Mucking around with Jim Belushi in the Sun-Times

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Piety / Media / Comedy Mucking around with Jim Belushi in the Sun-Times

Posted by Sam Worley on 05.29.12 at 04:48 PM

Erich Ferdinand
Humor

Let’s check in on our new corporate patrons, Sun-Times Media, and the Sun-Times's new weekday feature, the Daily Splash. The Splash, which debuted yesterday, features a rotating cast of 30 celebrities weighing in on the day's issues—the celebs average out to about, say, B+ list, but OK, there's also Rahm Emanuel. (I see your Emanuel and offer you Jenny McCarthy, who believes that childhood vaccinations cause autism, and Pete Wentz, who is Pete Wentz.) In yesterday's inaugural, Gary Sinise, of Forrest Gump and some other movies, paid anodyne tribute to veterans. Today's columnist is Jim Belushi, with whom corporate honcho Michael Ferro conceived of the Splash. The two men were at dinner together, writes Splash editor and columnist Susanna Negovan: "Brad suggested that Jim write a column, and Jim jokingly replied, 'Sure!'" Oh god, but then it wasn't a joke anymore.

So today Belushi does humor. He takes the humorous premise that, now that he's in his mid-50s, he's become a "pill popper"—you know, like for gout and baldness. The headline is "In my 50s, I'm a pill popper." In the text this is related in the mock-confessional style. Belushi reports eating pretty well in California, where he lives, but when he visits Chicago all bets are off. "On my way to the airport,"” he writes, "I have to stop and pick up two double-dipped Italian beefs from Portillo's. Did you know they have a drive-through? A limo will fit through it!" Ha ha! I totally didn’t know that. And so then he takes some more medicine. He has, Belushi muses, "pill-anoia," a condition which causes the sufferer to seek out every legal prescription medication around. This sets up several jokes about old people's sexual functionality, which is a famously humorous topic.

The Sun-Times is paying celebrity contributors to the Splash a $1,000 fee, which they've all agreed to donate to charity.

Tags: Sun-Times, Sun-Times Media, Gary Sinise, Daily Splash, Jenny McCarthy, Jim Belushi, Michael Ferro, Wrapports, bad jokes, Susanna Negovan