Hitchens paying his penance?

There I was, idly perusing the October issue of Vanity Fair, when suddenly I was struck by a profound religious revelation. An ethereal being whispered in my ear: “See? The Lord works in mysterious ways -- and he’s got a wicked sense of humor.”

This revelation did not come while I gazed at Vanity Fair’s cover, which shows Nicole Kidman opening up her shirt so we can all get a good look at her bra. My epiphany came 200 pages deeper into the magazine, when I happened upon a far less lovely sight -- a photo of Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens naked in the shower, soaping up his portly, pudgy torso.

Yikes! It’s nice to know that Hitchens takes showers occasionally, but did we really need to see the photographic evidence?

Hitchens is, of course, a famous journalistic provocateur who loves to verbally butcher sacred cows. He has penned ferocious attacks on Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger and just about everybody in between. This spring, he took on the ultimate target, publishing “God Is Not Great,” a bestselling attack on the Big Guy Upstairs and the folks who worship Him.

I enjoy reading Hitchens, who is smart and funny, so I worried when his anti-God book appeared. I half-expected to read that he’d been the tragic victim of a freak accident -- a bolt of lightning zapping Hitchens on a bar stool somewhere. But that didn’t happen. God in his infinite wisdom instead chose to humiliate Hitchens in the pages of Vanity Fair. What else could explain that hideous shower picture? Or the equally hideous photos of Hitchens swabbed in mud masks and other goop? Or the goofy Hitchens column that the pictures illustrate?

The column is Hitchens’ zany account of his wild, wacky misadventures at a fancy California spa, where he was rubbed with mud and wrapped in seaweed and separated from his beloved Scotch and cigarettes.

This genre of story is, of course, one of the oldest clichés in journalism. When feature editors can’t think of anything else, they send male reporters out to get weird beauty treatments and dispatch a photographer to document the humiliation. So why would a sophisticated, trendy au courant magazine like Vanity Fair resurrect this moldy old chestnut?

There’s only one plausible explanation -- divine intervention. The Big Guy arranged the whole thing to humiliate Hitchens.

And it worked perfectly. First, Hitchens was forced to undergo the wretched tortures of mud baths and medicinal scrubs, all of them documented in embarrassing photos.

Then he had to write the thing, including the requisite self-deprecating “humor,” describing his “porpoise-like” body, his “ratlike claws,” his “layer of flab” and his “fanglike teeth,” which resemble “a handful of mixed nuts.”

And the humiliation isn’t over yet. At the end of the column, an italic paragraph informs readers that there’s more to come: “In the next installment, our correspondent confronts extreme smoking cessation . . . cold-turkey booze withdrawal and ultimate waxing.”

Oh, no, not ultimate waxing! That’s a fate worse than smiting. Lord, have mercy on this poor sinner.

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Bin Laden, the ultimate Outsider

Six years after 9/11, Outside magazine has come up with a unique view of the mastermind of the attacks:

“Whatever else you can say about him,” writes Ian Frazier, “by now Osama bin Laden, if he’s still alive, is the ultimate outdoor guy in the world.”

Frazier, a veteran reporter, author and humorist, makes a pretty good case for this not- entirely serious thesis. After all, living in caves in the Hindu Kush mountains for six years is a pretty impressive feat of outdoorsmanship.

“What, for example, is he doing for drinking water?” Frazier asks. “In the winter he must melt snow, but in summer, does he strain out the glacial scourings with a water filter?”

Then there’s this: “The wind in these mountains howls in summer as well as winter; what does he do about chapping?”

As a boy, Bin Laden loved camping trips in the Arabian desert with his father, Frazier reports. On one trip, Bin Laden and a pal captured a lizard and brought it back to the tent, where they surprised their fathers with it.

“Anyone who has ever camped,” Frazier writes drolly, “can imagine the hilarity.”

Frazier suggests a new tactic in the hunt for Bin Laden: Send American outdoorsmen to the Hindu Kush to search for him -- “military guys, hunters, mountain climbers, people who read this magazine.”

In fact, he suggests the perfect people for the job -- his outdoors pals Steve and Matt Rinella. “I’ve hunted with Steve and Matt, and they’re incredible.” And then he adds this bit of info: “Steve has an article in this issue, on Page 178.”

So I turned to Page 178 and found “Down, Boy,” Steve Rinella’s account of traveling to Vietnam so he could sample the local culinary specialty -- cooked dog.

“I’ve eaten just about everything that you can legally hunt or purchase in a supermarket, from maggots to antelope bladders to a crown roast of kangaroo,” writes Rinella, who is the author of a book called “The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine.”

As it turned out, Rinella didn’t much like dog meat, and when he encountered boiled dog paw in broth, he couldn’t help thinking about Muffin Man, his girlfriend’s cute little corgi-terrier, which kind of spoiled his enjoyment.

Could this sentimental dog eater catch Bin Laden? I don’t know. But it would make quite a story for Outside magazine.

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Diet food that’ll stick to your ribs

Speaking of food, the cover of Prevention magazine touts “The One Food That Fills You Up, Fights Disease & Fires Up Weight Loss.”

What is this magic chow? Soybeans? Broccoli? Dog paw in broth?

Nope. It’s peanut butter. Prevention’s “grocery guru,” Marge Perry, recommends slurping the stuff right off a spoon. Unfortunately, she has nothing to say about peanut butter’s traditional old pals -- grape jelly and Wonder bread.