Trying To Squash A Rumor Is Like

Natural Villains Are Hard To Come By, What With All The Shrinks And Social-scientist Types Threatening To Understand Everybody Into The Ground.

This Is What Holidays, Travels, Vacations Are About. It Is Not Really Rest Or Even Leisure We Chase. We Strain To Renew Our Capacity For Wonder To Shock Ourselves Into Astonishment Once Again.

The Rich Plankton Of Pop Heroes And Pop Villains On Which We Americans Are Accustomed To Feed, The Daily Media Soup Of Sports Figures, Ax Murderers, Politicians, And Rock Singers, The Ever-running River Of Celebs, Heavies, And Oddballs That We Use To Spice Up Our Own Relatively Humdrum Lives Has Of Late Become A Very Watery Gruel. Where Have All The Good Guys And Bad Guys Gone? Why Does Everyone Out There Look So Gray?

At Gatling-gun Tempo Word-perfect The First Time Out. The Journalistic Equivalent Of A High-wire Front Somersault Without A Net.

A Plane Is A Bad Place For An All-out Sleep, But A Good Place To Begin Rest And Recovery From The Trip To The Faraway Places You've Been, A Decompression Chamber Between Here And There. Though A Plane Is Not The Ideal Place Really To Think, To Reassess Or Reevaluate Things, It Is A Great Place To Have The Illusion Of Doing So, And Often The Illusion Will Suffice.