NASA has taken a “de-orbit only” position on the future of the Hubble telescope. Bastards. On the plus side, if you’re really good at re-entry calculations, and have a lot of mattresses to spread around your backyard, maybe you can snag yourself a mighty fine accessory for your nightly window-peeping.

I was distraught to pick up the newspaper from the driveway this morning and see an obituary for one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg. Heart attack. He was only 37. You may not know the name, but you’ve seen him at one time or another. He had a spaced-out delivery, like Stephen Wright on acapulco gold. He was so shy that he almost couldn’t face the audience. In his early years, he’d stare straight down at his feet while delivering his bit, his long hair dangling in his face as though to further hide from the crowd. You just wanted to run up onstage and give him a hug. In later years, he was able to finally look up and out among the seats, but he still wore darkly-tinted glasses, as though if he couldn’t see the audience well they couldn’t see too deeply into him.

He hailed from St Paul, MN, as was well known and loved on the local comedy circuit. He has a new album out, “All Together Now”. I’ll pick it up and put it alongside his previous album, “Strategic Grill Locations”. Comedians don’t make a lot of money doing the tour thing, and Mitch leaves behind a family way too soon. I’m sure they can use all the financial help they can get. Buy one of his CDs–even if you don’t always get the jokes–and remember that for every Bill Cosby and Rodney Dangerfield and George Carlin, there’s a Sam Kinison, a Lenny Bruce, a Chris Farley, and a Mitch Hedberg: guys who never made it beyond the initial promising arc of their career and left us with one less reason to laugh.

Last year, the St Paul Pioneer Press ran an interview with him (alas, unarchived) in which he discussed his troubles with drug abuse and how he’d finally kicked the nastier habits and was putting his life back together. Isn’t that a familiar story? Troubled entertainer straightens out only to die unexpectedly. I guess the moral of this story is, don’t clean up your act or you’re gonna die. Pass the acapulco gold.

As Pope John Paul II passes through what may well be the final hours of his long papacy, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls has become a familiar face on TV. His determination to put the best spin on an obviously terrible situation has me calling him Rome’s version of Baghdad Bob: Vatican Vinnie.

Several weeks ago, when the pope was unable to breath properly and had to have an emergency tracheotomy, Vatican Vinnie talked as though it was no big deal. In fact, it probably didn’t even need to be done–they inserted a breathing tube almost for the hell of it. As if the pope were Michael Jackson in a Rococco Crap store: “I’ll take one of those, and one of those, and two of those…”

Yesterday, John Paul was given last rites, which actually had the effect of tearing the media away from poor Terri Schiavo’s death bed and putting them in full Pope Death Watch mode. That is a big deal. You know last rights: the Catholic ritual for the dying. “Oh, no, no, no,” Vatican Vinnie tells us. “Last rites aren’t just for the dying anymore. They give them all the time now. It’s really little more than a blessing for the sick.” (I’m paraphrasing there.) He practically waved his hand and went, “Last rites…feh.”

Um, Vinnie… The last time the pope got last rites was when he took two bullets and the Vatican officials were trying to remember which firewood pile was for the black smoke and which was for the white. Terri Schiavo was off her feeding tube for a week before she got last rites. Cop Rock didn’t even get last rites.

This morning, with news that the pope was running a high fever, was in septic shock, and had suffered cardiocirculatory collapse, Vinne tells us that John Paul is “lucid, fully conscious.” Most doctors will tell you that if your blood pressure is so low that your veins collapse, then the blood flow to your organs–including your brain–is very low and there is no way you are lucid.

If it weren’t for the fact that a person were clinging to life somewhere in the massive complex behind him, Vatican Vinnie’s optimistic-to-the-point-of-delusional pronouncements would be almost funny.