Did you have a guy in high school who always seemed to effortlessly attract all the girls you were interested in, and you never could figure out why? I had a guy like that, and I'd just like to take a moment to mention that I recently had a very enjoyable conversation with one of my relatives who still lives in the old country who called to ask if I still remembered that guy, and to let me know that the indictments are expected to be handed down any minute now. Turns out I had it pretty easy next to J. R. Moehringer, who in the current issue of Los Angeles magazine reveals that, in his high school class, that guy was David Spade, the former Saturday Night Live waste of space whose movie career includes the Chris Farley team-up Tommy Boy (which Moehringer, in exchange for lord knows how much money, calls "much loved") and his own star vehicle Joe Dirt, which up to September 10, 2001, was probably the single worst thing to happen in the twenty-first century. "We graduated together in May 1982," he writes, "and even back then, when we were pubescent boys, I knew Spade was the greatest ladies’ man of all time. He was voted Most Artistic, but the entire student body at Saguaro High School knew he was the campus Casanova, a walking stalk of catnip for every cheerleader and homecoming queen. I can still close my eyes and see Spade in a burst of vivid colors—royal blue Ocean Pacific shorts, black-and-white-checked Vans, beige puka shell necklace. I can see him flying across the gray quad on his skateboard, pirouetting around the caramel-legged girls in their short shorts and miniskirts, making them swoon and tee-hee and sigh his name." Moehringer's article is a profile of his own teenage pal, with a special angle: the author's desperate desire to crack the secret of Spade's appeal to women. (He also breaks the news that Spade may be plotting a sequel to Joe Dirt, to be called Joe Dirtier.)
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