With the State of the Union, the deaths of Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger, the release of the iPad and the  Minnesota Vikings not making the Super Bowl, it’s hard to remember that today we celebrate one of the newest, and hopefully annual, national holidays — National Lady Gaga Day.

NLGD even falls at a very appropriate moment in the calendar — two days before the Grammy Awards.  

Her chances of winning seem to be high, but she has a lot of competition. Gaga has also kept the limelight on her despite so many events since September, when the last major music awards ceremony took place — the MTV  Video Music Awards and, of course, Kanye.

“The Jay Leno Show” debuted the following Monday.  On the show, a sober Kanye West  had what will surely be a classic breakdown of the 21st century when Jay asked what his mother would think.

For many of us, deep down, we knew Kanye was right  — though at the time we would never admit it. But when you are 15 years old, Taylor Swift has a halo around her head.

At least Beyonce allowed Taylor Swift to fearlessly finish her acceptance speech.

Thinking of Beyonce, she and husband Jay-Z were one of the highest paid, most influential couples in America last year.  We’re sure they could’ve cracked a bottle or two on a boat with The Lonely Island and T-Pain.

But even with her money, can Beyonce beat the woman who has an entire day celebrating her just days prior to the big award show?

She may not have as much money, but Lady Gaga has the attention of the paparazzi and  many people fascinated by her fame.

But is she as fierce as Sasha?

Can she give the competition a boom boom pow and clean up in her nominated categories, which are record, album and song of the year as well as best electronic/dance album?

She has been bluffin’ with her muffin, and after Sunday, we think she will be able to boast with a toast.

Thinking of breakfast food, we know someone who won’t be on any Wheaties box anytime soon again.

Womanizer Tiger Woods slid into trouble when he started sliding into all those single ladies … none of whom got to put a ring on it.

We figure his wife wanted to give him a black eye and never mutter the three words

“I” and “love” and “you.”

Those three words became hard to say for one late-night TV star and NBC.

The network obviously didn’t take MGMT 101 and left all the kids no time to pretend that we would get to see Conan continue with “The Tonight Show.”

What was the result? “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” received a 21 gun salute from America, which gave the show its biggest ratings of its brief run.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, his ratings weren’t great, but he was still in the process of working on a dream. Blame it on Jeff Zucker.

Ready for the Grammys?

 We gotta feeling Lady Gaga will put on her poker face Sunday and go all-in to win.

But never say never for an underdog like Dave Matthews — remember last year when Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s album “Raising Sand” beat such albums as “Viva la Vida” and “In Rainbows.”

Sunday’s approaching — tick tock, tick tock.