DICK CLARK: Not of This Earth?

Fifty years old but he doesn't look a day older than a clean urinal. All the personality of a hung jury. Mercury vapor smile solidly implanted in a face you keep expecting to melt. Drip. Stands so straight you'd think he's got a cookie cutter for an asshole.

Dick Clark. You gotta admire the guy. Even though he looks like an overgrown bird feeder, he's a primal proselytizer of trash, turning stupid teenage weirdness into commercially acceptable reality. His heavy-handed mastery of TV sublimation, rarely straying from his trademark of big, uncomplicated Iron Butterfly shots and fast pacing, and his distant early warning system for fads has kept him at or near the top for twenty-five years now. He deserved a hearty pat on the wallet, even if he characteristically had to do it himself.