Well, here we are again, flicking through Jane magazine's Celebrity issue and wondering why. Why is Jane, in its proud mediocrity, still in business when the far superior Sassy couldn't make a go of it? Why does Jane count among its "celebrity" contributors no-names like Rich Cronin, Jemima French, Alison Goldfrapp, Izabella Miko, and Oz Perkins? Why are so many of the actual celebrities in the issue Scientologists? Why do the Jane staff still bother with this crap? Why do we?

This year's issue does the impossible: it manages to outstrip all previous celebrity issues in its complete and unrelenting crappiness. There literally is not one thing in this entire issue worth reading. It's 164 pages of a vacuum. You open it and it implodes. I feel it is giving it too much attention even to catalogue its many shortcomings, but just so you don't think I'm exaggerating, I will borrow a technique from my esteemed colleague The Man from F.U.N.K.L.E. and give you a guided tour.

The cover: Here's why I didn't realize at first that it even was the celebrity issue. Instead of a nice big close-up cheesecake shot of some celebrity or other, it's six rectangular, black-and-white photos of various stars. Across the middle it does, indeed, promise that "300 celebs reveal things they probably shouldn't," but the print is in this odd shade of salmony-coral that makes it hard to read from a distance. So way to handicap your shitty issue straight out of the gate, Jane.

Page 24: The masthead. The staffers have added celebrity surnames to their own, I guess to indicate their allegiance to their favourite (or, ironically, their un-favourite) stars. Thus Jed Winokur becomes "Jed Winoker Hynde," Gigi Guerra becomes "Gigi Guerra Sampras," and former Sassy staff writer (and formerly respectable) Karen Catchpole declares herself "Karen Catchpole Caviezel." Okay, I am as guilty of anyone as saying that various people -- real and fictional -- are "my boyfriend." I'm not such a tool that I'd ever print a magazine for strangers to read in which I dubbed myself "Wing Chun Janney." Because I'm not in third grade, and a magazine is not a spiral notebook with puffy stickers on its cover.

Page 33: Jane's Diary. The headline reads, "fake hedline for the slutty masses of slut lovers." (The no-caps usage is sic, by the way; Jane is edgy like that. Capital letters are for squares, man!) Jane explains, "That above is what Brant in our art department stuck on the layout just to show me the headline placement. [That's called Greek text and, thanks, we get it, doofa.] But it's so much more brilliant and appropriate than anything I could possibly come up with right now." Or ever, apparently; doesn't every Jane's Diary consist of her whining about how exhausted she is? Like, you're editing a crappy-ass magazine, not mining coal. Get a little perspective. Maybe if you spent less time licking celebrity ass and getting your hair ironed, you'd have time to do your job. The rest of the diary (continuing to page 34) is an alphabetical list of the celebrities and her thumbnail assessments, like, "Amy Carlson (p. 64) wore what we gave her, did her makeup the way we wanted and did everything the photographer asked (this is not normal)." First of all, who? Second, so? I guess we get all that back story to contrast her with "Boston Public's Jessalyn Gilsig (p. 152) was always on it, even when she blew her deadline." First of all, who? Second, how passive-aggressive of you. I didn't care about Gilsig either way before I read that line, but after I hoped she would blow up to be the next Julia Roberts and then dis Jane when they begged to put her on their cover. (Then I read Gilsig's article -- advancing the radical and risky opinion that public-school students (especially in the age of AIDS, y'all) should be taught more than abstinence in their Sex Ed classes -- and decided that she wasn't worth my good will after all.)

Page 41: A page of photos of actors who've played gay characters. [Crickets chirp.] Seriously. Just their photos, and a list of their names. Below, there's a paragraph from each of Kerr Smith (who plays Jack on Dawson's Creek) and Michelle Clunie (who plays Melanie on Queer as Folk), telling us -- in all the detail two hundred words afford -- what it's like to be a straight actor (or, in Kerr's case, way straight) and play a gay character. Um. Good for you. Again. Not coal mining. Perspective, please.

Page 42: Uncle Kracker's first job was pumping gas at his dad's gas station. So now that he's rich, he's bought his own gas station. And his dad manages it. I never thought I could have any respect for flash-in-the-pan four-hit wonders like Hammer, but at least he pissed his money away buying a house for his mom so that she could retire, not securing a menial job for her in perpetuity.

Page 44: David Krumholtz use to live in Queens. Now he lives in Los Angeles. I swear to God, they gave him space in a national magazine to tell us that. Also, Scientologist Jason Lee tells us about some artist buddy of his.

I'm only up to page 44? Damn, I'd better pace myself.

Page 71: Paris Hilton is the beneficiary of a "makeunder." And I have to say that she looks fantastic, both before and after. I know she's nouveau riche useless heiress trash. She's also beautiful. She's so beautiful, it really doesn't matter whether she ever learns that the word is "chic" and not "shiek."

Page 101: A floating non sequitur informs us, "The movie Boogie Nights was officially renamed His Powerful Device Makes Him Famous when it debuted in Hong Kong." Hee hee! That is almost funnier now than it was the first time I heard it, four years ago. Seriously, didn't fucking Reuters pick up that "story" of all the wacky cuckoo nutty movie-title translations? Didn't you see it in your crappy local newspaper one time when you went home to visit your parents? And didn't Wired or someone like that subsequently reveal that most of the translations were fake?

Page 126: A couple of howlers in a story about celebrity activism and charity work. InStyle has a feature on this every month, entitled "Cause Celeb." (Isn't that name awesome? It slays me.) InStyle knows perfectly well that the only reason any regular person cares about any charity effort is because it's been endorsed by a glamorous celebrity. Jane tries to pretend that the celebrities in their article -- Rosie Perez, Mia Farrow, and Susan Sarandon -- are doing their work quietly, without needing any attention or admiration. Which is exactly why they agreed to talk about it in Jane. Anyway, Mia Farrow talks about visiting Nigeria to visit polio patients: "I took my academically gifted 13-year-old, Seamus, who is already in his second year of college...." It's a good thing that kid isn't in junior high anymore, because I guarantee he used to get beaten up daily. Elsewhere, Susan Sarandon describes her experience working with AIDS patients in India, and says, "I'm sure no one knew who I was. And I'm sure they hadn't seen my movies. But it didn't matter." It mattered so little, in fact, that she had to make a special point of telling us how little it mattered. Ladies? Shut up.

Page 135: The headline reads, "ENOUGH CELEBRITY ASS-KISSING." Yeah right.

Page 138: A fashion spread starring Scientologist Juliette Lewis.

Page 148: Mandy Moore interviews Daphne Aguilera, a character played by Andy Dick on his MTV sketch show. Toward the end, Moore asks where Aguilera sees herself in five years, and Aguilera replies, "I'm actually working on a musical right now. Instead of Evita, we're thinking of Hillary Clinton: The Musical." Andy, you can make that cheque out to Djb.

Page 158: Horoscope. The entry for Sagittarius reads as an open letter to Britney Spears: "We love you. We're trying to get you to be on the cover." Begging really does wonders to boost an editor's professional credibility. How about doing more to bring a finished, polished issue to print instead of making such a production out of showing us the seams? All this behind-the-scenes stuff is interesting when you read it about Vogue, on Page Six. No one gives a shit about the low-stakes editorial meetings going on (or not, as Jane's Diary suggests) at Jane.

Page 162: The advice column, entitled "Deal With It." The "Family" advice comes from "Gay Ribisi, mother of actors Giovanni and Marissa." Marissa also had a short article in last year's issue, despite the fact that her last major role consisted of three lines on an episode of Friends in 1997. Why on earth should her mom -- not at all a celebrity in her own right -- appear in this issue? Perhaps the answer lies within her response to the reader seeking to mend a troubled relationship with her mother. Gay writes, "A great philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard, once said, 'Communication is the universal solvent.'"

Riiiiiiight. Well, I would comment on this, but I don't want to get sued. I'll just point out that Gay is a Scientologist, and that both of her children are second-generation Scientologists. What is with all the damn Scientologists? That's five out of three hundred people in this issue. It's not like they represent that big a percentage in the general population. The only thing I can think is that Jane herself has secretly converted and this shitty-ass issue is her way of coming out as a cultist. The idea that the rest of the content could have possibly been conceived and produced to serve any other purpose just makes me sad.