A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

There's been so much written about Mel Gibson's new movie, Freaky Good Friday, that I'm reluctant to say anything myself. While all the usual do-gooder suspects have been complaining about the movie's violence, luckily people see things differently in my old stomping grounds:

But the Rev. Jeffery Schroeder, resident chaplain at the Interdenominational Stuarts Draft Christian Home and Retirement Community, said that Gibson, no stranger to violent films or torture scenes, could have upped the gore for realism's sake.

"It didn't go as far as it could have," Schroeder said.

Funny. The only "torture scene" I remember Mel Gibson being involved in was What Women Want.

NOTE TO SELF: STOP READING NEWS

What a week. Not only do I find out that my own wife is probably a terrorist, but I'm also suddenly overqualified for a career in manufacturing, and a wacky little culture war is breaking out.

Is it November yet?



Oh, wait. Never mind.

BACK TO THE SADDEST CIRCLE OF HELL



I know I often say that The Family Circus is disturbing, but really. The mystery object on Dolly's head aside, the mind reels at just what kinds of images Bil might have hidden on his computer. In some circles, this would be called "a desperate cry for help." To me, it's just desperate.

LET'S PARTY LIKE IT'S... 2000

Okay, I realize I'm probably not the right person to be critiquing the local nightlife scene, given my last night out on the town involved an ex-Monkee and a would-be stalker. But still, this is almost unspeakably sad.

A bar, based on a movie from 2000? And a bad movie from 2000, at that. What's next? A place where the dress code includes leg warmers and headbands? (Oh, that's right -- Jaxx is still in business. Speaking of which, check out their hard-rockin' motto, prominently displayed on their Web site: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason." Good times!)

Again, demographically speaking, I'm probably the wrong person to be talking about the party scene. Though the neighborhood Burger King does have a pretty bitchin' ball room.

NEXT QUESTION

I've always wondered what it would be like to be in a book club. Of course, I'd actually have to learn to read first, but that's a minor detail.

Anyway. I was flipping through a book my wife was reading the other day, and much to my dismay, it had a set of ready-made questions for book clubs to discuss at the end. Which would be fine, except that many of them were questions that could be answered with a "yes" or "no," or simply had no relation to the book. I can imagine some pretty awkward discussions:

"Did you have a mother figure that wasn't your mother?"
"That's kind of personal, don't you think?"
"The book says to ask this question. Did you have a mother figure that wasn't your mother?"
"Uh.. sure. I guess."
"Who?"
"Lynne Cheney."
"Hmm. Next question."

With that in mind, I've taken the liberty of coming up with some similarly EZ-n-Fun discussion questions for one of my favorite bits of light reading:

• Have you ever worn a hat? Discuss.
  
• The novel is set in Ireland. Do you like U2?
  
• Have you ever exposed yourself on a beach?
  
• In the chapter "Oxen of the Sun," which character reminds you of your favorite doctor on ER? Discuss.
  
• The final chapter is a lengthy internal monologue. Have you ever written a sentence without commas or periods? Was it a grocery list? If not, did anyone else understand it?

I'll have my agent give Oprah's agent a call.

MAYBE I SHOULDN'T TRY TO GET OUT MORE

So I'm at a concert a few nights ago, and some random guy sees a friend's digital camera and asks if he can use it to take a picture. Once he's told sure, he can try to get a picture of himself with the musicians, he shakes his head.

"No," he says, pointing at me. "I want a picture of that guy."

Now, when you're blessed with an Adonislike physique that quite often overshadows your incredible wit, you get used to this sort of request. Still, given the setting, it struck me as kind of odd. After a little questioning, he confessed. Twenty years ago, he told me, his college roommate "used to have your look..."

Hmmm. Unless that sentence ended with "...but then there was that tragic incident with the pack of feral wolves and the overzealous Botox clinician," there's no way that's good news.

Maybe I'm just a little oversensitive. In my pre-beard days, I've been compared to Rick Moranis by small children. Now that I have a beard, I've been compared to Michael Moore by my own children. Quite a complement, I know, but the strange part is that I weigh about 140 pounds.

Lest you think this guy was trying to get a picture for a fake passport or something, he did mention his friend's name, and I did, of course, Google it. While I don't think this guy was his style-challenged roommate, it's yet another flattering comparison.

The moral of this story? Avoid free tickets to concerts headlined by former '60s idols. The things I'll do to get out of the house...

NOT A GOOD WAY TO START A MONDAY MORNING

Now I'm nominally a Democrat, which is why I feel well within my rights to point out how creeped out I was when I flipped through the paper this morning.




Yes, that's John Kerry peering into a house while campaigning in New Hampshire. Which, by the way, is a Class 2 misdemeanor in many states. Of course, it could be worse -- if he was on the other side of the door, the caption would have simply read "You raaaaanng?"

That was on page A1. Flip to the jump, and this is what you'd see:



In a lonely one-bedroom apartment somewhere in LA, a joke writer for Jay Leno just smiled.

And this was on the same page:



Now I like Dean, and they're a sweet couple and all, but this picture's just creepy. As Sally said after flipping through the Post this morning, "Every time I pick up the paper, I feel like I need to take a shower." And not in a good way...

THANKS TO THE NOT-SO-INFINITE NUMBER OF MONKEYS...

...the newest installment in a collaborative (read: bizarre) writing project I'm working on with several friends is now online. All credit goes to Tom, whose wife, CeCe, actually knows a thing or two about using monkeys to get a book published by a reputable house. Sock monkeys, anyway.

MAYBE PAUL KRUGMAN CAN HELP EXPLAIN THIS

It's been a long time since I've mentioned my archnemesis here. But looking at the paper this morning, I was rendered dumbfounded (and we all know how painful that can be):



I know Bil's not exactly the master of the inscrutable, but really -- what in the hell are we supposed to make of this? (The radio waves emitting from his chin aside, I mean.) "Improving finances?" What, did Bil split his $300 tax refund among his ill-mannered brood? Or is this a manifestation of his repressed fears of growing old and penniless, and winding up sleeping in a dumpster? (Given this earlier panel, that's not all that far-fetched a theory.) Or, in some twisted fantasy world, has he made his wife's mother (yes, I know how to tell the Keane grandparents apart), a kept woman?

The mind reels.

UPDATE: Oh, I see. A few days ago, he drew a cartoon of the precocious Keane Kidz(tm) plotting in secret to demand a raise in their allowance. That lends creedence to the "kept woman" theory, which just creeps me out to no end.

MOVE OVER, WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN

Always eager to prove that I am, first and foremost, a Serious Journalist, here's a couple of recent examples of my work. First, a serious and high-minded comic book. No, really. And, as if that wasn't enough, there's this: a probing investigative expose of nekkid people holding flower pots. (Note: Free registration probably required, but after that build-up, how could you resist?)

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'll be waiting for my Pulitzer to come in the mail.

HAVE YOURSELF A GENERIC LITTLE CHRISTMAS...

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write, be it online or elsewhere: I actually entered my company's holiday decorating contest this year.

Of course, as is the case with many competitions, I play to lose. This is what I managed to come up with, in the span of about 15 minutes, including brainstorming, printing, and decorating proper:



The theme? "A Generic Holiday." After all, nothing gets folks into the holiday spirit like sloth and sarcasm...

TREASON ABOUNDS

These headlines are starting to look a little like an Ann Coulter book signing, but still, I must ask: Why does Google hate America?

TREACHERY IN THE HINTERLANDS

Those bastards!

TOO BAD THE BOOKER'S ALREADY BEEN ANNOUNCED...

The newest installation in the nightmare collaborative novel I'm "writing" with a couple of friends, penned by yours truly (or, at least, by the half-dozen monkeys we keep locked up in the basement with a crash-prone Megtron(tm) PC and a copy of Xywrite) is now online.

In true post-modern blog style, the most recent installment's at the top, meaning you need to read from the bottom of the page up for it to make any sense. Except, of course, that it still won't.

GUESS THE BLIND PEDESTRIAN PLAYKIT'S BEEN DISCONTINUED

I realize this makes me a callous, uncaring parent, but the names of these toys always make me laugh.



Hard to believe that a periscope could cause eye injuries. Or that toy nunchucks could cause "blunt impact." But mostly, I feel sorry for poor Ribbets.

THEY KNOW THEIR AUDIENCE

Consider the ad at the top of a weekly e-mail for journalists that just came over the transom: "You have adult acne.... Will anyone ever find you attractive?"

Yes... and no.

METRO FOR RED-STATERS

One of the gazillion associations in the DC area has written a painfully retentive guide to the metro. "After one trip, you'll be a pro!" the breathless copy reads. Especially helpful -- the detailed instructions for purchasing a farecard, and I quote: "1. Put your money in the slot."

The only thing they forgot to add was not to get scared when the train goes under the Potomac, since it doesn't get wet. (I once worked at a newspaper where the publisher didn't quite grasp the concept of a subway, but that's another story for another day.) All I know, if I was thinking about coming to DC from the distant hinterlands, the level of complexity this suggests would have me out on the shoulder of 395, hitchhiking.

(Shout-out to DCSOB for pointing this one out.)

THE SMOKING GUN

I spent a few years living in Germany during my teenage years -- a few years which just happened to fall during the mid-1980s, so I missed quite a few cultural milestones. MTV? We'd occasionally get a videotape someone would bring back from the states, which would make the rounds of my friends until we had the 2 hours of music memorized*. Cabbage Patch Kids? Luckily, I missed that one until recently, when one of my daughters was given a vintage one by a great-grandmother. Smurfs? Well... actually, they came from Germany, though they were called something like "Schlumphs," which is precariously close to an unflattering German term for a young woman of questionable virtue.

But I digress. When I returned to the states, I had a lot of catching up to do, culturally. And one of the things I never quite got was the TV show Alf, which came and went while I was overseas. Allegedly. I summarily refused to believe that a sitcom starring a stuffed furry alien could possibly have become a prime-time hit, even in the 1980s. And yes, I had seen Knight Rider. It was huge in Germany. In fact, I accused many stateside friends of being part of a conspiracy to convince me that Alf was real, then chuckling at my gullible self behind my back. Even years later, I was never quite convinced.

Flash forward two decades. While visiting the in-laws last weekend, we stumbled upon this.



I'm through the looking glass, sadder and a bit wiser. Sadder, mainly, as had my kids not gleefully colored all over the sucker, I could have made a fortune on eBay.

(*) Back in the day, MTV aired short-form movies that were intentionally synchronized with popular songs of the time, called (I believe) "music videos."

THIS COULD BE ME...

Apparently this is where some journalists wind up during these trying economic times.

It certainly has a lot more panache than the Maytag box I've been eyeing of late...

THIS JUST IN...

... I have no life. I scored a 109.5 on this test. Pity me.

The most embarassing part, aside from the fact that I precisely remember the lyrics to a freakin' Toto song from two decades ago but can't recall what I had for breakfast this morning? I identified lots of songs generated by hair bands. Bad hair bands...

BOO!

OF PUMPKINS AND PAINTBALLS

It's fall, which means it's time for our family's annual trip to the pumpkin patch out in the country. Well, not so much in the country anymore--it's now surrounded by a gaggle of vinyl-clad Northern Virginia McMansions, all with extensive decking so their owners can enjoy an uninterupted view of the moon bounces, the plentiful parking, and all the cheerful examples of copyright infringement the proprietors have plastered on everything that isn't orange and/or organic.

Still, it's fun. Pumpkins, moon bounces, slides, hayrides, and, this year, shooting at targets with a high-powered rifle equiped with a sniper-style scope.

No, really. Okay, so it's paintball, but it still seems like an odd choice for the under-6 crowd.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm not one of those freedom-hating, Dear Leader-mocking types you see all over the blogosphere. I learned to fire a rifle in high school ROTC (don't ask), and have, in the course of undertaking journalistic research, participated in a paintball battle pitting our hardened newsroom of seasoned reporters against a bunch of Shenandoah Valley locals, who brought their bulletproof vests, automatic paintball rifles, and boundless enthusiasm to the match. I still have the welts to prove it.

At the same time, though, at a pumpkin patch? It's a bit embarrassing. Especially when I caught myself shouting at my daughter, "NO! AIM FOR THE HEAD! NOT THE CHEST--THE HEAD!"

Or not.

MY NEW CAREER...

...as a film reviewer. Scroll down to the review entitled "A stunningly prescient rumination on Euro-American relations," and enjoy.

The balcony is closed.

YEAH, BUT OTHER THAN THAT, DID WE GET ANYTHING WRONG?

A classic correction from The Washington Post:

A Sept. 21 item in the Metro in Brief column about a woman fatally shot in Prince George's County and a child who was wounded incorrectly reported the woman's age, the child's sex, the child's location at the time of the shooting, and the street on which the shooting occurred. A correct account of the incident appears in today's Metro in Brief column.

Guess the editors were busy fact-checking the Page One story about the all-you-can-eat steak.

THIS JUST IN: CULTURE IS DEAD

I wouldn't believe this if I hadn't read it myself: Evidently piqued at the thought of his wife being groped by a treacherous Frenchman, our august president wrote her this lovely, nuanced poem:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Oh my, lump in the bed
How I've missed you.
Roses are redder
Bluer am I
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.
The dogs and the cat, they missed you too
Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe
The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier
Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

Awww... They're just like two schoolkids, aren't they? I'm going to try calling my wife a "lump in the bed." Then I'm going to try getting used to sleeping on the sofa downstairs.

THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR

When critics use that phrase, it's usually hyperbole. For us, it's literal.

Ever since we had our first child, we've seen exactly one movie -- no more, and no less -- in the theater each calendar year. Between the relative scarcity of babysitters, and the desire to do something other than sit in a dark room when we're lucky enough to find one, we just don't go to the movies much any more. In fact, we haven't been the movies yet in 2003.

Good thing, too. Had we already squandered our movie for the year, we would have had to wait for this to go to video.

WHO NEEDS THE NYT SUNDAY BOOKS SECTION?

My well-documented love for this comic meets my penchant for fair and balanced book reviews.

Maybe we should pass this title along to Mssr. Limbaugh.

IT DOESN'T GET ANY META THAN THIS

Here's the first longish thing I've written for Teacher -- an article on blogging. And now here I am, blogging about an article about other people blogging. It's enough to make your head spin.

It doesn't end there. One of the great things about the Internet is that when you write about people who write on the Internet, they write back about being written about. Journalists have a tendency to "file and forget," so it's kind of refreshing to get feedback, both good and bad, without having to fish for it. Here's one of my interviewees using the title of this entry to poke fun at my short description of him in the story. Hey -- I never claimed to write for the New Yorker.

Another person I interviewed tried to read the article at work, but -- and this is a first in my storied writing career -- her school's Internet filter blocked it, presumably because the article quotes a blog that uses the f-word the way most people use commas. More specifically, the Internet filter had this to say:

This page will not be displayed because... it has exceeded its tolerance of questionable words.

Exceeded its tolerance of questionable words? Funny, I get that from my editors all the time.

GOOD GRIEF

More fair and balanced commentary from the hinterlands.

I'm glad I'm not the person who had to edit this one down into (semi) coherent sentences..

THOUGHTCRIME!

So, you'd think a good way to blow off some steam would be to go hear some live music, right?

Think again.


This is us at a recent concert in oh-so-hip Arlington, where we lived before we became boring suburbanites obsessed with shiny wallpaper and homeowner association-mandated paint colors like "Beachwood." Looks like we're having some good, clean, Right-Thinking fun, right?

Think again. Examine the circled part of the picture carefully. Here it is again, enlarged for your convenience.



Uh-oh. Something tells us our names are on a list now.

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME... HAIRBALLS

So, the Redskins won their first game of the season the other night, though based on what I've read about the NFL's "celebration" on the Pepsi Vanilla(tm)/Fritos(tm) National Mall(tm), good taste was the real loser of the night.

I'm a long-time Redskins fan, having endured a decade-plus of medicore teams, embarassing owner gaffes, and revolving-door coaching. I've even had the, um, luck of attending some historic games, like the one where Gus Frerotte (remember him?) gave himself a concussion by high-fiving a concrete wall with his head, and the bitterly cold, windy December game that led to the sacking of Norv Turner (remember him?), and... well, that's about it. Come to think of it, most of the rest of the past decade's been a blur. A mediocre, turnover-prone blur.

But you read it here first, folks: They're going to the Super Bowl this year. No ifs, ands or buts.

How do I know? Because, after nearly a decade, I found out this summer that my name had finally come up on the season ticket waiting list. Of course, I found this out days after one of our cats wound up having to spend a week at an animal hospital, and the bill came to virtually the exact cost of the season tickets--almost to the penny.

I'm trying to maintain some perspective. After all, as I've been saying, our cat probably won't lose nine games this season. Though come January, if the Redskins are still in the hunt, Sushi had better stay down in the basement on Sunday afternoons.

UPDATE: I just got another e-mail from the Redskins notifying me that good season ticket seats are still available, which is pretty much unheard of in these parts. Either people aren't buying that first win of the season, or a lot of people had sick pets this summer...

I ALWAYS KNEW THAT WHOLE POLITENESS THING WAS A FACADE

Yet another reason not to trust the Canadians.

A TRAITOR IN OUR MIDST

Where I work, in buttoned-down Bethesda, you wouldn't expect drama, rebellion and outright treason to play themselves out in the streets.

You'd be wrong.

First, someone quite unreasonably, I think, spraypainted the newspaper boxes for The Washington Times with one simple word: LIES. That was followed by the word SWILL on the USA Today boxes. Then, the same person hit the parking garage where I stow my Xtreme vehicle with an axiomatic motto, intended to demoralize those of us still contributing to the nation's GDP: COMMUTE WORK COMMUTE SLEEP. And now, the construction site for the Rio Grande, your typical chainy Mexican restaurant being built down the street, has been hit. The same objectively pro-Saddamite spraypainted an arrow pointing to a picture of Uncle Julio, the chain's grinning, sombrero-wearing mascot, and added the question: STEREOTYPE? Clearly this person is a divider, not a uniter, and clearly he hates freedom. Or at least chilie con queso.

Of course, you're no safer in the hinterlands. Check out this fifth columnist in my former place of residence. Fortunately, the Patriots at the paper were quick to run photos of the offending susbstances, let someone accidentally ingest some tabouleh.

THE HOLIDAYS ARE JUST FOUR SHORT MONTHS AWAY...



...not that I'm dropping hints or anything. Who knows, maybe I was just inspired by this heartwarming example of compassionate conservatism (scroll down to the comments for the full effect).

Or, if this all seems so three months ago, there's always this. A timeless classic which plays... a timeless classic.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION, PT. 2

Kids at the beach... This is exactly what summer vacation is all about. Nine hours in the car each way, listening to kids tunes involving SpongeBob, Dragontales and the confounded freaking religious vegetables thanks to an iPod whose battery refused to die... not so much.

SOMEONE NOTIFY OPRAH IMMEDIATELY

The scary joke novel I'm writing with two friends has been updated once more, thanks to Jeremy. Taking an already weird literary experiment to new heights, his new entry includes Saladin, Jimi Hendrix, Einstein and a plot line from the cinematic masterpiece Back to the Future II. (As always, the most recent chapter is at the top of the page, though it's no more coherent when it's read chronologically from the bottom up).

Now it's my turn to update the sucker, hopefully without any flying Deloreans or breakdancing robots. Okay, well, maybe just one breakdancing robot. Or two.

If all this makes your brain hurt -- and God knows that's what it does to mine -- you could just read this instead, for a far more coherent and reassuring worldview.

IT STILL MAKES MORE SENSE THAN J-SCHOOL

As if Jayson Blair, massive media consolidation and this wacky unrecession haven't been ill enough portents for those of us in the journalism biz, now there's this fun new option for the upwardly mobile reporter. Instead of putting in your time in the trenches, building a decent clip file, and uncovering that one big scandal that can define a career, you can simply bid for a major-network writing gig on eBay.

Okay, okay, so maybe it's on Fox. But at the moment, the bidding for this Nascar column-writing gig is well north of $200, which vastly exceeds your typical rookie reporter's annual budget for Ramen noodles. A pity, too -- I've always wanted to build on my well-documented ability to cover sophisticated, upscale sporting events.

A SHAMELESS PLUG FOR A SOCK PUPPET

My college friend Cece has a book coming out in September. After years of seeing sock monkey-related imagery from her and her husband, Tom, and not getting the joke, I can't wait.

Thanks to a master's level class my wife took on this Internet thingy, I know you can pre-order the book on Amazon, and help Sock Monkey break the 1,646,444 mark in their sales rankings.

As if that isn't enough of an enticement, Amazon has the book categorized not only in its "monkeys" category, but also under "cleanliness" (where you can also find this Right-Thinking tome). Really, what more could you possibly want?

NO PROBLEMS FINDING A PARKING SPOT WITH THIS

As regular readers of this space know, I drive an SUV (but don't worry -- it's electric). And now, as a way to offer a glimpse of my reclusive, Howard Hughes-like existence (only without the millions of dollars or the Kleenex boxes for my feet), here's a picture of my bitchin' set of wheels.

Sure, it only gets 8 MPG, but that's not what keeps me up at night. My biggest worry is finding a skilled artist with a flair for the medium of airbrush-on-steel during these busy summer months to replace the map of Iraq with one of Iran. Or maybe Liberia. Or France.

SO IT'S NOT THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

Another fair and balanced letter to the editor from my former employer in the hinterlands:

Enough whining about entitlement

I would like to respond to Nelson Graves' column regarding affirmative action. Isn't it time the African American race quit crying about how unfair they have it? Let's start out first by stating this: The Civil War was not over slavery as has been taught to our kids: It was over states' rights, NOT SLAVERY. Haven't there been other (enslaved) races? Some could point (out) that the Jews were slaves to Hitler. Why should a black man get a job over a white man who is more qualified? Do we have a White American Pageant or a "WET" -- White Entertainment Television -- channel? No, we don't. So why should a black man get a job over another because of his skin tone or vice versa?

(Graves made) reference to Michael Jordan; he is one of the few who is doing something with his money in the black community. We all know of the millions of dollars black athletes and also entertainers make, but what do they do with their money? We hear not, "How can I help the African American race" but how nice a "crib" or "ride" he has, so enough of the whining -- it's time!

The whites call your bluff on how bad your race has it and say what needs to be said -- that the only way to have something is to work for it, not rely on someone feeling sorry for you -- and that goes for every color.

But we do have a White Entertainment Television channel -- it's called Fox News.

Bear in mind that this ran in the same august publication that -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- used whiteout to remove a snake from a Far Side cartoon on deadline because a woman called the publisher to complain that snakes were servants of the devil. Unfortunately, the snake was the punchline of the panel, so the next morning readers awoke to a cartoon that made no sense whatsoever. Usually, they had to get to something I wrote before that happened.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION



This is the view from our friends' backyard in Tucson, Arizona, where we spent a few days watching a massive forest fire snake up the far side of the mountain you see here.

It's not like we look at the newspaper and ask aloud, "Hmm. It's vacation time. Where can we go where there's 115-degree weather, an airport named after American Hero Barry Goldwater, and a massive natural disaster?" It just sort of works out that way.

The amazing thing? Somehow, we still managed to have fun. And I'll take 115-degree weather and Barry Goldwater over eternal drizzle and the guy who can't even ride a Segway.

TAKE THAT, SADDAM!

Who says our nation's color-coded rainbow of terror doesn't mean anything? As a result of the previously mentioned return to Mellow Yellow(tm), they've unlocked one door at my office building. Hell, if we go back to blue, they might even let us crack a window!

SLOWEST NEWS DAY. EVER.

I look forward to reading the newspaper on weekends. So as I skimmed the front page of The Washington Post this morning, what do I see? In the paper that brought down Nixon, a front-page article about a woman who tried to eat a 50-ounce steak (and failed, to save you the time of reading about 2,500 words of bland "local color"). You see, she's from Texas! It's a wacky, non-D.C.-like, place!

Okay, let's be fair. Maybe not much else is going on in the world. So let's flip to the Metro section. Surely in a city that Donald Rumsfeld just called statistically more dangerous than Baghdad, something interesting happened. Sure enough -- at the top of a page, a story about earthworms, and how the nonstop rain we've endured over the past few months is a Bad Thing for them. Maybe they could move to Iraq.

Remember, this is the paper of record in the nation's capital, the self-appointed watchdog of our public servants. They should be focusing on the big issues, the barnburners, the exposes -- oh, wait, I forgot to turn to the Style section. I stand corrected!

THE WORLD'S UPSIDE DOWN...

...when in the D.C. area, Newt Gingrich hawks his new novel about the (surprise!) Civil War at Barnes & Noble, while Hillary Clinton hawks her own book at Wal-Mart. No word, though, on whether they were handing out free tackle boxes.