly confused as to how a seat belt works, STOP DRINKING. You’ve reached your limit.

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On Tuesday CNN’s Larry King announced that he’ll end his 25-year-old talk show this fall, having been beaten consistently in the ratings the past year by his 9 PM cable-news competitors, Fox News’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. King’s announcement came eight days after he hosted a telethon edition of Larry King Live with guests Cameron Diaz, Robert Redford, and Sting — no, not to raise funds for the alimony he owes his half-dozen ex-wives, but to aid victims of another disaster, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

He’s not the only King lending a hand in the Gulf. Earlier in June, the self-proclaimed King of the World, Titanic director James Cameron, who’s considered an expert on underwater filming technology, held a meeting with other deep-sea experts and the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss the oil spill. A week later, actor-environmentalist Kevin Costner testified before Congress about machines his scientist brother has developed that can separate oil from polluted water; the Waterworld star has invested $24 million of his own money in the technology. There’s also D-list actor and born-again Christian Stephen Baldwin, who’s making a documentary about the spill tentatively titled “The Will to Drill,” and the band Korn has joined forces with Creed and the Backstreet Boys and agreed not to buy BP fuel while on tour this year.

That’s all well and good, but do these fuel-boycotting fossils from the late ’90s realize that concertgoers made a silent agreement to boycott their tours almost a decade ago? As for Cameron, his meeting with the EPA quickly turned into the most expensive meeting of all time — granted, the Avatar director’s PowerPoint presentation was hailed as “a riveting 3-D display of words, arrows, and rectangles” — and Costner later revealed that he’s sunk an additional $24 million of his money into more movies in which he’ll play washed-up former athletes.

But if all these famous people truly want to do something about the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history — it’s estimated that as many as 115 million gallons had poured into the Gulf of Mexico as of mid-June, while BP’s relief wells aren’t expected to stop the leak until sometime in August — why don’t they make a genuine sacrifice for the greater good? Celebs gone green, I want you to plug that leak.

Think of Bruce Willis detonating the bomb on the gigantic asteroid at the end of Michael Bay’s 1998 film Armageddon so that mankind could live to see another day, not to mention more terrible Michael Bay films. But instead of Bruce Willis playing a redemption-seeking oil-rig worker turned astronaut, it’d actually be Bruce Willis! For anyone who paid full price to see Hudson Hawk in 1991, his sacrifice would bring a welcome sense of closure.

Besides, thanks to a live video feed, that burst BP pipe 20,000 leagues under the sea has been a bigger star this summer than any of the high-priced actors in Sex and the City 2, The A-Team, Jonah Hex, or Knight and Day. It’s too bad the government can’t charge an admission fee — every resident of the Gulf coast would have their livelihood restored in no time.

I’m not suggesting we use every famous person in the world to plug the leak. After all, if there were no more movie stars, who would headline our Broadway plays? Mere stage actors? Perish the thought! But here are a few suggestions to get the ball rolling:

Shia LaBeouf. In May the 23-year-old actor told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was promoting Oliver Stone’s upcoming sequel to Wall Street, that two of his previous films, 2009′s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Michael Bay strikes again) and 2008′s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, weren’t worthy of their predecessors. Discussing Crystal Skull, he said, “I think the audience is pretty intelligent. I think they know when you’ve made [a bad movie]. And I think if you don’t acknowledge it, then why do they trust you the next time you’re promoting a movie.”

But if you’ve always thought Crystal Skull is one big BP tar ball, Shia, why didn’t you say so in 2008 when you were promoting it? Then I would’ve trusted you, because that would’ve been a ballsy move. But criticizing it two years after it earned $786 million worldwide just feels like a big middle finger to anyone who enjoyed the movie as simple popcorn entertainment. (You can expect the young star’s apology for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps sometime in 2012.)

LaBeouf added, “I’ll probably get a call [from Crystal Skull director Steven Spielberg]. But he needs to hear this.” Fortunately, we don’t need to hear anything else from you. DOWN YOU GO!

Lady Gaga. Maybe it’s not her fault she’s overexposed, but it’s time for Gaga to go glug-glug.

Joe Barton. You might be thinking, “He’s not a performer like LaBeouf or Gaga,” but don’t kid yourself — all politicians are performers. The Texas congressman and former oil executive was forced to apologize for his apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward in front of the House energy committee on June 17 after he accused the Obama administration of trying to shake down BP. Now that you’ve sunk to the bottom metaphorically, Joe, get literal about it in the Gulf.

Tony Hayward. This one’s definitely not a performer. In fact he was so lousy at public relations that BP yanked him away from the TV cameras after he went yachting on June 19. Call it his version of the Shia LaBeouf middle finger, with this particular digit pointed directly at every resident of the Gulf coast. To paraphrase Christopher Cross’s biggest hit, “Saaaaaailing takes Tony awaaaaaay / From where everyone hates his guts …” Hayward infamously told the press in May that he’d like his life back, but he’s going to have to settle for the life aquatic at this point. DOWN YOU GO, BOYO!

Amanda Seyfried. I have nothing against the star of Letters to Juliet, Dear John, and Mamma Mia!, but have you ever noticed how, uh, otherworldly she looks? My guess is that Ms. Seyfried wouldn’t require a prosthetic tail fin for a remake of Ron Howard’s Splash, and I bet she’d do an even better job corralling Nemo, Sebastian the Crab, and the rest of the undersea animal kingdom to fill that gushing pipe with sand, hidden treasure, abandoned Soviet submarines, Tony Hayward’s yacht, etc.

Bruce Springsteen. Once he was born to run. Now he’s destined to sink. (I went to a concert of his in 2002 where he only played for three hours, not four. You owe me, Boss.)

Dick Cheney. Say, didn’t the former vice president have a thing for oil? Perhaps he’d like a closer look …

Warren Beatty. According to Peter Biskind’s biography Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, the legendary actor slept with approximately 12,775 women before he married Annette Bening in 1992. With a track record like that, there’s no doubt he can plug a hole.

Chris Brown. The R&B star, who hit his girlfriend, R&B star Rihanna, in February 2009 and then saw his young career hit the skids, made a big comeback at the BET Awards last week. But if you really want to do the right thing, Chris, your comeback will involve you not coming back up from BP’s busted pipe.

Val Kilmer. The onetime Batman, who contemplated a gubernatorial run in New Mexico last year, was recently in the news for publicly apologizing to his neighbors in San Miguel County in order to get the county commission’s approval so he can rent out guest houses on his ranch. It seems that in 2003 Kilmer told a Rolling Stone reporter that he lives in the “homicide capital of the Southwest” and that 80 percent “of the people in my county are drunk.”

Why, if the numbers held up like that across the state, there’s no way Kilmer could lose a gubernatorial race — who wouldn’t drunkenly vote for Batman? But he was wrong to say those things, and now the Top Gun and Top Secret! star must become the next “top kill.” Take your recent bomb, MacGruber, with you, Val, in case it can be detonated again inside the pipe, and if it’s not too much trouble, don’t lose any weight before you dive — we could use a generous circumference like yours down there.

Arizona legislators. If you just say the words “Mexico” and “disaster,” I’m sure they’ll all jump right into the Gulf and deport the oil themselves.

Whoever created the Facebook page DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE [sic]. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH [sic] FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN. But the Lord had nothing to do with your inability to spell, or your questionable taste in C-level thespians, or your cutesy-poo wish that the leader of the free world would die, so DOWN YOU GO!

That jerk who used to live next door and sing R. Kelly and U2 songs into a microphone and drive me up the paper-thin walls that did nothing to keep out his steroidal caterwauling. For the crime of imitating famous singers and failing miserably, DOWN YOU GO, KARAOKE KILLER!

I know, I know — I’m losing focus here. Look, I don’t want to sound heartless when it comes to our nation’s greatest natural resource, but celebrities—

Hey, that’s it! If we send a bunch of heartless tin men into the Gulf of Mexico to soak up the oil they so desperately crave, we won’t have to sacrifice any celebrities. Problem solved!

Of course, with hurricane season already under way, the entertaining Web comic xkcd had the nerve to give Michael Bay ideas for his next big disaster movie. Therefore the Pearl Harbor director will have to be tossed into the Gulf — for the greater good, but also for the sake of Hollywood’s self-respect — preferably on the final telecast of Larry King Live so that its host can go out with a bang, or at least a loud suck.

Still heartless? Perhaps. But with a last name like Bay, you can’t say he wasn’t asking for it.

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On May 12 the American Civil Liberties Union filed two free-speech lawsuits in Scranton, Pennsylvania, defending citizens who were charged with using profanity by local police. Seven days later CBS announced its fall schedule, which includes the William Shatner sitcom $#*! My Dad Says, the first TV show to be based on a Twitter account, namely Justin Halpern’s Shit My Dad Says page. The watchdog group Parents Television Council, upset that the word “shit” is alluded to in the show’s title, has threatened to challenge the broadcast license of any CBS affiliate that airs the series — and promos for it — before 10 PM, even though the network has scheduled it for Thursdays at 8:30 this fall.

In the past year, feature films like Inglourious Basterds and programs like Oxygen’s Dance Your Ass Off have pushed the boundaries of acceptable language on theater marquees and in TV Guide. The cable channel FX has practically built its reputation on airing original shows such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that employ ”shit,” “asshole,” and “goddamn” so often in their dialogue that it’s hard not to think FX bought the rights to the words and wants to make sure it gets its money’s worth.

For parents of young children it’s only going to get worse, unfortunately, but with a loosening of the language comes truth in advertising, as the networks and various cable outlets start declaring right up front what their new shows are all about. Below is a sampling of what you’ll be seeing in the coming months.

Fox: “So You Think You Can Sing and/or Dance? Well, Whoop-tee-fuckin’-doo!”

NBC: “The Fattest Fuck”

ABC: “25 Girls, a Guy, and Lots of Bitchy Behavior, All in the Pursuit of a Loveless Marriage Proposal”

CBS: “CSI: City of Angels … and Junkies … and Lots and Lots of Whores”

Fox News Channel: “Glenn Beck Presents: Opinion Shows Are Like Assholes — Everybody’s Got One!”

CNN: “Anderson Cooper and the Unbiased News Nobody Wants to Fucking Hear”

PBS: “The Many Tits of the Many Wives of King Henry VIII”

Trinity Broadcasting Network: “Goddamn, It’s Good to Be a Christian”

Weather Channel: “Mother Nature: A Bad Motherfucker”

Univision: “Dirty Sanchez & Rusty Trombone” (a Spanish-language crime drama about two cops who go undercover as male prostitutes)

The CW: “Yeah, We Know Our Ratings Are Worse than Univision’s, Cass! Stop Rubbing Our Noses in It, You Bald Cocksucker!”

Animal Planet: “Shitstorm in the Gulf: How BP Managed to Fuck the Earth’s Delicate Ecosystems With a Huge Fucking Donkey Dick”

Discovery Channel: “Volcanoes 2010: Commercial Flight’s Biggest Pain in the Ass”

ESPN: “Balls”

Food Network: “Nuts”

Golf Channel: “Holes”

Comedy Central: “Night of a Thousand Dick Jokes”

Spike TV: “Ultimate Pissing Contest”

HGTV: “Sprucing Up Your Shithole Apartment”

Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel): “Ass-Backward Time Travelers”

Oxygen: “The Word ‘Vagina’ as a Punchline: The Vaudeville Years”

History Channel: “The Vietnam War: One Gigantic Clusterfuck”

BBC America: “Don’t Be Such an Arse, You Silly Cunt” (starring Dame Judi Dench)

A&E: “The Mentally Ill and the Batshit Insane Yet Highly Watchable Things They Do”

Nickelodeon: “Kids Say the Most Fucked-Up Bullshit”

Al Jazeera: “The Dick Cheney Being Ass Raped by Fiery Demons Smile-Time Variety Hour”

VH1: “Bitch, I Will Tear Out Yo’ Muthafuckin’ Weave If That’s What It Takes to Win the Heart of [Insert Washed-Up Celebrity's Name]! Shiiiiiiiit …”

MTV: “Buncha Fuckin’ Douchebags Gettin’ Wasted and Yellin’ at Each Other in a Beach House”

TV Land: “Leave It to Beaver”

BET: “The N Word” (This is merely a promotional title. Only African-American journalists and bloggers have been granted access to use the show’s real name.)

Finally, Lifetime has a new tag line that should please viewers of both genders: “Programming for pussies.”

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Earlier today I received the following press release in an e-mail. It was also posted on the Vatican’s website but was then mysteriously removed just an hour later.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Rocco De La Guardia, Office of Public Relations
Phone: 011-39-06-555-83296
E-mail: rocco @ lasantasede.va
Internet: http://www.vatican.va

The Catholic Church to Disband After 2010 Farewell Tour

VATICAN CITY (Apr. 30, 2010) — After 2,000 years, millions of baptisms, and too many standing-room-only Christmas Eve and Easter services to count, the Catholic Church has decided to call it quits, announcing that Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 world tour will be his and the Church’s last.

In an exclusive interview with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the pope remarked, “Every church, no matter how popular it becomes, has to eventually ask itself: ‘Are we still relevant? Do we still have something to say to people?’ And in our case, the answer is no.”

After being elected to the papacy in April 2005, Pope Benedict struggled to convince Catholics that he could effectively replace Pope John Paul II, with attendance at worship services declining over the years. “John Paul was the most dynamic frontman I’d ever seen,” the pope, 83, told L’Osservatore. “You couldn’t take your eyes off him, even when he took his eyes off you and fell asleep during a service.”

He continued, “But these days it’s not the Church’s eyes that Catholics wish we’d take off them. To put it another way, the Vatican may be the Holy See, but over the past few decades the Church has become the Holy Touch.”

In recent weeks the pope promised that the Catholic Church would do “penance” for its “sins,” hinting at allegations that have cropped up throughout Europe of sexual abuse by priests and subsequent cover-ups by bishops. “I’ve decided that the best course of action is for the Church to disband. I would say we’ve decided to go out on top, but it’s doubtful the many victims of abuse would appreciate me wording it that way.”

Pope Benedict has agreed to pardon all priests and bishops accused of misconduct. “That way the victims won’t have to waste their hard-earned money suing them,” he said. “It works out well for both sides — because people don’t go to church that often anymore, they don’t leave as much money in the collection plate as they used to, and therefore the Catholic Church doesn’t have as much money to fight sexual-abuse lawsuits as it once did. I’m not blaming parishioners for what transpired, but it’s clear the problems began once they stopped going to church every week.”

The pope said his decision to break up the Church after only 2,000 years was inspired by the Beatles, the popular musical group that broke up in April 1970. “They had the right idea. They ended it before it got stale,” he said, adding, “We were bigger than the Beatles for a few years there, but nothing lasts forever — nothing except guilt. Catholics kind of wrote the book on that one, didn’t we?” The pope laughed. “Besides, I’m German and I lived through World War II, so believe me, I know all about guilt.”

Pope Benedict XVI recommended that future ex-Catholics shop around for a new Christian denomination before committing, but he also had high marks for Islam: “Some of it may seem extreme at first, but it’s the kick in the pants organized religion has desperately needed for a long time now.” When asked if he had anything positive to say about Scientology, he responded, “Do I wear a sensible hat?”

The 2010 Catholic Church Farewell Tour kicks off in London on June 1 and continues throughout the year on all seven continents. For a full list of dates and locations, please visit www.vatican.va.

# # #

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Three weeks ago the New York Times reported that Mattel is producing Ken and Barbie dolls based on four characters from the hit TV series Mad Men to promote the show’s fourth season, which starts on the AMC cable network in July. And at the American International Toy Fair in February, Mattel introduced Barbie’s 125th and 126th job titles to date, as voted on by consumers: computer engineer and TV anchor.

The latter career was chosen by girls, while it’s safe to assume that the winner of the “popular vote” was due in no small part to all those thirtysomething male toy collectors who dream that a gal like Barbie is just one interview away from joining their company’s IT department. That is, if those men still have jobs — the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January that one in five American men is unemployed. So even though Barbie won’t be turning heads at the unemployment office anytime soon, what’s the job market like for some of America’s other favorite toys?

Dora the Explorer. She may be able to speak two languages, but Dora is still exploring Craigslist postings, Monster.com job listings, and the want ads every day. Can you say “complete waste of time”? Very good!

Legos. Because of the downturn in the real estate market, construction jobs are scarce. Thousands of Legos “hard hats” have been sitting around the past year and a half as they wait for construction projects to resume, passing the time by trying on other kinds of hats, like baseball caps and astronaut helmets. Despite the stress caused by their financial uncertainty, not to mention their fingerless hands, the Legos boys never stop smiling.

Slinky. The toy that’s “fun for a girl and a boy” is enjoying a steady side career now that the Mafia has endorsed it as an acceptable substitute for piano wire.

The Six Million Dollar Man. To save on maintenance, Colonel Steve Austin’s bionic arms and legs have been permanently removed. Good thing he can still make that cool electronic jumping noise with his mouth.

Weebles. It used to be that these egg-shaped Americans wobbled but didn’t fall down. But once widespread alcoholism entered the picture in 2008, equilibrium was no longer guaranteed.

Sorry! This board game has had a career resurgence after being given to numerous laid-off employees in lieu of a verbal explanation. (It’s often preceded by a gifting of the game Clue.)

Ken. Although Mattel’s Mad Men dolls are set to debut in July, Barbie’s significant other has fallen on hard times, losing his doll house, his doll car, and even his doll clothes in quick succession. Ken was recently arrested in Malibu after soliciting an undercover cop for anatomically incorrect sexual favors.

Smurfs. Reporter Smurf is now known as Depressed Smurf.

Transformers. As long as Americans continue to not buy American-made cars, teenage boys who look like Shia LaBeouf will continue to not have poorly written adventures with extraterrestrial robots disguised as Ford Camaros.

Magic 8 Ball. Still making a healthy living getting people’s hopes up for no good reason.

Tickle Me Elmo. Psychological damage caused by a severe tickling at the hands of a Catholic altar boy in 2004 left Elmo a shell of his former self. The soft ‘n’ cuddly resident of Sesame Street has been unable to hold down a steady job ever since.

Play-Doh. With food prices continuing to squeeze the budgets of average American families, Play-Doh has aggressively made its case as an acceptable meat substitute, earning millions in the process.

My Little Pony. Went krazy, became Krazy Glue.

Monopoly’s Mr. Moneybags. Aw, boo-hoo! The jolly old zillionaire lost a few hundred million last year. I guess he’ll have to wait until next year to buy Canada. Waaaaah!!!

Little Green Army Men. With wars still raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, and reports of an unprecedented military buildup just across the border in your little brother’s room, these brave warriors won’t be coming home for at least a few more years.

Mr. Potato Head. Donated himself to a food pantry for the greater good; last seen as undercooked French fries. (R.I.P. John Patrick Seamus Potato Head, 1952-2009)

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A recently published report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 26 percent of “millennials,” or young people born after 1980, claim they have no religious affiliation, compared to 20 percent of Generation Xers (1965-1980) and 13 percent of baby boomers (1946-1964) when they were between the ages of 18 and 29.

There’s no need for religious organizations to panic, since 40 percent of millennials say religion is a major part of their lives, just as 39 percent of baby boomers said the same thing in their late teens and 20s. However, as a precautionary measure, God has become the latest celebrity to create a Twitter account, in the hopes of reaching young people in the ever-evolving world of social networking.

Besides, as author and pastor Robert J. Morgan pointed out on his Facebook page last summer, “Texting is very biblical; it has divine origin … For example the book of Proverbs is the original Twitter. In 140 characters or less, the Lord sent down His short bursts of insight and wisdom, which we call the Proverbs. Each of the individual verses of Proverbs is like a Tweet from the Lord — His divine Short Message Service.”

Here are some of the tweets God has posted in the past couple weeks:

Anybody know of a good, affordable beard trimmer? Tweet me back.

The Dark Ages — not my finest hour.

Just had a guy on Earth tell me, “You look like Morgan Freeman.” I get that a lot.

Thought I’d have more than 286 followers by now. Oh well.

If the Dems can’t pull off this health care bill, I’ll just GIVE everybody good health. Serious as a heart attack, y’all.

Listening to ‘Dear God’ by XTC. Melody? Awesome. Lyrics? A little whiny.

Good talk with my son today, feeling good about comeback special this April. Hope he doesn’t get cold feet just b/c it’s on NBC.

Republicans, I love U, but what’s w/ all the crazy talk?

Whenever anything bad happens in the world, just think of it as one of my “lost weekends.”

@johncmayer I think it’s time you and I had a talk.

Trouble sleeping? Read a little Nietzsche. Knocked me RIGHT OUT.

On the seventh day I “rested”? If that’s what you call overeating, fine. But I prefer not to sugarcoat it.

Is it all right if I don’t like Sarah Palin OR ‘Family Guy’? Kidding! Calm down…

Not to brag, but I always knew “You’re So Vain” was about David Geffen.

Truth be told, I’m a moral relativist.

Thanks, California beauty queens, but if I want to speak out against gay marriage, I’ll do it myself.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness”? Tell it to the tighty-whities I’ve been wearing the last three days.

For the last time, I LOVE EVERYBODY. Stop claiming I’m on your side, whatever side you’re on.

@obamarama Yes. “700 Club” is a guilty pleasure of mine. Why else do you think Pat Robertson is still alive?

It’s true – I’m always tempted to use my name at restaurants so I can get a better table.

Wow. Lot of Negative Nellys here on Twitter. Lighten up, everybody — I’m this/close to sending in the locusts.

No, I will not start using emoticons so everyone is 100% clear on my meaning. I never said this was going to be easy.

If you’d told me 5,000 years ago that the Bible would make it past the first printing, I wouldve laughed in your face.

Of course I watch Leno — I’M REALLY REALLY OLD!

To all you songwriters who claim I wrote your songs ‘thru’ you, where my royalty checks at?

Hey! Episcopalians! Ease up on the communion wine or I’ll have Jesus turn it back into water! LO*!

IT’S is not the same as ITS. YOU’RE is not the same as YOUR. THEY’RE, THEIR, and THERE are all different words. Evolve already!

Is the Bible open to interpretation? Did Me-hu’ja-el begat Me-thu’sha-el?

If I were an inventor, I’d probably invent something that destroys dust once and for all. That stuff gets everywhere.

Mickey Rooney’s still alive?! I thought I saw him up here the other day. Guess not. All the best, sir!

Angry God? Benevolent God? It all depends on my mood. But all-knowing? You bet.

Are you guys retweeting my stuff because you like it or because I’m God? Sometimes I’m not sure.

This guy cracks me up! http://tinyurl.com/1xln

If a stray lightning bolt hits my cloud and I’m not the one who threw it, is that still considered an act of me?

Get well, Charlie Sheen. You are truly one of my greatest creations.

Straight from the horse’s mouth: Judas was underrated.

Sometimes I watch Larry King and it’s spooky how much I sound like him.

@rwcass I’m not going to make a personal appearance just so you can win an argument with your girlfriend. Please stop asking.

WHAT?!?! NBC preempted Nickelback at the closing ceremony in Vancouver! Time to smite somebody…

* “LO” is an abbreviation for “laugh omnipotently,” commonly used in heavenly e-mails and tweets.

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On the morning of January 11, numerous media outlets reported that former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich had proclaimed to Esquire magazine that he’s “blacker than Barack Obama” in its February issue, which arrives on newsstands tomorrow. And later that morning the ex-governor, who was impeached last year on corruption charges and is now awaiting trial, apologized for his bold statement, using the word “stupid” 17 times to explain himself to reporters.

Here’s the full quote from the Esquire interview: “It’s such a cynical business, and most of the people in the business are full of shit and phonies, but I was real, man — and am real. This guy, he was catapulted in on hope and change, what we hope the guy is. What the fuck? Everything he’s saying’s on the teleprompter. I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up.”

And I sure hope you took it all in, Blago, because once you go to prison, you won’t be seeing much of anything for a long, long time. (Note to self: find out which brand of truth-serum-laced crazy pills Esquire reporters are dissolving in their interview subjects’ water. In the January 1998 issue, Daily Show host Craig Kilborn was quoted as saying, “If I wanted [executive producer Lizz Winstead] to blow me, she would,” and one month later the magazine published an interview with O.J. Simpson in which he stated, “Let’s say I committed this crime … Even if I did this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?” Outstanding, Esquire!)

But I am happy that Blago came to the conclusion he’s not black, because it allows me to name someone who’s much blacker: Jay Leno.

You heard me! Even if he is merely “light-skinned” in the eyes of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the former and near-future host of The Tonight Show is waaaaaay blacker than Rod Blagojevich. Why? Because only people who live in Illinois care one way or another about Blago, but everybody seems to hate Jay.

See, whenever a black man gains some power in this world after working hard to achieve his goals, white people get nervous and try to knock him down a few pegs. You know what I’m talking about!

Martin and Malcolm.

R. Kelly and M. Jackson.

Willie Tyler and Lester.

Presidents Obama and Clinton.

And now Jay Leno.

Even black people hate Leno. His original bandleader on Tonight, jazz musician Branford Marsalis, described his on-air relationship with the talk-show host to Jet magazine in 1994: ”It will never be what Dave [Letterman] and Paul [Shaffer] have because I’m not the kind of person that’s gonna kiss Jay’s ass and say everything he does is right.”

And in the spring of ’92, right before Leno took over for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, fellow talk-show host Arsenio Hall used another four-letter verb starting with the letter K when speaking to Entertainment Weekly about Leno: “No one put the late-night silver spoon in my mouth. I earned every drop of mine. And I’m gonna treat him like we treated the kid on the high school basketball team who was the coach’s son. He was there because he was anointed too. We tried to kick his ass, and that’s what I’m going to do — kick Jay’s ass.” (Having failed to kick said ass, Hall eventually made guest appearances on both The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and The Jay Leno Show.)

Leno’s been compared lately to Brett Favre, the longtime Green Bay Packers quarterback who retired in 2007 after 16 seasons with the team, then came out of retirement to play for the New York Jets in ’08. Favre then retired again, only to sign with the Minnesota Vikings for the 2009 season, where he’s done pretty darn well for himself in his old age, thank you very much.

A better comparison, I think, is Paul McCartney, except for the fact that no matter what people think of McCartney’s solo work, they still remember what he did with the Beatles and continue to praise it to the high heavens. In Leno’s case, no one seems to remember that 25 years ago he was considered the top stand-up comic in the country.

In her biography American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story, author Cynthia True writes, ”Bill had been in Austin barely six months when he got a call from [Houston's Comedy Workshop] to open for Jay Leno there the second week in February 1983. Thirty-three-year-old Leno, who packed clubs three hundred days of the year and was becoming well known through his appearances on the new show Late Night with David Letterman, was considered the sharpest, best road act in the country. Leno was a hero to Bill….

“Leno brought his wife, Mavis, and [with Laurie Mango, Bill's girlfriend, they] hung out all week, having dinner at Steak & Ale before the shows. Bill and Laurie couldn’t get over how warm and genuine Jay and Mavis were. ‘Bill was thrilled to be with him,’ Laurie said, ‘and kept telling me what a great guy he was. There were very few people Bill would say were funny: Seinfeld, Jay, and maybe one or two more, but that was it.’ Leno seemed to have an affection for Bill, and he had lots of advice for him: if you want to get on television, he suggested, you should clean up your material and make it more palatable for general audiences. Leno said Bill didn’t need to swear or get graphic about sex; he was powerful enough without that stuff.”

Cut to one year later. “Jay Leno had promised to help Bill get on Letterman and he was true to his word. He’d told Late Night segment producer Robert Morton what a great act Hicks had, and on a Friday morning in early February 1984, Bill got the call.”

Then cut to nine years later. “Bill found it entirely revolting that a man who made ‘three million a year,’ a man who was once the most brilliant, caustic voice in the country, was using his name to sell snacks to ‘bovine America.’ In fact, Leno’s Tonight Show, like The PTL Club, was something of an obsession with Bill. He loved to watch while hanging out on the phone with one of the guys, [comedian Andy] Huggins, [comedian Jimmy] Pineapple, or [Chicago comedy-club owner Len] Austrevich, and just rail on how cloying Leno had become. ‘Both Bill and I absolutely adored Leno as a comic,’ Huggins explained. ‘And what he became on The Tonight Show made him absolutely fascinating to us. We would watch Arsenio Hall and that show was dreadful, but it was exactly what we expected. But Jay was so good at one time. It’s not like he moved just three degrees closer to becoming a hack because “I’m on TV now.” He did a complete one-eighty. Stunning.’”

In his stand-up act, Hicks pondered whether Leno would kill himself on the air while interviewing former Dallas star Patrick Duffy or Joey Lawrence of NBC’s Blossom. He called his former mentor a “company man to the bitter fucking end” and accused him of being a “whore” for advertising Doritos, declaring that he was “off the artistic roll call.”

According to American Scream, Leno phoned Bill one day to ask why he was being trashed onstage. “They had a long talk and Bill told Jay how much he hated The Tonight Show (as if the man were not aware) and how disappointed he was because Leno was one of his comedy heroes. Why was the show so stodgy? Why was he showcasing guys like Carrot Top? Why was he being so … unfunny?”

Of course, Hicks had it easy — he died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 32, just as his career was finally building some serious momentum in the U.S.

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. Or so they say. But if you die tragically young like Hicks — or Andy Kaufman, for that matter, who succumbed to a rare form of lung cancer at age 35 a decade earlier — you at least don’t have to make compromises later in life in order to maintain your career, like O’Brien cutting back on Late Night‘s absurdist “Masturbating Bear” gag for the 11:30 hour or Leno loading his monologues with as many inoffensive one-liners as possible — he still “sells” every single one of them, though, which must endear him to his writers — in order to lure the greatest number of viewers. (Leno’s “Headlines” segment has always been hilarious, however. If you don’t like it, then the typos have won.)

One of David Letterman’s greatest assets on Late Night in the ’80s was Chris Elliott, a wickedly talented actor and writer whose various appearances on the show as “characters” like the Guy Under the Seats and the Fugitive Guy (and even once as Leno) added greatly to the conceptual fun. But by 2000 he was starring as “the wacky neighbor” on the NBC sitcom Cursed, a.k.a. The Weber Show. It was hard not to think that a similar fate would have been waiting for Kaufman had he lived (at least Taxi had some critical cachet because of James L. Brooks’s involvement), and no fan of Hicks would have wanted to see him outgrow his “angry young man” persona just so he could end up as occasional comic relief on a CSI spin-off in his 40s.

I’ve never seen Leno perform live — throughout his 17 years hosting The Tonight Show he was still performing an average of 160 stand-up gigs a year, and he swears he lives off his stand-up money, having never touched his TV earnings, apparently afraid that too much money will make him lazy – but when I was growing up in the ’80s and early ’90s I loved whatever scraps of Late Night my parents would allow me to watch, and Leno’s guest appearances were part of what made the show great. His jokes about Penthouse Forum letters and Playboy centerfolds’ turn-ons still make me laugh (and now I actually know what he was talking about).

“Doing [Letterman's] show in the ’80s, going on and zinging back and forth, that was the most fun for me of anything I ever did in show business,” Leno told Bill Carter in the New York Times in 2008.

Partly because of those appearances on Late Night, Leno caught the eye of The Tonight Show‘s producers and started filling in for Johnny Carson in 1987, eventually taking over the show five years later when Carson retired after three decades as host. According to Bill Carter’s 1996 book The Late Shift and the HBO movie based on it, CBS began courting Leno in ’90 for a new 11:30 show, but he wanted Tonight. The only problem was, so did Letterman. (But can you imagine him doing a show from Burbank? When he hosted the Oscars in ’95, it seemed like a good indicator of where The Tonight Show might have gone under his watch.)

Helen Kushnick, Leno’s manager at the time, negotiated a top-secret contract with NBC for her client’s services before Carson had even retired. By the end of ’92, however, a proposed deal by CBS to pay Letterman $16 million a year for an 11:30 show of his own had endangered Leno’s position, as Carter reported in the New York Times in December of that year:

“Mr. Leno said he would ‘obviously leave NBC immediately’ if the network decided to give the ‘Tonight’ show to Mr. Letterman. He said he would absolutely refuse to do a show in the 12:30 A.M. spot now occupied by Mr. Letterman’s show, ‘Late Night,’ and would indeed consider creating the same problem for NBC that Mr. Letterman’s proposed deal with CBS caused.”

Seventeen years later it’s Letterman’s Late Night successor and Leno’s Tonight Show successor, Conan O’Brien, who’s refusing to move further down the schedule, in this case to accommodate Leno at 11:35 once again: NBC announced last week that it wanted to move The Jay Leno Show, which failed to attract large audiences five nights a week in prime time over the past four months, into late night in a retooled 30-minute version, bumping O’Brien’s Tonight into tomorrow with a 12:05 start time.

I don’t blame O’Brien for standing his ground, and the fact that he’s only been given seven months to prove himself as host of The Tonight Show is unfair, especially given how long he had to wait to get the job. Then again, Leno was also forced to go on the defensive after only seven months back in 1992.

As Carter wrote in the Times in September of ’04, after NBC reached a deal five years in advance to remove Leno as the host of Tonight and install O’Brien, “One of the main inspirations for concluding the deal this early was NBC’s conviction that it could not go through the painful and at times embarrassing process that attended the last decision to turn over the host job on ‘Tonight.’”

But back in the early ’90s NBC wasn’t stuck in fourth place, a ranking that makes the current late-night soap opera even more painful and embarrassing for them. The network was number one in late night for 14 straight years, however, mostly thanks to Leno’s popularity on Tonight, the most profitable show on NBC besides Today. Therefore they felt the need to screw it all up by doing whatever it took to keep both Leno and O’Brien on the schedule instead of allowing one of them to go to a competing network.

Now NBC executives want to correct their mistakes, but Reuters is reporting that it may cost them up to $40 million just to complete O’Brien’s severance package and put Leno back in place at Tonight.

And once Leno is in his old stomping grounds again, he’ll be hated even more by comedy nerds, especially O’Brien fans who feel that Leno gave their hero The Tonight Show only to demand it back once he felt abandoned in prime time. Leno told Rolling Stone‘s Neil Strauss last year that his attitude about having Tonight taken away from him in ’04 was “‘Guys, whatever you want to do.’ I’ve never been one of these guys that breaks up with a girl and goes, ‘But why? If I do this, will you go out with me?’ I’m more like, ‘Babe, if you don’t want to see me, I’m gone. It’s over. Thank you.’”

But Leno didn’t walk away from NBC last year, nor is he likely to walk away from a new assignment now. ”The network asked him to make a compromise. He’s being a good soldier, and he’s being trashed,” Jay Leno Show producer Jack Coen told the Associated Press. Coproducer Tracie Fiss, who’s worked with Leno for the past 18 years, added, ”Jay doesn’t have the power to make these decisions. The decisions are made by NBC.” And they appear more than willing to let him look like the bad guy in this whole debacle.

As Strauss wrote in the introduction to his Rolling Stone interview, “Beneath his upbeat, regular-guy demeanor there lurks a streak of disappointment, an immigrant fatalism — that sense that once you stop striving and achieving, the world will grind you up.” Leno’s lifestyle, he observed, is “a routine designed to keep him safely insulated, his attitude predicated on the fact that at any moment everything he’s worked for could disappear and never return.”

The bottom line is that, much like Paul McCartney, Jay Leno loves to work. It appears to be his only vice. But he’s good at what he does, and his Tonight Show fans love him for it, even if none of them use Twitter or Facebook to voice their opinion. Leno also knows how to survive in a cutthroat business, though he’s only a shark in the sense that he apparently thinks he’ll die if he stops moving.

His attempt in his recent Jay Leno Show monologues to portray himself as a victim at the hands of NBC programmers was strained — he’s only an underdog in terms of what critics and knee-jerk tastemakers think of him — but how would you feel if your boss came to you one day and said, “Jay, thanks for all your hard work these past 12 years. We really appreciate you keeping Tonight at number one in the ratings for nine years now, and never missing a show or demanding huge raises.

“But here’s the thing — Conan’s been hosting Late Night for 11 years now, just like your old buddy Dave hosted Late Night for 11 years, and … well … he wants The Tonight Show. You know how it is — fulfillment of a lifelong dream, ‘when I was a boy,’ et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, Conan’s managers and agents and lawyers say he’ll leave for another network if he doesn’t get it. And we can’t have another Letterman situation on our hands. We just can’t. It’s bad for business.

“Besides, even though you’re at number one, your audience is older than Conan’s, and we’re pretty much at the mercy of these advertisers who kiss the ground 18- to 49-year-olds walk on.” (Ironically, O’Brien’s ratings in the key 18-to-34 demographic at Tonight have been lower than Leno’s were when he was host.)

No matter how much of a grumpy old man he becomes, I’ll take Letterman’s timing and delivery any day over Leno’s or O’Brien’s. But as New York magazine’s Sam Anderson wrote in January of ’08 after Letterman and Leno brought their shows back during the writers’ strike, the latter’s “not trying to be the funniest guy in the world; he’s trying to be the most dependably serviceable at monologuing — an equally difficult task that carries almost none of the turkey-cocking street cred of revolutionary art comedy. Like many Americans, Jay Leno works as hard as he can under impossible conditions (he even knows he’s losing his job next year), and he refuses to beat himself up for it — a position that is, in the end, riskier, more vulnerable, and easier to identify with than that of his nearest rival. And, if you can manage to think about it without irony, very nearly heroic.”

That’s not how anyone would describe the ignorant white guy who used to be governor of Illinois, except maybe the man himself, but Rod Blagojevich will soon be joining Leno on NBC: come March 14, he’ll be part of the new season of Celebrity Apprentice. I’m sure he’ll have lots to talk about with fellow black contestants Darryl Strawberry, Holly Robinson Peete, Michael Johnson, and Sinbad.

By the way, this marks my final Sugar Water essay for Popdose. As Jeff Giles keeps reminding me, it was my decision, and I stand behind him standing behind it 110 percent. Join me next week, won’t you, for my new series: Hey, Who Else Hates [Artist or Title]? Seriously, Right? I Mean, C’mon!!!!

It’ll be super.

Billy Paul, “Am I Black Enough for You?” (from 1972′s 360 Degrees of Billy Paul)
Todd Rundgren, “Some Folks Is Even Whiter Than Me” [Edit] (from 1972′s Something/Anything?)
Radiohead, “Talk Show Host” (from the 2009 collector’s edition of The Bends)
Paul McCartney, “Tug of War” (from 1982′s Tug of War)

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