The HiLo Life
By:
January 21, 2010
Your digest of what’s what!
Jersey Shore star Paul “Pauly D” Delvecchio is known for his outspokenness in matters ecclesiastical, but the strength of his feelings on the Church’s impending beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman has taken some observers by surprise.
“JHN for sainthood???” twittered Delvecchio last Tuesday to his 78,632 followers, “omigod he SUCKED.” On Wednesday at 4.21 am he took up the theme again: “newman didn’t like papal infallibility suck it up bro what the pope says goes haha.” And ten minutes later, a derisive reference to Newman’s 1845 conversion: “JHN a fag. should of stayed anglican. dehydrated so bad right now need gatorade!!!” (I have a call in to the Vatican on this. Updates soon.)
Glenn Beck has been sending me more of his poetry — an advance copy, in fact, of his upcoming collection The Seer, The Sage (HarperCollins). Handsomely bound, nice thick pages, a credit to the publisher. I must say that Glenn in his windy Whitmanesque mode (and I’m thinking here of long-form pieces like “Truth Jam” and “’Neath Liberty’s Boughs”) is not really my cup of tea. But he has another side too, pithy and adroit. Take the short poem “Shy Dog,” which Glenn tells me via email was written “when my dog Steve Austin was refusing to meet my eye, because of guilt I think (we found a mess later!)” I submit it in its entirety:
Why so shy, shy dog?
What has you so tenderly vexed?
Is it the thought of what you just did?
Or the thought of what you’ll do next?
Bravo! (Which reminds me. I promised Glenn I’d burn him a copy of Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz — the 1980 release, before it was re-recorded with a different rhythm section, thereby depriving the original musicians of revenue and desecrating the memory of Randy Rhoads. Stand by, GB!)
Did you catch me on Letterman last week? I was promoting my book Best YouTube Comments 2009, which I co-edited with Paul Muldoon. An awkward night, in the end. How distressed I am by this silly feud over The Tonight Show! Both Jay and Conan are madly old friends of mine, as are Dave himself and the two Jimmys, so when Dave brought it up I attempted to play a conciliatory role. “Ah, it’s just TV,” I said gaily. “Who gives a flying fuck?” But my host would have none of it and pressed on, fanning the flames of discord with his bitter jokes. More worrying still was the clear evidence of Dave’s continuing obsession with cosmetic surgery: the man’s face was a Death Star of Botox and he appears to have had his ass solemnized again.
At last the FCC’s ban on television pundits saying “Look —” has gone into effect. I first made this recommendation in 2004, to then-chairman Michael Powell, when I noticed David Brooks making a habit of it on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. “Look —” Brooks would say, inflating slightly, before delivering himself of an especially purple piece of punditry. “Sinister!” I said to myself, and I was right. Hacks and gasbags everywhere took note of Brooks’ technique, and soon the most distilled fatuities on television were being prefaced with this command: “Look, Obama needs to blah blah.” “Look, the American people are tired of blah blah.” But no more! Henceforward, thanks to an aggressive campaign spearheaded by (among others) Chyna and Dave Grohl, pundits caught using “Look —” will face a fine, a suspension and/or an appearance on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
Congratulations to the cast and crew of The Hangover for winning Best Comedy at the Golden Globes! If it had been up to me (and it nearly was — only a bad tuna sandwich prevented me from directing that movie) (seriously, I was one meeting away from it) (one meeting!) I would have had Mike Tyson, in his great scene, sing along not to Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight but to The Smiths’ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now. I can see Iron Mike now, his large arms wisping and waving like aquarium seaweed: “I wath happy in the hathe of a drunken hour…” Oscar material!
Meanwhile, slopping in my espadrilles past the basement lab this morning, I noted with sorrow the overnight demise of two of my test subjects. The experiment continues, however, and you can be sure that the results will appear in the fullness of time either in The New England Journal of Medicine or McSweeney’s. Stay tuned.
Installments of “The HiLo Life: With Marcia Kogler-Vegan” are archived here.