ADAM MOSS GATHERS NO SIMON. Hallelujah! After more than 37 years, New York magazine has finally relieved itself of John Simon, as reported by The New York Times and Gawker.

As a critic, Simon comes across as an extremely cultured misanthrope with a predilection for misogyny and homophobia. The insults he spews say more about his miserable self than his ostensible subjects.

CurtainUp.com attributes this description of Simon to writer Dolores Prida: "John Simon died 40 years ago and his corpse was revived by a witch. To keep alive he must drink the blood of actors, directors and theatrical designers on a weekly basis."

Here are samples of Simon's work, according to brainyquote.com

Diana Rigg is built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses.

Sandy Dennis has balanced her postnasal condition with something like prefrontal lobotomy, so that when she is not a walking catarrh she is a blithering imbecile.

The only real talent Miss Day possesses is that of being absolutely sanitary: her personality untouched by human emotions, her brow unclouded by human thought, her form unsmudged by the slightest form of femininity.

Miss Garland's figure resembles the giant-economy-size tube of toothpaste in girls' bathrooms: Squeezed intemperately at all points, it acquires a shape that defies definition by the most resourceful solid geometrician.

Kudos to New York editor Adam Moss for driving this cultural vampire out of New York. For Simon's "retirement" party, I suggest Moss arrange for a blister-raising public spanking of the critic. I wouldn't be surprised if Simon enjoyed it--he seems to have been asking for one for decades.