Hey, ODB, Come Get Your Award!

This column was written to the sounds of “Vincent Laguardia Gambini Sings Just for You,” a recent album of Louis Prima-style swing and lounge blues sung by none other than Joe “GoodFellas” Pesci. If there’s anything in here that you don’t like, take it up with him.

Hey, in a year in which there were three alleged assaults by pop musicians or their bodyguards on music journalists and two on photographers, it seems a good idea to have a little wise-guy muscle on hand, just in case.

Imagine if Pesci had been hanging out with, say, Bob Dylan during the Grammy Awards telecast. Remember that guy in the “Soy Bomb” shirt who danced while a startled Dylan sang? With Pesci on the scene--Soy Burger.

But yo, Cousin Vinny, we’re glad it didn’t turn out that way. We love Soy Bomb almost as much as Jarvis Cocker, the singer whose similar disruption of a Michael Jackson performance on England’s Brit Awards show inspired us to name Pop Eye’s Dubious Distinctions award the Jarvis. In recognition of his American counterpart, for this year we dub the accolade the Jarvis-Soy.

But who is worthy of it?

Even in a year when George Michael got more public exposure than he’d had in ages, Ginger Spice became a U.N. Population Fund ambassador and Marilyn Manson, well, was Marilyn Manson, one figure rises above--the one man who was able to steal Soy Bomb’s thunder on the Grammy show. It could only be Wu-Tang Clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who bum-rushed the stage complaining about Wu-Tang’s loss in an earlier category, as a startled Shawn Colvin and John Leventhal were about to accept the song of the year award.

DIRTY DANCING: That was only the start of an eventful year for the rapper.

* He sustained two superficial gunshot wounds during a July robbery attempt against him in Brooklyn, and then checked out of the hospital against doctors’ advice.

* One week later, he was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting after police said a closed-circuit security camera at a Virginia Beach store taped him putting on a pair of shoes and walking out without paying.

* Another arrest in September for allegedly threatening to kill a security guard at the House of Blues in West Hollywood.

* He was nearly blasted to hip-hop heaven (or wherever) by a pyrotechnic explosive on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards show, standing over the soon-to-flame device and staring at it before a quick-thinking Pras pulled him out the way in the nick of time.

* And, in a move that alone would merit his getting the Jarvis-Soy honor, he announced that he was changing his name to Big Baby Jesus.

“When it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children,” he said on the Grammy show. “We teach the children.”

Of course, he wasn’t the only one teaching dubious lessons in the pop world in 1998:

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOLS: Black marks in the permanent records of Gretchen Plewes, assistant principal of Zeeland High School near Grand Rapids, Mich., and Gerald Witt, principal of Irmo High School in South Carolina. Plewes last spring suspended a student for wearing a T-shirt bearing the name of the band Korn because she believed the group had “extremely offensive lyrics” and is “indecent, vulgar, obscene and intends to be insulting.”

Witt, meanwhile, forbade the Indigo Girls to perform at his school because Emily Saliers and Amy Ray are lesbians, inspiring two other schools to also bow out of the duo’s college and high school tour. The principal of one insisted it wasn’t because of their sexual orientation, but because he’d heard they’d used profanities at an earlier school show. Maybe they were just quoting Korn lyrics.

WHICH OLD WITCH: In a related note, a Huntsville, Ala., minister nixed a student performance of Stevie Nicks’ wistful song “Landslide” during a high school baccalaureate program because he believes the singer is “a witch and Satan worshiper.” Nicks’ manager, tired of people linking her Gypsy attire to black magic, suggested the minister “get a life.”

Another person believing Nicks to be a witch met a stronger response. A restraining order was granted against Ronald Anacelteo, a Colorado mental patient who believes the singer has “spiritual powers” to heal him. Upon learning of his release from a psychiatric hospital, Nicks was granted an order barring him from her concerts and from trying to contact her.

ON A CLEAR DAY: Taking a page from the U.S. troops that blasted Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne tunes at the house of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega to try to drive him out of his compound in 1989, Barbra Streisand and James Brolin serenaded the paparazzi outside their July 1 wedding in Malibu with White Zombie’s “Thunderkiss ’65.” One cameraman reportedly smirked, “At least it’s not Streisand music.” The group’s then-leader Rob Zombie was thrilled, stating, “Hopefully the Funny Lady will use a track off my new album to ward off meddling paparazzi at her divorce hearing.”

UNIMPEACHABLE: In a letter to President Clinton, released as part of Kenneth Starr’s report, Monica S. Lewinsky talked about hiding in the office and noticing that Clinton had a copy of Sarah McLachlan’s album “Surfacing,” noting that she thinks of him every time she listens to “song five.” The track, “Do What You Have to Do,” is written from the perspective of a young woman clinging obsessively to a lover. Hmmm, maybe Lewinsky could intern on next summer’s Lilith Fair tour.

JUST FOR YOU: We leave off where we began, with Joe Pesci’s album and its mobster riffs and in-jokes, punctuated with such asides as, “I’m better off living all by myself like [expletive] Celine Dijon [sic].” And then there’s “Wise Guy,” which takes the music of Blondie’s “Rapture” with new lyrics geared to Mafioso matters. Hey, there’s gangsta-rap and then there’s gangster-rap.