And not finding an image online I dug it out of my closet and took a few pictures with my iPhone. And not the new iPhone with the decent camera, sorry.

The article, purportedly by Steve Dunleavy, begins, "Everyone on earth remained in deep seclusion today as the tragic news of Michael Jackson's bizarre death sent shock waves through an unconsolable and devastated world," and reports that Jackson had just gone into "his world-famous spin move" on stage when a nuclear blast hit, accelerating "the already dangerously high velocity of Michael's spin, increasing the twirl ratio beyond acceptable industry standards," propelling him into the earth's core. It announces a worldwide funeral tour as "weeping mourners from New York to Nepal donned solitary black gloves in witness to their grief." Remember when the glove was the strangest thing about him?

OK, so the joke doesn't sustain very well past the cover, which is funny largely because it's a joke about the Post, not Jacko. Who, note, was not yet called Jacko. The best bits in the article involve Jackson's brother: "'Jermaine just keeps reliving the entire horrible nightmare,' said someone. 'He sits in Michael's media room and screens the video tapes over and over.'" And later: "Witnesses to the tragedy report that Jermaine grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed the head of his rapidly disappearing brother. The action, while courageous and quick thinking, failed to help Michael in his greatest moment of need."

And there's a coda that will seem awfully familiar to anyone who's read today's newspapers.

For Michael, death was the worst blow to date in a life marred by tragedies ranging from blazing hair to fierce family squabbles over how best to extract every dime from his fabulous talent — all of which had caused him to retreat ever further into a childlike world filled with toys, games and persistent denials of homosexuality.

Ironically, Michael... may have realized he was living on borrowed time. 'He was walking around knowing that at any moment a nuclear blast could take him out, yet he kept up a brave front for his fans,' said Michael's closest friend, the Post Post's Lisa Robinson.

Now those fans, conservatively estimated to include everyone in the world still alive, struggled to cope with a lost of staggering proportions. In every country of the globe, rich and poor, celebrities and the insignificant alike joined together as one in an unprecedented orgy of weeping, so intense that in many areas flash floods resulted, killing thousands.

Daniel Radosh is the author of Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. This article first appeared on his personal blog.

The Times redacted Jason Jones' use of the word fart in an online interview today about the Daily Show correspondent's evisceration of the newspaper, choosing to replace it with the clinical term your 4th grade teacher preferred: "[flatulence]."

Daniel Radosh, who has long chronicled the idiotic and prudish efforts of newspapers to avoid using bad words, points out quite reasonably that fart is not even remotely close to a term that any reasonable person over the age of 8 could conceivably find offensive, which is why the Times uses it all the time.

But he goes the extra mile by adding that, as we speak, the Times is hosting a trailer for Le Journal Erotique D'Un Bucheron—which translates as The Erotic Diary of a Lumberjack—a 1974 French film that looks really good. The trailer features oral sex, naked wrestling, breasts, and all-around inescapable full-frontal nudity that you wouldn't want to watch with your parents. No farts though, as far as we could tell.

From left: Geoff Reiss, Gina Duclayan, Kristen Rayner, Daniel Carter, Christiaan Kuypers, Nicki Gostin, Marion Rosenfeld, Paul Donald, Damon Torres.

If non-Christians have heard of Bibleman at all, it's probably because for the first seven years he was played by Willie Aames. In the 1970s and 80s, Aames was the shaggy-haired co-star of Eight is Enough and Charles in Charge, and his only superpower was snorting three grams of coke a day. Eventually he cleaned up, was born again and took a new job as Bibleman. His episodes are now in perpetual reruns on TBN, and I sat down to watch one.

The show opens with the backstory of our hero, Miles Peterson, "a man who had it all: wealth, status, success. Still, something was missing." That's putting it mildly. I don't know about you, but when I feel that something is missing I usually mope around the house or browse YouTube for videos of cats falling off stuff. Miles, however, goes tearing out into a rainstorm and collapses into a sobbing heap. "Then, in his darkest hour," Miles finds something half buried in the mud: a Bible. Not just any Bible — a radioactive Bible. No, actually it is just any Bible. But apparently that's enough to turn him into Bibleman.

In this episode, Bibleman and his sidekicks, Cypher (the black guy) and Biblegirl (the girl) go up against a villain called Primordius Drool, a mincing green-skinned fop with a lisp and a fondness for show tunes. Subtlety is not Bibleman's strong suit. The same actor also plays a talk show host named Sammy Davey, who is a classic stereotype of a New York Jew, complete with nerdy glasses and a giant Jew-fro. Slouching and cringing, Sammy Davey needles and browbeats poor Bibleman in an accent so thick that he actually pronounces Bibleman as if it were a surname like Silverman or Lieberman.

The heart of the show is the fight sequences, typically involving a darkened warehouse (all the better to obscure the lackluster choreography) and Bibleman swatting away CGI fireballs with his lightsaber while announcing, "Isaiah 54:17 says 'no weapon forged against me will prosper!'" Every now and then, Bibleman shares a lesson with his sidekicks, as when he laments that people "allow their minds to cover up what God has placed on their hearts" — a near perfect pitch for the common evangelical notion that feelings are to be trusted above rational discernment, a belief that many non-evangelicals would be distressed to hear is being passed on to eight-year-olds.

"Metrosexuals Come Out." Warren St. John writes the platonic ideal of trend piece; ensuing controversy forces him to prove his manliness by watching shitloads of football.

George Gurley's infamous "floppy woo" piece uncovers disturbing trend of large-twatted women.

David Amsden breaks "guys jerking off to Internet" story.

Ralph Gardner, Jr., discovers wives who earn more than their husbands and withhold blowjobs.

Republicans: Hip and edgy! (Warren St. John continues to atone.)

Jennifer 8. Lee writes "The Man Date." Irrevocable decline of trend piece can be traced directly to this moment.

A couple of women Louise Story knew in college "put aside their careers in favor of raising children." Made front page of NYT. Was entirely anecdotal.

Nick Sylvester found guilty of crime every other trend-piece writer commits: making shit up.

Women fuck their contractors
People like skulls.
Rose-fucking-ay.

Now, Less Than Ever: The Decline of The Trend Piece [NYO]