This magazine is a font of mystery to me. For some reason its owners decided to create it at what must be enormous expense. For even more mysterious reasons they decided to send it to my house. It’s an oversized glossy with lots of ads for jewelry, plastic surgery and expensive kitchen equipment. It’s the sort of magazine I usually use as a protective heat shield for my laptop computer without ever opening. But last night I decided to look at it. It’s precisely what I thought. Lots of pictures of black-tie parties I don’t want to go to let alone see pictures of and even more pictures of Washingtonians I don’t want to meet — but often do — all dressed up. But then, on the last page, I saw something special: Larry King’s old USA Today column has been revived (you know, the one which the Onion spoofed by ending with “Get these squirrels off of me!”).

I don’t know if this is in every issue or if this was a special one-off. But it had everything we missed from his old column: a string of bland non-sequiters of little to no redeeming value.

Here is an excerpt exactly as it appears (i.e. the elipses are his):

…Robert Parker never ceases to amaze me. I think I’ve read everyone of his books. His crisp dialogue and wonderful storytelling ability are there in his latest thriller, School Days. The lead character is representing the family of a young man accused of school shooting. As with every Parker book, this is a page-turner.
…My heart remains with the Wizards this year. I think if they can avoid injuries, they might go deeper into the playoffs than they have in the recent past. My Capitals, on the other hand, are going to need a lot more scoring in a wide-open National Hockey League.
…The funniest show on the tube, bar none, is HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry David’s consistency as the show enters its fifth year is undeniabe. The man is a comedy genius, and the show is drop-dead funny.
…One of the bright young stars on TV is Heidi Collins of CNN. She has a tremendous future in the media game, and the sky’s the limit with this talent.
…Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Yom Kippur speech on forgiveness at a synagogue was one of her best. Deeply felt and strongly delivered.

And so on. He finishes with an ancient borscht belt joke too old and long for me to type which he calls “the joke of the season.”

You cannot make up banality like this.