As we enter the March 2001 issue of Vanity Fair, please be aware of low ceilings and watch your head accordingly:

The cover: Ah, Julianne Moore. A real star, which is a nice change from the Heath Ledgers of the world. Even the coverline -- "A Bombshell with Brains! So what's a nice girl like this doing in a movie like Hannibal?" -- is fairly easy to stomach. But what's with all the exclamation marks? in fact, what's with Vanity Fair's general slide into a kind of semi-ironic campiness? Little red "Exclusive! Plus! New This Month!" boxes on the cover? Under Tina Brown, VF often felt like a downmarket rag masquerading as an upscale glossy -- sure, it's Demi Moore naked, but it's done so tastefully -- whereas now VF feels increasingly like an upscale glossy slumming it as a tabloid. "Inside the Bizarre sex-fetish world of 'plushies' and 'furries'"? What's going on here? Is this issue being guest-edited by Jerry Springer? Oh, and Julianne Moore's boob is half-hanging out. Okay, let's move into the magazine.

Page 109: Wait, before we get to the magazine (yes, we're at page 109 and there are still no articles in sight), here's a photo spread for Ellen Tracy featuring Cindy Crawford. Is she even awake? Is this what it's come down to? In every picture, if you look behind her eyes, it looks like the only thing going through her mind is "the check, the check, the check, turn left, the check, turn right, the check, fuck Revlon, the check, the check." But we digress.

Page 119: Ah, the Fanfair section. As longtime readers of The Mediator will know, we're no fans of this section. Anyway, it's shrinking, it's shrinking, and soon it will be gone.

Page 132: Okay, one thing about Fanfair. With regard to the map illustrating the recent boom of shops and groovy hangouts in Williamsburg? Apart from people in Manhattan and the immediate area, who could possibly care? For this you keep Fanfair alive? Okay, let's move on.

Page 138: Christopher Hitchens on the monarchy. Nothing to read here, folks. Move along.

Page 148: Dominick Dunne's Diary. Uh, yeah.

Page 160: Here we go. A preview of Tim Burton's remake (or reimagining, or whatever) of Planet of the Apes. This is what you will think when you look at these photos: (1) Is that Charlton Heston, back for a cameo? No, it's Kris Kristofferson. (2) You know, this ape makeup is, like, thirty years more advanced than the original movie, and it doesn't look that much different. Probably the mouths will move better.

Page 162: "In the Dot-Com Doldrums." It's a smirking story about the former bratty dot-com millionaires who now face a swift and terrible comeuppance, which is to say that they're worth only $15 million instead of $515 million. A question in the back? Yes, it WAS Vanity Fair that, not long ago, did a slavering photo spread of up-and-coming dot-com geniuses, including the CEO of Pets.com. And yes, ma'am, it was Evgenia Peretz, the very same writer who wrote this piece -- who staked out dot-com mania as her own personal beat for VF about two years ago. But let's not dwell on the past. This article is great if you're interested in the heart-rending stories of people like twenty-three-year-old Bill Martin, whose fortunes have fallen so drastically that, where he once sold his website to Alta Vista for $167.5 million in stock, he now has to regroup and may even be forced to -- gasp! -- go to Harvard Business School. What will his parents tell the neighbours? Unfortunately, I can't say what happened to Bill or these other unfortunate and recently-downgraded-to-mere-millionaire wunderkinds, because my eyes were too filled with salty tears to read to the end of the story.

Page 174: The aforementioned Furries story. No, I didn't read this, mostly because it's about forty-five pages long, and because if I care to learn more about people who are sexually excited by dressing up as stuffed animals, there are plenty of places I can find out about them, as can you. ["And, no, we will not provide a link to such places from here." -- Wing Chun] That said, let's move on.

Page 206: Look, I know this "Divided Attentions" pie chart is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but why does it always read like a chart of Tyler Brule's brain? When you say that 22% of the nation is thinking about Stephen Sprouse's Louis Vuitton Monogram-Graffiti bags, are you trying to be funny? Ironic? Serious? We, the people, are flummoxed.

Page 224: A cheesy pin-up of Pam Anderson and Marcus Schenkenberg, pegged to nothing in particular -- another example of Vanity Fair's newly developed penchant for a winking embrace of trash culture. Here's a tip for you aspiring magazine editors out there: if you're going to do a topless cheesecake shot of Pam Anderson, don't place it so that her barely covered bosom falls in the gutter. The literal gutter, of the magazine. The other meaning, you have no control over.

Page 226: You know, Jeff Koons looks like Adam Yauch's older brother.

Page 236: "Dear Dame Edna." Yes, it's an advice column by Dame Edna. Okay, what is going on? Please, Vanity Fair, 'fess up: did you give Dame Edna a column because you like her, or just because you "like" her? Do you realize that the whole magazine is taking on this strange feel, as if every page is wrapped in air quotes, every editorial decision carrying the whiff of mock sincerity (or is it sincere mockery)? Do you realize that now you as-often-as-not read like an incredibly nuanced and brilliantly subtle parody of your old self? I know you can't answer me, Vanity Fair, for you are only a magazine. But you puzzle me. You puzzle me.

Page 238: "Hugh Hefner's Roaring 70s." Hefner, bimbos, feathers, and an article I enjoyed when I read it two years ago in Esquire. ["I didn't." -- Wing Chun]

Page 290: The Proust Questionnaire, this month featuring Tom Green. It's only twelve a year, people. Who's up next month? Carson Daly? Johnny Knoxville? Joey Slotnick? Tom Green's answers to the standard raft of questions are all funny and insincere and, well, kind of pointless -- a fitting end, as it turns out, to the entire issue.

Oh -- and, yes, we did skip the actual Julianne Moore profile. If you've read a Vanity Fair celebrity profile, you've read this one.

That's it for the tour, folks. Please watch your step on the way out.