But if you ask the doctors, many will tell you that New York patients have become more demanding than ever, as women who devoted their 20's and 30's to their careers are coming in expecting their doctors to work miracles with their reproductive plumbing.

What everyone agrees with, however, is that in the last few years, the pressures of managed care and rising malpractice-insurance rates (one of the highest in medicine) have drastically changed the lives of ob/gyns.

"We get reimbursed less and less and have to pay more malpractice," said Ching-Lynn Chen, who sees up to 30 patients a day at OBGYN Westside in Manhattan. "You have to see more patients to make the same amount you used to. But our patient population is demanding, and they expect things to stay the same."

"I've got patients who just sort of won't stop talking," said Frances Mary McGill, a former director of gynecology at St. Vincent's Hospital who now has a private practice. "I think New York women are smart, savvy business women, and they expect and want every question answered, and they want clarification and reclarification. Sometimes I say, 'We've covered this three times, so if you want to continue to discuss this, I could have you make another appointment,' but they don't like that. They get annoyed."

Mary Conners-Ashmore started practicing before the current health-maintenance organization trend hit New York and made many fee-for-services policies obsolete.

"Now we all know there's no money in medicine anymore," said Dr. Conners-Ashmore. "But at the beginning, it was a shocker. You really need to see a certain number of patients per week, day and month, and have a required number of deliveries, to make obstetrics worth it." She opted out of the H.M.O. system, dropped obstetrics and concentrated on a private gynecology practice.

"In Manhattan, women put off their child bearing, which means that they're more informed when they do have their baby," she said. "They have more education on average, and they don't want to be marginalized, and they don't want a paternalistic approach." She said it's impossible for doctors starting out of residency now not to be with big insurance companies. "I went into medicine to take care of women," she said. "But thoughtful ob/gyns really are sort of out of the game."

Although the overall birth rate is down in New York City, the birth rate for older women is on the rise. According to the Health Department, 30,403 woman between the ages of 35 and 39 got pregnant in 2002, up from 27,379 in 1995. For women over 40, the number jumped from 7,313 in 1995 to 9,820 in 2002. (Nationally, the C.D.C. reports that birth rates for women aged 40 to 44 years rose 5 percent between 2002 and 2003.)

"It's sociological," said Jessica, a 39-year-old magazine writer with two kids who lives in Brooklyn. "If everyone is 22, they're having routine tests. If you're having your first baby at 40, there are more complications. Women expect their doctors to understand that this is the most tender moment of their life, but they're seeing people come in and out on a conveyor."

After a bad experience with her gynecologist, Jessica said she decided to find someone new. "I had this test that was really awful, and I got kind of nauseous and sick, but they said they needed the room. So I left the hospital and had to sit down on the sidewalk in New York City. Someone came up to me and said, 'Do you need a doctor?' And I was like, 'My doctor did this to me!'"

She found a new ob/gyn who spends time with patients, and when it comes to the long waits, she tries to change her personality.

"You have to enter the zone," she said. "Normally I would be furious, but this is such an important thing that all rules of engagement are suspended." She said she can always spot the first-timers-the ones huffing and puffing and looking at their watches. "I always see these high-powered women come in and get furious," she said. "But if you find a great doctor, you have to be willing to put up with it, because what's more important in your life?"

Scheduling an appointment at the Soho Medical Group wasn't easy for Janet, a graphic designer. Several of her friends with more high-powered jobs than her own had put off a routine checkup for years, since they couldn't expect to schedule an appointment over their lunch hour and return to the office much before closing.

When she finally complained angrily to her doctor after her fifth or sixth two-hour-plus wait, her doctor said, "Wow, you're really tense. Maybe you have a chemical imbalance." The doctor then ordered up about $400 worth of non-coverable blood work.

If some gynecologists are silent and cold, others are alarmingly chatty. When Christina, a radio producer, went to an Upper West Side gynecologist for a routine yeast infection, she spent most of the visit trying not to cry.

"She asked me where I met my boyfriend, and how soon I had sex with him," said Christina. "Then she asked me what I knew about him, and if I slept with a lot of people. She kept acting like I was a slut, and made me feel like if I had gotten anything from him, it was my fault. I was already feeling very vulnerable, and was afraid of her touching me after that because she seemed so powerful and scary. She's a gynecologist, it happens every single day; she should know how to proceed with caution. When I lay down and put my legs up, I was totally terrified."

When she moved to New York for a magazine job, Jen picked a gynecologist out of her health-care book and made an appointment. She found the battery of questions about her diet and sex life a little abrasive, but figured that this was New York. But the worst was yet to come.

"As soon as she saw my Brazilian, she started talking about how this is something men impose on women, the way men in China used to have women bind their feet and men in Africa made women remove their clitorises," said Jen. "It made me uncomfortable, and looking back, I wish I had decided to leave right then."

One doctor told Leslie, an office manager, that she had beautiful, perky breasts-right before feeling them for lumps. Then there was the doctor who offered a play-by-play during his examination of Samantha, an illustrator: "He stuck his finger in and said, 'Oooh, nice and tight,'" said Samantha. "Afterward I felt uneasy and confused, like: 'Is a doctor supposed to-or allowed to-say that?'"

Julie, a writer, had to clench her teeth through her doctor's political rant.

"Right in the middle of the most vulnerable part of the examination-feet in stirrups, legs spread, hand rammed up me-he started ranting about how much he hated Hillary Clinton," said Julie. "What was so unnerving about it was the obvious misogyny-because the only train of thought I could come up with for this sudden and bizarre tirade was that he was literally thinking 'cunt' as he was examining one-which of course made him think of the junior Senator from New York."

Catherine Monk, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who treats patients dealing with stress and psychological issues related to pregnancy and fertility, said that the kind of med students who go into gynecology don't always have the caretaker personality.

"My assumption is that sometimes people go into fields to control something and make it right," said Ms. Monk. "That can be antithetical to asking, 'How are you?'"

She said she often hears patients complaining that they feel like their doctors are asking "How is your uterus?" instead of "How are you?" But she added that she also understood the reasons a doctors might not ask such an open-ended question-it's uncomfortable, the doctor is under tremendous pressure, and if the patient answers "Not good," it can mean more work for the doctor, such as giving the patient a referral to a shrink.

It's not that hard to find a new gynecologist if you don't like the way you're being treated. Once pregnant, though, leaving is no longer an option. Most women feel that if they can't make the relationship work, they're the ones who are going to suffer. So most of the time, they suck it up.

Elizabeth, a hotel inspector, gained 60 pounds with her first child and used to dread her appointments.

"If I gained too much weight one week, my doctor would say, 'Looks like someone had a good week!'" she said. "I burst into tears just about every other week."

Another gynecologist on the Upper East Side who feels strongly about weight gain simply places a sticker of a pink pig on her patients' charts if she thinks they've gained too much in a given week.

When Ellen, a TV executive, noticed that one of the partners in her medical group at Beth Israel, Dr. Allan Zarkin, was acting like Don Rickles during an appointment, she didn't worry too much, because he wasn't her primary doctor. But when her primary doctor went off duty an hour before she went into labor, Dr. Zarkin was next in line.

"I guess I have a baby-friendly body or something," said Ellen. "Because he looked at me and goes, 'Oh, this one's like the midtown tunnel!' Even in my daze, I remember my mother and husband being horrified."

When it came time for the episiotomy discussion, Dr. Zarkin said he thought it would be a good idea: "I told him I didn't want one, and he said, 'But I can sew you up-you'll be tighter than you were.'" As luck would have it, he also happened to be on call for her next baby. A few years later, he made tabloid-headline news for carving his initials into the stomach of a patient. Ellen found a new gynecologist.

A book editor named Holly was so disgusted by her gynecologist, she sued. On July 3 of the Fourth of July weekend, her doctor told her that she had an ectopic pregnancy and asked her to come in on Monday. She also told her not to move around much over the holiday weekend. Holly asked if this was because she could die if she moved around, and the doctor said it was possible.

"I told her she had to see me immediately," said Holly. "But she said she was going to the beach and hung up." Holly found another doctor to treat her that day, and then wrote a letter to the original partnership asking for her money back, as well as their word that this would never happen to another patient.

"They wouldn't give me their word, or the $100, so I sued them in small-claims court," said Holly. "She had to take half a day off work, her malpractice insurance probably tripled, and of course I won."

Margot, a screenwriter, liked her doctor as a gynecologist, but hated her as an obstetrician. When she noticed low fetal movement in her 32nd week, she checked herself into the hospital and spent the day hooked up to a fetal-heart monitor. She saw her own obstetrician the next day, who said, "Whoa, this looks like pre-eclampsia to me."

"I asked her what that meant," said Margot, "and she said, 'It means your baby isn't getting enough oxygen and you both could die.' I was so vulnerable, I didn't know how to defend myself. And you can't change doctors mid-treatment, so I knew I couldn't make a big stink and make her dislike me."

On the street, Margot tried to reach her husband, but she couldn't find a cab and her cell phone was in a dead zone. When she finally reached her husband, he did some research and soon realized that she had a very good chance of not dying.

At the beginning of the pregnancy, Margot and her husband had felt lucky to have found their doctor. "She was dry and terse and not very shakable," said Margot's husband. "We liked how she was off the cuff and not making a big deal of things. But that's what sort of backfired."

Dr. Linda Mullen, the director of Women's Mental Health at New York Presbyterian Hospital Columbia University Medical Center, said she hears lots of complaints about too-short exams from patients. She teaches a course to ob/gyn residents specifically on how to talk to patients, but acknowledged that this is simply the nature of the job.

"The training for ob/gyn teaches you how to get in and solve the problem and do things quickly," said Dr. Mullen. "And once you get out, you have to see a lot of patients, because all of it is financed with managed care. Then because malpractice costs are what other specialists are paid for their salaries, there's increased pressure to see a lot of patients. Getting the baby out and doing the surgery is a risky business, and at the same time it's a field where you're expected to talk to people like a primary-care physician."

Lisa, a psychologist with a private practice, had been trying to get pregnant for seven months before leaving her gynecologist because she wasn't getting the attention she wanted. She found her doctor cold and hard to communicate with, and she felt like she was always mad at her.

"One time she returned a call and I said, 'Thanks for calling back, do you have a minute?' She responded, 'Thirty seconds.' I know I'm one of those typical New York women who's overanxious about getting pregnant, but my heart just sunk. When I explained that it's just really hard every month when I get my period, she didn't say anything. I finally said, 'I guess you don't understand.' And she still didn't say anything.

"I completely thought, 'This is my fault,'" said Lisa. But when her shrink told her to find someone new, she decided to take his advice. "Pediatricians spend 50 percent of their job calming down parents," said Lisa. "And a gyn spends at least a third of their time dealing with people like me. So, you know, I don't know-deal with it."

"They're getting appropriate care, but because of the pressures, there's less time to explain," said Dr. McGill. "There's less time to meet emotional needs. And there's a lot of emotionality involved in female issues."

"Most people don't even know what their buccal fat pad is," said Maggie, describing the pockets of skin above the molars in each cheek. "But it's the kind of thing you notice every day when you look in the mirror. At most, someone might think you lost a tiny bit of weight, but you see it yourself."

Then Maggie decided she wanted bigger breasts.

"My mom was more agreeable than my dad," said Maggie. "My dad was more like, 'You're beautiful the way you are, blah blah blah,' but my mom was more able to understand. I struggled a lot in middle school and was very unhappy. I guess she understood that if there was something that would make me feel better, what was the harm?"

Maggie waited until she finished high school and had her breasts enlarged from a small B cup to a 34 C.

"I had gotten to a point where I was fairly satisfied with my body," said Maggie. "I finally got over thinking you had to be super skinny, but I still felt disproportionate, and that that subtracted from my femininity."

"I was totally fine with it," said Maggie's mom, who had her own nose done decades ago. "I could see what she was perceiving, I thought there would be an improvement, and there was. She never thought it was a way to get happy or get guys. When we talked about it, I told her you can't just work on the outside, you have to work on the inside as well. And I feel like she's done that."

The days of the basic nose job on your 16th birthday are over. Rhinoplasty may still be the most customary procedure for teenagers, but many New York City teens see no reason to stop there. Between advertising, the Internet, daytime talk shows and reality TV, plastic surgery has become about as mysterious as a haircut. In rising numbers, teenagers are having procedures that include neck liposuction ($3,500), buccal-fat-pad excisions ($3,500), collagen injections ($450), Botox injections ($500), gynecomastia (male breast reduction) ($6,000), eyelid surgery ($3,500), otoplasty (ear surgery) ($4,000) and laser hair removal ($600). In New York, they come loaded with their parents' money and tell doctors that they want to look like Jennifer Aniston, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, J. Lo. Interviews with several plastic surgeons who practice in the world capital of cosmetic surgery-the East Side of Manhattan-indicated that teens in search of medically enhanced beauty are on the upswing.

"It's a decades-old ritual in certain parts of the United States for a 15- or 16-year-old to have rhinoplasty," said Dr. Lawrence Bass. "But now that we have a constellation of faster, safer, more reliable cosmetic procedures, reasonable body modification is being adopted by more and more teenagers."

"It's unfortunate, but not really a surprise," said Ophira Edut, editor of Body Outlaws: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity . "Teenagers are a big demographic that marketers are targeting, and they're being given a very difficult standard to achieve. It's a very airbrushed, glamorous look; it's not an image you can hit the gym and get. The direction the beauty standard is going in is one that probably does take surgery to achieve."

"You have to be ready to deal when you do have a procedure, especially with guys with breast augmentation," said Maggie (whose name, like those of the other young women quoted in this article, has been changed). "But I feel great about it and would definitely keep doing this."

The teens, of course, are just following a trend eagerly embraced by their parents and older siblings. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, there was a 48 percent increase in cosmetic procedures in the U.S. between 2000 and 2001. Most of the surgery (44 percent) was for people between 35 and 50. And while kids 18 and under were responsible for just 3.5 percent of surgeries, that represents an increase from 2.9 percent in 1997.

The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery has no official position on teenagers and elective plastic surgery, but parental consent is required to operate on anyone under 18. It's up to the surgeon to evaluate whether a child is emotionally mature enough for surgery. Sometimes it's hard to determine exactly who it is that wants the surgery.

"One of the most important things in dealing with teenagers is to know what their motivation is," said Dr. Lawrence Reed. "Sometimes the child is just sitting in the chair and I say, 'What do you think?' And they say, 'Whatever my mom thinks.' That's not good enough for me. Even the most well-meaning parents have visions that are not shared by their children. It's one thing to make them take piano lessons, but surgery's different."

"It's not uncommon to see kids brought in by a parent who is pushing a surgery because they're compulsive about their own weight," said Dr. Robert M. Goldwyn, a clinical professor of surgery at Harvard University. "It's amazing how it breaches common sense. I remember a mother who brought her child in for rhinoplasty because she was concerned that her child wasn't popular enough."

"Sometimes you'll see a family in which the parents have relatively normal-appearing noses, and you can't figure out where the kid got his nose," said Dr. Alan Gold. "And then it turns out both parents had their noses done growing up."

Dr. Kenneth Francis said he thinks cosmetic surgery for teenagers can be seen as a welcome trend. "I'm all for it," he said. "Sometimes it brings them out of a social shell that they're stuck under. I've seen a number of teenagers become extroverts after having been introverts their whole life. There's controversy in everything that we do as plastic surgeons. I just happen to be of the camp that if I can make someone feel better about themselves, then I should do that."

Liposuction, traditionally a procedure for the extremely overweight, has gone micro and is now one of the most fashionable procedures for 18-and-unders.

"It's not so much about changing your weight; it's about changing your shape," said Dr. Howard Sobel, who said he sees between 15 and 20 teens a week, up about 30 percent from five years ago.

Dr. Sobel said he performs lipo for the neck, hips, thighs, chin, arms and even ankles.

"We had a couple of kids who had these big ankles, those ones where your calf runs into your ankle," he said. "Kids who didn't want to put on a short skirt because they have funny-looking legs. Or they think they do."

In micro, or "designer," liposuction, metal rods the size of small straws are used to remove the fat.

"Some kids are just genetically predisposed to have a certain shape," said Dr. Sobel. "And they're trying to change their love handles and double chins with this small little half-hour procedure. They have a bruise for three to five days, and then they go back to school."

Wanted: J. Lo's Butt

Dr. Bass said that anyone perceived as attractive in pop culture is in demand for imitation.

"I see a lot of Jennifer Aniston's nose," he said. "Which, of course, is an operated-on nose."

He said there's been a wave of teens requesting Jennifer Lopez's round bottom and curvy hips.

"I personally don't do buttock or calf implants on teens or adults," said Dr. Bass. "But we will sometimes do fat injections. If you leave the saddlebags when you cut into the waist with lipo, you're reducing, but also getting a curvier look."

"I've had several requests for buttock augmentation," said Dr. Francis, "especially in the Hispanic teenage population. But I've not recommended an operation for any of them."

"A few years ago, everyone wanted to look like Sharon Stone," said Dr. Alan Matarasso. "Now, younger teenagers are coming in asking for Britney Spears' figure and facial features. Most teens want the lip enlargements and the buccal fat pad removed. They do this to look thinner in the face, which has always been desirable. But the surgery didn't exist. Thirty years ago, they would take out their wisdom teeth; 20 years ago, they'd get cheek implants; today, they do this."

Many plastic surgeons refuse to perform the buccal-fat-pad extraction.

"You don't want to make them look great at 17 and not at 22," said Dr. Gerald Pitman.

"Buccal fat pads should never be removed, because you really need them when you're old," said Dr. Patricia Wexler. "It gives a sophisticated look, which is great when you're 26-but when you're 46, you look gaunt."

She said that teenagers come to her for liposuction of their saddle bags and love handles, but frequently it's body-appropriate.

"Rather than have eating disorders, they'd rather deal with that one body area than starve themselves all over," said Dr. Wexler.

Dr. Danny Fong performs eyelid surgery on teenagers.

"The eyelid surgery is mostly for Asian kids who have single eyelid folds and want a double eyelid fold," said Dr. Fong. "It creates a fold in the upper eyelid-about 50 percent of Asian people don't have that fold."

Dr. Debra Jaliman said lip injections are trendy for teens in her office.

"The other thing I found interesting is girls having laser hair removal for their bikini line," she said. "Even young kids, starting at 12, who don't want to ever have to shave or wax."

After a life spent hating her small lips, Jane, a senior at a private school on the Upper East Side, started getting collagen injections from Dr. Jaliman when she was 16. On her first visit, she asked the doctor not to make her look like Goldie Hawn in The First Wives Club . Dr. Jaliman applied numbing cream, gave her a stress ball for the pain and injected the collagen with tiny needle pricks. Jane was pleased with her new lips-enough to repeat the process every four months for two years. Until a few weeks ago.

At the beginning of Jane's last visit, Dr. Jaliman told her about a new solution called cymetra, which lasts more than twice as long as collagen. Jane agreed to try it, and then immediately regretted her decision.

"An hour after I got it, I was just like, 'Oh my God.' I don't know, I've been O.K. with my looks for a while now, and I guess I realized it wasn't really a big enough deal to bother with any more. I realized I'm going to have these for nine months, when I start college. I guess I'm stuck with them. Also, knowing how much money it costs, it just felt ridiculous. I actually could have bought a car."

Jane said photos of models hang from the walls of her school's senior lounge.

"People have a lot of money on the Upper East Side and are obsessed with that sort of thing," said Jane. "It's all over the place. Plastic surgery isn't that normal, but pretty close to it."

Alicia, a teenager on the Upper West Side, started gaining weight at 15. She joined a gym, but hated the way her body was changing. She researched liposuction online and scheduled a consultation with a doctor whose Web site she liked. The week after she turned 18, she used her birthday money to have chin and stomach lipo and her buccal fat pads removed.

"I just wanted to do those areas," said Alicia. "I don't have a problem with other areas; I just thought those protrude a little bit too much." She said her boyfriend didn't want her to do it, that he told her to diet and exercise.

"But I guess I just wanted a quick fix," said Alicia. "I was so pumped to do it, I wasn't even scared."

She hasn't told any of her friends and is wearing baggy sweat clothes for now.

"No part of me regrets it," said Alicia. "I feel great. It depends on how low your self-esteem is. If you feel like, 'I'm ugly because I have this fat,' then don't do it. But I don't have low self-esteem. I just wanted to look nice, and you can't wear nice stuff if you have a stomach."

Like their Vogue- toting older sisters, teen girls are also having Botox injections (freeze-dried botulinum that temporarily paralyzes facial muscles)-even though they're years away from having any wrinkles to smooth.

"They're starting Botox early because what happens is, some of them have a tendency when they smile or frown to wrinkle," said Dr. Sobel. "So even if you do it later, you've already etched your skin. If you do the Botox early, then the skin won't wrinkle on itself and you won't get an etched line."

"Anybody who does Botox on a young person should be shot," said Dr. Helen Colen, who said she regularly turns down requests from teenagers. "Today's kids have been forced to grow up so quickly. Everybody wants to be perfect, and everybody is judged according to what they look like. I've had kids who come in and want their old nose back. Or they bring a picture of what they used to look like and say that they want to restore it."

"I'm Italian, German and Greek," said a young woman, Hannah, who started having Botox injections when she was a senior in high school on the Upper East Side. Hannah's mother helps pay for the injections, around $500 dollars every three to six months.

"When I frown, there's a huge hunk of skin that makes like a third person," said Hannah. "First I tried not making that face, but then I got the Botox in between the eyebrows, and when I made the face, it was like the most amazing thing. It didn't paralyze me or look unnatural. I look the way I was supposed to look."

For good and bad, the Internet has changed this basic truth. About 400 self-styled pro-anorexia (or "pro-ana") Web sites currently exist online. They are places where girls at every stage of the disease go to seek out sympathetic sufferers and feel accepted. But what worries doctors is that the sites often encourage girls to embrace their disease, to lose even more weight, rather than seek treatment. Some of the sites describe themselves as "pro-choice" or "pro-tolerant," and have names like "The Thin Page," "Starving for Perfection" and "Ana by Choice."

The tone varies from site to site, but most include the same elements: "thinspiration" photos of waifish models and actresses (Kate Moss is everywhere); tips for losing weight ("Stand up and move constantly. Obsessively tapping or fidgeting burns 10 percent more calories"); tips for hiding one's behavior ("Leave a dirty dish lying around the house every few days for your housemates to scold you about. This is normal behavior … and it will create the illusion that you're eating"); body-mass index counters; commandments like "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels"; daily journals; and open message boards where girls talk freely and near-anonymously about how they feel.

Operating and surfing pro-ana and "pro-ed" (for "pro–eating disorder") Web sites may be a form of therapy for many girls, but psychotherapist Steven Levenkron, who wrote the anorexic's bible, The Best Little Girl in the World , in 1978 and Anatomy of Anorexia in 2000, is concerned that the sites don't address the significant gradations of the illness.

"The problem is, there are lots of girls who are very treatable," said Mr. Levenkron. "But when they get onto these sites, they're a little less treatable. The girls who run these sites are lonely, and instead of calling themselves sick, they get to feel like they have a career. Managing a Web site produces the illusion of managing a radio station-they feel like they're hooked into the world. And many of them have no social life, and their only hope is to find other anorexics. But it's negative energy coalescing: It seduces girls into anorexia, and makes the girl who runs it feel less lonely."

"Today was harsh," begins the journal entry of the host of a pro-ana Web site. "I was doing so well, even on the way to complete recovery. But I find myself feeling completely and utterly disgusting. I am consumed by this feeling of not being good enough and it's killing me. I can't get past it and I hate it. This morning was different then mornings of late, I woke up wanting to be someone else. I mean, I have always wanted to be someone else, someone better, but this time was different, terrifying. I woke up and wanted to die. I cried so horribly this morning that I think it was enough to last a thousand years. When I finally got my self composed I went to my full length mirror and lost it again. What has become of me. I have completely let myself and all my goals slip away. I am so gross."

Most sites include disclaimers that they may "trigger" self-destructive behavior. One site hosted by an 18-year-old high-school senior in California reads: "Warning! This is a pro-anorexia site. If you have an eating disorder or feel you might otherwise be upset or triggered by the information on this site then please leave. Please do not misuse the information on this site. It is meant to help with weight loss, not suicide. Don't let your eating disorder get out of hand. I will not be held responsible for your actions. I believe each person has to make their own choices about what they put into their body and this website is to help educate people about their options. I believe people with eating disorders should have the right to continue with their behaviors if they want. Eating disorders are coping mechanisms, albeit maladaptive ones, but usually they are a last resort. They are used when nothing else works. If you take away a person's method of coping they will no longer be able to live. Please realize that this is not a pro-death site. It is merely to help people who suffer from anorexia find friendship in a place where they will not be judged. Understand, this is not the kind of diet you go on to lose five pounds. It is a serious illness and there are consequences to whatever choice you make. Please weigh your options carefully. Thank you."

In July 2001, the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders asked big servers like Yahoo, which was hosting more than 100 pro-ana sites, to shut them down. They did, but it was only temporary, as the owners found other Web sites or private servers as hosts.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, five million to 10 million girls and women, and another one million boys and men, suffer from eating disorders in the U.S. For 90 percent of women, the disease begins between the ages of 11 and 22. The disease has a 30 percent full recovery rate; between 5 and 20 percent will die from it-among the highest mortality rates of any psychological illness. Bulimia, or "mia," tends to develop in the later teens, and is more common, affecting 1 to 3 percent of women.

A pro-ana host named Kessa said she stumbled upon her first pro-ana Web site three years ago, and that while the pictures of dangerously thin girls scared her, she felt "morbidly curious."

"Eating disorders are often very isolating diseases, and at the time I didn't have many friends," said Kessa. "I was dealing with my own food issues, and becoming pro-ana seemed like a great idea. I felt it would help me make friends while making me beautiful. To this day, my favorite thing about the pro-ana world is the sense of community. We are really tight-knit. We support each other in everything, even recovery."

Kessa said that after a while, she became desensitized to the photos of too-thin women and convinced herself that they were beautiful.

"I would stare at these models and tell myself over and over again that they were beautiful and perfect, and that I could be just like them. Eventually, even very emaciated girls didn't scare me," she said.

She kept a journal online that led her to start a pro-ana site. She had to change the site's address every time her parents discovered it, but as soon as she turned 18, she got a credit card and purchased her own domain.

"My goal with my Web site is to make people with eating disorders feel less alone and to be able to make the choice not to get better-and still be accepted in at least one place in our judgmental world," said Kessa.

Clara (not her real name) said that she's been anorexic since she was 3, and that she got it from her mother, who used to cook her tons of food but never ate any of it. Clara goes to college in New York and works part-time as a makeup artist in a department store. She has a boyfriend, but only one female friend. She runs a pro-ana site.

"I really, really like it because it's something to belong to, and you can meet new people every single day," said Clara. "Someone will just I.M. you and say, 'Do you want to start a fast on the same day?', and you talk to each other about the fast and how it's going and if we've allowed ourselves to eat. And if we decide to allow ourselves to eat one carrot, we'll eat the carrot together."

Dr. Rachel Russell, a clinician who specializes in eating disorders in Danbury, Conn., sees the pro-ana sites as an honest expression of what anorexia is, complete with the ambivalence.

"There's some desire for community," said Dr. Russell. "But there's also a kind of wanting to smear their pain, like, 'Look at this-I'll make you look at this!' This is because a lot of important people in their lives aren't recognizing their pain."

She thinks it would be a mistake to outlaw the sites.

"When you have an eating disorder, being able to articulate anything about the experience is valuable on some level," she said. "I also think it's valuable for people to have access to other people's experiences-it can have the effect of seeing oneself in a mirror."

Holly Hoff, the director of programs at the National Eating Disorder Association, disagrees. She wants the sites banned.

"We recognized right away that the fact that this information was on the Internet was like putting a loaded gun in the hands of someone who's suicidal," said Ms. Hoof. She added that the sites are increasing the stress on girls who literally may be dying to be thin.

Nora (not her real name) is a 16-year-old junior in high school in New York, who said she's been posting on pro-ana sites since her mother got the Internet last year. She was very clear about what led her to her anorexia: two instances of abuse when she was a child. She explained that because she was hurt, she feels entitled to keep on hurting.

"It's a selfish thing," said Nora. "I just want to suffer right now. I don't want to die-I just want to express my hurt.

"It's too personal in real life," she continued. "So by putting it online, I feel like I can detach it enough and get it out and feel better about it without having to comfort somebody else in person. Because I'm not emotionally stable enough to do that, and neither are they."

Nora said she has no desire to meet the people she talks to online, because she's scared of finding out they lied.

"I'm afraid of finding out that someone who talked to me and comforted me and related to me is a fat girl," she said.

Nora divided anorexics into three general groups: "There are suicidals, who are just barely committing to living; the people who are in denial and don't think they're going to die; and the people like me, who realize there's a problem and don't know how to get over it," she said.

What they all have in common is a generational facility with computers and the Internet that allows them to evade their parents' scrutiny. One Web site cautions: "DESTROY ALL EVIDENCE …. Sign out of your mailbox and clear the history before you get off of the Internet. You know how the address fills itself in automatically sometimes? Imagine a link to www.anorexicweb.com popping up when you're [ sic ] mother's trying to rent a car online."

Nora said she uses a secret e-mail address to talk to people, and surfs the Web with a browser her mother doesn't realize is on their computer.

"She's not that into the computer," said Nora. "She's an accountant who should have been a dancer, and that's all she talks about."

"We spent the whole entire night finding out how we were in love with the same books and music," said Sophie, who has long, dirty-blond hair and heavy-lidded eyes that are never completely open. "She was new and she was pretty and mysterious, with her dark hair-all the guys flocked to her."

The following Friday night, they went to Anna's house, raided her parents' liquor cabinet, and ended up walking up and down lower Broadway, talking to strangers and giggling. They were holding hands and hugging, and at one point, Anna was leaning up against a store window when Sophie put her arms around her neck and kissed her.

"She put her hands around my neck and kissed me back, and that was it," said Sophie.

They hailed a cab to take them to a friend's party in Brooklyn and made out the whole ride there.

"A lot of kisses are meaningless," said Anna, who looks like a less sweet version of Katie Holmes. "But there are those few that really just fill you up and make you feel warm and happy."

Sophie and Anna (their names have been changed) arrived at their friend's brownstone and joined everyone in the den, sitting down on either side of a guy Anna had a crush on.

"We were kissing each other across him, and then we both started kissing him," said Sophie.

"We were being quite outward about it," said Anna. "It was kind of obnoxious. But there's this thing about enjoying it-and doing it for attention. And it was both."

After that, Anna and Sophie continued to spend all their time together-but even now that they were physically involved, they never thought of themselves as lesbians. They both knew that their romance would probably come to an end if either one of them met a guy she wanted to date.

While many New York girls may act like lesbians to both mock and attract young men, there is a definite group of young women who are finding something in a sexualized female bond that they don't get from the attentions of the average high-school boy. While "L.U.G.'s" (lesbians until graduation) became a term of derision in the 1990's-applied to college women who slept with women on campus but would immediately link up with socially appropriate males once they left college-the trend seems to have worked its way into a younger crowd. (At least among girls. Boys interested in publicly experimenting with other boys would find themselves in a far less "glamorous" subgroup.)

"Day-long, week-long, month-long: There are many types of lesbians at my school," said "Tina," a junior at a private school on the Upper East Side. Tina first experienced kissing her girlfriends in seventh grade, at sleepover parties.

"The girls in junior high are more experimenting with a partner that they think is safe," she said. "It's like practicing for guys. But girls who are in high school do it more for novelty purposes. A lot of popular girls do it. They just figure out that it's something guys think is hot, and they use that to their advantage. It's totally O.K. to be a real lesbian, but poser lesbians are usually a kind of insecure girl who feels like she's not really special for any reason-and I know I kind of sound like Dr. Phil."

"It's not really that big a deal," said Tanya Lewaller, the president of Perspective, a club that deals with gender and sexuality issues, at Hunter College High School on the Upper East Side. "I know girls who are really lesbian-that's their sexual preference-and I've met girls who do both. It's cool that people can experiment with it, and in high school they can try to find out what they feel about it and what's their orientation. And it's good that this is a society that's open about it. It feels normal at Hunter, but once you go outside of New York City, it's not normal."

"I think it's more accepted in the city than the country, because there are more alternative types around," said Tina. "It sounds cheesy, but it's true. Last summer at camp, all the little suburban girls would call me a lesbian if I undressed in front of them in our bunk."

Anna and Sophie admit they'd enjoyed the attention that came with being a girl-girl couple in high school.

"At school, they said I was this wannabe-lesbian straight girl trying to be really cool," said Anna. "And maybe, you know, I was. People put on the front so much at our age that it's fantastic to be fluid-but then everybody still has the same reservations we've always had."

"There's still a big thrill that you get from being that girl, the girl that does that, " said Sophie. "Even when everyone around you is trashing you."

"The pop-culture terrain about sexuality has changed, and I think it's a lot more permissible to be gay-ish than it used to be," said Jennifer Baumgardner, co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future. "Not permanently gay, but gay-ish. So I think young people are trying these things on. If you ever go to Ani DiFranco concerts, they're filled with girl-girl couples between the ages of 12 and 20, and I'm sure a lot of them are not going to end up gay."

Girl-girl love scenes are increasingly unremarkable in movies like 1999's Cruel Intentions (in which Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar's characters share a slow and deliberate French kiss) and the current Femme Fatale , in which Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' character seduces Rie Rasmussen.

"I think teenagers always want to go to the edge," said Judith Ruskay Rabinor, Ph.D. "When I was a teenager, the place to go to was Europe. Now that's old hat, and they want to go to Katmandu. We're living in a sexually permissive time, and girls feel empowered enough and want to experiment. And a lot of girls are wary of commitments to guys. Girls often give up their power when they start dating. I think girls are so much more relational, and when a girl gets involved with a girl, the girl isn't just a big 'Duh.' The girl talks and cares and listens. It's not about rebellion-it's about exploration, and it's natural."

Ms. Baumgardner said she believes the more freedom there is to figure out sexuality, the better.

"There has been progress if they feel that they have more options and choices. Maybe there's a dynamic of sexual inequality at their school-where girls feel like they never have the upper hand, or that they're going to be a slut if they have sex. Or they don't know that having a sexual and romantic relationship with their sexual equals is healthy and liberating. In some ways you can even imagine, when you're making out with a girlfriend, what these things that are so amped up in the culture-like breasts and soft skin-are like. You get to objectify someone the same way you're objectified by men."

On a recent Saturday night, about a year after Sophie and Anna met at the ski house, Sophie, Anna, Anna's boyfriend Thomas and a girl named Eliza-now all juniors at the same private high school-were clustered on the floor of Sophie's bedroom in her parents' Gramercy Park apartment. Sophie was straddling Eliza, one of her best friends, giving her a back rub and fiddling with her straight blond hair. Anna was lying with her head on Thomas' legs.

"I'm not about straight and gay," said Anna, "I think that if you see something special in a person, that's all that matters. I've generally found those special things in guys, but Sophie and I were utterly and completely dependent on each other, and I really loved her."

"I spent every single day of my life with Anna," said Sophie. "And I treated her like I treated a guy. When she wouldn't call me, I'd be like, 'Why isn't she calling?' I was pretty much obsessed."

"I think where sexuality becomes malleable is where people are happier," said Sophie. "People realize that if this huge thing isn't so serious, and if we can go from being with a girl to being with a guy to back to a girl with fluidity, then everything becomes more fluid. Whenever I hook up with girls, I feel very empowered. And when I hook up with guys, I feel they have more power than me.

"You can just feel it," she continued. "Ten years ago, girls our age would be embarrassed if they ever got caught, but now many girls take advantage of it, as a situation to be seen as a total sex bomb. There are girls who are gay, there are girls who want attention, and there are girls like me, who just find people I've been attracted to and hook up with them. I mean, look at my friends-they're so pretty. Obviously you're attracted to them, because you spend so much time with them."

Sophie slipped into her closet to change her outfit for the fourth time. She emerged wearing a pair of skin-tight jeans and flopped down on her bed.

"I think girls who kiss each other to turn on the guys generally aren't attracted to each other," she said. "I see how they react to each other-they spend a lot of their time putting on lip gloss and push-up bras and all that jazz. The girls that go to my high school want to be the picture-perfect image of a girly-girl, because that's what guys are most attracted to-girls who are virginal and overflowing with femininity. They don't really like girls who speak their mind."

Sophie said she's sure she'll always fool around with girls, even when she's an adult, but that she has no interest in identifying herself as lesbian.

"I can pretty much assume that the girls who are gay in our school are very secretive about it," she said. "I know a girl in 10th grade who would never mention it to anyone-because they would believe her. I think for us, people just suspend their disbelief."

Anna and Sophie's physical relationship ended last spring, around the time Sophie met a guy she wanted to be her boyfriend. Anna started dating a guy in her grade a few months later. But the two remain best friends.

The most strangely poetic of crime thrillers, known chicly these days as films noir, also has one of the great movie titles, and features Robert Mitchum's first (and probably most) defining role for his screen persona, Jacques Tourneur's memorable 1947 romantic suspense classic Out of the Past [Monday, April 13, AMC, 54, 4:15 P.M.] . Mitchum is a former detective now working in a small-town garage, all in the hope that his past won't catch up with him. But it always does, especially the past you're trying so hard to forget: the vulnerable, lovely and very dangerous woman he fell for, acted enticingly by Jane Greer, and the smooth, lethal gangster she comes attached to, played to perfection by a young Kirk Douglas (only his fourth film).

The superbly constructed screenplay-with an extended flashback beautifully narrated by Mitchum-was done by Daniel Mainwaring, under his crime-author pseudonym Geoffrey Homes, and based on his own novel, Build My Gallows High , which remained the picture's title in Britain. (The story was remade, after a fashion, in 1984 as Against All Odds , starring Jeff Bridges.) The black-and-white photography by Nicholas Musuraca, much of it shot on real locations, is especially evocative, but the overall quality of passionate understatement, of a certain sadly clear-eyed empathy for all the doomed characters, comes from Jacques Tourneur.

This feeling can be found in all Tourneur's finest work, even with the most unlikely material, from a subtle horror picture like Cat People (1942) to a low-keyed Joel McCrea western like Stars in My Crown (1950). It is the Frenchman in him. Born in Paris, Tourneur grew up with the movies: His father, pioneer director-producer Maurice Tourneur-a student of sculptor Auguste Rodin-was (particularly during the silent era) one of the giants of the French and the American screen, and was most distinguished by his work on mystery-horror-fantasy films. The master Alfred Hitchcock himself told me that among the pictures that most impressed him as a youth was Maurice Tourneur's fantastic The Isle of Lost Ships (1923). As a youngster, Jacques first worked on his father's pictures, soon was off on his own and, being a good son, did not want to figuratively kill the father, so never seems to have aspired to the kind of size and popularity the elder Tourneur's work achieved. Instead, Jacques went the other way; his more modest accomplishments, however, have an equally enduring value, and Out of the Past is his best film.

The Sturges Watch: One-of-a-kind writer-director Preston Sturges' very first work in both jobs was his brilliant 1940 satiric comedy-drama about crooked politics, The Great McGinty [Monday, April 13, AMC, 54, 2:30 A.M.] . Veteran B-actor Brian Donlevy gives the performance of his career as an indigent drifter who gets paid to vote in a local election and impresses the bosses by managing to vote 37 times; he eventually becomes governor of the state! Love, however, makes him fight for truth in one fatal instance, proving Sturges' point that honesty can be disastrous for a politician. His exceptional screenplay won the first Academy Award ever given in the newly minted category, best original screenplay, and in the next three and a half years, he wrote and directed seven other comedies of equal resonance, sparkle and wit, from The Lady Eve (1940) to The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944).

The following films, on this week, have previously been highly recommended here (for a nominal fee, I am told The Observer will send you the relevant column): Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles in the Carol Reed-Graham Greene-Alex Korda Vienna-shot suspense masterwork, 1949's The Third Man [Thursday, April 9, WLNY, 55, 3 A.M.] ; Judy Garland and James Mason in George Cukor's show-biz musical tragedy, 1954's A Star Is Born [Saturday, April 11, AMC, 54, 3 A.M.] ; pre-accident Montgomery Clift as a priest suspected of murder, Anne Baxter in love with him, in Hitchcock's 1953 suspense-love story, I Confess [Sunday, April 12, AMC, 54, 1 A.M.] ; Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in Frank Capra's affecting 1941 antifascist drama Meet John Doe [Tuesday, April 14, WLNY, 55, 3 A.M.] .

Wednesday, April 8

Of all the unlikely places for a sudden expression of artistic integrity. Last week on Beverly Hills, 90210 , David (Brian Austin Green), who, let's recall, was folding shirts at the Gap a few months ago, almost broke up with Valerie (Tiffany Amber-Thiesson) because she introduced him to a commercial director. "I don't do armpit music, Val," David told her. "Do me a favor, don't do me any more favors." In the real world, a world in which Gus Van Sant directs Hanson videos, commercial directors come in all shapes and sizes. NYTV spoke to Harvey Wang, a still-life photographer and filmmaker who started making commercials a few years ago-maybe you know his 14 Ikea ads, like the one where the dog can't wake the parents, pees on the rug and the announcer asks, "Need a new rug?"

"One of the biggest hurdles is getting the job," said Mr. Wang. "I was at an agency yesterday, and there were 100 reels on the floor. They have to like your work, but a lot of the time they like two or three people, and it ends up being about what goes on at the meeting. It's the highest-paid form of filmmaking that there is; you make between $5,000 and $15,000 for a day's work. There's a lot of money in commercials, which is probably why every feature director wants to make them. They generally figure anywhere from $80,000 to $150,000 a day for the total budget for a shoot, so when it gets down to making these things, you hire great people. And it really is fun. There's a real adrenaline high to being in production. The stakes are very high, and there is tremendous time-pressure. For instance, they'll describe something in storyboards, and then a week later you're standing in a field watching a country fair being erected. A lot of what I bring to commercials is a sense of believability. It's about creating worlds that are identifiable and real." Mr. Wang's "Blimpies Bloopers" ads start airing today, through June 28 on ESPN, channel 8.

Thursday, April 9

Jonathan Benjamin plays Jonathan Katz's son Benjamin on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist . He spoke to NYTV from his Manhattan apartment. "Once a month, we meet in Boston and shoot an episode of Dr. Katz , which is primarily improvised," said Mr. Benjamin. He says he'd like to do the show forever, although he never watches it. Sometimes he spends time in Los Angeles, like last year when he made short films for MTV's The Jenny McCarthy Show . Right now, he's writing a sketch-comedy pilot for Comedy Central called The Half-Hour Network . "That will keep me in New York, which is sort of a goal of mine. It's actually my only goal." How much TV does he watch? "I'm really like a channel changer. I don't watch things consistently, I just sort of change channels until I fall asleep or take a nap, kind of like a lab animal. I used to have a girlfriend to force me to watch shows the whole way through. I'd have to get up and go pace in the kitchen. It used to be I could watch TV a lot easier because I remember being in Boston and not having cable, and though it wasn't as good, it made it more significant to watch something. Probably my favorite show of all time is Cannon , which is an old 70's detective show with William Conrad. I just like the idea of a really fat detective, really fat, too, he wasn't even moderately fat. I guess what it was, was the chase scenes. There's at least one chase scene per show, and that is great television."

NYTV called Dr. Will Miller, a pop-culture therapist, to ask how big a problem Jonathan Benjamin has. "It's not in the category of silent killer, but it's certainly a silent epidemic," he said. "Channel surfing is rooted in this neurotic idea that there's something you're missing. It's a compulsive disorder and a very common modern ailment, and there are definitely steps you can take to cure it. It doesn't necessarily affect your ability to be productive, but it affects your mood and your capacity to enjoy what you're doing, and that can have a long-term effect because if you never feel satisfaction and you always feel driven, it will affect the choices you make in your life. It's a challenge for people in this day and age to decide when the time is to say 'I've succeeded.'

"People are unable to detach from the pull to be stimulated. They can't just sort of rest in place where they are. It takes a lot of discipline to do that. It's a compulsion, like gambling, where you want to get the next thrill. It definitely qualifies as an addiction. If you're watching it compulsively, the way Jonathan is describing, you're fearful of missing something and so you can't enjoy any of it. And that's what Jon does, that's classic Jon."

How can it be cured? "With any compulsion or phobia, you must force yourself to detach. I would say to Jon, Jon needs to turn off the TV and force himself to go out and engage in some other activity. And if you can't do it alone, call up a friend and say 'I'm a compulsive viewer and I can't help myself, please come over to my house and take me out.' That's one reason people are into nostalgia TV, because they can find rest. If they come to a Brady Bunch , it breaks the spell. You're in a frenzy to find something better and if you find something familiar, you can let the rhythm break." Today, Jonathan Katz analyzes the stand-up comedians, and TV writers, Louis C.K., Ron Lynch and Fred Stoller. [Comedy Central, 45, 8 A.M.]

Friday, April 10

Rodney Dangerfield, missing in action for the last couple of years, flies to Burbank, Calif., from his hometown Nashville to appear on the Tonight Show With Jay Leno . [WNBC, 4, 11:30 P.M.]

Saturday, April 11

When Saturday Night Live called up Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine , and asked him to appear in a skit about all the Clinton junk, he said Yes. No stranger to TV, from 1988 to 1991 he hosted a talk show called Bookmark on PBS where authors sat around and talked about books, and he frequently appears on Washington Journal to talk about the news with Brian Lamb. SNL even sent Mr. Lapham the script and let him make a few changes. "I thought all of it was fun," said Mr. Lapham from Harper's . "I like the wit of the show. They make it very easy for you, and it was better than I expected." Mr. Lapham has his own idea for a show. "I would like to do a show on history, kind of a talk show. It would be a show with a Nightline kind of format, but instead of doing it with politicians, you'd have historians. You'd start with the week's news-war in Africa, White House scandal-and then work backward with three or four historians. You could work the war in the Balkans all the way back to the Romans or take the confusions about the lack of overarching Christian faith and take that back to Charlemagne or into medieval times or whatever was the judgment of the historians present. I'm an addict of C-SPAN. I like the History Channel and A&E and Bravo. I spend a lot of time at the high end of the dial, if you know what I mean." How about the bear hug from the guy in the band Third Eye Blind at the end of the Saturday Night Live taping? "Oh, that was nice. I didn't know who he was, but I was told by my younger associates that it was a cultural moment." Tonight on the old NBC war horse, Greg Kinnear and the band All Saints. [WNBC, 4, 11:30 P.M.]

Sunday, April 12

Carey Zeiser directed and produced Madonna Rising , a nostalgic tour of Madonna's old stomping ground: her apartment on East Fourth Street and Avenue B, the Music Building, old delis. NYTV spoke to Ms. Zeiser about the shoot, which was hosted by best friend-to-the-stars Rupert Everett. Madonna affects a British accent, mispronounces the word "anonymity" and continues to perfect her energetic and world-weary routine. "It was Madonna's idea," said Ms. Zeiser. "She pitched it, and I'm not even 100 percent sure why she chose to go back. It's kind of cool because a lot of the lyrics are about her past.

"She chose Rupert, I think, because they're like two peas in a pod, and there's a mutual respect; they can give each other shit. She was more open with him than with journalists. At this point in her life, she's really looking back and taking stock; it's sort of perfect." [VH1, 19, 8 P.M.]

Monday, April 13

Open auditions for MTV veejays today and tomorrow: Call 258-8000. The winner will be announced on April 18. It'll be a tough job announcing the whole half-hour of videos that play between 8 P.M. and midnight. [MTV, 20, 9:30 P.M.]

From the creators of Party of Five , the season premiere of Push . Hot, blond athletes at a California college. [WABC, 7, 8 P.M.]

Tuesday, April 14

Grant Tinker, the founder of MTM Production and the former head of programming at NBC who believes strong news helps entertainment, would take a dim view of ABC's recent decision to fire 50 people from news bureaus around the country: "Laying off correspondents, closing bureaus and deep-sixing documentaries certainly saves money in the short run," he said. "But to the degree that corporate financial pressures injure the credibility of a news organization and shift its programming focus from good journalism to ratings, they are disastrous." Nightline has been spared any firings. [WABC, 7, 11:35 P.M.]

Leo Flores, a salesman at the Original Levi's Store on Lexington Avenue, said he sells at least a pair a day, mostly to European and Japanese tourists, but also to New Yorkers. Troy Pierce, the men's buyer at the Antique Boutique, said he sells between 20 and 50 pairs a week (at a discount price of $199 a pair); the tourists from abroad are his best customers, too.

The durable Levi Strauss blue jeans were called "waist overalls" 125 years ago, and they really were workers' pants-just right for the cowboy, teamster or ditch digger. By the late 1940's and early 50's, what had been a sturdy component of the laborer's wardrobe became part of the teenager's uniform.

In those postwar days-when the jeans had one leg in the culture of laborers and one in the camp of rock-and-roll-crazed teens-Levi's were made on 28-inch looms. The swath of denim was cut at the selvage, leaving a red line along the straight side seam. Teenagers would turn up the cuffs to show off the red selvage line, proof that they wore the real thing.

As Levi's grew more popular, they necessarily became less associated with working men or rebellious youth culture. The Levi's of the early 60's were pre-shrunk, mass-produced (forget those 28-inch looms) and consumer-friendly. The red selvage line was gone. In the 70's, Dad wore them to Disney World, and anyone who believed in the gritty authenticity promised with each pair of Levi's had reason to feel a little disappointed. Oh, the counterculture made efforts to reclaim the pants as their own by wearing them ripped. But the strategy backfired when mainstream performers like Cher and Diana Ross modeled purposely torn Levi's in cheesy music videos. By the 90's, Jerry Seinfeld wore them neat and crisp on his hit sitcom.

What to do to bring back the old rough-hewn glamour? Levi's hunted down and repaired those 28-inch looms and, voilà, that telltale red selvage line is back. It isn't cheap, but, hey, you've got to pay up if you want "authentic" pants in 1998.

What's next-the $50 bottle of Bud?

The Monica Diaries

Continued excerpts from several hundred loose pages, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, which were dumped on The Observer's front stoop and labeled, "The atached (sic) is my story, the story of a white house intirn (sic) in my own words, not that bitch Linda. ML."

March 3, 1997, 11:58 P.M.

dear diary,

well Creepo blew up at me tonite over nothing and i am listening to the radio for love songs that will make me cry and i decide to reminiss about our first kiss back when they called the intirns to say the govurnment was shut down so all intirns had to keep the country moving and i was like Yes! and i put on a shortish skirt with opake tights and the gray Banana Republic sweater set that makes my boobs look good and my chunky heel loafers...and i get to the WH and some cute guy gives me envelopes to stuff and im like I don't think so so i hand them to this dweeb intirn charles that we call charles in charge like a joke and i sort of wander around the WH and these intirns have this pizza for the President and i say better let me take it to him and they are such losers they say Ok, and this one extra cute secret service guy says Ok too so i carry the pizza to the O.O. and the secretary is like go on in he's hungry so i go in … and he's on the phone and he's wearing this dark blue suit that is sooo handsome but a heinus tie and i'm like Pizza party! but he just points to a table so i put the pizza down but first i put napkins under the box and he says thank you without words just moving his mouth but if he's expecting me to leave he is way mistaken so i take out a slice and he hangs up and says well hello there its good to see you again and i'm like its an honor mr. president and he gets diet cokes from this little fridge and gives me one and says he's so greatful the intirns are running the country because of the republicans and i feel him staring at the pizza so i say dig in and he does and i pick the pepperonis off my slice and he asks me about my duties but i'm looking at his blue eyes which are so pretty and then he looks at me and says With intirns this gorgeous, hell, i wish we had a govurnment shut down every day! and inside i'm like oh my god so i say maybe the shut down will last forever and we laugh and he says he's seen me around the WH a lot and has always thought I was a very beautiful woman and then we are kissing and i put my hand on the back of his head and his hair feels nice and i'm thinking god is he romantic and i think i almost had a swoon and then he is sort of pushing me down and his thing is out so i give him the bj and then he zips up and i'm feeling like dizzy so i sit down and he says We both better get back to the countries business and i'm like i hope i see you again soon and he says sure and sort of holds my arm and leads me to the door and says let's keep this just between us Ok and i'm like of course and I try to give him a kiss but he turns away and says pizza breath …

March 5, 1997, 1:15 A.M.

dear diary,

i called Daddy tonite because i decided to stop living the lies and tell him everything, not about giving the President bjs but that i'm dating him, and anyway mom has encourajed me to tell Daddy because she says let's see if he can handle some truth in his lying son of a bitch life, so i dial and first he's like i'm a bit busy dear and i'm like Da-ad and i give him the line about the father needs to be there for the daughter and he says he will call back to save the expensives and an hour later he calls and he's like so what's up? and im nervous so i'm like how are you? and he's like Fine and I say I'm okaaaay, so he'll know i'm not, but he does not get the hint, and instead he says is that mother of yours putting you up to something? and i'm like Da-ad and he's like do you need money? and i'm like well it would not hurt but that is not the mission of this call, and he's like Oh, and i say I have this new boyfriend? and I like him? and Daddy's like That's nice, and i say he's in govurnment? like me? and Daddy says does he treat you like a special girl and i say oh yes Daddy but underneath i'm thinking well not unless you consider demanding bjs and dirty phone calls treating someone special … and Daddy says is this another drama teacher situation and i'm like Da-ad! and then i say in fact he has his own plane and he's on TV but Daddy is such a dope that he does not get it and he says Well he must be a handsome fellow and i say yes Dad he's cute but i have to go now and he says stay out of trouble little girl and i'm like Da-ad and he's like by-by and hangs up before me …

It's telethon time at WNET, meaning they go with their best stuff and make you suffer through desperate pleas for money. Prime time starts with Molly O'Neill's New York: A Taste of the City, in which the New York Times food columnist seeks out cool, out-of-the-way places where people are making and growing and eating food-like Shaheen's Sweets in Washington Heights and the Damascus Bakery in Brooklyn's Little Arabia. She talks to chefs and counter people in a comforting, curious, Mister Rogers sort of way. Scripted exchanges between Molly and her Hell's Kitchen butcher of 15 years transform cold New York into a gritty, happy, Channel 13 kind of place. Sample a line of her narration: "People are always calling New York a melting pot, but I think of it more as a spice cabinet, stuffed with crazy flavors from all over the world. Trying new combinations is what it's all about." [WNET, 13, 8 P.M.]

Comedy genius Larry Gelbart is feted at the Beverly Hills Writers Guild Theater in M*A*S*H, Tootsie and God: A Tribute to Larry Gelbart. "You shouldn't have to endure people being kind to you for two straight hours," Mr. Gelbart told NYTV by phone from his place in Los Angeles. "It's really an embarrassment of riches. I think you can see how uncomfortable I am on the tape." …

So, what do you watch now? "The news and The X-Files . When you're writing comedy all day, you don't really go home and think, 'Entertain me.' Television hasn't changed. There was always some garbage and always some gold there. You cannot have this many hours of broadcasting and expect the consistency of quality. And by and large, even with all the negative things on TV, I think for the discerning viewer there is more quality there than in the theater and the movies. Broadway doesn't encourage serious drama, and we know about the movies. They're thinking globally. Most pictures are made to work in Ohio or Taiwan." [WNET, 13, 10 P.M.]

Click away from the Gelbart tribute to check out his new Showtime series, Fast Tracks. [Showtime, 37, 10:30 P.M.]

Some staff news from Late Show With David Letterman : Tim Long has quit as head writer and heads for The Simpsons , that great decompression chamber in the sun where a lot of battered Late Show alumni end up. Others who have left Mr. Letterman for The Simpsons include Donick Carey and Ken Keeler. The new Late Show head writer is Rodney Rothman, who's 24 years old.

Tonight, Dave's a repeat, but it's a nice one: Martin Short stops by, asks for a "bouncy C." [WCBS, 2, 11:35 P.M.]

Thursday, March 12

Maybe you were meaning to rent it, but you somehow ended up with G.I. Jane instead. So here's your chance to catch Crumb , Terry Zwigoff's 1994 profile of comic book artist Robert Crumb. [TMC, 49, 10:30 P.M.]

Tortured comedian Garry Shandling hits The Tonight Show With Jay Leno . Something that probably won't be discussed: Mr. Shandling's lawsuit against his manager and executive producer of The Larry Sanders Show, Brad Grey, and the effects the suit might have on the entertainment industry. [WNBC, 4, 11:30 P.M.]

Friday, March 13

Some claaaassy sex stuff for premium cable viewers: Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1997) on Cinemax. [Cinemax, 29, 10 P.M.]

Saturday, March 14

Well, you know ABC is in trouble now. The network, which finished in fourth place (behind Fox) in the February ratings, is reviving the early 80's "reality" show That's Incredibl . Ach, what's the difference. If Diane Sawyer was hosting it, instead of Baywatch girl Gena Lee Nolin, you'd think you were watching Prime Time Live. [WABC, 7, 8 P.M.]

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Travel up the dial, away from the late-night Saturday TV wasteland, for an hour of joy during the season premiere. The aliens crack wise along with a British sci-fi movie from 1967, The Projected Man. [Sci-Fi Channel, 44, 11 P.M.]

Sunday, March 15

A sermonette from NYTV correspondent, the Rev. Billy Berlind: Is there a greater pleasure on earth than Sunday TV? Oh, Baywatch, oh, golf, and if you're truly blessed, a Corey Haim movie! As you negotiate the twists and turns of your hangover, carefully piecing together the previous evening, tabulating the ranks of the offended and preparing apologies-yes, friends, I know-that is when He can deliver your sorry ass. Who is He? Why, Jay Kordich, the Juiceman! …

Now you're thinking, "Gimme a break, Billy. Infomercials? I know your game. I've seen ye kitsch hunters, lookin' for a few knowing laughs at the expense of some hapless nugget of Americana." Friends, believe me. Let Jay Kordich into your lives. Give him 28 minutes of your time, and be converted …

Nancy Nelson is your host. She's a perky lady in her mid-40's. She wears a sweater with vegetables on it and stands behind a table laden with produce. "Hi! How are you?" She speaks quickly to an attentive studio audience. "This is going to be such a wonderful half-hour. I don't know about you, but I wanna to know how to be healthier and more energized? But it's got to be fun. Well, you can't do anything but have fun when you meet this gentleman. Most of you around the world are familiar with him. He has been juicing for very long time. And he's been telling us to do it for a long time." …

The Juiceman is 75. He was once at death's door until a concoction of apples and carrots brought him back to life. He has big white eyebrows that speak of his abundant, overflowing health! Jay stands beside Nancy, bathing in the applause. "Jay," she says, "I've watched you, like all of these people, and I sit at home and say, Yes, I understand, I should. But I'll be honest with you: I've never juiced in my life."

"You haven't mentally, " he says, "but your body has. Your body is a natural juicer. You see when you read these results and get these reports on testing and studies and everything, and they're not conclusive yet, but it looks as though they're favorable … Don't wait till they say it's scientifically proven. Start now! Don't wait 20 years! I don't have 20 years!"

"We get the point," she interjects. "The time is now."

They stand before a small white plastic contraption. The Juiceman gets to work. "Wait," says Ms. Nelson. "You're putting the apple in there, with the seeds?" Finally … full cups of juice.

"To you, Jay!" She sips the drink, rolls it around her mouth and looks toward the audience. Holy Mother, praise Him! She looks at Jay. He nods. He knew. "This is good!" she says. "This is really , really good!" Thank you, Jay. Thank you, TV. [WPXN, 31, 11:30 A.M.]

The first in a batch of 13 new episodes of The Larry Sanders Show . This will be the last season-and it starts off with a dark, complicated, funny episode in which Larry finds himself battling Jon Stewart for his own job as the network breathes down his neck. Winona Ryder, never seen on a talk show (if you don't count Charlie Rose) , does a cameo. [HBO, 28, 10 P.M.]

Monday, March 16

` The life of Cary Grant on tonight's edition of Biography. [A&E, 14, 8 P.M.]

Colin Quinn, Saturday Night Live's new "Weekend Update" guy, tries to prove he really is funny on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. [WNBC, 4, 11:30 P.M.]

Tuesday, March 17

NBC's last hope for unveiling one new decent show this season: The debut of Al Franken's Late Line, a sitcom that looks behind the scenes of a Nightline- like show. [WNBC, 4, 9:30 P.M.]

Nick Kopple, a 16-year-old sophomore at the Dalton School, has seen Titanic seven times. "It's sort of like you can release your emotions," he said. "Like, say you have a lot of little things building up, you can just wash them all away. The first time I saw it, I started crying when she jumped off the lifeboat, and the second time, I started in the opening credits." Mr. Kopple has a tip for getting the maximum emotional bang out of Titanic "It's better if you wait a while in between," he said. "I'm going to save it for a day when I need to cry."

Titanic is grand, and at over three hours, it takes its time. The sets are so sumptuous and convincing that nothing can shake the kids of their conviction that they have escaped into some mythical 1912-not even when the society-girl heroine, played by Kate Winslet, flips the bird; not even when the movie's artist hero, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, stands on the bow going "Woooooooooo!"

Stephanie Bauman, a 15-year-old freshman at the Nightingale-Bamford School, has gone through the Titanic experience 11 1/2 times. "I start crying at the part when you see the old people on the bed and the mom putting her kids to bed," said Miss Bauman, "and then I cry to the end. With this particular movie it's probably because you know the ship is going to sink, but you still don't want it to, so throughout the whole movie you can't stop crying . And it's so much better to cry because it makes the movie so much more enjoyable."

The movie has captured teenagers, but it wasn't really intended for them. It's not hip and has none of the MTV-style quick cuts supposedly dear to those born after 1970. Ancient virtues and vices-love, honor, pride, courage, cowardice, greed-are all up there on the screen, writ large with the help of the record-setting $235 million budget. For kids who have grown up in a broken-down, whacked-out metropolis and who have been educated in a climate where parents and teachers and therapists tell them there are no real answers, this is something incredibly new.

So in Titanic , supposedly jaded city kids have found something they can really throw themselves into, body and soul, the same way some of their parents might have given themselves over to acid. They enter the theater knowing they're going to witness a doomed love story (complete with a villainous cuckold straight out of a silent movie) and the horrible deaths of 1,550 passengers, and that's why they go see Titanic again and again- so that they can feel something, so that they can weep. Given James Cameron's God's-eye-view directing style, the movie is tidy and in control despite the harrowing events it chronicles, which is profoundly satisfying for the repeat viewers. It's a safe thrill.

"You feel like you're really there when the ship starts to sink," said Miss Bauman. "The first time I went, I went to HMV afterward to get the soundtrack, and I ran into a friend and she was like, 'Oh my God, what's wrong?' and I was like hysterical for like two hours . I've started bringing tissues and wearing no eye makeup. I usually wear a lot, but now I'm always prepared. I think I'll see it as many times as I can. Usually, it puts me in a very depressed mood because of Leo DiCaprio, so I usually just go home and feel sorry for myself and think I'm going to meet him at a club downtown over the weekend. I know he goes to Life Cafe and Time Cafe and Life, the club on Bleecker, because my friends have seen him out. He's gorgeous. I've actually had dreams about it. It's usually like I'm on the ship but I never get Leo, like never."

Miss Bauman's advanced state of Titanic itis has caused her to act out scenes from the movie with her friends. "We do like a two-person show, like when she's like falling off and when he's in the suit and he kisses her hand and he looks up and half-smiles and says, 'I saw that in a nickelodeon and I've always wanted to do it.' One day we did it for like literally a half an hour. The part when he's drawing her is my favorite part because there's funny lines. She says, 'I believe you are blushing, Mr. Big Artiste. I believe Monsieur Monet never blushed,' and he says, 'He drew landscapes .'"

Titanic may be wholesome, National Academy of Arts and Sciences-approved entertainment, but the act of seeing the picture over and over, and sobbing along with it each time, is something that might not sit well with parents. Jamie Beilin, a 17-year-old junior at the Spence School who said she's only applying to colleges with film schools, is a seven-timer. "The first time I went and saw it was on a Monday and I came home and my parents weren't home and I was just crying so much and I couldn't stop crying and my parents came home and they were like, 'What's wrong? This isn't right-you've seen lots of movies,'" she said, all in one breath. "The second time I saw it because my parents made me go see The Apostle , which I hated, so I went into it and I cried even more when I was alone. I was so embarrassed. I was hysterical. Guys like it because it's like sinking for 45 minutes. That's what they like-they don't get the love part, they like the sinking part. I don't think guys really like her [Kate Winslet] that much; they think that she's fat and just not pretty enough, but I think she's great."

Since it opened Dec. 19, Titanic hasn't dropped from the No. 1 position in box office grosses, and it has become the third-highest-grossing movie ever. Sixty-three percent of those who have seen it twice or more are under 25 years old, 23 percent are female (outnumbering males 2 to 1), and 20 percent of the audience is under 17.

There was Jeff McLeod, a New York University undergraduate, in the lobby of the Sony Village 7 on the night of Valentine's Day. "The first time I saw it, I didn't start crying till the end," he said. "But the second time I saw it, I was weeping like a baby, almost from the start, from the haunting images and the old film footage. After that, it didn't happen till, like, the ship started sinking and I started bawling. My shirt was all wet right here around the neck." Then Mr. McLeod went into the theater, alone.

On the night of Feb. 16, Erica Riccardi, 15, and her boyfriend, Manuel Candal, 15, told their parents something vague about going out with "about 10 friends." Actually, they hopped the subway and rode to Manhattan. Their destination: the immense Sony Imax screen-80 feet tall, 100 feet wide-on Broadway and 68th Street for the 10 P.M. showing of Titanic

It was the fourth time for Ms. Riccardi, a sophomore at the Fontbonne Hall Academy in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and the eighth time for Mr. Candal, a sophomore at the Xaveria High School in Bay Ridge. Riding the up escalator, Ms. Riccardi said she has never seen a movie more than once before Titanic "except maybe Home Alone 2 on video when I was a little kid." With her wearing Blue Asphalt bell-bottoms, white Adidas down jacket and purple contact lenses, and him in his wide-leg Aeropostale jeans, Nautica fleece shirt and plaid Tommy Hilfiger jacket, they were the very picture of New York teenagers, 1998.

"I love it here," said Mr. Candal. "I've been to this theater before, and it was so damn big I was, like, I have to see it here."

The theater swallowed their conversation before the movie started.

"I wish it was the first time again," said Mr. Candal.

"Yeah," said Miss Riccardi, "I wish it was the first time again."

"The first time was like the bomb ," said Mr. Candal. "I cried like every other scene. I cried the whole damn movie. She usually cries after me. Whenever I start, she follows. We're like the same person-we're inseparable."

Mr. Candal has never been so passionate about any other movie. "I never once had the desire to go see a movie twice in a movie theater," he said. "But after I saw it the first time, I was like, 'I'll be here again tomorrow.'" He continued to chronicle the facts of his unlikely commitment to this movie as if it was as confusing to him as it might be to other people. "There's a book downstairs in the lobby called James Cameron's Titanic -I have that, that was 20 bucks! I read A Night to Remember , that book. I actually got the novel and read it in two days, and that's a good novel. It's a long one, too, and I read it. It's the first time I ever read a book on my own. Then I read a biography of Leonardo DiCaprio. Don't think I'm gay or anything. I just think he's cool. I wanna be him. I'm not attracted to him. I just think he's hot and I would like to be him."

Like James Dean?

"I don't know who that is," he said.

Miss Riccardi did. "He's on my refrigerator magnet," she said.

The couple didn't speak once during the 192 minutes of Titanic . They just held hands and stared straight ahead and every once in a while wiped away tears. Afterward, they seemed down. "You know when she's coming down on the boat and he's looking down on her and he starts to cry?" said Mr. Candal. "That's when I started." Erica said she started crying when they were dancing at the party in steerage.

It was 1:30 in the morning, and the theater manager said he wanted to lock up.

"It's definitely the best movie I've ever seen, definitely," said Mr. Candal.

"Everything's so interesting," said Miss Riccardi. "There's no boring parts."

"Then you have the bastards who are like 'Uh, they shouldn't have this love crap,' and that's bullshit ," said Mr. Candal.

"My brother said that," said Miss Riccardi.

That's the thing about true love. The others never understand.

Among the most entertaining of non-"auteur" star vehicles-made at a time when stars often were not only good actors but unique personalities as well-is the first pairing of America's innocent James Stewart (as he was always billed in pictures, never Jimmy) and Europe's worldly Marlene Dietrich, out in the Wild West of 1939's Destry Rides Again [Tuesday, Feb. 24, AMC, 54, 11 P.M.]. The picture is a perfect example of what made the old studio star system in its heyday work so well: Both stars' parts are expertly styled for what these actors can do best and, because their innate personas have such appeal and scope, the characters achieve an added dimension of mythic size that could never be attained with only good actors. It was Stewart's first of about two dozen westerns-only John Wayne rivaled him for hit cowboy pictures throughout the early 50's and early 60's (Wayne's first hit western, John Ford's Stagecoach, was also released in 1939)-and set a particular image of him that he and others did variations on for the rest of his career: the book-reading, nonviolent Eastern dude in the West who must learn to use a gun when necessary. Western master Ford cast Stewart in exactly that same role 23 years later for what would turn out to be Stewart's, Ford's and Wayne's last great western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Also released in 1939 was Stewart's most defining nonwestern role, in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. For Dietrich, on the other hand, Destry was a huge change of image-done with that clearly in mind: Marlene, after several successes with director-discoverer-mentor-lover Josef von Sternberg in the early 30's, had toward the end of the decade become "box-office poison" to exhibitors, the somewhat distant pedestal Sternberg had put her on having lost its allure with Depression audiences. Destry ripped her right off any pedestal and, interestingly, it was Sternberg himself who convinced her to take the role of a tough, brawling saloon chanteuse, a woman of easy virtue. The extended cat fight between her and Una Merkel is justly famous, and the novelty song she sings, "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have," became a popular Dietrich standard throughout the rest of her career. I saw her sing it marvelously at a concert in Denver 33 years later. Directed by veteran Hollywood hack George Marshall, the film is unadorned, straightforward, unpretentiously made and surely Marshall's best movie of about 400 he did. Marlene and Jimmy had a blazing affair during the shooting, and the electricity is noticeable. Dietrich told me that during one love scene, Stewart's "interest" became so "apparent" that director Marshall called an early lunch, at the same time wagging his index finger reproachfully at the actor, "Jimmy …"

The Hitchcock Watch: Stewart's lifelong best friend, Henry Fonda, did one stark, strange suspense film with the Master, an especially personal work to Hitchcock, yet among his least known and least popular, 1957's true story The Wrong Man [Tuesday, Feb. 24, AMC, 54, 8 P.M.]. When Hitchcock was 5, his father had a police friend put the child in a prison cell for five minutes to teach him "what happens to bad little boys"; this resulted in a thoroughgoing terror of police, and in this picture an innocent man goes to jail, which drives the wife mad. Done in a kind of hypnotic, quasi-documentary fashion, the film is brilliantly played by Fonda and Vera Miles, and reveals the director in one of his darkest moods. From 1938 comes Hitchcock's final English success, relying on a lot of British humor, The Lady Vanishes [Saturday, Feb. 21, CUNY, 75, 9 P.M.]. Although Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Dame May Whitty are absolutely splendid, the script dates: As Hitch himself used to say, negating the entire message-in-code plot, "Why didn't they just send a carrier pigeon?" But as an example of the oddball innocence of early Hitchcock, it's charming.

Wednesday, Feb. 18

Olympic Winter Games. Tonight: Ladies' figure skating, short program. NYTV correspondent Nick Paumgarten filed this report from his couch:

Sadly, there are only a few more days left to watch figure skating practices in prime-time. No more Verne Lundquist and Scott Hamilton, the CBS commentators in the brown sweaters, killing time in the skim-milk light of a near-empty rink, while flu-ridden CBS staff members keep repeating the network-mantra that Americans tune into the Olympics for stories, not sports. Now you have to settle for Verne and Scott in tuxedos getting worked up over American medal contenders Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and Nicole Bobek in the real competition.…

In fact, at this point, the Olympics may make for compelling TV. The ice dancers will be swapping partners back at the hotel, the female hockey players will be loading up on the sake and looking for a scrap in the Olympic Village.…

But if the coverage is still pissing you off, or if you have questions (i.e., is Scott Hamilton "best friends" with every skater whose moves he describes?), just put in a call to Leslie Anne Wade, the CBS Sports Olympic spokesman. Ms. Wade is the Mike McCurry of the Nagano Olympics. She calms all the disgruntled sports TV columnists who keep writing about how dull host Jim Nantz is and why they delayed the women's Super G, etc.…

NYTV called her in Nagano to complain about Verne and Scott's brown sweaters, but wound up taking a shine to Ms. Wade's smoky voice. "Did you know the voice was gonna sound like this?" she said. "It's not from smoking or talking too much. I've sounded like this since I was a kid."…

Then Ms. Wade started putting the hurt on me a little bit: "So what are you gonna write about, how beleaguered I am or something?" she said. It was 8:20 A.M., Nagano time. "Well, I'm not beleaguered." But is she having fun? "Truthfully? I'd rather be in New York." But then she'd have to watch the Games on TV. [WCBS, 2, 8 P.M.]

Saturday, Feb. 21

Look, just because ABC avoids airing Nothing Sacred during a rating sweeps period (tonight, you get Harrison Ford in the 1994 semi-blockbuster Clear and Present Danger ) doesn't mean that someone in the executive offices doesn't like the show. Even though the show is not in the top 40 (actually, it usually finishes around 118th place), ABC has renewed the priest drama and will begin showing it at 9 P.M. on Saturdays when it relaunches on March 7 (that is, a week after sweeps is up).…

"It's very baffling to me how these decisions get made," said Kevin Anderson, the 38-year-old star of the show from his trailer on the set in Canoga Park, Calif. "So a couple of months ago, I decided to stop trying to figure it out and just enjoy myself. The feedback we get is 99 percent positive, including priests and nuns and spiritual people. It's very inspiring to feel that people who actually live that life kind of dig it. Bill Kane, who created the show, was saying that it's kind of a cathartic experience for people who are in these religious communities to see their lives revealed in a kind of artistic way, and that they appreciate the show's attempt to be authentic and honest.…

"So far it has stirred up a debate, and I think that's great and that as an actor that's what you want to do-make people talk about a certain idea. It has as much effect on people's lives as watching the mindless crap that you see all over the TV. You know, bathroom humor. I'm not a sociologist, but I would think it would have a dulling effect on someone if they watched it constantly."…

Mr. Anderson has appeared in a few movies ( Hoffa, Sleeping With the Enemy ), but he likes the grind of TV acting: "One of the pros is you never have time to get neurotic about what you're doing, particularly me, because I'm in, like, every scene. There's kind of an un-neurotic thing that's very nice. You have so little time you're just going with your instincts, and that can be kind of fun. One of the negatives is you can't be as thorough. You can't rehearse, and a lot of times you're basically remembering your lines and hitting your mark. It's relentless. I miss not being able to go back to my trailer after lunch and take an hour nap, but actors are such babies. I would say I'm getting more good out of this than bad, because you're just acting 12 to 15 hours a day, just like nonstop."…

What do you watch on TV? "I like to watch David Letterman, and I like that George-is it George?-or Charlie Rose. I shamefully admit that when I'm not working, I get a sort of sadistic pleasure out of watching those cheap shows like Hard Copy ."…

Michael Suman, author of a collection of essays, Religion and Prime-Time Television , thinks Nothing Sacred deals with religion better than any other show, but that basically religion has little place on TV: "TV isn't the best medium for religion because spiritual and transcendental issues aren't that entertaining. Whenever it gets into the public realm, one religion tries to cram its way of looking at religion down each other's throats. A lot of the criticism today is about the lack of religion on TV or when it's on, it's portrayed as negative; but it's all coming from the religious right, who really don't want to see religion in all its different realms but only their own view. They don't want to see an accurate reflection of religion in American life, especially if it's far removed from the Protestant conservative vision of the world. TV is a business. It's about entertainment, it's about removing people from the serious issues of life. It doesn't deal well with the subtleties, complexities and transcendental issues involved. I think Nothing Sacred is a good show, and one of the best examples of religion on television that I've seen because there's a bit of ambiguity-which is why it's doing so poorly in the ratings. It's too good of a show to be successful on network TV." [WABC, 7, 8 P.M.]

Multiple-Academy Award-winning director Leo McCarey, the man who teamed Stan Laurel with Oliver Hardy and supervised all their best silent work, also made perhaps the quintessential screen love story because he knew how to keep the humor in it; actually, he made the same story twice, with two different casts, 18 years apart. The first one, Love Affair (1939), starred Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer; the second had Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr and served as the catalyst for Nora Ephron's successful 1993 comedy, Sleepless in Seattle : That's 1957's An Affair to Remember [ Saturday, Feb. 14, AMC, 54, 2 P.M. ]. In Sleepless, Meg Ryan refers to Affair as a picture "men don't get," which, if the generalization has a base, is probably because the Lothario in the piece is the one who must learn his lesson. The idea for the film-a man and a woman, both engaged to others, meet on an ocean liner, fall in love, agree to rendezvous when they're free six months later at the top of the Empire State Building, but she has an accident, doesn't make it, and he thinks she didn't really love him-came to McCarey in a flash after a three-week European vacation with his wife as they arrived at the Port of New York and saw the Statue of Liberty. The 1939 version has the more inspired feeling to it, almost as though McCarey were improvising the whole thing as he went along-which, indeed, was often his technique; being in black-and-white, the first also has a more realistic atmosphere, and the early sequences of banter between Boyer and Dunne are among the most amazingly fresh comedy love scenes ever captured. However, the overall emotional impact of the Cary Grant version is stronger, probably because Grant's image, unlike Boyer's, was often comic, and so by contrast the dramatic notes hit all the harder. In certain ways, this is one of the few Cinemascope pictures that is improved by the cropping to TV size, mainly because McCarey steadfastly refused to be bothered composing for the wide screen (which he loathed) so that the sides of nearly all the images are irrelevant. The intimacy and essential loneliness of television also help to bring the story closer and to erase embarrassment at being overwhelmed by emotion. McCarey got his secret wish on this picture (his last success, and he only made two more films) by co-writing a hit song, the title one, which became a pop standard. The combination of comedy and romantic drama is among the most difficult mixtures to pull off; McCarey was a master at it, and An Affair to Remember is one perfect example, and the ideal Valentine's Day movie if the guy isn't a dope.

The Hitchcock Watch: Three brilliantly directed thrillers and one exciting drama from the master of suspense, including far and away his best English film, 1935's classic The 39 Steps [ Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 14 and 15, CUNY, 75, both 9 P.M. ]. Forerunner of all innocent-fugitive-on-the-run films, starring the beautiful British star Robert Donat in the role Cary Grant would play in Hitchcock's American culmination 24 years later, North by Northwest (1959). Hitch's own personal favorite, he always said, was his superbly observed 1943 small-town, serial-killer-at-large story, Shadow of a Doubt [ Saturday, Feb. 14, AMC, 54, 10 P.M. ]. Starring a deeply ambiguous Joseph Cotten as the "Merry Widow Murderer," the picture is strong on character, not surprising since no less than Our Town 's own Thornton Wilder worked on the script; Wilder was also the only writer Hitchcock ever praised publicly, even thanked him on screen for his "consultation." Teresa Wright, Hume Cronyn and Macdonald Carey co-star in one of director's most subversive slices of Americana. Robert Walker gives the performance of his career as a spoiled mama's-boy psychopath who proposes a swap of murders to Farley Granger in 1951's memorable Strangers on a Train [ Tuesday, Feb. 17, AMC, 54, 11 P.M. ], and the divine Tallulah Bankhead is splendid as a journalist in an all-star one-set tour de force, with a John Steinbeck script, 1944's Lifeboat [ Tuesday, Feb. 17, AMC, 54, 11:15 A.M. ]. The notoriously eccentric and iconoclastic Ms. Bankhead amused Hitch and his crew by never wearing panties, even as she had to cross into and out of the lifeboat numerous times a day.

Don Imus, the Dark Prince of Morning TV

NYTV correspondent Peter M. Stevenson writes:

The best morning show on TV isn't a TV show, but rather a radio show that only incidentally appears on television-we're speaking, of course, of the MSNBC cable TV simulcast of Don Imus' WFAN radio program, Imus in the Morning .…

Mr. Imus' famous blend of political satire, interviews and news is heard over the radio by 10 million or so Americans every morning, but the MSNBC version is watched by just 56,000 households, and brave households they must surely be. While the show works beautifully on radio, on TV it's a shaky, dark, existential three hours-no chipper smiles from Matt Lauer or Katie Couric, no cheery fat weathermen, no saccharine interviews with pretty movie stars, no sober assessments of national disasters. Instead, you get to spend your first waking hours-the show comes on at 6 A.M. and lasts till 9 A.M.-with a cynical, chicken-boned, craggy-faced wreck of a man who announces with some regularity that he hates the fact that he's on TV.…

Seated across from Mr. Imus is his sidekick, Charles McCord, a mustached fellow in pressed shirt and tie, a family-man type who does the day's news and probably offers to carry old ladies' grocery bags in his local A.&P. Visible in the wings is Mr. Imus' producer, Bernard McGuirck, a quick-witted doofus who supplies running commentary in the form of bawdy one-liners.…

The guests are often respected politicians such as John Kerry, writers like Doris Kearns Goodwin, media pundits like Dan Rather and Tim Russert-indeed, ever since the 1992 Presidential election, Mr. Imus' stature as powerbroker and occasional political pariah (see his raucous, Clinton-taunting 1996 speech at the Radio-Television Correspondents Association dinner)-has risen enormously. The best guest, however, is Mr. Imus' brother Fred Imus, a country-and-western hick version of Mr. Imus who sells clothes via catalogue out of New Mexico and calls in to the program regularly.…

But to read the above is to assume that there is a show-for there is no show, in terms of the conventions of TV. "We do a radio program; I hope we don't ever do a TV program," Mr. Imus once told an interviewer. He's got nothing to worry about. Mr. Imus, his handsome rock 'n' roll face now dry as parchment, his body hidden beneath baggy polar fleece, never looks into the camera, never offers the viewer an empathic channel. He sits in his own psychic igloo, almost shivering, as if it's about 20 degrees below zero in there, as if he's using all his energy just to keep it together for just one more show. Cameras mounted above Mr. Imus and the crew's heads move around the windowless studio on a circular rail, looking like robotic medical instruments, probing for an interesting shot. Which often ends up being something unappetizing, like a close-up of the flaky bald spot on the back of Warner Wolf's head. Respite from this desert of male decrepitude and dissatisfaction comes whenever Mr. Imus' much younger, blond, sexy actress wife, Deirdre Coleman-Imus, makes an appearance, either in person or in name-at such moments, Mr. Imus actually blushes.…

Because this is primarily a radio show, there are several moments in each program when the cameras are rolling but, as a small message across the screen will tell you, " Imus in the Morning is in a radio commercial." These are the choicest moments-Mr. McCord stuffing some breakfast item into his face, then wiping a bit of food from his mustache with a napkin, and Mr. Imus feeding piece after piece of gum into his mouth until your own stomach acid rises in protest. It's in these floating bits of footage that you realize you are watching what is really a documentary of sorts, a look into the abyss that always threatens to swallow the most carefully scripted of TV moments.…

But make no mistake, despite the wet-lipped sarcasm and searing attacks on Bill Clinton and others, Don Imus, morning television's Underground Man, is not bitter. And here we have the key to his appeal: It lies in the fact that he's a recovering alcoholic and coke addict. Which means at some point during his rehab at Hazelden in West Palm Beach, Fla., 10 years ago, where he finally checked himself in after what he has said was a "nine-day binge on vodka, drinking warm vodka out of the bottle," at some point down there amid the expensive nurses, D.T.'s and waving palm trees, he must have had a glimpse of something Good in himself. Something absolutely true and cornball at the same time. And each morning, while ranting and cussing and imploding inward, what Mr. Imus is also doing is waiting for some more of that Good. It ain't much, but it's everything. In the meantime, like the rest of us, Don Imus is embarrassed to be here. [ Wednesday, Feb. 11, MSNBC, 43, 6 A.M. ]

Olympic Dudes

Well, you gotta say this about the Olympics broadcast put on by the tattered CBS sports department: It's got charm. Especially when those two dudes, Steve Podborski and Jim Rippey, are doing the play-by-play for the snowboarding competitions. Their banter, which seems to owe something to Keanu Reeves, is a breath of fresh air compared to the slick monotony of Christian Cooper. When Mr. Podborski and Mr. Rippey find themselves having to come up with something to say to fill the dead air, they resort to lines like: "Man, he must have been stoked on that run!" and "I'm having such a great time watching!" Not to mention "Go for it, dude!" These guys will be on tonight during the half-pipe competition. [ Thursday, Feb. 12, WCBS, 2, 8 P.M. ]

Buchwald Gets a Special

On tonight's edition of Biography , it's Art Buchwald: The Wit of Washington . "I'm happy with it," said the syndicated columnist and author, who is now 72. "It explains me, how I was in foster homes and the Marine Corps. My theory is that this is the equivalent of getting on the cover of Time magazine-I'm in very good company. They did a good job. I went along with it. I don't like to get on the air and talk about Monica and all that stuff, that's not my bag, but this is nice." …

Mr. Buchwald has an idea for TV, but no one will listen: "I want to put a name up every 5 to 10 minutes to tell you what you're watching. Don't you think that's a good idea? It's not gonna cost them anything, and I've even gotten my idea to Ted Turner-I told Tom Johnson, who is the head of CNN-but nothing! Everyone says it's a great idea, I don't know. It's like pushing a rock up a hill or something. It's free and no one's touching it!" …

Anyway, he doesn't think much of TV.…

"One of the biggest moments of my life was when I was in Chicago around five or six years ago. I was sitting in the greenroom waiting to go out and plug my book, I'll Always Have Paris . And it was just me and a lady holding a chimp, just looking at each other. And she asked me to hold the chimp because she wanted to change her …" His voice trailed off. "Another time, I was in Detroit with Tony Kornheiser, and we were buddies and were both going on to plug our books. Then they said we just invaded Grenada and told me I was going to be bumped so they could talk about Grenada, and so I said I was just there and he said, "You were? Come right in," and I bluffed the whole thing. They asked me what it was like there, and I said it was very nice. That's the only way to sell books. Kornheiser never got on the air and he never forgave me. 'You goddamned fraud!' he said to me. I said when it comes to book plugging, it's every man for himself." [ Monday, Feb. 16, A&E, 14, 8 P.M. ]