Those opening the Opinion pages of The New York Times yesterday were greeted with a strange surprise—Bono is the Times’ new columnist. You’d think to be a Times columnist, you’d have to (a) have a last name and (b) take off your sunglasses for your columnist photo, but apparently, neither is the case. The topic of his first column? Frank Sinatra and New Years’ Eve—the kind of piece most columnists wait a few weeks to do, when they’re at a total loss for real things to write about.

Now, I actually like Bono. I do. But his writing is, well, not good. He does what many non-writers do when they’re told to write—he overdoses on flowery language and packs in as many adverbs and gerunds as he can in a sentence. A sample:

“Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.”

Velvety blackness? Ugh.

So here is my advice to Bono. One, pick topics that really matter to you. After all, weren’t you nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? Don’t you want to inform the general public about bad things going on around the world? And two, keep it simple. “Nothing changes New Years’ Day”—that was great. Those five little words had way more impact than this entire column. And finally, take off the sunglasses. Really, dude. —Kate