Newspapers gearing up for Bloomsday in June and Bloomberg should decree that high school graduates must recite a passage from Ulysses. Of course Joyce was a lunatic and his works resemble the incoherent writings of schizophrenics, but he uses words after all and words are the guage of a civilization. Does anyone read Piaget anymore?

Guess the fatwa on Salman Rushdie has expired and he will soon take a trophy wife. As a devotee of all cooking programs, the only thing worth watching on television, we are acquainted with Padma Lakshmi whose bare midriff so close to the curry pot and slow, velvet delivery distracted us from the correct ingredients for garam masala.

Last night an interviewer interviewing an interviewer (Larry King and Barbara Walters) on TeeVee, both with identical IQ's.