The Joe Bob Report

Abercrombie & Fitch discontinued a line of T-shirts featuring Chinese cartoon characters and slogans like "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs can make it white" and "Buddha Bash--Get Your Buddha on the Floor" after a massive protest by the Asian American Students' Association at Stanford University. "We did not mean to cause offense," said an Abercrombie & Fitch spokesman, following the advice of ancient Chinese philosopher No Lah Feng.

* Kingsley Barham of Delray Beach, Florida, is marketing a series of trading cards called "Heroes of the World Trade Center," featuring photos of September 11th victims and biographical information on the back. So far he's signed up 160 families and is ready to issue the first batch. Up until last summer Barham was planning to release a trading-card series on marijuana, but after September 11th he decided smoke was better than smokes. * Everybody's afraid of Martha in the wake of Christopher Byron's critical Martha Stewart biography "Martha Inc." First all 2000 Kmart stores refused to carry an edition of the The Globe tabloid, which ran a cover story based on the book, and now public radio station WNYC in New York has refused to allow the book's author to underwrite a program. It seems that Martha gives big bucks to the station and they don't wanna soil her doilies. * After 42 years and 17,162 performances, the world's longest- running musical, "The Fantasticks," finally closed at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, thereby making it easier for more and more actors to lie about being in the original cast. Jerry Orbach is telling the truth. * Gregorio Fuentes, the inspiration for Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," died at his home in the Cuban fishing village of Cojimar at the age of 104. Since the book came out in 1952, and since Hemingway had known him a long time, he wasn't too damn old until recently, was he? This is what happens in Third World countries where plastic surgery is under-utilized. * After years of declining market share, the mustachioed lumberjack on Brawny paper towels is finally getting the heave- ho, to be temporarily replaced by racing legend Richard Petty, who, come to think of it, doesn't look that different from the Brawny man. The current Brawny man "looks like a 1970s porn star," branding consultant Martyn Straw told The Wall Street Journal. "Everything on the package says 30 years old." That's because he IS 30 years old. The original Brawny man carried an ax over his shoulder and wore a red and black plaid shirt. In the early eighties, the ax was dropped. Since then his bushy mustache has been trimmed and the part in his hair has been moved from the middle to the side. Somewhere along the way his plaid shirt disappeared in favor of blue denim. Unfortunately, none of the changes have helped in Brawny's ongoing battle against Bounty, which controls a third of the paper-towel market, or more than three times what Brawny's current owner, Georgia-Pacific, is able to command. That's why in 2003, there will be a new Brawny man, and if current trends are any indication, he'll be gay. (Scratch that. Look at the current one. He IS gay.) * Anyone making a reservation at the Oasis Beach Resort and Convention Center in Rosarito, Mexico, is now subject to fines of up to a million bucks. The Treasury Department issued a bizarre order publicly identifying 10 Mexican businesses as fronts for the Arellano Felix brothers, who are believed to control the cocaine pipeline into the United States. Their U.S. assets were frozen and all Americans were forbidden from doing business with them. This may be the only Mexican hotel where, when they say it's a Coco Loco, it's a coco loco. * Sting will get a $1.5 million advance for his memoirs, to be entitled either "Stung," "Stang" or "Like a Bee." * Karen Morgan beat up a 51-year-old woman for bringing too many items into an express checkout line at a supermarket in Lowell, Mass. Morgan, 38, was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon--her foot--after becoming enraged that there were 13 items in the basket of a woman using a 12-item line. Her chances of freedom now depend on careful jury selection, as Lowell is known as a city that shows no mercy for express-line hooliganism. * Vodka-loving members of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic became so rowdy on their Amsterdam-to-Los Angeles flight that United Airlines landed the plane at Dulles International in Washington and ordered them off. The 100 musicians were forced to find lodgings for the night, lectured sternly, then allowed to continue to L.A., where they performed a concert of 20th-century Russian music at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. They were so well received that they did an encore selection: "Little Brown Jug." * The British marines invaded Spain by mistake, going off- course in an amphibious training exercise and landing on the beach at La Linea instead of in Gibraltar. The embarrassed soldiers stayed five minutes, then left, destined for the HMS Ocean, which is enroute to a support operation for Afghanistan. Fortunately, Afghanistan has no beaches. * Mattel introduced the first "multi-ethnic Barbie," a doll named Kayla who has the same dimensions as Barbie, but slightly darker skin and a face that doesn't look quite so WASPy. Mattel spokeswoman Julia Jensen declined to say just exactly what ethnicities were included in the design of Kayla. "She could really be anything," she said. "It's whatever a little girl sees in her." Seeking more concrete information, we asked Ken, who said, "She's a dream booty call--half Thailand bar girl, half Brazilian beach babe." * A Washington state legislator is demanding that the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway, better known as Highway 99, be renamed the William P. Stewart Highway in honor of a black Civil War veteran who fought for the Union and settled in Snohomish, Wash. We have a suggestion that will save a lot of time on talk shows and a lot of ink on editorial pages. Let's call it Highway 99. * Two F-16s were scrambled to intercept an American Airlines jetliner en route from London to New York when flight attendants became suspicious of two men who made repeated trips to the bathroom together. The men were escorted off the plane by agents from Port Authority, Customs and the FAA. Under questioning, the men protested their innocence, insisting that all they were doing was . . . smoking crack and having sex. At that point they were, of course, cordially welcomed into the country and invited to a private reception at the Department of Justice. * Kenyan police cracked down on gigolos who sell sexual services to German and Swiss women vacationing on Nyali Beach. A lady who tries hard enough can still find a Masai or Samburu warrior who will take her back to his village, but you'd better leave some major Euros on the bed . . . er . . . straw mat under the baobab tree. * Chu Mei-Feng, a former politician in Taiwan, was filmed by a secret camera having sex with her married lover. Just before Christmas, the story broke in a Taiwanese tabloid, which gave new subscribers a free 40-minute video of the bedroom hijinks. The government moved in to stop distribution of the video, saying the publishers had broken laws against indecent material, but the words "Chu Mei-Feng" are now among the most popular search-engine terms in the world, and black market copies of the video are on sale for up to $30. The highlight of the video, according to those who have seen it, are when Chu Mei-Feng writhes naked on the bed and begs her lover to "Chu mei feng." * The last two Jews in Afghanistan, Zbolon Semantov and Isaak Levi, hate each other. Both men have families in Israel but choose to stay in Kabul so they can fight over the control of two empty Jewish temples. When they fought over ownership of the Torah, the Taliban seized it and it's never been returned. So now they fight over who would have control of the Torah if they had a Torah. Can anyone say "Oi vey"? * Arthur Andersen didn't have time to fire 7,000 employees individually, so they instructed them to check their voicemail to find out if they should report to work the next day. The pink slips had apparently been shredded. * The Internal Revenue Service has decided to allow "weight loss expenses" as a medical deduction, in yet another tax victory for fat cats. * Oprah Winfrey announced that she's ending Oprah's Book Club because she can't find enough books "that I feel absolutely compelled to share." For the past six years Oprah has selected and recommended one book per month, but who can keep up that kind of grueling reading schedule? * A citizens group in New Paltz, N.Y., erected a sign on the New York State Thruway proclaiming "This community does not tolerate racism against Muslims, Arabs and people of color." But all the other people are JERKS. * The Gap is $2 billion in debt, and its stock price has declined 50 per cent over the past year. Last month its unsecured debt was reduced to junk-bond status, and the company announced that no new stores will be opened this year. That cute little baby-T with the bare midriff is looking pretty lonely on that plastic hanger, ladies. * Eleodoro (Tiny) Villafane of New York recently weighed in at 408 pounds, which is comparatively svelte considering that exactly one year ago he topped 840 pounds. Villafane is the guy who holed up in his East Village apartment, watching TV and eating for months to get over depression caused by the death of his mother. Finally his body gave out, he slipped in his bedroom, and rescuers had to tie him up in a net and drag him to an ambulance. He woke up in the hospital a week later, and the first thing he saw was Richard Simmons weeping at his bedside. Now THAT will make you lose weight. * A crazed Janet Jackson fan broke into the star's dressing room at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island and stole . . . her stuffed animals. Nineteen-year-old Mario Backman was arrested and charged with cuddling stolen property. * The island nation of Tuvalu--population 10,600, with one hotel and one factory producing dried coconut meat--decided to join the web in 1996 and was assigned the international domain suffix ".tv." A little while later a Los Angeles-based company made Tuvalu an offer it couldn't refuse: $50 million for rights to the ".tv" suffix. Now Tuvalu has used the money to join the United Nations so they can vote on the only issue that matters much to them: global warming. If global warming trends continue, Tuvalu will disappear under the ocean within 50 years. At the airport in the capital of Funafuti, you can buy a souvenir poster showing the ocean with a solitary flagpole sticking out of it and the legend "Tuvalu was here." The Tuvaluans are trying to show how ahead of the times they are. * Anthrax Street in Fayetteville, N.C., was consigned to the dust bin of history when city fathers renamed it Allegiance Avenue. Locals who had grown up in the Anthrax neighborhood staged a brief protest, coughed, then dispersed. * Scientists at the National Sea Life Center in Birmingham, England, are trying to get sharks to mate by piping Barry White music into their aquarium. They've already had success with lobsters stimulated by rock music, and they got the latest idea when they noticed one of their male sharks wearing a gold neck chain and sunglasses. * Rampaging wild elephants trampled three people to death, destroyed 15 houses and left 100 people homeless in the Cox's Bazar region of Bangladesh. Unfortunately, humans are not a protected species. * Mike Fusella of Pound Ridge, N.Y., launched a line of "museum quality" Nazi dolls, including Adolf Hitler and Josef Mengele. Each hand-painted doll has 24 movable pivot points, allowing for quick and easy "Heil Hitler" salutes, and retails for $170. They're going so fast that he now plans to add Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels to his National Socialist menagerie and predicts that, in 100 years, they'll be sold by Sotheby's. That means they would last approximately eight times longer than National Socialism itself. Of course, his ultimate goal is to produce the Klaus Barbie. * Hedge-fund manager Mark Yagalla was sentenced to five years and five months in jail for swindling investors out of $32 million to support his romance with Playboy centerfold Sandra Bentley. Bentley is the identical twin who was also seeing Hugh Hefner along with her sister Mandy. Presumably both girls will be making regular trips for visitors' day. * An extra fell off the stage of the Metropolitan Opera during a performance of "War and Peace," and conductor Valerie Gergyev stopped the orchestra until it was determined he was okay. During the curtain calls, the embarrassed extra, Simon Deonarian, was led onto the stage by Met general manager Joseph Volpe, who said, "One of our retreating French soldiers lost his way in the snow." It ain't over till the grenadier tumbles. * Ronald Popodich shot his married girlfriend, then two days later intentionally ran over 18 people on a New York street. He escaped, went home to his New Jersey basement full of S&M devices and porn. After another two days he hijacked a car at gunpoint, returned to New York and ran down seven more pedestrians. When cops finally got him, he said "I wanted to hurt more people." Since no one died, he's expected to be released from jail in the year 3742.

David A. Vise, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, bought 20,000 copies of his own book, "The Bureau and the Mole," from Barnesandnoble.com, then tried to resell them on eBay, pocketing the difference between Barnes and Noble's price (and free shipping) and his own price for an autographed copy. He was over-optimistic about the value of his autograph, though, so he returned 17,500 copies to Barnes and Noble and asked for a refund. Meanwhile, the book was hitting the best-seller lists, causing Barnes and Noble to further discount the book (best-sellers are always discounted). Vise sent back books he had already paid for so that he could then rebuy the same books at a lower price. All the shenanigans finally caused Barnes and Noble to angrily complain to Vise's publisher, Grove/Atlantic, that they smelled a mole. Vise called it "creative marketing." We call it a reporter with WAY too much time on his hands.v

* A new postage stamp honoring the state of Montana will feature . . . the logo of Wyoming! The hat-waving cowboy on a bucking bronco is such an official symbol in Wyoming that it's on license places, road signs and carpets in the state Capitol. The state has been using the symbol since 1918. Postal officials said, well, it's time to share. * Professor Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds" art exhibit opened in London, featuring 175 body parts and 30 whole corpses on display. The corpses include a pregnant woman with her womb exposed to reveal a seven-month-old fetus, a man who has been skinned and his skull cut away to reveal his brain as he leans over a chess board, and two people riding a horse with both their skin and the horse's stripped away--and their skulls cleaved in half. (The man leans forward to hold his own brain close to the horse's gaping mouth.) Other items include "Muscle Man with his Skeleton" (a skeleton standing outside his muscles) and "The Organman" (who holds his carefully preserved liver in his outstretched hands). Most of the bodies were donated by people who had seen the exhibition in Germany and other sites around the world and wanted to be a part of it. Von Hagens, a professor at the University of Heidelberg who pioneered the "plastination" of corpses in the seventies, says he put the exhibit together in order to "democratize anatomy" and let the public see things that have been previously limited to doctors. "The lay people have to see the whole body and how it works," he said, "not just little parts pickled in a jar like a cucumber." Scalpers are having a field day with tickets that cost an arm and a leg. * Harald Tom Nesvik, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, nominated British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush for the Nobel Peace Price for "decisive action against terrorism." According to the prize rules, the peace prize is supposed to go to the person who "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Well, it's the thought that counts. * The Humane Society of Catawba County, North Carolina, is protesting a high school teacher's plan to slaughter a lamb as part of her science class instruction. Stephanie Sigmon's class has spent the entire year raising various farm animals, and the conclusion of that learning curve would presumably be slaughtering the animals and selling them. The school board is fine with it, but the animal rights people aren't big fans of a schoolyard throat-slitting--unless it involves humans, of course. * The Southern Baptist Convention cancelled its reservations with the Howard Johnson hotel chain because the HoJo near Lambert Airport in St. Louis is hosting an annual event called "Beat Me in St. Louis," featuring "dungeon parties" and demonstrations of caning and whipping. The Baptists are having their convention in St. Louis in June but are urging members to stay anywhere ecept Howard Johnson's, so that they can cane and whip one another in private, like God intended. * Mayor Carolyn Risher of Inglis, Fla., issued an official city proclamation declaring that "from this day forward . . . Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis." The Prince of Darkness was said to be unaffected by the decree, as the condos in Inglis are not so hot in the first place. * Husband-wife team Daniel and Manuela Ruda of Germany proudly admitted murdering a 33-year-old friend, then offered a devil- made-me-do-it defense in which Manuela said, "For the last two and a half years, I've had Satan in my soul." Both defendants made obscene gestures throughout their long trial, but were sentenced to 15 and 13 years in a psychiatric ward. The judge denied their request to continue to sleep in coffins, reasoning that that would be cruel and unusual leniency. * Al Pacino missed several days filming on the CIA spy thriller "The Farm" when he poked himself in the eye with his script. It had pointed dialogue. * Enterprising New York criminals have turned "The Club" into a disguised sawed-off shotgun, making it a multi-purpose tool, for use as a lethal club, a lethal gun, or, in a pinch, a way to scratch your steering wheel. * Bob "Action" Jackson, the veteran Yellowstone Park ranger who has caught more poachers than anybody in the park's history, was asked to leave his post a month early this winter and may not be hired back. The National Park Service is apparently tired of reading his name in the paper, as he crusades against hunting outfitters that set up illegal salt licks around the boundaries of the park so they can lure elk and kill them. He says it's causing grizzly bear deaths, because the bears go after the elk carcasses and get shot. (It's illegal to kill grizzlies unless you're defending yourself.) Jackson's supervisor finally gave him a specific order that reads: "Bob Jackson is not authorized to speak to the media while on government time. On his days off and outside the park, he can talk to media, but is not authorized to express opinions regarding Yellowstone National Park, the National Park Service or about anything he does in his official capacity with the National Park Service." Jackson works the most remote corner of the park, where the Yellowstone River meets Thorofare Creek, and claims that when he went in there 23 years ago, "you couldn't go more than a quarter-mile without getting poacher tracks." He cleaned it up, Rambo-style, but ended up angering his superiors. Think of it this way. He's Yogi Bear. They're Boo-Boo. * Research by the Beverage Marketing Corporation has revealed that, in trendy upscale bars, women make most of the drink-buying decisions. If a woman orders a Creamsicle, a pink grapefruit cassis martini, a Cosmopolitan, a Catherine kiwi, a Thai-tini, a CV Wink, or any other peppermint-stick sweet fruity cocktail, the men will more often than not say, "I'll have one, too." In other words, the days of straight bourbon, Scotch and vodka males are suddenly numbered. The explanation is that, starting in the eighties, there was a steep rise in the popularity of flavored vodkas, then trends favoring rums and tequilas--"white liquors," instead of the traditional brown liquors like whiskey. The white liquors are easily mixable with fruit flavors, whereas Scotch, say the experts, is an acquired taste. They didn't explain exactly why young males don't simply ACQUIRE THE TASTE, but it probably has something to do with Jimmy Buffett. * Hollywood's stars and starlets had their sweat glands frozen before the Oscars with $1,190 BOTOX injections. Because there's nothing worse than sitting next to Brad Pitt with a wet pit. * The 2002 Academy Awards ceremony was the worst-rated Oscars telecast in history, scoring a 25.4 to go lower than the previous loser, the 2001 awards. At four hours and 21 minutes, it was also the longest Oscar ceremony in history, beating out the previous record-holder, the year 2000, at four hours, 8 minutes. Officials of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences were quick to point out that a rating point this year actually represents more homes than a rating point last year, that the statistics don't take into account ratings peaks during certain early parts of the telecast, and also that this year's Oscars sucked. * Oscar Goodman, the flamboyant mayor of Las Vegas, has sipped Beefeater gin for much of his life, so Beefeater offered him $25,000 for an official endorsement. Goodman decided he would do it and donate the money to the city, but that $25,000 was mere pocket change. He called up Tanqueray and asked them if they'd be interested in an "I switched brands" campaign. We could have told them that the opening line in Vegas always changes. * Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister, said "Bullshit!" on CNN, thanks to an interview with Paula Zahn that didn't have a tape-delay. CNN apologized for the word and promised to give Palestinians equal cussin' time. * Playboy plans a "Women of Enron" pictorial spread to illustrate what losing your shirt looks like. * The New York Post unearthed Miss Cleo's birth certificate and discovered that she's not Jamaican at all. She was born in Los Angeles on August 13, 1962, to a father from Texas and a mother from California. But she channels a Jamaican lunatic. * "Doctor Dogmeat," South Korea's leading academic expert on canine cuisine, held a special seminar to promote her 350 canine recipes and propose a development strategy for the Korean dogmeat industry. Ahn Yong-Keun, a professor at Chungchong University, is working with 100 dogmeat restaurant owners to show their stuff at the World Cup finals, to be held in Seoul in May and June. Dogmeat proponents will be opening new websites and showing people how to cook their own dog casseroles at home, hoping that many of the foreign tourists will leave Korea with a new taste in their mouths and a bow-wow in their hearts. "The new federation will promote the eating of dogmeat during the international event period by designating poshintang restaurants near World Cup stadiums as special places to serve foreign visitors," said Choi Han-kwon, director of the 21st Century Startup Research Institute. "Poshintang" translates as "body preservation stew," which consists of special tender dog flesh from animals specially bred for nutrition and taste. Many of the dogs have to be beaten, burned or hanged to make the meat more tender, all of which will be demonstrated on an upcoming episode of "Emeril Live." Bam! * Japanese scientists are breeding pigs with spinach genes to make bacon healthier. "This is the world's first success in breeding mammals with plant genes!" exulted research team leader Akira Iritani of Kinki (!) University, sounding suspiciously like Peter Cushing in "The Curse of Frankenstein." Iritani said he had placed spinach genes in the fertilized egg of a pig and planted it in the mother--and after three and a half years, no health problems have been noted in the Popeye Pig offspring. Next challenge: the Broccoli Big Mac. * Joan Collins got married again. The lucky guy is a Peruvian- born theater manager 32 years her junior. He liked her karma and she liked his llama. * Sylvester Stallone wants to do a new Rambo movie in which he rescues five girls from Afghanistan. To prepare for the role, he's apparently been living in a cave. * The International Spy Museum, opening in Washington, D.C., in June, will feature James Bond gadgets like a lipstick that shoots a bullet, shoes with listening devices (didn't Maxwell Smart invent that?), a KGB coat with a camera hidden in a button, and exhibits on famous American spies like Nathan Hale, Benjamin Franklin, Josephine Baker, Julia Child (!), and the filmmaker John Ford. The private museum is a $34 million project that has both former CIA and former KGB officers on its board, and will also feature two restaurants, a spy shop, a lecture hall, a library, and an interactive exhibit that allows tourists to create a new fake identity for themselves. (Has anyone told Ashcroft?) * The Virginia House of Delegates defeated a bill that would have banned open containers of alcohol in cars. It's still illegal to drink and drive, but sniffing the fumes on the way home from the tavern is a God-given constitutional right. * Mee Moua became the first Hmong ever elected to public office in the United States when she won a four-way special election for a senate seat in the Minnesota legislature. The Hmong are an ethnic group from the highlands of Laos who were displaced during the Vietnam War, and 24,000 of them live in St. Paul. Moua, an attorney, ran on the platform, "You can't go wrong with a Hmong." New Line Cinema announced "an original, fresh and thrilling post-modern" version of the classic "Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Michael Bay will direct, and according to New Line productuion president Toby Emmerich, "he will not so much look at the previous 'Chainsaw' movies as look back to the original, real stories that informed it." Here's our question. The stories that informed Kim Henkel's original script are: Ed Gein, the Wisconsin handyman who pickled and stuffed his mother and kept her in his barn; Elmer Wayne Henley, the Houston teenager who helped a homosexual man kill and bury young boys in his back yard; and "Hansel and Gretel." So why do you need to buy the "Chainsaw" rights at all? Besides which, Tobe Hooper's 1974 cannot be improved. This is really pissing us off. * A piece of Antarctica the size of Rhode Island shattered and collapsed into the ocean, but scientists were quick to say that this is no reason to think that global warming is getting worse. The Larsen B ice shelf, which no longer exists, was always a troublemaker anyway. * Anssi Vanjoki was caught going 47 miles per hour on his motorbike in a 30 mile-per-hour zone. His traffic fine: $103,600. Welcome to Finland, where fines are now based on the annual income of the speeder. The more you earn, the more you pay when you break the law. This equal-pain-for-equal-crimes law had already nailed an Internet entrepreneur for a $71,400 fine doing a 43 in a 25. You know what would be fun? Invite Bill Gates to party in Helsinki, put him on a plane that arrives late, get him a Hertz rental, and don't tell him. * In another remarkable example of Finnish equality, identical-twin Finns, age 71, were killed in identical bicycle accidents along the same road two hours apart. One twin was hit by a truck while cycling on the west coast of Finland. Before police could even identify the body, his brother was killed on his bicycle by a second truck a half-mile down the road. Fortunately, the brothers lived on modest incomes, so the government will only take 80 per cent of their estates for accident cleanup. * The United States announced its final assault on Afghanistan--sending Eve Ensler to Kabul to conduct feminist workshops. * Nederland, Colorado, celebrated Frozen Dead Guy Days in honor of Bredo Morstoel, a Norwegian landscape architect who's been encased in dry ice in a storage shed since 1989, thanks to his grandson, who believes in cryonics. After 13 years of being known as the place with the frozen dead guy, Nederland decided to go ahead and celebrate its claim to fame with a festival, complete with $25 tours of the crypt, a parade, a dead guy lookalike contest, coffin races, polar plunges and a film festival. Unfortunately, dead guys don't dance. * And speaking of dead pickled Europeans, there will be no Frozen Dead Guy Days in the village of Nueil-sur-Layon, France. A French court ordered that two bodies kept in a refrigerated crypt in the Martinot family chateau must be either buried or cremated, frustrating the wishes of Dr. Raymond Martinot, who froze his wife's body in 1974 and prepared to join her for the past 28 years. After he died last month at the age of 80, his son Remy Martinot placed his father's body in the special case in the basement, but local authorities took him to court. He's appealing the decision, and if all else fails, may be heading to Nederland, Colorado, where a stiff stays stiff. * Jerry Seinfeld is spending $1.4 million to build a three- story garage on West 83rd Street in Manhattan for his collection of Porsches. But construction work has gone on for more than two years now, and the neighbors are tired of the constant noise. Seinfeld is giving out cash and cases of wine to the irritated complainers, and telling them that if they get too restless, he'll add on a studio apartment for Kramer. * NBC, which had announced a new policy of running liquor ads, gave in to special interest groups and abandoned its deal with various spirits producers. Originally NBC told Smirnoff that, after four months of running "social responsibility" ads, the real commercials would begin in April. Smirnoff paid for the designated-driver ads, then NBC pulled out before the real ads ran. In a bar, this is known as a mickey. * Steven Seagal was sued for $60 million by Julius R. Nasso, his long-time producer, for failing to appear in four films because his Tibetan Buddhist spiritual advisor wouldn't let him. In 1997 Seagal announced he was the reincarnation of a Buddhist lama and ever since then has relied on a monk named Mukara, who ordered Seagal not to appear in violent films, fire a gun, or wear black. The result is that Nasso had to pay back $25.3 million in foreign-rights advances on the four films. There is no response at Seagal's West Hollywood office, where the answering machine plays a recording of one hand clapping. * Starbucks was ordered to pay $3.5 million to a woman who was permanently injured by an exploding cappuccino machine in Glen Cove, New York. After being maimed with a Grande Decaf Double- Latte, she was asked to get her own condiments at the table against the wall. * Researchers at Caltech announced that prolonged use of marijuana makes you stupid and lazy. Their full report will be released in the fall of 2025. * After an anonymous donor put up $70,000, the art committee of the House of Commons commissioned a massive sculpture of Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister, to eventually take its place in the Parliament. But now that the marble statue is finished--it stands seven feet tall and weighs two tons-- Members of Parliament are refusing its installation, saying that no one can be honored that way unless he or she has been dead for at least five years. Meanwhile, civic leaders in Havasu City, Arizona, are begging for the statue to be given to their city, which is already home of the London Bridge and a mock Tudor English village. "The statue would be perfect for our beautiful new City Hall building," Bonnie Barsness, president of the Lake Havasu Tourism Board, told The New York Times. "It has a lovely lobby, with wall-to-wall windows, and we could put it in a corner that looks out over our spectacular mountains and lakes." Labor Party MPs say that Arizona is welcome to the statue, and the sooner they haul it away the better. The few souls who have seen the statue say that stone becomes her. * Plastic Fantasy, Inc., of California is selling an anatomically correct action figure of porn star Jenna Jameson, complete with "futuristic" costume (removable, of course), and a base complete with stripper poll. We don't want to know where the joints are.Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle reminded everyone that "Congress shall have the power to make war," after which he was shouted down, beaten, and branded a traitor for espousing such a novel interpretation of the Constitution. *Guests at Liza Minelli's wedding to husband number four included Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor, Macaulay Culkin, Mia Farrow, Petula Clark, Phoebe Snow, Luther Vandross, Anthony Hopkins, Andy Williams, Donald Trump, David Hasselhoff, Mickey Rooney, Gina Lollobrigida, Maya, Joan Collins, Rosie O'Donnell, Celeste Holm, Janet Leigh, Freda Payne, Jill St. John, Robert Wagner, Natalie Cole, Michael Douglas, Olivia Hussey, Arlene Dahl, Mrs. Anthony Quinn, Altovise (Mrs. Sammy) Davis, Carroll Baker, Phyllis Diller, Esther Williams, Petula Clark, Robert Goulet, The Doobie Brothers, Gale Storm, Donny Osmond, Marisa Berenson, Carol Channing, Lauren Bacall, Martha Stewart, Pee Wee Herman, and Al Green, all of whom forever held their peace. * "Not So Innocent" was told "Bye Bye Bye." *Sally Jessy Raphael's talk show was cancelled after 20 years of helping people realize why they want to marry their brothers, sell their bodies, have their sister's babies, steal their best friend's lesbian mistress, and wear too much makeup while getting fat as pigs. Where will these people go for advice? Oh, right. Four other shows. * Tom Ridge, director of homeland security, introduced a festive color-coded terrorism alert system, ranging from green (low risk of terrorist attack) to blue ("general" risk) to yellow ("significant" risk) to orange ("high" risk) to red ("severe" risk). Other colors may be introduced in the future, such as white (high risk of mimes at the mall), magenta (high risk of Martha Stewart appearing on "The View") and mauve (high risk of a new gay-pride series on Showtime). * The Immigration & Naturalization Service approved student visas for Mohamed Atta and fellow terrorist jetliner pilot Marwan al-Shehhi exactly six months after they died blowing up the World Trade Center. After their terrorist status was pointed out, INS officials mailed out stern warnings directing them to file Form S-1134-D verifying their non-existence. * Broadway diva Patti Lupone threw a backstage fit, then skipped two performances of "Noises Off" in a protest against several cast members remaining on stage after the curtain call to solicit money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. (It's a Broadway tradition that dates back to the eighties. The money- raising campaign is done six weeks every spring.) Apparently the former star of "Evita" opposes curtain speeches because she thinks the audience has already paid enough for the ticket. (Apples and oranges, hon.) She voiced her objections at a cast meeting, then settled for a compromise: only one member of the cast would remain on stage to ask for the contributions. But when four cast members stayed on stage for the solicitation at the March 9 matinee, she started screaming at the stage manager, then missed that night's performance and the next day's matinee. She took the time off to campaign against the March of Dimes, the American Cancer Society and the National Arthritis Foundation. *Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie adopted a Cambodian baby from Tats R Us. * Chante Mallard, a nurse's aide in Fort Worth, hit a man with her car and then left him stuck headfirst in her broken windshield for TWO DAYS as he bled to death. She periodically walked into her garage during the two days and apologized to the man. Her precise words of apology aren't known yet. "Sorry about the head trauma, but hey, cheer up, you're gonna like living in this windshield!" * Formica filed for bankruptcy, citing hard times over the counter.* The Kenneth L. Lay Chair in International Economics--no, this is not a joke, yet--is being offered by the University of Missouri. The professorship pays a six-figure salary, applications are being taken now, and Economics Department Chairman Michael Podgursky sees no irony. "I don't think the name will be a negative," he said. "It's not the Osama Bin Laden chair." No, that would be in the Middle Eastern Studies Department. * "Stupid White Men," the new book by satirist and documentarian Michael Moore, was scheduled for release last October 2 with a massive 100,000-book printing. But after the terrorist attacks, Moore was told by HarperCollins that there were "problems" with the book and that they were asking for major rewrites of large sections, especially the sections full of George W. Bush jokes. Since HarperCollins had already printed 50,000 of the 100,000 copies, this meant they fully intended to shred the existing books and start over. Moore, to his credit, refused to rewrite a single word of the book, and pointed out that, if they had published on the original date, all his jokes about Enron, Kenneth Lay and Arthur Andersen would have seemed more prophetic. "And there's lots more in the book that I wanted out in the public arena months ago," said Moore. "An open letter to Yassir Arafat on how to really win and stop the bloodshed; a report on a chance run-in I had with Jeb Bush two weeks before the 2000 election on a deserted street in Tallahassee; my exploration of the three times (that I know of) that George W. Bush has been arrested and charged with crimes by the police--it's all there, and I saw no need to change a single thing." Far from supporting their author, HarperCollins responded that "the political climate has changed in America." After a number of meetings with HarperCollins executives, lawyers and editors, the publisher softened its demands, asking Moore simply to "tone down" his book. Again he held firm. HarperCollins was on the verge of killing the book entirely when a group of librarians, wondering what had happened to the book, organized a letter-writing campaign on Moore's behalf. Press accounts appeared in two or three places. And HarperCollins finally cratered, releasing the book on February 19. But now there are new problems. Some bookstores have cancelled Moore's in-store book signings, calling the book too controversial. "I don't like this feeling," said Moore in an explanation to the people on his email list, "and I would greatly appreciate it if this country would come to its senses and start acting like America again (or least our idea of America!)" As The Joe Bob Report has pointed out many times, that is sorta wishful thinking, Mike. * Anna Nicole Smith was awarded $88 million in damages by a federal judge who ruled that the son of her late husband--oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II--had spied on the couple and controlled her husband's access to money. Let's hope he didn't spy on them TOO closely, because there are some things about a May-December marriage we don't want to know. * When ABC aired the 1971 James Bond movie "Diamonds Are Forever" on March 2, network censors painted a digital bra onto Lana Wood, who plays Plenty O'Toole, in a scene where she hugs Bond while wearing only a pair of panties. But here's the odd part: she's only seen from the back. Those must be incredible shoulder blades. * Sayed Ragab al-Sawirki, an Egyptian businessman, was sentenced to seven years hard labor for having five wives at the same time, when the legal limit is four. A Cairo police investigation showed that Sawirki had married 19 women, but only five at the same time. Other criminal sentences were handed out to various people who helped Sawirki, including two clerks, the father of the fifth wife (who forged the birth certificate of his 14-year-old daughter so she could marry Sawirki), a wife who had married Sawirki a fourth time after divorcing him three times (three years hard labor for that), and two brothers of the jailed wife, for signing the marriage certificate. Under Islamic law, a woman who divorces the same man three times cannot remarry him again unless she has married a different man in the intervening period. Which, when you think about it, has happened often enough that there's a law about it. That's beyond the experience of Liz Taylor. * "Starballz," an X-rated animated parody of "Star Wars," was sued by Lucasfilm Ltd. to try to stop its distribution, but a federal judge threw out the suit and said George Lucas's claim that it would "confuse consumers" is pretty farfetched. After all, one has Chewbacca. The other has a character who chews Bacca. One has R2D2. The other has I Screw U2. One has Princess Leia. The other lays the princess. One has Darth Vader dressed up like an S&M slavemaster. The other is a porno film. * Europe's first brothel for servicing women, located in a chalet in Liebstadt, Switzerland, went bankrupt because customers refused to pay. The brothel's owner, whom police identified only as Clemens K., finally got fed up with welshers and mugged an elderly couple with a toy gun. "If they'd operated like a normal brothel and made sure they got the money before the sex, they would have been all right," said a police spokesman after Clemens' arrest. "But they didn't ask for money until afterwards and the women only paid for what they thought the service had been worth." The brothel was open a little over a month before it went belly up. Its six male prostitutes are eligible for unemployment as long as they look for work every day--which could be fun. * A spandex-clad one-legged bicycle messenger beat up a 300- pound transsexual on a crowded subway train, but her injuries couldn't be verified because the only doctor who examined her is on a silent-meditation retreat somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. All of which goes to show that New York City has recovered from 9/11 and is conducting business as usual. * Researchers in Rotterdam announced that people who have one to three alcoholic drinks a day have a 42 per cent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and other types of old-age dementia. The results were the same regardless of whether the person drank wine, beer, spirits or sherry. In previous studies, alcohol has been shown to prevent heart disease and strokes. Consumers were urged to do their part in the battle against aging diseases by simply buying the old coot a whiskey. * A driver in San Angelo, Texas, stopped and asked John Dement for directions to an apartment complex. A few minutes later the same car pulled up and the driver jumped out, angry at Dement because the apartments weren't where he had said. He then pulled a pistol, shot at Dement, and drove away. The motorist is still at large, but wanted by police for attempted double drive-by. * The 17th edition of Air Jordan sneakers will retail for $200 and come in a sleek metallic briefcase complete with a CD-ROM showing how the shoe was developed. Each sneaker is, of course, painstaking hand-stitched by 13-year-old Chinese girls held in cages in the Hunan province. * Calvin Jerold Burdine was sentenced to death for murder after his lawyer "dozed and actually fell asleep during portions of his trial." The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the conviction and ordered a new trial. But since this particular death-penalty case occurred in Texas, the state decided to appeal that decision to the highest court in the land, arguing, among other things, that Burdine's attorney may have been dozing during parts of the trial that didn't matter anyway, that the lawyer is no different from Texas lawyers who try cases while under the influence of alcohol, addiction or illness, that many lawyers have Alzheimer's disease, drug addictions and mental disorders and that doesn't necessarily mean they can't provide effective counsel. But the Texas attorney general didn't make his strongest argument of all--that the attorney was actually being fed post- hypnotic information by Miss Cleo that could have saved his client. * One month after being crowned Miss Long Island, Jill Nicolini gave up her crown amid revelations that she appeared in Playboy, displaying her Long Islands. * Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein collapsed in the hallway outside the Brooklyn Criminal Court where he was on trial for criminal harassment, sprawling face down on the floor and shouting, "I'm dying, I'm dying, no more!" Shortly after being helped back to his feet, the jury came in with a verdict--guilty on six counts of harassment and aggravated harassment, not guilty on six other counts. Goldstein, who said he collapsed because of low blood sugar (he has diabetes), was typically vituperative about the verdict. "I have a right to leave a foul message," he said, referring to the messages he left on former assistant Jennifer Lozinski's answering machine after she quit working for him. Goldstein had cursed at her on the phone when he was made to wait at the airport for his rental car. She quit and refused to come back, so he vowed to make her life "a living hell," accused her of embezzling, vowed to "take her down," and flashed her home address and telephone number on his weekly cable show, "Midnight Blue." Goldstein wants to challenge the New York state harassment statutes as "overly broad" because "If I called up Osama bin Laden, said 'Fuck you, Osama, I hope you die of cancer,' then here in New York I could be arrested. New Yorkers are the most nasty miserable fuckers. We live to send people hostile messages. But based on this statute, all we can say is 'Have a nice day.' What are we, in Milwaukee?" Goldstein faces up to two years in prison, but we can pretty much guarantee he won't become anybody's bitch. * The Houston Astros paid Enron $2.1 million to get the name "Enron" off of Enron Field before opening day, April 2. The problem is, there are so MANY Enron signs in the stadium that there may not be time to dismantle them all. The Astros haven't yet secured a new sponsor for the stadium, so for this season it will be called 401(k) Field. * The new Office of Strategic Influence, a Pentagon propaganda department created to plant information and lies in the foreign press, was canceled by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld after a full week of press and public criticism. Rumsfeld said the office was really not needed and that military personnel would be instructed to lie in the traditional manner. * Miss Cleo, whose real name is Youree Harris of Davie, Fla., got zapped with two civil suits, one by the Federal Trade Commission and one by the Florida State Attorney General, charging her with fraud. "This is an operation that appears to be fraudulent from start to finish," said J. Howard Beales III, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. Beales said the average call to Miss Cleo winds up costing $60, with some tabs running as high as $300, and that Miss Cleo herself had no reputation or experience as a psychic before starting her television ads. Miss Cleo has also been sued by Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When reached for comment, Miss Cleo said that Beales "better stay away from that nasty woman, because you been seein' that stuff before." * Ten penis gymnasts showed up for auditions for "Puppetry of the Penis," the off-Broadway show that features "the ancient Australian art of genital origami." The ten hopefuls, each totally nude, took the stage to twist and shift their private parts into five standard "installations" used in the show, followed by a free-style period in which they were encouraged to do tricks of their own. One contestant wowed the judges with "The Birdbath" and "The Shower Cap." Another was less impressive when he showed them "The Lazy Elephant." * Ronald Huff was partially devoured by his giant Nile Monitor lizards before his body was found in his Dover, Delaware, apartment. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals rushed to the scene and recovered all seven lizards, the largest measuring 6 feet long and weighing 25 pounds. "They're alive and well," said SPCA director John Caldwell. Animal lovers everywhere rejoiced. * Prada, which prides itself on being internationally hip, used actual rainforest lumber for the floor of its new superstore in New York's trendy Soho. The "wave floor," as it's called, is constructed of an endangered strain of zebrawood found only in the rainforests of the Congo, Cameroon and Gabon. When you cut it down, it destroys chimpanzee habitat, causing them to get involved in territorial fights. And there's nothing worse than seeing two chimps fighting over zebrawood; they've been known to hit each other over the head with their purses. * Question of the week: Why do fat guys wear North Face padded ski jackets? * On the new 2002 "Brady Bunch" wall calendar, Mr. Brady is missing! He's been airbrushed out of all the pictures. In fact, he doesn't appear on lunchboxes, T-shirts or any other "Brady Bunch" merchandise sold by Viacom Consumer Products. The actor who played Mr. Brady, Robert Reed, died of intestinal cancer in 1992 after being diagnosed with AIDS. His daughter, Karen Baldwin, controls his estate and has refused to allow his image to be used, even though its absence creates a terrible one-parent burden for Florence Henderson. Child psychologists suggest that parents use the absence of Mr. Brady to encourage discussion of what happens to a family when Dad goes away and . . . uh . . . discovers his feminine side. * Black members of the Virginia House of Delegates are refusing to recite the daily salute to the Virginia flag, saying that it's racist. The salute reads as follows: "I salute the flag of Virginia, with reverence and patriotic devotion to the 'Mother of States and Statesmen,' which it represents--the 'Old Dominion,' where liberty and independence were born." If anyone can find the racist words in it, please contact The Joe Bob Report immediately, because we now believe that black political correctness has reached a point of channelling racist voices from the graves of dead slaveholders and hallucinating lynch-mobs in the form of words like "reverence," "devotion" and that tell-tale "Old Dominion." * Tonya Harding is being sued by her landlord for non-payment of rent on the three-bedroom house she shares with a roommate in Vancouver, Wash. Harding fell behind when that latest business deal, "Redneck Disney on Ice," fell through. * District Court Judge Megan Lake Thornton of Lexington, Ky., has started holding women in contempt of court when they get a restraining order against their men and then return to the men. "It drives me nuts when people just decide to do whatever they want," Judge Thornton told The New York Times. In her first act using the new policy, she fined two women $100 and $200 for contacting the man they got a restraining order against. Advocates for battered women announced they would appeal the rulings, saying it violates a previous precedent known as the "Come On Sweetie Babydoll I Didn't Mean It I Was Just Drunk I LOVE YEW" principle. * Mild-mannered Al Goldstein, publisher of Screw magazine, went on trial in Brooklyn Criminal Court for allegedly threatening and harassing his former secretary after she failed to arrange VIP treatment for him at a car rental company. Supposedly Goldstein harangued her with four-letter words, vowed in phone messages to take her down, threatened to make her life "a living hell," and published her home address in his newspaper. Character witnesses for Goldstein will include Grandpa Al Lewis, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, porn star Ron Jeremy, and author George Plimpton. The judge agreed with prosecutors that all the many thousands of words Goldstein has written about the case would be admitted into evidence, including his profanity- laced attacks on Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes and a photo of Hynes' head on a nekkid babe's body. During cross- examination, Goldstein was asked about an editorial suggesting someone "slam a 747" into the office of Hynes, causing Goldstein to go ballistic. "Haven't you heard of the First Amendment?" he screamed, slamming his hand on a table. "That's protected speech!" Judge Daniel Chun ordered the jury removed, had Goldstein handcuffed by bailiffs, held him in contempt, set bail at $100,000, then realized he couldn't charge him without issuing a warning first. So he was brought back into the court and the trial continued. This marks the 20th time Goldstein has been arrested, but he's been acquitted on all charges except one--a 1971 obscenity conviction. Presumably that was the moment in his life when he discovered how much he LIKES handcuffs. * In the annual ABC News President's Day poll, President Bush was ranked the third greatest president in history, behind Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Which makes sense, because Lincoln freed the slaves, Kennedy founded the Peace Corps, and Bush was a president. * Police in Austin, Tex., threatened to arrest women who exposed their garbonzas during the annual Mardi Gras celebration on Sixth Street, saying nekkid-hooter-flashing inspires violence, but after several protest demonstrations were planned, they backed off their decision at the last minute and allowed hundreds of liberated dinglebobbers to roam free. Going topless is not a crime in Austin, and the police didn't want to have to deal with an organized tit-in. * Ray Brent Marsh, owner of the Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Ga., said his incinerator broke down and so he just started throwing the bodies out back. Police expect to recover as many as 300 bodies, many of them mummified because they've been exposed to the elements for as many as 15 years. George Romero has optioned movie rights. * The District of Columbia Boxing and Wrestling Commission gave preliminary approval for a license for Mike Tyson, who has been searching around the world for a place that will allow him to challenge Lennox Lewis for the heavyweight title. Tyson feels he needs to make the fight happen as soon as possible, because he's at the top of his form and currently has only two rape cases pending. * Rosie O'Donnell went on "The View" to admit she's gay, which is sort of like Mike Tyson going on "The Man Show" to admit he gets angry. * The reigning Miss America held a press conference in Atlantic City to deny charges made by her parents that she's unhappy in the job and angry about being billed $2,200 for a celebration party after she was crowned in September. "For the record," said perky 21-year-old Katie Harman, "I love the job of Miss America and am 100 per cent in support of the Miss America organization." Later she made a phone call to her native Oregon, in which she said "Daaaaaadyyyyy! Don't!" * Liza Minnelli prepared for her March 16 wedding to manager David Gest by checking into drug rehab for three weeks--because there's nothing worse than the bride's head crashing face down into the wedding cake. * City officials are refusing to grant a permit for this year's end-of-winter Russian festival in Brooklyn's Prospect Park because they don't approve of the tradition of the "stenka na stenku" (wall-on-wall). That's the 1,500-year-old tradition, still beloved by Russians everywhere, in which two teams of 100 bare-chested men slug it out with their bare fists. The wall-on- wall brawl is part of an ancient pagan festival called a "maslenitza," and festival organizer Vitaly Sherman says, "It's not a festival without the stena na stenku." Tupper Thomas, head of the Prospect Park Alliance, says she won't approve a permit for anything involving violence. But Sherman says, "We will have an ambulance standing by. We're not barbarians." Bare-breasted beef critters assaulting each other for fun--isn't that something you can find any night in Greenwich Village anyway? Let 'em brawl. * The U.S.S. Greeneville, the atomic submarine that sank a Japanese trawler last year, had another collision, leaving a gash in the fuel tanks of the U.S.S. Ogden and spilling fuel into the ocean. A Pentagon spokesman minimized the incident, downplaying rumors that the captain's last words before the accident were "Lemme show you what Waddle did wrong." * A new Russian opera, "Monica in the Kremlin," features Monica Lewinsky as a KGB double agent who meets Vladimir Putin and ultimately marries his security guard. "I wanted a woman who loves and could be loved," explained composer Vitali Okorokov. The demanding lead role is written for a soprano who can hit double high C without actually opening her mouth. * Bea Arthur launched her one-woman show on Broadway, and every gay guy within 100 miles wept tears of joy. * "Jerry Springer: The Opera" debuted in London to rave reviews, even being compared to "The Producers." The musical is filled, of course, with gun-toting diaper-wearing talk-show guests, tap-dancing Ku Klux Klansmen, lesbian dwarves, lap- dancing transsexuals, and lots of angry on-stage fighting. "There is an extraordinarily potent moment," wrote Lyn Gardner in The Guardian, "when the fat, desperate, angry would-be pole dancer Chantel is forced to dance," resulting in a production number described as "a hymn for the unloved and unlovely." Unlike Springer's TV show, all the fighting in the operatic version is unstaged; the performers really do hate one another. * Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was dubbed an honorary knight by the queen of England and was seen later in the week charging on a steed through Prospect Park, Brooklyn, holding a lance and shouting "A kingdom! A kingdom! My horse to get my kingdom back!" * A musical based on the life of Jesse Ventura is being developed by songwriter Stephen Dolginoff, to be called "The Body Ventura." If Tommy Tune is hired to direct, we could have dancing pro wrestlers with exposed butt cheeks for the first time in Broadway history. * William T. Dillard, founder of Dillard's Department Stores, died at age 87 at his Little Rock home. At the time of his death, he was reclining on a mahogany queen matched with a Victorian chifferobe and two-piece vanity. * Monica Lewinsky was dining at the New York restaurant Eden with five friends when a guy at another table sent over a round of "Blow Jobs"--shots consisting of Grand Marnier, Bailey's Irish Cream and Kahlua topped with whipped cream that are traditionally downed without using your hands. Monica invited the guy over to her table and downed the drinks with him. Bless her heart. * Oprah Winfrey's lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Howard Stern, demanding that he stop airing clips of Dr. Phil McGraw, better known as "Dr. Phil," the Dallas psychologist who regularly appears on Oprah's show to counsel guests. Dr. Phil has been a long-time target of Stern, inspiring some of his funniest riffs, and the legal letter from Oprah just stoked the fires more. "Dr. Phil doesn't like the fact that we actually expose him for being a wacko," said Stern. "He's a car salesman. Anybody who's really in the medical community knows this guy is a wack job. Only Oprah buys into this. Anybody who's seen real therapy done, you don't just quick-fix yell at somebody and then they cry--it's a long process. Oprah is pretending she's helping someone, but it's all about getting ratings and more money. How much more money does she need before she stops humiliating people? Dr. Phil, that's not for real. I don't know why Oprah's pushing this garbage. I thought she was better than that." Dr. Phil was unavailable for comment, but a spokesman said he was supervising an emergency group hug. * The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments voted 11- 2 for a resolution saying the name of the Washington Redskins was "demeaning and dehumanizing" and calling on the team to change it. A Redskins spokesman responded by saying that the team was extremely sensitive to Native-American concerns but that the name would stay because "We getum heapum wampum." * The Joe Bob Report loves the circus--especially that grand American institution, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which we attend at least once a year. Unfortunately, the last two years have seen all kinds of anti-American CIRCUS-HATERS attacking Ringling Bros. to the point of absurdity. In California, the Humane Society actually filed CHARGES against Mark Oliver Gebel, the top animal trainer in the circus, claiming that he "abused" an elephant with a metal prod. In fact, Gebel was using the oldest elephant-training device in the business--a hook-shaped instrument called an ankus. When you touch an elephant's leg in certain places, the elephant is fooled into believing that you are bigger and more powerful, or at least that you know where his soft spot is. It's not exactly clear why, but it allows humans to be safe around elephants, which could otherwise kill us anytime they wanted. At any rate, the inspector for the Humane Society goes to the circus and reports seeing a "nickel-sized bloody spot" behind the elephant's left leg, where Gebel had touched the noble beast, and the case actually went to court. Testimony showed that the injury was not visible just a short time later when the elephant was hosed off. The jury acquitted Ringling Bros. on all charges--but there was no publicity on the ACQUITTAL, just on the original charge. But that's not all. Several animal-rights groups have brought suits under the Endangered Species Act to prevent circuses from using elephants at all. A California Congressman introduced something called the Captive Elephant Accident Prevention Act, to prevent elephants from crossing state lines. Seattle is considering banning "exotic animal acts" entirely. And PETA recently filed suit against Ringling Bros. for "espionage." (The circus had hired an ex-CIA man to find out about PETA's activities.) But here's the best story of all. PETA registered the domain name ringlingbrothers.com and set up a site showing pictures of abuses suffered by circus animals. So some guy--unrelated to the circus- -registered the domain name peta.org. When you went to THAT site, it turned out to be a group called People Eating Tasty Animals. PETA sued him! Our suggestion: the next time you see a PETA member, try to create a nickel-sized bloody spot on his or her left leg. * Animal rights fanatics are trying to get cockfighting outlawed in the three states where it's still legal: Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico. To do that they're pushing a Congressional ban on the interstate transport of fighting birds that would become part of the farm appropriations bill. The interesting thing about this idea is that Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico don't have any border checkpoints, and even if a bored state trooper actually DID stop somebody with a fighting chicken in the car, how would he know it's a gamecock and not just . . . a chicken? He could always check the bird for that tell-tale sign of a life in the prize ring: cauliflower beak. * Robert James Waller has written a sequel to "The Bridges of Madison County" called "A Thousand Country Roads," proving there is no deity. * Marty Markowitz, the new President of the Borough of Brooklyn, is taking down the picture of George Washington that has always hung in the Borough Hall President's Office because it's a portrait of "an old white man." "I respect history," said Markowitz, "but there has to be a recognition that this is 2002. There's not one picture of a person of color, not one kid, not one Latin. Borough Hall should reflect the richness of our diversity." Back when Brooklyn was a city of its own, George Washington fought the British in the Battle of Brooklyn and at other sites around New York, then served his first term as president there. Hence his name on many New York landmarks, including the largest of all New York bridges, the one connecting Manhattan to New Jersey. Of course, you know the one. The Old White Man Bridge. * More than 10 per cent of Valentine's Day card recipients in Britain, France and Germany send the cards to themselves, to save face, according to a survey by Amazon.com. Only 5 per cent, however, manage to get lucky on February 14th and have sex with themselves. * Scores, the most famous topless bar in New York, may soon be available on the stock market. Internet Advisory Corp., which is traded over the counter, says it is negotiating to buy the club and then build a nationwide chain using the Scores name. Internet Advisory is one of those dot-coms that went bankrupt last year, but Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Richard Goldring now believes there's more money to be made in naked hostesses than in web hosting. G-strings will replace email in the company's vast expansion, outlined in a reorganization plan called "What's Behind the Bra?," which turns kamikaze from a description of the company's performance to a profit center served by the big burly guy behind the bar. * Porn legend "La Cicciolina" will return to politics later this year in her native Hungary. Ilona Staller sat in the Italian parliament in the late eighties, but now she plans to contest the parliamentary seat for Kobanya-Kispest, the Budapest suburb where she was born. The peroxide blonde was famous in Italy for campaigning on a "free love" ticket and appearing bare-breasted at public events. She served in the Italian parliament for five years and still lives in Rome's pricy Olgiata suburb, where she runs the Love Party, fighting for the legalization of brothels, "love parks" and better sex education. She says her campaign in Hungary would focus on helping the poor, especially the nekkid poor. * The Pope has ordered secret religious tribunals for priests accused of sexual misconduct with children. It will take only a two-thirds vote of the cardinals to result in the ultimate penalty--being reassigned to Vatican tourism duty. * Justin Sebik of Bayonne, New Jersey, the guy who was kicked off of "Big Brother" for pulling a knife on a woman he was trying to seduce, was charged with assaulting his 24-year-old girlfriend during a nasty breakup that left the girl with a fractured ankle. She claims he choked her and threw her on the ground. He claimsshe was "punching me all over the place." If he'd just held the knife to her throat, the way they used to do it in the good ole days when they first fell in love. * Attorney General John "I Don't Think That's in the Constitution" Ashcroft sent a memo to all federal agencies, saying that they should oppose Freedom of Information Act requests and that the Justice Department would defend their refusal to turn over documents they don't want to turn over. He quickly reassured civil-liberties advocates that he wasn't abolishing the 25-year-old act; he was merely clarifying that Congress, when passing the law, defined the word "information" as "feel-good crapola to clog up reporters' mailboxes and confuse them." * The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the heirs of the Three Stooges have the exclusive right to sell and license the likenesses of America's favorite yuksters. California artist Gary Saderup, who made a charcoal drawing of the Stooges, can no longer sell his lithographs and silk-screened T-shirts and will be required to give the Stooges' heirs his $75,000 profit plus $150,000 in attorney's fees and other costs. The lawyers for Larry tried to work out a compromise, but the lawyers for Moe insisted on a full-frontal assault. The lawyers for Curly got down on the floor and flailed their legs in a running motion, making repeated circles before the august body. * Karen Davis, president of the animal-rights group United Poultry Concerns, compared the death of chickens in slaughterhouses to the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks. In an open letter to the Vegan Voice, she wrote, ""In 2000, the total number of chickens killed in food production worldwide, including hens used for egg production and then slaughtered, exceeded 40,000 million, an increase of approximately 1,300 million chickens per year through the 1990s. . . . Among land animals, chickens constitute the largest, most expanding universe of pain and suffering on the planet. While I would not dream of using arguments to diminish the horror of the September 11 attack for thousands of people, I would also suggest that the people who died in the attack did not suffer more terrible deaths than animals in slaughterhouses suffer every day. Moreover, the survivors of the September 11 attack and their loved ones have an array of consolations--patriotism, the satisfaction of U.S. retaliation, religious faith, TV ads calling them heroes, etc.--that the chickens, whose lives are continuously painful and miserable, including being condemned to live in human-imposed circumstances that are inimical and alien to them as chickens, do not have available. They suffer raw, without the palliatives. Doubtless the majority, if not every single one, of the people who suffered and/or died as a result of the September 11 attack ate, and if they are now alive continue to eat, chickens. In conclusion, I think it is specious to think that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center was a greater tragedy than what millions of chickens endured that day and what they endure every day because they cannot defend themselves against the concerted human appetites arrayed against them." We have three words for you, Karen: McNugget, Extra Crispy. * The Christian Family Association of Gadsden, Ala., is backing an amendment to the Alabama constitution that would allow the display of the Ten Commandments in the state's public schools, and vowing to fight the re-election of any legislator who opposes it. Dean Young, executive director of the association, got involved in the issue when Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was challenged for placing the Ten Commandments on the wall of his courtroom back when he was a circuit judge in Gadsden. "We've stood by far too long and let acknowledgement of God disappear from our schools," Young said. "The Ten Commandments show there is a God." Contacted in heaven, a spokesman for God said that all divine punishments would cease until the citizens of Alabama are fully informed. The Deity was also said to favor a bi-partisan compromise bill that would include the posting of the other 5,000 Old Testament laws, with a line at the bottom that says, "Forget one of them and Gadsden is toast." * A 71-year-old man interrupted an armed robbery at a Berlin grocery store by pelting the two masked men with a can of sauerkraut. His aim was good enough to hit one of the men on the head and cause them to flee, humiliated by pickled cabbage. * The Germany economy could be thrown into total disarray by the introduction of the Euro in brothels and red-light districts. In Berlin, for example, a 120-Deutschemark session now costs 60 Euros for a half-hour of straight sex. It's a price decrease of 2.2 per cent and amounts to about $53.40. But in the more tawdry Reeperbahn, the notorious red-light district of Hamburg, unscrupulous bordello owners have revised the price UPWARDS, charging 60 Euros instead of the normal 100 marks for an hour of full body massage. That's an increase of 17.35 per cent and has the potential to send horny German guys north to Denmark, where they didn't bother to accept the Euro in the first place and where the girls are LOTS better-looking anyway. Danish girls accept Euros, kroner, dollars, rubles, drachma, New York subway tokens, Confederate currency, and IOUs from guys named Murray. It's that whole Scandinavian thing. * The Justice Department spent $8,000 on draperies to cover up the Art Deco semi-nude statues in the Great Hall of the Justice Department building because Attorney General John Ashcroft was apparently tired of being photographed with a nekkid breast over his shoulder. The two offending statutes are a female figure representing "the Spirit of Justice" and a male figure representing "the Majesty of Justice." The male has a cloth draped over his crotch, and the female wears a toga, with one breast exposed. She's always been referred to by Justice Department employees as "Minnie Lou." The most famous "Minnie Lou" photo in history shows former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese releasing the final report of his commission on pornography. Apparently mischievous photographers sprawled all over the floor to make certain they got the exposed breast into the shot. The Justice Department is refusing to say who ordered the "Minnie Lou" draperies, but a spokesman did say that they were ordered for "aesthetic purposes." We see: Free the Minnie Lou One! *Michael Jackson was in New York on September 11th and learned about the attack on the World Trade Center "from friends in Saudi Arabia." As he told the story to Vibe magazine: "I screamed down the hotel hallway to all our people, 'Everybody get out, let's leave now!' Marlon Brando was on one end of the hall, our security was on the other end." Jackson and his entourage piled into a car and headed for Jersey. As they left, says Jackson, "There were these girls who had been at the show the night before, and they were banging on the windows, running down the street screaming. Fans are so loyal." Assuming that the New York FBI office reads Vibe magazine, they might have a few questions for Jacko, such as: What friends in Saudi Arabia? Have you ever taken flight training? And why doesn't your face match your passport photo? * Will Smith has announced that he's searching for the perfect $80,000-a-month apartment in New York so that he can finish up an album and be shielded from the public while he rests up for his international tour in support of "Ali." The problem is, New York doesn't HAVE an apartment that expensive. The best realtors could find was a duplex penthouse at Trump International Hotel & Tower for $45,000 a month, but we're sure that if he stays in the market long enough, a guy named Vinnie will miraculously unveil exactly what he's looking for. * The hottest souvenir T-shirt in Los Angeles proclaims "Free Winona"--a reference to the movie star's recent arrest on shoplifting charges at Saks Fifth Avenue. (Police say she was caught on videotape removing security tags from clothing and stuffing the items into a shopping bag.) Sales are so good on the T-shirts that gift shop owner Billy Tsangares has recently expanded his merchandise to include a Winona tote bag emblazoned with Ryder's picture and the motto "I Paid For This Stuff." Tsangares has done this before, previously making a killing on "Free James Brown" and "Free Pee Wee Herman" shirts. His latest creation: a shirt bearing an Enron logo with devil horns and a tail that reads, "Enron--Evildoer." Rex Reed must be seething with jealousy. When he shoplifted three CD's from the Virgin Megastore in Times Square last year, there was no merchandising followup at all. * The Ritz-Carlton Ground Zero opened in New York, offering rooms ranging from $465 to $4,500 a night. The price tag for the first new building in Lower Manhattan since 9/11 is $210 million, which includes those little chocolate mints they leave on your pillow every night. * Ashrita Furman, 47-year-old owner of a New York health food store, holds 71 titles in the Guinness Book of World Records, including his latest--walking five miles while spinning a hula hoop, which he established last week in Phnom Penh. Furman is also known for once ascending Mount Fuji on a pogo stick, but that was back in his vertical days. All that health food can get in the way of his ambition: he has to be forcibly restrained once a year during the Nathan's Coney Island hot-dog-eating competition. * Jenny Craig and her husband Sid sold Jenny Craig Inc. to the investment wing of Deutsche Bank. The Craigs retain a minority stake in the company, but Sid Craig will step down as chief executive and Jenny will pig out on Cheetos. * Dick "Night Train" Lane, inventor of the clothesline tackle, died at age 73. The Hall of Famer still holds the single season record for interceptions--14--despite playing only 12 games a year in his era. The offspring of an Austin pimp named Texas Slim and a prostitute who left him in a trash bin when he was three months old, he got his nickname from the Buddy Morrow song "Night Train." After his football career, he was married to jazz singer Dinah Washington and served as road manager for Redd Foxx. His trademark move--wrapping his arms around the NECKS of receivers to take them down--was later banned by the NFL. Wimps. * Retailing legend Stanley Marcus, of Neiman-Marcus fame, died in Dallas at age 96, making it impossible for him to sign any more copies of his autobiography, "Minding the Store," thereby making the three remaining unsigned copies worth millions. *Forty-four former Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders have filed suit against 29 NFL teams for peeping into their dressing room at Veterans Stadium through cracks in the wall. It was apparently a well known "perk" of playing against the Eagles that the visitors dressing room was full of viewing spaces between the doors and walls that gave bird's-eye views of the cheerleaders' shower and dressing area. Michael McKenna, the Philadelphia attorney handling the case for the girls, named every NFL team that played at the Vet since 1983--all except the Jacksonville Jaguars--but he did not name the Eagles, because their home dressing room doesn't have cheerleader access. "I'll take depositions from every player if I have to," McKenna told the Washington Post. One of the standard questions during the depositions will be: "Did you ever witness a blonde with 36DD's, one slightly larger than the other, and if so, are we talking breasts alone, butt alone, butt with breasts, or the full Monty?" Stanley T. Overstreet, a 34-year-old shoe salesman from Malpaca, Ohio, was named special prosecutor in the Enron investigation after it was determined he is the only person in the nation who has never been employed by Enron, owned Enron stock, received money from Enron, taken a phone call from an Enron executive, or attended an Enron party. * Amazon-dot-com posted a one-cent-per-share profit for the fourth quarter of 2001, causing celebration on Wall Street and producing hope that the recession is over. Retailers geared up for frustrated Amazon investors, relieved to be in the black at last, ready to spend spend spend with those one-cent dividend checks. * Virgin Records agreed to pay Mariah Carey $49 million not to make any more albums. The deal brightened her spirits and shortened her mental rehab time by several weeks. **At what was supposed to be a press conference, Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis traded punches in what turned into an all-out free-for-all between the fighters and their retinues, with pinching, biting, wrestling, rolling on the floor, blood, tears, and profane screaming. Afterward Tyson said, "I will never be intimidated by anyone, and Lennox will pay in April." Lewis responded by attempting to get both ears insured by Lloyd's of London, which declined the policy. * Mike Tyson's wife filed for divorce, alleging in her petition that the former heavyweight champion cheated on her. Attorneys for Tyson answered the complaint with a counter- petition that read in part: "Well, duh!" * A new British study revealed that mammograms do not prevent cancer or help women avoid mastectomies, meaning that millions of women have been mashed, mangled, squashed and groped for two decades for no good reason. Abused dinglebobber lawsuits to follow. *The most popular actor in New York University's stuffy theater department is Benjamin Curtis, who thought he would make a little extra money to put himself through acting school by auditioning for commercials. He got one job--a commercial for a Long Island crisis center--and then last year he managed to score a second one. Now he can't walk into a restaurant without being approached, and there are websites devoted to his worship. He smiles and takes it all in stride, but one thing he won't do for his millions of fans. He won't say "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell." * President Bush announced that he won't be able to balance the budget this year, despite promising to do so, and that it has nothing to do with the $1.35 trillion that had already been collected until Bush decided to give it back. * Philadelphia unveiled its new downtown concert hall, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, with two extravagant concerts . . . that nobody could hear. Music critic Tim Page of the Washington Post said the sound was "dim, diffuse and unsupported, somehow managing to be both muddy and bone-dry." He said that Frederica von Stade "could have been singing in another room--a sensation of eerie remoteness." As for the Philadelphia Orchestra, the new center's principal tenant, their rendition of Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe" was "a lively, nuanced performance that sounded as if it would have sounded beautiful--somewhere else." Well . . . uh . . . it only cost $265 million, and . . . uh . . . how bout those Phillies? * Kmart moved a step closer to becoming a blue-light special when it fired its president and hired a bankruptcy expert to take over. The 103-year-old chain, originally called S.S. Kresge, may have to close 400 of its 2,000 stores. Meanwhile, Kmart stock lost 70 per cent of its value in three weeks, wiping out $2 billion of investors' money, and its bond rating was lowered to junk-bond status. Fortunately, Martha Stewart has a plan for turning Kmart stock certificates into decorative placemats. * Enron's principal business was "risk management." ** NBC aired a special commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Alex Haley miniseries "Roots." Interestingly enough, the original miniseries ran on ABC, but that network decided they'd had enough of Haley. Even more interesting, the 1997 BBC documentary proving that Haley made up the "Roots" story and that it's not history at all and that there is no Kunta Kinte, has never been aired in the United States. "Virtually every genealogical claim in Haley's story was false," wrote Philip Nobile in a 1993 Village Voice article. But most amazing of all, in Haley's plagiarism case--in which it was shown that he stole the plot, the main character and even word-for-word passages from a 1967 novel by white author Hal Courlander--the judge said Haley repeatedly perjured himself in court, but that "I did not want to destroy him." And so Haley was allowed to settle quietly out of court. Now "Mandingo"--that was a documentary. * Tom Ford, creative director for both Gucci and Yves St. Laurent, has declared that Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim leader, is the most fashionable man on earth. A version of Karzai's trademark ambassador-style hat, of Persian lamb, goes for $250 at Fifth Avenue shops, and his draped shearling overcoats are a steal at $3,500. Ford introduced several Afghanistan-influenced styles at his men's fashion show in Milan, and at the post-show press conference he said that Karzai "comes across as someone with great elegance and pride." Even more important, there are no fur-hating animal-rights groups in Afghanistan--and if there were, he would hunt them down and bring them to justice. * Thomas E. Franklin is the name of the photographer who took the picture of the three firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero, Iwo-Jima-style. So LET'S GIVE THE GUY SOME CREDIT, okay? It wasn't some kind of Kodak Moment arranged by Madison Avenue. The guy was there, he had the eye to see what was going on, he framed it beautifully, he got the light right, he got the faces and the perspective perfect--so let's hope he gets the Pulitzer Prize for The Record of Hackensack, where he works. Pictures like that don't take themselves. Next, let's hope the Fire Department of New York is kidding when they say they've commissioned a statue to be modeled after Franklin's photo, but they've told the sculptor to make a few slight CHANGES! They want the three firefighters to be ethnically diverse: one white, one black and one Hispanic. In other words, FALSIFY THE DAMN PICTURE. And not only falsify the picture, but falsify reality. There are 11,000 New York City firefighters, and only 3 per cent are black and less than 1 per cent Hispanic. Fortunately the three REAL guys in the picture have had their lawyer contact the department and say they don't wanna be switched into another race. Actually, if you wanted to truly represent the diversity of the Fire Department of New York over the last two centuries, you would have one Irishman, another Irishman, and one Scot with part Irish blood. * Powerful Congressman John Dingell was forced to drop his pants after his artificial hip set off a metal detector at Reagan National Airport. The 75-year-old Michigan Democrat also wears a knee brace and has surgically implanted pins in his ankles. By the time the screeners got finished with him, the brace was off, his shoes and socks were off, and a wand was being waved over the business part of his boxer shorts. Northwest Airlines defended the conduct of the screeners, saying that sophisticated computer profiles have targeted elderly crippled American members of Congress as terrorism threats. *Executives at CNN said they were "outraged" over a promo for anchor Paula Zahn that ran about ten times before being pulled and called "a major blunder" by the CNN promotions department. In the ad, a voice asks, "Where can you find a morning news anchor who's provocative, super-smart, oh yeah, and just a little sexy?" As the words "provocative" and "sexy" are flashed on the screen, you see quick shots of Paula Zahn's lips and profile. Then the background music stops and you hear a sound like a zipper being unzipped. As soon as the ad starting running, Zahn called the network and said she was outraged. CNN chairman Walter Isaacson issued a statement, also using the word "outrage." Zahn was one of the early hires by Turner executive Jamie Kellner last year during his CNN makeover. He also hired Andrea Thompson, best known for appearing seminude on "NYPD Blue," to anchor Headline News. In a memo to the promotions department, Kellner made it clear that all future promos featuring leggy gorgeous babes in designer clothes who read the news should be referred to as "stuck-up bitches." * NBC gave "Today" show anchor Katie Couric a new $60 million contract but told cameramen and technicians they would have to settle for a scaled-back contract that will give them pay raises as low as 1.5 per cent. These are troubled times, they explained, and everyone has to sacrifice. Meanwhile, Enron President Jeffrey Skilling cashed in $30.6 million worth of his company's stock during his six months on the job. Stunned by allegations that his actions were unethical, he said, "I only took half-a-Couric." * Mark Cuban, bad-boy owner of the Dallas Mavericks, received the largest fine in NBA history--$500,000--for criticizing the referees after a 105-103 loss to the San Antonio Spurs. Cuban told reporters that there's a "star system" of officiating that gives preference to the better players in the league. He then went on the offensive against Ed Rush, the league's director of officiating. "Ed Rush might have been a great ref," said Cuban, "but I wouldn't hire him to manage a Dairy Queen. His interest is not in the integrity of the game or improving the officiating. The number one priority of Ed Rush is maintaining power." Cuban, whose net worth is $1.4 billion, has now been fined eight times for a total of $1.05 million. Each time he's fined, he matches the fine with donations to charity. A day after the fine, Cuban said, "There wasn't a single word that I said that I hadn't said to them [the NBA] privately a dozen times before, and they won't do anything. It's far easier to fine me than to address the problems." Given his wealth, the half million was a slap on the wrist, which, in the NBA, is sometimes considered a foul and sometimes not. Depends on whether you're a star or not. * Britney Spears has been hired to promote reading and literacy on the "NBA All-Star Read to Achieve Celebration," to be aired on six networks during the events surrounding the annual NBA All-Star Game. Posters promoting the special are being placed in libraries throughout the nation, and those who can't read the posters are being given Britney Spears videos in which she describes every book she's read since the age of 8, including "Black Beauty," "Little Women," and "The Story of O." * "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," probably the worst Frankenstein movie ever made, was one of 25 films added to the National Film Registry by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian names 25 "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant motion pictures to the Registry. The list is supposed to make sure the films are permanently preserved, and so far there are 325 of them. Billington partially redeemed himself by including on this year's list "The Miracle of Morgan Creek," the 1944 Preston Sturges comedy which Joe Bob considers the funniest flick ever made. Abbott and Costello, on the other hand, suck. * The United States solidified its position as the fattest nation in the world, with new statistics released by Surgeon General David Satcher showing that 60 per cent of Americans are overweight. Satcher's recommendations for solving the worsening health problem included more emphasis on physical education in the schools, less fast-food marketing in poor areas, and the insertion of the term "Lard Ass" into the names of all members of Congress who qualify--for example, Newt "Lard Ass" Gingrich, Hilary "Lard Ass" Rodham Clinton, and the eminent Edward "Ted" "Lard of All Asses" Kenndy. * Metro AG, a German consumer electronics chain, blanketed the country with 15,000 posters featuring three-breasted women wearing low-cut tops and the caption "There's more inside than you think." Unfortunately, German feminists were not amused, and the company is now busily dismantling the whole campaign. Presumably it would have made impressionable 14-year-old girls feel inadequate about the relative number of their breasts. * Daniel Bernard, the French ambassador to Britain, says he can't remember calling Israel a "shitty little country" during a dinner party with Conrad Black, owner of the Daily Telegraph, who promptly published the remark. Now that he's being called an anti-Semite on three continents, Bernard has wracked his brain to figure what he DID say, and he insists that he was misquoted. He meant to say that Israel was "a country of little shits." * In our continuing effort to remain up to date on Saddam Hussein's literary career, we report this week yet another novel believed to have been written by the Iraqi strongman. "The Fortified Castle" hit the Baghdad bookshops and has already been hailed as "great artistic work" by the state-run television network and the newspaper al-Jumhouriya. The 713-page stunner begins with the following sentence: "The novel is a trip in the world of struggle and virtue and a fight against injustice." And after such a wham-bam beginning, the thrills never let up, following the life of a militant who was wounded and captured in the war with Iran, but made his escape and returned to Baghdad to study at the university, only to fall in love with a Kurdish girl from northern Iraq. Unfortunately, our young hero can't be married because his bride must obtain legal papers from her hometown of Sulaimaniya, but she can't return there because of death threats to her family, which opposes the political system in place. Events overtake them anyway, as the Persian Gulf war breaks out and the young man must fight again. This would be Saddam's second novel after last year's "Zabibah and the King," which has already been hailed as "the Iraqi Gone with the Wind" (Baghdad Gazette), "first among the oeuvre of authoritarian killers" (Pan-Arab Monthly), and "twice-trampled donkey feces" (Kurdish Times). * Heidi and Jeni Porras, 22-year-old twin sisters with platinum-blonde dye jobs, smuggled assault weapons and pistols into a maximum-security Guatemalan prison on visitors' day. Their boyfriends, who happened to be serving life sentences for kidnapping, then shot their way out and joined the girls in a sport-utility getaway vehicle (SUGV). Unfortunately, the shootout resulted in 76 other kidnappers, murderers and rapists going free as well, in one of the biggest jailbreaks in history. The boyfriends were eventually killed in a Guatemala City shootout with a rival gang. Ten other escapees were killed during the escape or shortly afterward. Twenty-one are still free. But Heidi and Jeni, alas, not only lost their boyfriends, but they ended up in shackles themselves. Needless to say, full body searches will be frequent and most unpleasant in the future, and we're likely to know their true hair color soon. *Pauline Moore, best known to the readers of these pages as the bridesmaid in FRANKENSTEIN and the psychic in "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island," died in a nursing home in Sequim, Washington. Her career had ended in the early forties, when she was only 30, as she decided to devote herself to raising a family. She also performed and wrote devotional religious dramas, poetry, short stories and plays. She had debuted in the twenties as a Flo Ziegfeld chorus girl on Broadway and been a cover girl for Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan and McCalls. She never made the A list, but she had occasional roles in big-budget pictures, such as Shirley Temple's schoolmarm in "Heidi" and Henry Fonda's true love in "Young Mr. Lincoln." She died of Lou Gehrig's Disease at the age of 87. She is believed to be the last "Frankenstein" cast member who was still alive. *More than 80 per cent of the English have had sex in their cars, and 20 per cent of the women of Cheshire in northwest England do it at least once a month. Other interesting findings from a survey by MSN Carview, an international network of automotive websites, included the fact that 22 per cent of the women in Newcastle upon Tyne have had sex in the back of a taxi. It was an experience shared by one in three Britons overall. The most sexually inept Brits? Those from southeast England. Eighteen per cent admitted injuring themselves during sex. It's those bloody stick shifts. *A Filipino farmer sliced off his penis with a machete after reading the Bible and deciding his member was leading him into a life of sin. He was inspired by Matthew 18:8, which reads, "If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire." Family members found him writhing and bleeding in his hut, the penis lying nearby, and rushed him to a hospital where it was reconstructed. It is now 20 per cent shorter, however, the result of his having hacked at it several times before it came off. "He said he wanted to be nailed to a coconut tree," the man's mother told reporters. "He had memorized the Bible and preaches with the pastors in our place. He also advised other people to remove nude photos from their walls so that small children will not become sex maniacs later." The man later said he had no regrets about the act, because his penis was a "cobra" driving him toward women. But as anyone who has ever tried to kill a snake knows . . . *A dog ripped off a Swede's ear and swallowed it. While the man was being rushed to the hospital, the dog was being rushed to the vet and given an emetic in the hopes of getting the ear back. When that didn't work, veterinarians opened up the dog's stomach and retrieved the ear, but four hours had elapsed. By the time the ear was delivered to the hospital, there wasn't enough left to warrant reattachment surgery. The dog was barred permanently from all jurisdictions except Nevada.