The Many Shades of Ira Sachs

From the October issue of The Independent:

The Many Shades of Ira Sachs
A Writer/Director as Colorful as his Characters

Ira Sachs won’t let me watch him bum cigarettes.

We’ve spoken for hours—about what it was like to grow up gay and Jewish in Memphis, the benefits of 15 years with the same therapist, and how it feels to have his 68-year-old father date 20-year-old women.

Sachs, eager for a smoke before noon, also shamelessly volunteers that although he bums five or six cigarettes a day, he won’t succumb to the temptation to buy a pack. And no, he doesn’t consider this habit to be bad karma. “I get good interactions,” he says, noting that when people say no, it provides helpful negative reinforcement.

But just as I’m ready to watch him carefully select the right benefactor outside of his lower Manhattan office, he politely shoos me away.

“It’s personal,” he says. “It’s like masturbation.”

Filmmaking, however, is decidedly collaborative, even for a writer-director like Sachs.

With Forty Shades of Blue, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year and sees a limited US release this month, Sachs formed the original idea in solitude but then gathered an army to execute it. His army fought some internal battles along the way and even broke apart in one instance, but as Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, you go to war with the army you’ve got, not the army you wish you had. And Sachs came through with an artistic victory.

Forty Shades of Blue tells the story of Laura, a Russian woman played by Dina Korzun, who has married and had a child with Alan, an older man and legendary Memphis music producer played with gruff warmth by Rip Torn. Sparked by the return of Alan’s petulant, married son (Darren E. Burrows), Laura grapples with the realization that her life has drifted into a rhythm that she can’t really dance to. Alan can be charming, sentimental and tender. Or boorish, insensitive and unfaithful. Her life is comfortable, but her spirit is restless.

Sachs always wanted to make a movie about a character who is familiar yet rarely the focus in most mainstream films. “I wanted to look at a woman who’s usually on the periphery, in the shadow of a powerful masculine man,” Sachs says, his tightly-trimmed beard and gold-rimmed glasses revealing an easy, brainy power of his own. “Turn the camera on her and ask who she is. Let’s just follow her; forget Dustin Hoffman [in 1978’s Straight Time, for instance]—let’s follow Theresa Russell.”

Sachs also chose to set his story in Memphis, the city of his youth and location of his first feature film, The Delta (1996). But most of the writing for Forty Shades fell to friend and co-collaborator Michael Rohatyn—a first time screenwriter and musician who scored the music for The Delta , as well as for Rebecca Miller’s films Angela (1995), Personal Velocity (2002), and The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005).

The relationship between Sachs and Rohatyn became prickly—more Sid and Nancy than Ron and Nancy (without the heroin and knives, of course) during the seven years of re-writes and attempts to secure financing.

“Any director who continues to work has to learn that’s part of the job,” Sachs says, speaking of skirmishes with meddling financers. “Ultimately, if you make a compromise, that’s a disservice—you haven’t been a good director, haven’t navigated the waters well. Having control and facilitating control is what directing is. I got to make exactly the kind of film I wanted to make.”

But when asked about his current relationship with Rohatyn, Sachs flashes a nervous grin and plays the “if-I-don’t-have-something-nice-to-say-I-won’t-say-anything-at-all” card. “As a collaborator, I sort of felt I was writing it for him, but not so much with him,” Rohatyn says of Sachs. “He would carefully read it and give his notes on it, and we would argue those notes. Then whenever he would leave, I would let him do what he wants.”

But there was no denying Sachs’s film knowledge and talent. “Ira taught me about movies,” Rohatyn says. “He has incredible taste and is really the most sophisticated cineaste that I’ve ever met. He would send me to look at movies by these directors, like Maurice Pialat, which was like listening to The Beatles for the first time. And then to try to write a movie like that — Forty Shades of Blue winds up being something I’m very proud of and a great tribute to Ira.”

Tellingly, Ira rarely refers to Forty Shades as “my film,” which shines a light on some behind-the-scenes bruised ego hubbub. But the film obviously has roots in Sachs and in Memphis. Sachs was born in Memphis in 1965 to Ira and Diane Sachs. His mother, a sociology professor at Rhodes College, divorced his father when Ira was three, then took Ira and his two older sisters on long trips to Europe, spending weeks at a time in England or a farm in France.

But it was his father who perhaps made the biggest impression on him, at least as far as Forty Shades of Blue is concerned.

“My father is a real original,” Sachs says. “One of the most original people I’ve ever known. He has very little superego; no shame or guilt. Luckily he’s not a psychopath.” Sachs smirks. When people ask Sachs’s father what church he belongs to, his father responds, “The Church of What’s Happening Now, Baby.”

The elder Ira has seven children between the ages of 8 and 43, from four different women, three of whom he married. But Sachs wants to set the record straight. “My father is a sweetheart—he has no temper, and he’s very generous,” he says. “The character in the film is not my father.”

Which isn’t to say his father isn’t a character. “I’ve always marched to the beat of a different drum,” Ira Sachs, Sr. says from his home in Park City, Utah, where he housed 11 of Ira’s cast and crew during Sundance. “Perhaps it was some inspiration for Ira to do the same.”

Perhaps, though his son, out of the closet since he was 16, has been through his own share of formative experiences. Growing up and especially as president of his temple youth group, Sachs says that he experienced more anti-Semitism than homophobia. While attending an inner-city high school, “boys would throw pennies at you.”

He tells such stories with a wry, unfazed smile, which is perhaps the result of 15 years in therapy. “I believe in the talking cure,” he says. “For me, it’s very much a part of my creative development—understanding human interaction. Good therapy helps you understand people better, and bad therapy makes you feel you are more important than you are.”

Sachs immersed himself in the children-run Memphis Children’s Theatre from sixth grade through high school. “It had the most diverse group of people I’d ever been involved with,” he says. “Black kids, white kids, rich kids, poor kids.”

He made his directing debut in high school (Our Town) and went on to direct mostly experimental theater at Yale. But it was during a semester abroad in Paris that he gained his most valuable education. “I was a lonely college student who didn’t speak too much French,” he says. “So I saw 181 movies in a three month period. I had never seen a Cassavetes film or a Fassbinder film. It was like baseball card collecting behavior.” Despite these influences, Sachs wound up modeling his style after Ken Loach, whose camera remains mostly fixed and observant, allowing the actors to own their space.

In 1992, Sachs made the short film Vaudeville, financed for $50,000 by his parents and with a few small grants. He returned to Memphis after a 10-year absence in 1994 to prepare The Delta, a personal film about a boy coming to grips with his sexuality and the unintended impact his privileged status has on someone even further outside society.

In happier times with Rohatyn, Sachs took the Forty Shades script to the Sundance Writer’s Lab, where he received guidance from Stewart Stern, who wrote the screenplays for Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Last Movie (1971). “It was comforting to hear people who knew more than you tell you that you were doing nothing new, and all you have to do is go back to basics and tell the story well,” Sachs says.

While the origin and intelligence of Forty Shades can be traced to Sachs and Rohatyn, its emotion oozes out of its actors: Korzun, Torn, and Burrows.

Burrows doesn’t have to dig deep to praise Sachs. “Ira has so much self-confidence, especially for a director new in his career,” he says. “There is often a fear with a new director that they hold on so tight it almost slips through their fingers, but he had complete control.”

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t conflict. Torn says: “Making a film is like a military operation. It’s not lovey-dovey all the time. Brothers can wrangle.”

Burrows applies a more positive spin. “I think Ira thrived on the tension,” he says. “It’s all a part of the creativity and the dance. Like a big ballroom dance, and if there’s just one guy telling everyone how to dance, it becomes stale.”

Choreographing his life and art from Memphis to Paris and New York, Ira Sachs seeks fresh interactions—not shrink-wrapped and uniform, but loose and unpredictable.

82 Bottles of Beer on the Ice

Hockey is back. No, really. Tell me you've noticed.

Only 81 more games until they start counting for real...

Embiggen Your Saxomophone

A wikipedia entry of made-up words from "The Simpsons."

Balloon-Foot, Pootie-Poot and Turd Blossom

Isn't our president just adorable? Just check out this list of his nicknames for some of the most powerful people in the world. My favorite one is his nickname for Ted Kennedy: Senator.

The Dredge Report

The dredging of the Raritan River begins next week and the tree huggers are up in arms. To hug fish, I imagine.

Also, Puerto Ricans in New Brunswick mourn the death of their dearly departed armored truck-robbing, FBI agent-shooting, most-wanted criminal. He shall be missed.

The God's Honest Truth

Belief in God leads to murder, promiscuity, abortion and suicide according to a new study. Which is why I will continue to worship my shrine of Don Knotts made from shell fish and Sacagawea dollars.

Shining

Check out this trailer from a heartwarming new Jack Nicholson family film set in a majestic mountain retreat. All work and no play makes Jack a something something.

Say it ain't so. No really. Please say it ain't. I'm feeling light-headed.

Irish Fighting Death

I hate Notre Dame, but I love Charlie Weis. Break out the tissues.

By the way, the Jets season ended yesterday with them losing two quarterbacks to injuries on their throwing shoulders. Apparently, the team is courting Tim "I've Been Sitting Comfortably For Months On My" Couch. Rick Mirer must have been unavailable.

Ugh.

I Walk (The Yellow) Line

Ever wonder how that yellow first down line works on NFL broadcasts? Well, wonder no longer. Now if only they could come up with some new technology to help the Jets reach it occasionally.

Losing My Religion Syllabus

The Lama is in town, doing his Lama thing. And religion classes are on the rise across the country and at Rutgers. Check it out, yo.

New Orleans

One last tribute to New Orleans before Rita drowns the place again. Here is the song "New Orleans" from The Springfield Playhouse production of "Streetcar!":

Clancy Wiggam:
Long before the SuperDome,
Where the Saints of football play,
Lived a city that the damned called home,
Hear their hellish roundelay...

Cast:
New Orleeeans...
Home of pirates, drunks, and whores!
New Orleeeans...
Tacky, overpriced, souvenir stores!
If you want to go to Hell, you should make that trip
to the Sodom and Gomorrah on the Mississipp'!
New Orleeeans...
Stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile!
New Orleaaans...
Putrid, brackish, maggoty, foul!
New Orleeeans...
Crummy, lousy, rancid, and rank!
New Orleeeans!

Fuck

A list of films ranked by the use of the word "fuck." Congrats to The Devil's Rejects for its 560 fucks in 100 minutes.

Essay Essay

Paul Graham's great essay about essay writing and why we were stuck writing about Beowulf in high school.

Oral Exam

According to a national survey, slightly more than half of American teenagers between 15 and 19 have had oral sex. The obvious question: what's wrong with the other half?

Australians Get Charge Out of Man's Jacket

A man in a woolen shirt and synthetic nylon jacket generated a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity that left a trail of fire behind him, causing the evacuation of a building. Can't think of anything funny to say here that tops the images in your head.

Old People and Buses

Because I know you've been clamoring to hear an update on the New Brunswick busing fiasco.

And because I know you want to know how the New Brunswick high school 65-year reunion went yesterday at O'Connor's Beef & Chowder House in Somerset. Don't be coy. You're dying to hear about it. Even if I was watching the Jets win ugly in East Rutherford yesterday instead.

All of TV Inside an Autistic Child's Mind

Now for something completely obsessive and weird. But entertaining for all you TV nerds out there.

All of Reality Like an Autistic Child Inside Bush's Mind

Newsweek's story about the president's hands-over-ears-and-eyes reaction to Katrina and any bad news should sicken and disgrace even the most staunch Republican.

The Wheels on the Bus Go 'Round and 'Round

New Brunswick's new busing system could use some crossing guards. And bus drivers. Anyone out there wanna make 17 bucks an hour?

When You Gotta Go...

President Bush writes a note to Condoleeza Rice during the during the world summit at the 60th anniversary of the United Nations.

16 Sundays

Football season kicks off in less than two hours. Are you ready for some cliches?

Or, as T-Perl so expertly pointed out, are you ready for some porno double entendres?

Your Domain is Soooo Eminent

Redevelopment stories in New Brunswick and Highland Park. The fun never stops.

Gilligan Finally Voted Off Island

Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan, died Friday of cancer. He was 70.

His Russian spy twin is still at large, armed with a pocket knife that has over 200 functions, including a death ray.

Before cancer did him in, Gilligan previously survived a direct lightning strike that rendered him invisible, a run-in with headhunters, a haunting, becoming an allergen to his fellow castaways, a giant spider, a lion, a British mod rock band, a boat crash and countless blows to the head from a large man wielding a skipper's hat.

He is survived by a movie star and Mary-Anne. They'll have to make the best of things. It's an uphill climb.

Friday night I watched Geraldo Rivera on FoxNews grab a random baby (here! gimme a baby!) and hold him up to the camera and incoherently blubber about the face of the tragedy and why can't the national guard just let these people walk away from all this filth and death and stench and just look at this baby! and he almost broke up crying twice and I just couldn't keep from laughing at him. (Photo by Stephen Elliott)

Gerry Rivers to the Rescue!

I just had to swipe this snippet from Stephen Elliot's story on Salon.com (subscription required). Can you believe this guy? (BTW: Geraldo Rivera did not change his name from Jerry Rivers to appeal to a Latino demographic as per the urban legend. But sometimes legends are better than the truth.) This is true:

Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She's wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He's wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees.

We shake hands. "Her relative called one of our stations," Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.

The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.

"That's the second time he brought her here," one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.

"What?"

"They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog."

"Are you serious?" I ask.

He says he is.

Top Five Songs About Floods

Here's hoping American music soon returns to its birthplace...

5. Lost in the Flood, Bruce Springsteen
4. Five Feet High and Rising, Johnny Cash
3. When the Levee Breaks, Led Zeppelin
2. Backwater Blues, Bessie Smith
1. Louisiana 1927, Randy Newman

Hurricanes, Fires, Heroes and Women

New Brunswick deputy fire chief James D'heron died one year ago Saturday. The city remembers, laughs and cries.

A pastor calls for hurricane aid for local residents: help families here to help their families there.

Douglass College students rally to save the only women's college on a public research university's campus. Some of them were a lot cuter than I thought they might be.

Burmese exiles march from Washington DC to the United Nations in New York to spread awareness about human rights abuses back home. I really do love Southeast Asians. And Burma is one fucked-up place.

Is This Wrong?

Louisiana, 2005

This post about the tsunami last December contained lyrics from Randy Newman's "Louisiana, 1927." Never more appropriate than they are now...

Louisiana 1927

What has happened down here is the winds have changed

Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain

Rained real hard and rained for a real long time

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day

The river rose all night

Some people got lost in the flood

Some people got away alright

The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

Louisiana, Louisiana

They're tryin' to wash us away

They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana

They're tryin' to wash us away

They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train

With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand

The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame

what the river has done to this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana

They're tyrin' to wash us away

They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana

They're tryin' to wash us away

They're tryin' to wash us away

No Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

A preschool makes a comeback and Douglass College fights for its feminist life.

Stormy Weather

Wanna see a CNN weatherman throw a shit fit after getting interrupted? 'Course you do.

Top Five Songs About Running

(Yes, I know the Neil Young song is about his car)

5. Run Like Hell, Pink Floyd
4. Long May You Run, Neil Young
3. Running on Empty, Jackson Browne
2. Running With The Devil, Van Halen
1. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

Too Old For This Shit

Random thoughts while watching the MTV Video Music Awards, mostly in fast forward:

• John Norris dresses like a fag, but he doesn't seem gay, which makes dressing like a fag much worse
• Kurt Loder and Norris have somehow circumvented the MTV Menudo-like policy of firing anyone from on-camera duty after reaching puberty; Loder has become Old Man Legitimacy for a network fond of hiring such luminaries as Sway and Gideon Yago, so it makes some sense to keep him around; Who Norris has been sucking off to keep employed is anyone's guess
• Diddy sucks even without the P.
• Shakira can really thrust her pelvis like nobody's business; I'm also pretty sure she might have been singing or something
• I've seen or even heard of only two of the videos nominated; I consider this a badge of honor
• When did MTV turn into BET? Seriously, there were maybe 4 white people in the whole broadcast and one of them was Eric Roberts. What's wrong, MTV? Scott Baio was busy?
• Shouldn't R. Kelly be in jail? Didn't he piss on a 14-year-old girl? I'm pretty sure that's illegal, even in Chicago
• Alicia Keys would be hotter if she didn't wear those peculiar side cornrows; Did she just get back from a vacation on Barbados or something? She might as well appear on stage with her sea shell collection
• Kelly Clarkson is still kinda cute; wonder if she's a coke addict yet
• Most rap music performed live in concert comes off too breathless and frantic to be enjoyable; all energy and no style
• Apparently, Eva Longoria is a dirty, skanky whore
• Green Day has been around for 16 years? I am really, really, really old
• And the MVP of the MTV awards: my DVR, which made this ordeal mercifully brief

They say never work with animals, children or David Hasselhoff

[Insert Bad Dog Pun Here]

A bunch of people and their dogs walk into The New Jersey Museum of Agriculture on a Saturday afternoon. There is no punchline. Just this story.

The Self-Absorbed Christian

Every self-proclaimed Christian in this country must read Bill McKibben's essay from the August issue of Harper's. And agnostic anti-religion folks (the sensible ones) should check it out to get some refreshing perspective on just how hypocritical we are in this country. Oh, it's not just supposed holy men like Pat Robertson preaching Jesus' supposed hatred for fags or how God would be cool with murdering Venezuelan presidents. No, we're all hypocrits. Me included.

But check this out:

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation's educational decline, but it probably doesn't matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves." That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans--most American Christians--are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

I have no problem with stupid Americans. I have no problem with religious Americans. I have no problem with hypocritical Americans. It's the stupid, religious, hypocritical ones that scare the bejesus out of me. You know. The ones running the place.

Men Smart, Women Smarter (Not)

It ain't me, it's the research that says men are five IQ points smarter than women on average. So, shut up and go get me my turkey pot pie, bitch.

Cellu- (Light My Way)

You know those impossibly beautiful, too-good-to-be-true hotties on the cover of glossy magazines? Check out Glenn Feron's retouching portfolio and marvel at our insatiable need to dupe ourselves with unattainable perfection. You will never look at Tyra Banks' breasts the same way again. As if that were possible anyway.

Traffic Mitigation for Dummies

Wassat? You wanna know how Rutgers plans to deal with The Great Route 18 Fuck D. Bones Project? Well here you go, little lemming. Read on.

Humanitarian Beats Woman, Kills Dog

I didn't write this one, but don't tell me that New Jersey ain't a hotbed of strange news. And more in today's paper.

Scarlet Letters

Rutgers students begin to move in, and the town prepares for madness and sex in the streets.

Into the Fire

I've got to say something and it won't be popular. The 9/11 families need to chill out.

Now, I have little standing to criticize. I have never lost a mother, father, brother, sister or child. My grandparents have died of natural causes.

A second cousin of mine who worked in the World Trade Center was killed on September 11, 2001. We weren't close. But when the family gets together at my aunt's house, his mother and sometimes his brother are there. He is not.

A fraternity brother of mine also died in that attack. He was three years older than me. We called him Freddy "The Bug." He made me photocopy my notes for a class we once took.

All this, and yet the tears I cried that day and since have been more for the overall tragedy. A shared grief with those who lost so much more. For our lost innocence. For the therapy of letting out what can only destroy from the inside. I have no right to criticize how anyone grieves. Grieving people often go a little insane. It's their right.

But while I'm driving in my car, and a woman whose son died in New York that day comes on the radio and demands that the city sift through every last piece of remains from the World Trade Center, full of rage that her son is doomed to spend eternity on a pile of garbage on Staten Island -- I got angry.

At her.

"It's a knife going through my heart. These type of remains deserve a proper burial and not that type of treatment," said Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son Chris on 9/11 and is part of group suing the city. None of his remains were ever identified. "There is some remnant of human life there, no matter how microscopic."

Likely so. And so what? Does every person who has lost a loved one in a tragedy deserve no expenses spared for a proper burial? Is the site of every airplane crash hallowed ground? Do we sift the dirt of such disasters through an ultra-fine mesh and scan it with an electron microscope? Should we strain the oceans for every decomposed remnant of people drowned in sunken boats or eaten by sharks? Is it too late to raise the Titanic for surviving kin?

The 9/11 families exercise justified anger. At their government for failing to protect their loved ones. And even more, for continued failures to act for our protection outside business-as-usual pork barrel politics and ill-advised oversees military campaigns. Their voices and anguish have served us all, pushing for the creation of the 9/11 commission and working to see its recommendations implemented.

But they are not owed the world. Tragedies happen every day and to people without emotionally potent and well-connected lobbying groups at their disposal. The estimated hundreds of millions (or even tens of millions) needed to rake over the Fresh Kills Landfill would be money better spent almost anywhere else. Our country doesn't need more monuments and cemeteries. It needs border security and defenses for our infrastructure.

Again, I can't imagine how grueling it is not to have even the smallest physical token of my son's existence. But Chris Regenhard, like so many others, was likely vaporized in the sudden collapse of a 110-story building. More people may have breathed some of him into their lungs that day than attended his funeral. This is the cold, sad truth. Spending a fortune in public money to provide some solace to a mother who certainly could never be consoled would be an additional tragedy.

The songs and passages of our youth tell our simple story. We are stardust. Dust in the wind. From dust to dust...

Sally Regenhard, please understand. Chris is not stuck in a pile of garbage. He is golden. He is in your heart.

Vigils, Frats and Blight

Anti-war candlelight vigils across the country, fraternity alumni giving their house to a sorority and redevelopment in New Brunswick: You know you wanna know about it.

Ebert's Thumb Up Your Ass

I've been reading Roger Ebert's column in the Chicago Sun Tribune for years. I figure he's the one movie critic with whom I agree the most--maybe 90% of the time.

But he's more than a thumb pointing up or down. The guy can write. He knows how to take different approaches to reviewing different kinds of movies. He muses about plot logic, character quirks and physics. He can describe a subtle performance with evocative language. He can be damn funny. And even though Hollywood recycles ideas wholesale, he seldom repeats himself. Seldom is he better than when the move just blows. To wit:

The worst movies Roger Ebert has ever seen.

SING ALONG: I'm just a bill, yes I'm only a bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill as a fully-funded proxy of a corporation in direct opposition to American security and financial interests...

Congressional Sausage

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi explains how a bill becomes a law. Oh, how I wish it were a cartoon scroll with the voice of Jack Sheldon sitting on the steps of Capitol Hill.

The Real World: White House

Apparently, someone at The White House reads the newspapers and figured out that the adventure in Iraq ain't really going according to Dick and Don's shiny happy plans. From the Washington Post:

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Think the feller hanging out for five weeks ranchin' in Crawford has been told this?

Preschools and White Coats

If you find this complicated story involving New Brunswick preschool funding or this one about a medical school ceremony interesting, then you really are a fan. Please feel free to send me dirty pictures and drugs.

Bigalow and Gigalo Rhyme...Heh, Heh...That's Funny

Ebert, that sly dog, telling Rob Schneider what's what.

Jersey Wannabe Wife Swappers Wearing Wife Beaters

ABC's "Wife Swap" holds an open casting call at the Middlesex County Fair yesterday, and New Jersey characters put on a show.

The Last Circle of Hell

Reporting on the $200 million, 4-year reconstruction of Rt. 18 that began yesterday almost made me want to cry. Why didn't anyone tell me about this disaster before I signed a friggin' lease? I already avoid this road--the most vital road I need to get to my apartment or go to work--during rush hour and lunch. What the hell is gonna look like when they shut down the overpasses and on-ramps?

If anyone is looking for me, I'll be sitting in traffic and cursing the gods.

Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock 'n Roll College Dorm

The brand-spanking new Rockoff Hall was opened in downtown New Brunswick yesterday, and I know you want all the adorable details. This is what I do.

The best pitchers throw a 70 mph fastball from 48 feet away, which translates to over 100 mph from 60 feet

A Whiff of Sportswriting

This story didn't make the online edition for some reason. And got severely lobotomized in the printing/editing process. So here it is in its entirety.


SOUTH PLAINFIELD: Steve Cavico of the Kane Park professional whiffle-ball team in South Plainfield heard more than he saw. Standing stolid, 48 feet from the mound and gripping the wooden handle of his wide plastic blue-barreled bat, he last saw the hollow, hole-filled ball leave the pitcher's hand near his ankles, whipping the grass with a sputtering whistle until it quickly rose and smacked the sheet- metal striike zone, almost at his neck. Cavico could only freeze in admiration.

"Oohh, nice pitch," he said. "Whoa!''

If you haven't heard of Kane Park, it is likely you have never been in Kevin Kane's backyard, which bears that stadium-like nickname and which is where the team had its humble beginnings. And you likely haven't heard of the FastPlastic professional whiffle ball league, which had its last regional qualifying tournament of the season yesterday at Veterans Park in South Plainfield. Kane and Cavico's teammate Kris Nagy is the Northeast regional director.

"What you can do with a whiffle ball simulates high competition baseball, and the guys are great,'' said Nagy, 25, who is from South Plainfield but currently lives in The Bronx, N.Y., and works for an environmental engineering firm in Manhattan. "It's all see-the-ball, hit-the-ball with this game. Half the battle is seeing the ball.''

And this sport, moving from backyards to the big time across the country, is something to see.

Yesterday morning, Kane Park, whose four-member team wear matching blue-and-orange jerseys, battled mightily in a 2-0 loss against the pitcher from The Old School Risers, a Maryland team that traveled the farthest for this 16-team all-day tournament. In addition to that wicked rising fastball, the Maryland pitcher throws an evil split-fingered something that looks like a beautiful meatball before dropping clear out of sight.

"If you've never seen a pitcher before, he's very tough to hit and see what he's doing," said Cavico, 34, a technology salesman from Brick. "But we've hit guys like this before. Sometimes it's early in the morning, and you're barely awake."

Rather than wake before dawn, Nagy and Kane, 27, who teaches history and law at Woodbridge High School, set up the eight fields Friday, taking five hours to erect the carefully measured orange construction netting and PVC pipe that mark the backstops and outfield fences. Kane said that the materials cost about $1,500, which includes insurance to use the park, and comes out of each team's $100 entrance fee.

The top prize for this tournament was $400, with second place worth $200. But the real prize is in accumulating enough points over the season to qualify for the playoffs, and a chance to win travel expenses and the honor of representing the region at the national tournament in Austin, Texas, this Columbus Day Weekend.

Last year, The Swingers from Middletown blew through the field of 40 teams from 14 regions across the country, riding a 9-0 record to the national championship and a $3,500 cash prize. With the sport's growing popularity, this year's prize is expected to be $5,000.

FastPlastic plays six innings of whiffle ball, in which teams of two to five players compete in a game with imaginary runners. Three strikes are an out, and four balls are a walk. A pitcher and two fielders can field ground balls for outs if they catch them on a fly or handle them cleanly in front of a line painted on the ground and then make a smooth throw to the backstop. Balls that stop rolling before a fielder or that pass them are singles. Balls that roll to the outfield fences are doubles; those that hit them on a fly are triples. And over the fence is a home run.

Hits advance imaginary runners much as real runners would in a baseball game. A single scores a man on second. Doubles clear the bases. There are other peculiar rules, but mostly they adhere to those of Major League Baseball.

The average age of players hovers in the mid-20s, though Kane said that they had a 45-year-old play in a previous tournament. And although one-time San Francisco Giants pitcher Chuck Hensley played in Texas last year, these are not world-class athletes.

The Niffs, a team from New Hyde Park in Long Island, N.Y., swig from Budweiser cans at 9 a.m. and smoke cigarettes between at-bats. Does this cause them any trouble with, say, eye-hand coordination? "Right now, no,'' said Nick Tullo, who said he was "20...um, 21."

But, as The Wiffled Wonders from South Plainfield are learning, it takes some considerable skill. Playing against the Hit Men from Vineland, Wonders pitcher Jimmy Quartuccio was feeling his age: 15.

"I thought I'm gonna play people my own age," Jimmy said of his first pro game in April. "And I come here and people are driving their cars and bringing their kids. I'm the youngest guy around here."

Jimmy, who plays baseball for Colonia High School, was on the mound against the Hit Men in his green-sleeved baseball shirt and green kneesocks. As sweat fell from his brown moptop and scraggly facial hair, he slid into his wind-up again and again, throwing hard, but throwing many more balls than strikes.

After the game, Elvin Cortez, 33, of the Hit Men told Jimmy: "You've got to take your lumps. Throw strikes. If you overthrow all the time, you're gonna get hurt."

Which is just what happened to Jerry Riso, 31, of the defending champion Swingers. "I threw too much last year, and it was doctor time," he said. "I never thought I'd have to go to the doctor for whiffle ball."

But the ball itself requires doctoring to achieve that insane movement. "You've got to scuff up the ball the right way," Kane said. "You can't take it out of the box and throw.''

Dan Erhardt, 17, of the Wiffled Wonders said he buys a dozen balls at a time. "I have a two-hour ritual," he said. "I sit in my driveway and rub them against the pavement in the blazing sun and number them. One time we used a cheese grater."

As the sun receded and the Mud Ducks beat the Swingers 3-0 to win the tournament at 7:30 p.m., almost everyone agreed their sport was ready for primetime.

"This should be on ESPN," Dan "Neif" Ennis of the Niffs said between drags on his cigarette. "They have hot-dog eating contests, Scrabble and Foosball tournaments. Why not whiffle ball?"

The answer was easy to see.

Time Machine

X-Entertainment has a site filled with hundreds of commercials from the '80s. Big League Chew, Underoos, GI-Joe, Laser Tag...too much fun for hopeless nostalgia addicts like me.

Endless Clouds of the Adolescent Mind

During my move, I came across a bunch of crates filled with high school notebooks (yes, I keep everything). Thought I'd share this song, labled "copyright 1992, 12:53 p.m. (English class)":

Loud and raucous: with feeling
Words and music by Harley Smoot

These Songs (For the Cynical Activist)

Cars and stars and bars and buildings
Nicks and nacks and nukes and killings
Hold the phones and tolls and buildings
Right the wrongs these songs we're singing...

What is wrong with bombs and babies?
Why shoot the dog, the kid with rabies?
Why fill the world with don'ts and maybes?
How much longer must we sing these...

Chorus
Songs we're singing grow longer
All the wrong muscles getting stronger
Our eyes are covered with crawlers
And the waves crash into the shore

Farts with hearts are just not pumping
The monks, the punks, the guidos jumping
Up and down the tight rumps rumping
Words for nerds and no one's singing (these)

Chorus

Denim's venom holds the stripper's zipper
Stuff the string does the highest tipper
Latch-on losers, tarrif on the shipper
March the town or maybe is it hipper (to sing these)

Chorus

Teaching is a Noble Profession

And here's one from '91--self-explanatory, really--simply titled "English Class."

Pain is not a fun thing.
Why would laughter come to mind
When your testicles in a blender grind?

Anguish is no good time.
How could smiles cross your face
With your head caved in by an iron mace?

Torture is not a party.
Who could dance or move his feet
When your brain, some bitch does beat?

Odes to the Anatomy

And one last trip down twisted memory lane. This one is dated 12/11/91 and features some clever doodles that I can't do justice here.

Ass
Not a pretty thing
No voice with which to sing
Some hair, a crack, two parts
Pressure builds, then farts

Tits
Two friends, such plump amigos
They bob wherever she goes
No foe can come between us
A place to stick my ______

Nose
No nose with which to smell
Could ever live to tell
The tongue to lick the dish
The place that smells like fish

Ear
What? I cannot hear
A thing without my ear
If bad, the things you say
My ear, I turn away

Horses and Hemorrhoids and Hippies, Oh My

More Home News stuff. No, this isn't mind-blowing. Give me some time, folks. My first week.

Although I like this one best. Even if no one caught the typo on Rutgers.

Space Cadets

My first story in today's Home News Trib talking to folks about the space shuttle launch. One down, hundreds and hundreds to go...

Bones

Apparently, I'm a darkly amusing drama coming to Fox this fall.

Caught Red (Gold) Handed (Faced)

Ohio man Patrick Tribbett discovers that huffing spray paint is a difficult habit to hide.

WWII For Today's Kids

A brilliant take on what World War II's chatroom might have looked like if it were a computer realtime strategy game.

In case you were looking for me...

My New Crew?

Next time, don't forget the gravy!

No Time For the Corner Boys

Cause tonight I'm gonna take that ride
Across the river to the Jersey side
Take my baby to the carnival
And I'll take you on all the rides
--Tom Waits

As of Saturday, I'm no longer a New Yorker. New Jersey and a new job beckon my return. And just as the city wipes clean and accepts anyone who arrives from wherever, New Jersey often stains and occasionally stings like mousse dripping from a sweaty head down a bronzed face and into your eye.

But I have no complaints. Life is good. My job is to tell stories and tell them well. With some luck and hard work, the next chapter in my story should be worth sharing. Or maybe the chapter after the next one. I hear the index promises to shape up decently. Stick around.

Bones of Contention

Just a service for the powers that be, in case I am to be considered for Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on The Supreme Court. My politics, in no particular order:

• Marijuana should be legal
• Any consenting adult should be able to marry any other consenting adult outside his immediate family
• Abortion should be legal, and minors should not be required to notify or seek the consent of their parents; notification laws are innefective and potentially dangerous
• The day-after pill should be available over-the-counter; the pill's effective cancelation of a pregnancy after unprotected sex is no more an abortion than the natural ejection of any other (perhaps) fertilized egg that doesn't attach to the uterus and grow to term; According to the FDA, it is safe and would prevent countless actual abortions
• If life begins at conception, it is hardly worth fretting over; Stem cell research can save adult lives; it should be legal and supported by the government with at least as much enthusiasm as farm subsidies and energy policies favoring oil companies
• Government should not coerce citizens into following any particular religion, and government should not provide any money for religious institutions or displays; Society should not shrink from displaying the religious preference of the marjority, so long as minorities aren't coerced into practicing another religion; For example, if I live in a predominantly Christian country, Christmas can be a national holiday just as schools are closed for Jewish holidays in New York; Also, I am free to ignore Nativity scenes and tell people to go fuck themselves when they approach me on the street with a "Jews for Jesus" pamphlet
• Intelligent Design isn't science; it doesn't belong in schools; science demands evidence through experimentation to support all hypotheses; something isn't true just because you might want it to be
• Prostitution should be legal; "Why should it be illegal to sell something that's perfectly legal to give away?"--George Carlin
• Downloading music is theft, but fans sharing music for no profit can never be stopped, and it ultimately helps the artist gain exposure; unless you're already so big you don't need it, in which case you should go back to your solid gold jacuzzi and diddle yourself
• Burning a flag is stupid, but far less harmful than outlawing a constitutionally protected act; love the principle, not the artifact
• Physician-assisted suicide is between the dying patient and the physician; Why can we put dogs out of their misery but not end our own suffering?
• Like doctors and lawyers, journalists should be shielded from being forced by the government to reveal confidential sources unless a life is at stake
• Capital punishment is not a deterrent and is racist in practice. Therefore, no state should execute a citizen simply to satiate society's or a victim's family's thirst for revenge; While more than half of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, Amnesty International has compiled statistics revealing that out of the 1,813 known people executed in 1999, 85% could be accounted for by China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States; Is this the type of company we want to keep?

Come One, Come All

This one is tame (and an actual film from 1961); If you're offended, don't dare look below

The Great American Porn Movie List

WARNING! This is --NO KIDDING!-- comedy in the worst, most depraved and offensive taste. What follows are movie titles invented from the imagination of sick, degenerate reprobates with too much time on their hands during late nights at summer camp and/or other fits of boredom (too many names to credit/blame). No women were involved in the creation of any of these titles, and I hereby preemptively apologize to them all. That's right. The whole lot of 'em. Nowhere below will you find anything remotely respectful of feminism or even simple human dignity.

Just horrible, evil, downright wrong. Shame on us all.

This list dates back to circa 1992, if that's any excuse. None of these are actual porno titles, at least as far as anyone knew at the time.

So if you are easily offended by the words of juvenile strangers indulging in a game of who-can-top-me-for sheer disgusting outrageousness...then please go find a web site about bunnies or something. And definitely skip the new film The Aristocrats.

For the rest of you sickos, try not to laugh. I dare you.

Romancing the Bone
Creamer Vs. Creamer
Bright Lights, Big Titties
The Cunt for Red October
The Sperminator
Raiders of the Lost Twat
Indiana Jones in the Temple of Poon
Jurassic Pork
Free My Willy
Dirty Rotten Cooters
Stand By Me . . . So I Can Fuck You Up the Ass
Titsie
Ordinary Peepers
Schindler’s Dick
Schindlers List of Whores
Star Whores
The Empire Sucks Dick
Return of the Red-Eye
The Smurfs and the Magic Skin Flute
When Harry Wet Sally
Come and Comer
Dazed and Abused
The Last Masturbation of Christ
Diddler on the Roof
Robin Hood: Prince of Queefs
St. Elmo’s Fire Crotch
The War of the Hoses
Doucheless People
Full Metal Dildo
All Quiet on the Western Cunt
The Shawshank Erection
The Fabulous Boner Boys
Field of Wet Dreams
The Right Muff
Forrest Hump
Coming in America
Reality Blows
Good Whoring in Vietnam
A Streetwalker Named Desire
Suddenly Last Hummer
Pokerhotass
City Prickers
Sophie’s Moist
The Great Train Sodomy
To Live and Die for a Lay
One Spew Over the Cooter’s Nest
Titty-Titty Bang Bang
Citizen Cunt (Starring Whore’s-son Welles)
Brighton Beach Mammaries
Prince of Rides
On Golden Shower
A Low Down Dirty Skank
Stench of a Woman
Twelve Horny Men
Eight Men In
Partner 57
The Hair Up There
Above the Rimjob
Blue Balls (Blue Chips)
Bush League (Major League)
Four Weddings and a Sopping Wet Pussy
In The Anus of the Father
Snow White and the Seven Whores
Crimson Tide of Menstrual Blood Oozing Down Her Leg
Queefal Weapon
Only You...Can Sing The Star Spangled Banner With My Scrotum In Your Mouth
Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape’s Dingleberries?
Flesh Gordon
Ferris Tooler Jacks Off
Felch (Fletch)
Bitch Cassidy And Her Unpantsed Kid
The Slutty Professor
Dr. Jerkoff And Mr. Hyde the Salami
Planet Of The Rapes
How To Eat An American Cooter
48 Hours...Of Continuous Anal Probing
White Men Can’t Pump
2001--Uses For A Dildo
2010-- More Uses For A Dildo
Assablanca
From Queer to Eternity
Masturbation Man (Demolition Man)
Dickboxer
Red Vaj Of Courage
Bush Durham
Jerking Girl
Riding Miss Daisy
The Color Of Pussy
Ace Vagina: Snatch Detective
The Abyss...Between Her Legs
The Adventures Of Sharon Munchmuffin (Baron Munchausen)
The Screwing Of The Lambs
Beaverjuice (Beetlejuice)
The Pelican Queef
Star Trek III: The Search For Cock
Scent Of A Woman’s Cunt
Clear And Present Boner
Little Women...Wth Huge Cocks Up Their Asses
Snatch 22
Teenage Mutant Ninja Rugmunchers
Alice Gives Head Like A Whore (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore)
The Queerhunter
Bang The Cunt Slowly
Stainly And Anus (Stanley And Iris)
Ed Sports Wood
SwallowQueen (Holloween)
My Cock, Your Lips—Now! (Apocalypse Now!)
Loose Canyons
Every Bitch Has A Dick In Her Caboose (Every Which Way But Loose)
Fuck Hard (Die Hard)
Fuck Hard 2: Fuck Harder
Fuck Hard With a Strap-On
Honey, I Violated The Kid’s Ass
Honey, I Blew the Kids
Catch 22 STDs
Invasion Of The Hairy Snatches
A Cock Turned Orange (A Clockwork Orange)
The Color Of My Jizz
Dirty Rotten Skanks
The Muppets Take It Up the Ass
The Great Muppet Cooter
The Joy Fuck Club
A League Of Their Bone
Mary Shelly’s Franks & Beans
My Squeezin’ Weenie (My Cousin Vinny)
My Own Private Dildo
The Neverending Orgy
Plapoon

Turn Your Doberman into a Poodle

Too adorable. Can anyone really take a poodle (or a poodle owner) seriously?

Stuck in Your Head For the Rest of Your Life

I don't like mattress jingles. Or any jingles for that matter. But especially mattress jingles.

Me and an authentic long-neck Karen hill-tribe villiager from Northwestern Thailand. I'm the one on the right.

Me and an authentic normal-neck, large-mouthed Dow Jones journalist from New Jersey. I'm the one with no interest in being photographed. No, not the rotund fellow with black-rimmed glasses.

All Those Stoned-Out Faces Left Stranded

Here it is. That fluff Fourth of July story that no one is in town to read on the Saturday of a holiday weekend. As if anyone would read this anyway. Except you. Bless you, my child.

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas

Gas prices in the city hit a record average $2.42. Read all about it in one of my last Daily News stories.

Same Old Jersey

I've recently accepted a reporting job at The Home News Tribune in lovely East Brunswick, N.J.

I know, I know. You can sense my excitement. This is the last place on Earth I wanted to live. But a bird in the hand is better than taking two for a tango or some such thing. So as my days as a New Yorker are numbered, I figured I'd offer this brief little snippet from a much longer snip, extolling the proud New Jerseyite lineage.

Yes. I am attempting a self-fulfilling prophecy through positive thinking. Does this ever work?


As Jed twisted his Explorer along the winding of the Delaware Water Gap--Port Authority of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, adopt-a-highway stretches sponsored by New Jersey Kiwanis, The Greek Revival and General Ironics, Inc.--he emerges through the tollbooth with his customary middle fingered salute to the sign that greets all those who enter Pennsylvania from points east. In stately font and grandiose manner, tagged with the current governor's signature, is the greeting: "Welcome to Pennsylvania; America Starts Here."

Jed has long since abandoned attempts to explain this colossal display of sheer stupidity. It can't even be called hubris, really. What? Pennsylvania: Home of the Amish, the Quakers, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the non-New Yorkers? What possible reason could they exclude the eastern seaboard when describing this country? God bless America from sea to shining...Pennsylvania?

He can recall an argument with Graham over the ramifications of this sign--a challenge really, to name one noteworthy American who proudly advertises Pennsylvania as his home state. Rocky Balboa doesn't count, he told his portly, ill-kempt Pennsylvanian amigo. Non-fictional characters only, please. The stumpy kid stumped, Jed first mentioned the sad fact that the imbecile comic Bob Sagat hails from Graham's hometown of Abbington, and this effectively ended Pennsylvania's offensive.

The Jersey list, of course, is anchored by the almighty Bruce Springsteen--Messiah of Rock And Roll, without whom The Bee-Gees might have taken over the world with a legion of trendy-dressing goons armed with hypnotic strobe lights and feathered hair. He alone, argued Jed, would make his case.

But wait, there's more and this group included Jack Nicholson, Frank Sinatra, Danny DeVito, Grover Cleveland, Allen Ginsberg, Lauryn Hill, Thomas Edison, Bon Jovi (O.K. One point for the bad guys), Whitney Houston, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, James Cagney, Norman Mailer, Walt Whitman, Jerry Lewis (That's two against), Joe Pesci, Meryl Streep, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, Jr., Bruce Willis, Eddie Murphy, Patti Smith, and every player on the 1995, 2000 and 2003 Stanley Cup Champion New Jersey Devils (those who haven't moved, retired, or been traded).

Then there is Lucky Lindy, of whom Jersey was proud enough to execute an innocent man for his benefit. How many states are that committed? The list is long and distinguished. Jed was forced to stop when Graham stumbled away in search of more beer.

Burning Up For Your Love

John Scalzi knows something about freedom and flags that our divisive, opportunistic and illogical Congress can't seem to fathom. You know what? I'd actually support a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution if there were a corollary allowing you to burn one when and only if a member of Congress wraps himself in the thing. Morons.

Love the principle, not the artifact. Money quote: "Real Americans don't take away the freedoms of other Americans. "

Designer Intelligence

An open letter to the Kansas School Board.

Best Movies By State

Blogger Steve Silver lists the best movies set in each of the 50 states. Lots of room for argument here. Which is the point of lists.

Holy Great Movie, Batman!

Finally, a real Batman movie.

Oh, I loved Adam West in the 60's movie and TV show. Especially Cesar Romero as The Joker, cackling like Michael Jackson at Chuck E. Cheese's and sporting a mustache under his clown makeup.

And Tim Burton got a few things absolutely right in his original Batman from 1989: The dark, dirty, surreal Gotham; the bat suit; the batmobile; Alfred. But the tone was over-the-top, a comic-y take on a superhero without the emotional weight or even a real plot. Nicholson shamelessly mugged and stole the movie from the ill-cast Michael Keaton -- an even bigger crime than his character's attempt to poison the entire city. The name of the film was Batman, after all.

I will not speak of Joel "Bat Nipples" Schumacher.

So here comes Christopher Nolan, getting every last detail almost perfect. By focusing on Bruce Wayne's emotional trauma, crippling fears, obsession with revenge and his sense of justice, we finally get a fully fleshed character behind the cowl. Some might argue that the film wastes too much time with Bruce's Far East exploration of the criminal mind and his training at the hands of The League of Shadows. But this is time well spent in a movie that promises with its title to reveal how Batman Begins.

It was always a running joke among nerds like me, trying to figure out what happened to the contractors who designed the bat cave or the technicians responsible for all his cool equipment. And finally, we have a movie that goes a long way to reveal all of this in believable detail, introducing a new character and enlisting Alfred as a more hands-on partner. If it wouldn't have stretched an already long movie out to unprofitable lengths, I could have watched even more of the evolution of this kind of stuff and Batman's crime-fighting learning curve.

As it is, though, this movie finally shows a Batman as Batman should be: a figure striking fear into scumbags, who works from the shadows and chills criminals to their bones with a ferocious appearance and all-business growl of a voice. And finally, a Batman who originated in DC's Detective Comics actually behaving like a detective. His relationship with a young (and eventually police commissioner) Jim Gordon is the stuff of giddy dreams. None of this story had ever been satisfactorily told before, and unlike Lucas's childish, sappy and illogical prequels, this Batman origin fulfills the promise of an aging geek's imagination.

Perhaps my biggest gripe (and you know there had to be one) is the fight choreography. Everything is shot up close and with quick cuts, likely because the bat suit just doesn't allow for a lot of agility or acrobatics. And maybe you can buy the excuse that the style of fighting Batman employs is the up-close-and-dirty kind. Certainly, these scenes are preferable to a CG-rendered Batman as in the Spider-Man movies. But while the wire work and fight choreography of Hong Kong Kung Fu pictures and the balletic brawls of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Kill Bill and The House of Flying Daggers have raised the bar of what constitutes an artistic achievement in fighting, Batman goes for a lot of muddled flying fists, kicks and blocks.

Oh, well. All still amazingly satisfying, though perhaps Batman Begins appeals most to the hard-core geek audience. Like me. With any luck, this will almost erase the memory of Schumacher's neon Gotham and (shudder) Alicia Silverstone squeezed into tights.

Top 10 Comic Book Films

1. Superman
2. Spider-Man 2
3. Spider-Man
4. Batman Begins
5. Superman 2
6. Sin City
7. X-Men 2: X-Men United
8. X-Men
9. Batman
10. American Splendor

Honorable Mention: Flash Gordon, Hellboy, Men in Black, Ghost World

Edited 6/23, 4:35 PM because I'm an idiot.

Schoolgirl, Really Ugly, Embarrassed by Post

Slow News Day: The Post decides to humiliate an 11-year-old girl to sell papers

Anyone catch this story from Friday's Post? Apparently, this girl's parents want their kid's school to recall all 200 yearbooks because they printed the wrong picture. Her mother said, "For the rest of her life, she's going to have to be ashamed of that horrible picture."

Um. Michelle Maihepat of South Ozone Park? You think maybe printing it on the front page of oh, maybe 480,000 papers might be a little more embarrassing for your little girl?

Listen, I'm not a partisan in the New York tabloid wars. Not really. I read The Post for their addictive, Chicken Little sports coverage. And it's silly fun how their news coverage serves as Rupert Murdoch's conservative pulpit in America. But this has to be the dumbest, most exploitive piece of barbed fluff I've ever read.

Which wasn't alleviated by the makeover they paid for and printed in today's paper. The poor little girl still looks about as attractive as Herve Vellaichaize after a few too many mojitos.

Hey, now. I can write that because my 14 stoned daily readers don't really compare to the circulation of the New York Post. Not yet, anyway. And we here at Rolling Bones know, if anything, there's nothing funnier than Herve Vellaichaize in a prom dress.

Zee Post! Zee Post!

Special Delivery

Today's front page story of the D. News reported by D. Bones

How do you get a humble, media shy hero to cooperate with your paper? Bribe him with $1,000 and Yankees tickets. A good man, and a good story.

The Danger of Interviewing While Black

Law-abiding black men fare no better than white ex-cons when it comes to interviewing for jobs in the city, according to a study released yesterday. So before you go on that next interview, make sure that you've got a freshly pressed suit, extra copies of your resume, brightly shined shoes and white skin.

WTC Pensions

Using 10 ceremonial pens, Gov. Pataki signed a bill making it easier for workers at Ground Zero to apply for disability pensions. This intrepid reporter was on the scene with his own pen and a tape recorder.

Boob Tube

When people get together and talk about the latest happenings on "The O.C." or "Two and a Half Men" (although, I imagine, not getting together with the expressed purpose of discussing these shows), I remain quiet. When asked, I tell people truthfully that I don't watch sitcoms and can hardly stand the latest trend in nighttime soaps.

But I'm not one of those television doomsayers who decry the vast wasteland of programming and pine for the days of "The Twighlight Zone," "Hill Street Blues" or whatever. Which isn't to say that it isn't a vast wasteland.

My cable package features some 500 channels of varying pay levels--many of which offer 24-hour programming. If 90 percent of this programming resembles hairy clumps of elephant crap, well, that leaves a lot of good stuff out there if you know where to look.

My DVR might be a good place to start:

"Penn & Teller Bullshit!" on Showtime -- Watch Penn and Teller debunk the war on drugs, second hand smoke, recycling, PETA, college, circumcision, bottled water, hypnosis and family values. Almost foolproof arguments delivered with biting wit and scathing contempt for self-proclaimed "experts" who are often emasculated on camera. If you can't stand John Stossel's smarmy manipulation of the facts or ever wanted someone to vanquish any guilt over your failure to embrace recycling, this is the show for you.

"Charlie Rose" on PBS -- Yeah, he can be as sycophantic as Larry King when talking to actors or Nobel Prize winners. Yeah, he can expound forever about the craft of acting like James Lipton. Yeah, he can't even crack a simple joke without clubbing it to death first. But there is no other destination on TV for an hour-long conversation of substance with people worthy of that attention. It was on Charlie Rose I first saw an actual interview with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. It was Charlie Rose who helped confirm that an hour spent with Carson Daly is an hour of your life, lost and erased-- never to return again. It's on Charlie Rose where you can see Sean Penn reminisce about Marlon Brando, obscured in cigarette smoke like he's on "The Joe Franklin Show" in 1956. Or where I learned how sublty seductive that communist dirtbag Noam Chomsky can be. Indispensable television.

"Dinner for Five" on IFC -- Simple concept. Like "Politically Incorrect" with food and without the politics. Watch Burt Reynolds tell stories punctuated by Richard Lewis's cracks. See Carrie Fisher tell a story about tripping on acid in 1978 with John Belushi at Disneyland. Watch Kevin Smith bullshit with George Carlin. It's hit or miss, depending on the guests. Just like any dinner party.

"Ebert & Roeper" on ABC -- Agree or not with their opinions, but this is still the best written and delivered film review show of all time. Smart, witty and often humble. And they don't always stick to the big releases, providing lots of good ideas for DVD purchases and rentals.

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central -- Nothing I can say about this show that hasn't been beaten to death by the mainstream media's uniform praise. Simply could not have survived the election without this one.

"Family Guy" on Fox -- It's back and maybe not as great as ever. But you must show some respect for the show that left "The Simpsons" in the dust long ago and last week aired a show in which baby Stewie hung from Annika Sorenstam's scrotum sack. No, seriously.

"Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN -- The quickest, most easy-going, wittiest and enjoyable sports discussion show on TV or radio. PTI's Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon make "Mike and the Mad Dog" look even more like "Blow Hard and the Retard." I never understood sports talk radio and shows about know-it-all hosts shouting down and hanging up on call-in losers griping about home team coaching decisions. Kornheiser and Wilbon keep things fast and light, kibbutzing back and forth like an old married couple or a Borscht Belt comedy team. It doesn't even matter that neither of them knows the first thing about hockey. Unlike Mike Francessa and Chris Russo, they don't pretend anything.

IFC, Sundance, Trio, Turner Classic Movies, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz and Fox Movie Channel -- Even overlooking the expensive pay channels that come with five sub-channels each in a package along with my internet connection, these other channels kick ass. This year alone, I've been able to see dozens of classic movies I hadn't gotten around to seeing: The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Ben Hur, The Evil Dead, Seven Samurai, Boxcar Bertha, Being There, Bridge Over the River Kwai, Das Boot, Do the Right Thing, Raising Victor Vargas, Some Like it Hot and The Station Agent. And more where that came from, all unedited and constantly replenished. Peruse these channels with your DVR guide, cross-reference with my film list and enjoy.

Let us not neglect "South Park," which is still razor sharp, timely and consistently outrageous. Evidence: In an episode from this season, Mr. Garrison's boy-toy Mr. Slave takes Paris Hilton and deposits her in his ass to prove a point. Need you ask what this point might be?

I'm also a big fan of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim show "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law," a surreal courtroom drama populated by Hanna Barbara characters. A dead-before-its-time Adult Swim show is "Home Movies", the squiggle-vision misadventures of a trio of prepubescent filmmakers, which you can catch on DVD.

If it ever reappears, "Cheap Seats" on ESPN features twin wry comedians Randy and Jason Sklar cracking wise a la "Mystery Science Theater 3000" at ABC/Disney's b-roll properties like 1970s "Wide World of Sports" shows about board breaking and cheerleading competitions. Hilarious.

"30 Days" on FX looks promissing, with Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock indulging in different social science experiments like trying to live for a month on minimum wage and having a Christian move in with Muslims. Good times socially conscious fun.

I'll also be happily watching "Six Feet Under" kill itself off after five seasons. A great, daring, uneven show. May it die as it lived.

And if you missed the E! News Michael Jackson trial reenactments, man, I just feel sorry for you. Too much fun. Forget the Jay Leno and Chris Tucker impersonators and the Michael vanilla pudding-face stand-in. The real show came during commentary segments with Jackson shills (rightfully) lambasting the prosecution. Phil Spector can hardly hope to be this entertaining.

Then there are those shows that won't be back for a bit, but can mostly be caught On Demand in the meantime: "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Chappelle's Show," "Inside the NFL," "The Sopranos," "Deadwood," "Real Time with Bill Maher," and "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel."

Summer is a good time to catch up on stuff in repeats you might have missed. I'm picking up "House" on Fox, which stars a lovable bastard doctor solving medical mysteries and isn't even as cheesy as that sounds. Solid writing of a complex, entertaining character in medical stories that don't get bogged down in the soapy drama that has destroyed "ER" since the 4th season.

But I must warn anyone who who might be tempted to spend 20-something wasted hours with ABC's "Lost." I knew exactly what I was getting into this fall, but stuck it out as an exercise in self-abuse. "Lost" is "Land of the Lost" meets "Giligan's Island" meets "Survivor" meets "24" meets "The X-Files." And like "The X-Files," "Lost" thrives on the tension created by seemingly intricate plot secrets that CAN'T EVER BE REVEALED OR THE SHOW IS OVER. So you get a season of writer's writing themselves into corners and then moving on to write themselves into another corner. Why, oh, why can't networks agree that a great premise, like the survivors of a plane crash on a creepy island told more-or-less in a compressed time-frame, should only exist for a season or two? Like "24" or that girl you know from high school, shows like this can only tease and never pay off.

Let her play with herself, I say. There is too much good on TV to bother.

Puerto Rican Day Pounding

From today's Daily News (in the Brooklyn section you don't get in Manhattan), a story about la policia beating down Puerto Ricans after the parade. No, they are not pinatas. And that's a Mexican thing, you bigots.

He Beat It!

Well, I can't say I'm surprised. After watching the very entertaining E! reenactments of the Michael Jackson molestation trial over the last few months, it was clear that no jury would convict him based on accusations from a family of loony grifters.

This family was helmed by an insane mother and a jerkoff father who, like so many parents, sold their children to Michael Jackson for baubles and vacations. They simply weren't believable. The mother had a history of perjury and false claims. They had a track record of targeting celebrities for money and favors. She used her child's cancer as a cash calf. Her testimony in this trial was fantasy embellished by fairy tales.

Which isn't to say that Michael Jackson is not a child molestor. Based on the substantial, verified evidence supplied by numerous believable individuals, he is almost certainly a pedophile. If not in action, than inclination. But the prosecution placed too much faith in this family and their certifiable mom, overreaching with a charge of false imprisonment and flubbing the trial in countless ways (trust me, I watched a lot of the E! coverage).

So this is a great day for Michael Jackson, perhaps justice for a scumbag family (punishing the boy for the sins of the mother who cried wolf even if the boy was molested), and a warning to prospective parents in California: Michael Jackson is like a freaky, fragile, flaking sculpture without a nose; you can look, but don't touch.

I Want You Back: When Michael Jackson would find himself attractive...

Bad Poetry

Written in 1993 in a depressed state somewhere between half-altertness and dream. New York, I think.

Empty

A hovering incompetence.
Drivel to the sap of
Warn witness.
Feed the urge to purge
The gray-green drones
Of yesterday’s sick head.
A tender spasm leaves
Personal stains—
And reminds the gorgeous
Orb
That despite the love,
There live the pains.

Weak knowledge belies
The quiver that frets and
Cries.
Under no mask can he utter
The sound of degenerate
Goofiness that flutters
And dies…
An immediate connection trolls
The stream of
Thoughts that rip and double-team
Down the pit of fallen hopes that
grip the rope that

ties the dream.

Enter the crude:
A sloshing glunk-glunking.
Drain the tube to lube the
Prickly friction
Of grinding years.
A sweating heart seeks a harmless tool,
And without a care (’cause
Fair is fair)
Knows that an empty beat
Knocks out a fool.

Sweet, simple sustain
Lulls and drifts—
Unfallen rain.
With the swollen clouds of
Unvanquished verve
He seeks a nerve for thoughts
To drain
Away from grief and self-contemptuous
Ire—
Like melting a leaf to
Drown the thief
In a pool of fire.

Screw the story about his grades--just look at this picture; any wonder the dude lost?

Please, No Moe

Must...make...more money with an inferior product...

Apparently, the long-discussed "Simpson's" movie is in pre-production. Can't you good people just let this family die with dignity? I want to keep my fond memories of the first 9 seasons. Have you no shame?

Errol & Inka

A brief excerpt from an unfinished (and unfinishable) novel that obliquely addresses my feelings on the recent Supreme Court Medical Marijuana decision. Errol Jordan, a 7-year-old aspiring labor lawyer, has a run-in with drug-using friends of Inka Popinski, a buxom ex-gymnast and comparative literature major at Cornell University.


Left alone with the dry-eyed, but less-than-cheerful child genius of the moment, Inka helped him pull off his tie and waited for him to say something.

"Those guys use drugs," Errol said. "And you're friends with them? Do you use drugs?" That wasn't the question she wanted to hear.

"Listen, why don't you talk to your parents about this. I'm really not the right person to ask."

"I'm not asking them. I'm asking you."

"It's just...it's just that you're really too young for me to answer you honestly. You know, I didn't know drugs from Oscar the Grouch when I was your age, and I was more than happy being young and ignorant. That's the beauty of childhood."

"But I bet you didn't have a functioning knowledge of quantum mechanics and cosmological physics when you were my age, either. And I don't know any Oscar Groucho Marx or anyone. That's a cop-out."

"No, but—"

"But nothing. I'm asking you to look past my age, and just talk to me like another person. Is that so much to ask? Why won't anyone talk to me about the important stuff?"

The image of young Mozart in a sex-Ed class shot into her head with the sudden juxtaposition of an MTV edit.

"O.K. Fine. What do you want to know?"

"Do you take drugs?"

"Listen. Drugs are just chemicals, right? Anything that effects your body chemistry can be considered a drug, right? Medicine is a drug. Certain foods are a drug. Do you agree?"

"Sure. But medicine and food aren't illegal and don't generally kill people."

"Hold on a second. Do you want to talk about politics or realities? Drugs weren't always illegal. Most were here long before there were any laws or anything that might be called civilization. Just because something is illegal doesn't make it evil. Recently, alcohol was illegal for awhile, and that was declared by an amendment to the Constitution. While Congress was waiting to ratify the retraction of that amendment, did alcohol suddenly become less evil? Laws are laws, and some are good and some suck, all are enacted by the most deceitful people on earth, and I'm not really interested in having a political discussion. I'm decidedly apolitical by nature."

"But if you break the law—"

"If you break laws that don't hurt anyone but yourself, are you a criminal Technically anyone who has homosexual sex in some states is committing a crime, but is it a crime against humanity? No. The crime against humanity is the law enacted by the state barring these types of activities that have no victims. But I don't want to talk about politics. Do you know what marijuana is?"

"It is one of several products of the cannabis sativa plant, a narcotic whose active ingredient tetrahydorcannabinol has—"

"Hold on. You said it's a plant, right?"

"Yeah."

"So if it grows on the planet, if it is in fact a weed that would grow wildly if man and his laws didn't intervene, whose to stop me or anyone from drying it and lighting it on fire. If you were to light that clump of grass you're holding, and breathe in the smoke, should I stop you?"

"It might make me sick."

"Ah, but if you smoke some other plant, and it makes you feel pretty damn good, what is the difference. Your happiness?"

"Well, what does it feel like?"

Inka could see herself answering this question for the benefit of the court reporter some day, while the judge cuts her off and lambastes her with a gavel's tone of voice, "You told him WHAT?"

"Now, this is tricky for me to describe because I believe that it is impossible to speak as an authority on any topic without direct personal experience with what you're talking about. Who is the Pope to be talking about sex? And that's particularly true when you talk about physical states and emotions. And I would not recommend you trying anything, because like we've already established, you're too young, and certain people aren't ready for certain experiences. My mother is fifty-two years-old and if she got high, I suppose she'd flip out a little. Not because of the weed, mind you, but because of her personal reaction to it. No substance is truly evil. It's just some stuff on this planet. Some stuff can kill you, some can make you sick, some can make you feel O.K., and some great. I wouldn't eat a spare tire or smoke tuna fish, but if I did, I could only blame myself and not the tire. O.K.?"

"But what does it feel like?"

Persistent little bugger, she thought.

"O.K. Did you ever spin around in circles in a big open space like your backyard and stare at the sky and then stop suddenly and feel all dizzy and giddy and maybe a little sick?"

"I can't tell you if I've participated in this specific activity, but the sensation seems familiar. Perhaps I have."

"Well, it's kinda like that although different. You know, there just might be a natural human tendency to experience different states of mind. I can remember spinning all over the place when I was a little girl, and I never equated it with being high. Go figure."

"Do you get high often?"

The kid, obviously, was not programmed to ever give in.

"In college, we have the luxury of time to both accomplish, explore, and languish in states of altered consciousness. You know, I'd like to continue this conversation, but I'm late for a class. If you got some time, you can come along and sit in. I think you'll find the lecture strangely appropriate, and certainly eye-opening. What do you say?"

An extended hand was all the leverage Errol needed, and he removed a clump of hair that was sticking to his forehead with a concentrated upward blow.

Ding Dong, The Stadium's Dead

With any luck State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's no-vote on state financing of the Jets West Side stadium should sink the project faster than Chad Pennington's gimpy arm will sink the Jets' playoff chances this year.

About friggin' time.

My father has owned Jets season tickets since 1966 when they were the New York Titans. He watched nascent murderer O.J. Simpson rush for 2,000 yards against them in the snow of Shea Stadium in 1973. He'd grease the ticket-takers $5 so I could sit on his lap at games there when I was 4 years old. We were at the last game in that stadium (a loss) when fans almost tore it apart. We followed them to Giants Stadium in 1983 for that first game (a loss) and I've probably seen upwards of 120 games there since.

Any Jet fan will tell you how demoralizing it is to be tenants in a building with the name of another, usually better local team glowing in red and blue. It's one of those sports absurdities that can hardly be stomached, no matter how much green and white bunting they drape the place with for Jets home games.

In a perfect world, the Jets would have their own stadium. In no world is a stadium in Manhattan perfect.

Setting aside for a moment the impropriety of New Yorkers partially funding a stadium for a billionaire and his sports team when almost every other aspect of city finances cries out for this money, the proposed (hopefully dead) stadium screws the fans.

Football fans tailgate. Grilling, drinking, tossing footballs, blasting music, soaking up the sun, huddling around fires. Tailgating is one of those things that makes football different from most other sports. Sunday is the day for truly devout families to shun church and dedicate their time and effort to make a full day of NFL worship. The party atmosphere will vanish if the stadium sits in midtown Manhattan. Jet owner Woody Johnson envisions cars parked in New Jersey to tailgate with ferry service taking them to the stadium. As though all Jets fans come from New Jersey.

And can anyone imagine what traffic will be like when fans flood out at 4 or 8 PM after another agonizing Jets loss? Even if 75 percent of those attending took some form of public transportation (not likely, considering how far folks will need to travel from Jersey, Queens, Westchester and Long Island), the glut of pedestrians, cars and buses would turn the West Side Highway, 10th, 9th and likely 8th Avenues into parking lots. Returning to the city from Jets games on game days from six miles away in New Jersey often presents a traffic nightmare. And if everyone were already in New York fighting to get out for a good night's sleep before returning to work on Monday? Show me a civil engineer who thinks this is a good idea and I'll show you a dude with Mike Bloomberg's ass hairs caught in his teeth.

And who will these Jets fans be? Not the same blue-collar, bitter, violent, lovable drunks that currently bat around inflatable sex dolls and burn giveaway hats at Jets games. Woody Johnson, who is still in debt after purchasing the team for $635 million in 2000, faces a growing price tag on his dead dream stadium, balooning beyond $2 billion. And although Jets president Jay Cross continues to huck and jive, the team will certainly need to charge season ticket holders thousands of dollars in personal seat licenses for the "right" to fork over more thousands on ticket prices they will certainly raise to the retractable roof.

Add to this financial hurdle the fact that the new stadium would feature 14,000 fewer seats than Giants Stadium, and it's clear that this eyesore on the Hudson will price out the average fan and host a crowd of corporate cronies and button-down jerks like those who can still endure Knicks games.

But Silver hit on the biggest travesty of this boondoggle. Why should the city and state of New York pay $300 million each to finance a private stadium when city teachers have worked for two years and city cops have worked six years without a contract. The NYPD is the most highly trained and worst paid major city police force in the country. They actually have to pay for their uniforms. Cops in Westchester and Long Island get almost double the pay for a fraction of the work and risk. The city transit agency projects deficits that could rise to $1 billion in a few years, while the 100-year-old subway system rots and much-needed projects (like the pipe dream 2nd Avenue subway) languish without funding. But Woody Johnson needs a new stadium?

And Silver's constituency in Lower Manhattan clearly sees the city's biggest hole, literally, in the dormant World Trade Center site. And the Olympics that New York will never get and no New Yorker I've ever spoken to actually wants? How about first healing the biggest, still raw wound the city and the country has ever suffered.

If every local team itching for a new home had its way, the year 2010 would see the Jets playing on the West Side Rail Yards, the Giants in a new stadium in the Meadowlands, the Nets in a new arena in Brooklyn, the Devils in a new arena in Newark, the Yankees in a new stadium in The Bronx and the Mets in a new stadium in Queens. That's six new buildings in five years. Right now, it looks like the Devils (remember hockey?) and the Nets have the best shot.

Wouldn't it make sense for the Jets and Giants to share a stadium in New Jersey? As a Jet fan, I wouldn't care, as long as it isn't New Giants Stadium or some such travesty, and they sell the naming rights to some egotistical corporation. Call it Preparation-H Stadium for all I care.

In fact, that would be my first preference. This whole process has been a real pain in the ass.

Hey, Jew

Take a sad song, make it better and join the folks over at Jewsrock.org, started by Jeffrey Goldberg and David Segal. Lots of curiosities, although I'm not convinced, as they claim, that Pink is Jewish. That party she wanted to get started never struck me as a bat mitzvah.

The Dorks of Losertown

I think it was Janeane Garofolo who once asked the immortal question: Has any skateboarder, anywhere, since the beginning of time ever landed a trick?

I ponder this mystery in anticipation of the latest incarnation of the self-important mythologizing of schoolyard bozos on wheels, the Stacy Peralta-penned flick Lords of Dogtown, a film I will not actively see.

"Actively" implies that when it makes its cable rounds -- as with Peralta's watchable self-important mythologizing of schoolyard bozos on wheels, the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys -- there's almost nothing I won't watch as opposed to actually doing something productive.

Only in Hollywood would the thirst for dollars among wayward youth necessitate a fictionalizing of a perfectly serviceable documentary just so Heath Ledger can intone a California stoner drawl.

Personally, I don't get it. The whole skateboarding thing, I mean. Other than kids who skin their knees and fall on their heads skating down cement stairways during their own uneventful after-school hours -- when not huffing gas, snorting glue and listening to Good Charlotte on their iPods, I imagine -- who else cares about this crap? Of course there are those same kids who never actually grew up, like the excreable Bam Margera, who pretends to torment his family for the pleasure of emotionally retarded MTV viewers on "Viva La Bam" and who apparently banged Jessica Simpson.

But even if these little sk8tr boyz were lovable pillars of virtue, I couldn't help but be underwhelmed by their supposed skills. Both Peralta films immortalize the moment when skateboarding "legends" descended into empty swimming pools and -- inspired by the fabulous gods of eh -- ramped up the edges and (whoa, dude!) broke the bounds of earth for approximately .2345 seconds of flight. The witnesses to this seminal moment in their sport strike a tone of holy moley reverence, as though discussing Neil Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Louis Armstrong or the guy who invented Arm & Hammer baking soda.

It's because of people like this that they continue to make Vans sneakers and Fred Durst owns a fleet of cars.

Seriously, people. Is there anything less exciting than the tricks performed by skateboarders? It's as though you're watching a documentary about a revolutionary new spelunking technique or the moment that changed needlepoint forever.

Real stoners were too lazy to skateboard anyway.

The Oddness of Everything

It's rare that I agree with anything I've read by George Will, but his recent piece in Newsweek, "The Oddness of Everything" hits the nail on the head: what's killing political and social discourse in this country and the world is a blind "excess of certitude." Simply, religious zealots and ideologues are so sure of themselves, there is no place for the wonder of just how little we do know. And when you look at the very big and the very small, as Will does in this excellent little column, it's hard to be sure of anything other than the stupidity of people so comfortable in their knowledge.

Big Time News from Louisiana

Here's a story that ran in last week's Courier in Houma, La., as part of my interview process. Bigger than Deep Throat, more powerful than a tall building full of Lewinskys.

Sign on with the screename: mickeymouse@mailinator.com and password: junky.

Deep Throat Uncovered: But why wait so long after Linda Lovelace's death?