Let me preface this column by making one thing perfectly clear--I'm sick to death of Jennifer Lopez. I don't care if she's the biggest star in the world. I don't care if she has a great ass, either. Big deal, plenty of women have great asses... and most of them have the benefit of never having been slapped by Puff Daddy. (Or P-Diddley Shit, or whatever the fuck he's calling himself these days.)

That said, I was watching Vh-1 recently and happened on a program called "The Fabulous Life of Jennifer Lopez." Now normally in a situation like this, I would have groaned disgustedly and changed the channel in a big hurry--but the TV remote was on a chair clear across the room. And me, on my sixth beer, wasn't getting my ass off the couch for anything besides another beer... or maybe some chips.

So the show stayed on... and it went a long way in killing my buzz and bringing to light my own sobering, pathetic reality..... J-Lo has lots more money than I do. She has lots more money than you, too. In fact, I'd hazard to say she has more money than everybody in our respective
hometowns COMBINED. Hell, this broad spends more money on bath towels than I make in an entire year.

My stomach recoiled as the program went over J-Lo's excessive spending in detail--$5000 bottles of champaign, multi-million dollar houses and a HUGE staff of leeches and hangers-on. J-Lo has a whole crew of people that do nothing but make sure she looks good--and struts around with up to twenty bodyguards at a time. She even hired a guy to TWEAK HER NIPPLES so they'd look "perky" on camera. (True story.) Realizing this, I began hating my own stupid job with a new passion.

But just as the depressing details of J-Lo's life began wearing me down, a sudden realization came to me through my beery haze--and something dawned on me. Mark my words, people, JENNIFER LOPEZ WILL BE BROKE IN LESS THAN THREE YEARS.

Why do I say this, you ask? It's simple. Jennifer Lopez is to this decade what MC Hammer was to the early 90's. When you think about it, the similarities between their careers are striking:

Both went from relative obscurity to making over $30 million in one year--$33 million for Hammer and $37 million for J-Lo. (Well hey, you have to allow for inflation.)

Both started off their careers as dancers, before finding greater success in music. (And movies, too, in J-Lo's case... even though every movie she's made thus far has sucked.)

Both of them refer to themselves with ridiculous nicknames which include initials.

Lopez has an entourage of at least fifty people that follow her around 24 hours a day--just like Hammer did, once upon a time. In fact, Hammer didn't just have people following him around... he'd deck them out in shiny, baggy pants and put them on stage! I mean, going to a Hammer concert in the 90's must have been something like this:

CONCERT GOER #1: (squinting) Which one of those dudes is Hammer?

CONCERT GOER #2: I don't know... the black one.

CONCERT GOER #1 Yeah, but there's at least five hundred black guys up there!

CONCERT GOER #2: Look for the one closest to the middle. Right in front of those guys standing there with their arms folded, looking pissed off.

J-Lo is spend, spend, spending her fortune just as fast as she makes it--again, just like Hammer. Remember hearing about Hammer's dream house on "Behind the Music"? He spent over a million bucks on Italian marble flooring alone. Two years later, he was bankrupt.

And I'm already seeing signs pointing to the inevitable J-Lo backlash. "Maid in Manhattan" did okay at the box office, but it sure as hell didn't shatter any records. Expect her next film to make considerably less, as a public grows increasingly bored of hearing the exploits of someone that Dean appropriately referred to as a "serial bride." As
public interest wanes, so do the paychecks... and then comes the spiral into obscurity.

This can't happen soon enough as far as I'm concerned. Once the money is all gone, what desperate attempts will she make to reclaim the limelight? A fully nude spread in Cheri magazine? I hope so, because otherwise I can't see myself getting interested in her ever again.

Hey, J-Lo.... STOP! It's Hammertime.

***wicked laugh***