Back when Fametracker was in its infancy, The Man from F.U.N.K.L.E. and I discussed the possibility of producing an occasionally updated companion site. It would be the antithesis of Fametracker, in that every celebrity assessed would be given perfect scores and glowing reviews. It would feature sections like "2 Stars, 2 Fab!" and the "Galaxy of Glam," and each celebrity profiled in the Fame Audit would be pronounced far less famous than he should be. Naturally, we could only call such a sister site "Starfucker.com." We decided, in the end, not to produce it, for two reasons: First, the "starfucker.com" domain was already owned by someone else, and second, Jane magazine exists.

Every year of its existence, Jane's September issue has been devoted to celebrity blow-jobs. "200 Stars!" trumpets the cover. Every successful rag -- from lowbrow People and TV Guide right on up to middlebrow Vanity Fair -- recognizes that what moves product is the image of a celebrity, so Jane isn't really breaking any new ground there. But the fact that Jane regards, as a selling point, the sheer volume of celebrity -- without indicating in any way which celebrities will appear within, and in what capacity -- reveals either the depth of the magazine's cynicism, or the extent to which we regular people are obsessed with them (to the point that we don't care who they are, but just that they are), or both. A glance at the "index" of celebrities that runs alongside "Jane's Diary" (this month, written by Sopranos star Edie Falco -- which is a shame, because while she's a very cool, Joan-Rivers-dissing actor, her writing is incomprehensible, and in a just world, I would not know that about her) indicates that Jane's idea of a celebrity is different than, say, mine. I mean, Paul Beatty? Alecia Elliott? Ruyter Suys? Um, who? "200 Stars" is what you get at the Oscars™. "200 Stars" is not a list that includes someone called Aunjanue Ellis.

But completely apart from the rather inflated promises of star content within, the issue fucking sucks, dude. (I know that's not so eloquent, but at least it is clear -- and sometimes, le mot juste absolutely has to include profanity.) Sure, Elizabeth Hurley is claiming that interviewer Tony Romando attributed remarks to her that she didn't utter, and is considering suing the magazine for it (so says this week's issue of People). But how does "actor and screenwriter Marissa Ribisi" -- last seen by the general public in a four-line guest appearance on Friends, four years ago -- feel about the brief memoir about her relationship with twin brother Giovanni, in which she comes across as a whiner who's jealous of his greater career success (viz "To this day, if he's low on cash, all he has to do is bring up that stupid bike [of his, which was stolen -- her fault] and dinner is paid. Have you ever noticed how rich people never have any bills?"). How does "Singer Lennon Murphy" feel to have the story of her mother's death reduced, in a 200-word story, to just another routine hurdle on her "tragic road toward a record deal"?

But no star comes across as more of an ass than "novelist" Ethan Hawke, in his short story, "Pissing in the Tall Grass with the Big Dogs." It's as if he inhaled a kilo of cocaine, read the collected works of Charles Bukowski in the space of a night, and then vomited this work of "short fiction" onto a series of soiled cocktail napkins. For one thing, the story is written in the second person ("You walk out of your building and there is that dark-haired lady with the two little dogs, Scooter and Muffy"), the most pretentious voice possible. For another, it's full of crude, out-of-context, and not terribly creative turns of phrase, plainly calculated to jar the reader into thinking, "Gosh, that sure isn't the Ethan Hawke I thought was so cute in Dead Poets Society!" ("The guy you share your dressing room with seems like a good enough guy. He was released from prison in 1974 and discovered acting as part of rehabilitation therapy. He is very good. The two of you have had a couple of laughs talking about pussy before, but for the most part he's real quiet, especially before the show." "Now [your co-star] is talking about today's notes from Herr Director. You are wondering what her pussy looks like, how soft it must be, how wonderfully pink and wet. Ohhh. You make her get off your lap.") In the style of Quentin Tarantino, he throws in specific, but pointless, pop-cultural references ("...[Y]ou continue on into more depressed neighbourhoods, looking for the Taco Bell you ate at the night before....You order -- two soft tacos, a nachos supreme and a medium Dr Pepper"). The magazine where I used to work once co-sponsored, with Absolut Vodka, a short fiction contest in which each entry had to incorporate the phrase "Absolut Vodka" in the text. The reference in Hawke's story to Taco Bell and Dr Pepper is handled as deftly as the Absolut fiction contest entries I read -- which is to say, very clumsily and artificially. The protagonist in "Pissing" is about as smug and self-involved as any Jack Kerouac hero ("You put on a large suede jacket. It's tough. It weighs a lot, like your car." "You're staring at yourself again...." "You sit down across from a beautiful black woman and her daughter. You like them because they look downtrodden"). If I didn't already despise Ethan Hawke both as a dilettante writer, and as a crappy actor, this story would have accomplished the task nicely. I'm sure he has more than a few converts to antipathy based on his embarrassing blatherings here.

Jane also jumps with both feet onto the "Robert Downey Jr. is a political prisoner!" bandwagon, publishing a story, in the form of an oral history, arguing that the actor's prison sentence for cocaine possession was unjust. Now, I am sure that prison really sucks, and that it's hard, and I agree that, particularly in the U.S., drug offenses are punished far too harshly and frequently and lead to the very real, and serious, problem of prison overcrowding. But Robert Downey Jr. was not in prison at the time this article was assembled (he's since been released) for his very first drug offense ever. According to a similarly-themed though considerably less biased article about Downey in the August issue of Vanity Fair, between June 1996 and August 1999 (the time of Downey's most recent incarceration), the actor was arrested on drug-related charges five times, and violated his parole twice. So for Scott Weiland -- who, we may fairly say, is not likely to be completely objective on the subject of drug abuse -- to defend Downey by saying, "Why should somebody be in prison because they suffer from a disease you don't understand?" is a little disingenuous. "I think that he should be in a rehabilitation program," says Donovan Leitch. Except that he has been...and, in July 1996, he escaped from the rehab facility. "Every time Robert would clean up his act, his reward was, 'Here's a million dollars and another studio picture.' And all that comes with all the hangers-on. I think it made it difficult for him to stay focused," Leitch adds, later. A million dollars? And an entourage of fawning sycophants? Poor baby! "I'm sure it didn't help Robert's case that he was found once in his car with a pistol," Weiland concedes. Ya think? "The judge was going to show Robert and all the other celebrities that go through his courtroom that, although he gave them a break initially, he's going to be one tough judge if they ever screw up. And he used Robert to make that example," says Downey's lawyer. The Jane editor notes, as an aside, "[Downey had violated the terms of his probation.]" So...that's a crime. And someone who's been arrested multiple times on variations of the same crime is a recidivist. Yes, a three-year term in prison for violating parole is harsh, but it's not hard time, and he did do the crime! I agree that Downey has a real problem -- a disease -- that isn't going to be cured in prison. But when he's busting out of rehab, what more can be done? I'm not crying any tears for Robert Downey Jr. It's all well and good to go on benders when you're in your twenties and you're a sucky actor anyway. (David Arquette, are your ears burning?) But when you get to be an adult with a child, the onus is on you to get your act together, not to whine at some second-tier chick rag about how you were a victim of "the system."