Elliott Kalan: America’s next Andy Rooney?

Elliott Kalan likes to complain about things. The Daily Show writer can go on forever (or at least one whole minute) on his irritation with gum, fancy pork-pie hat stores in your neighborhood, pre-made sandwiches, and generic movie titles.

So now that Andy Rooney has officially stepped down from his role as "old cranky guy" on 60 Minutes, Mr. Kalan would like to humbly submit his application for the job of professional complainer.

Hey, if it doesn't work out with 60 Minutes, maybe Mr. Kalan could team up with Larry David on some new project about whining.

It was 2:20 p.m. on the afternoon of Thursday, July 23, and Mr. Rooney, TV news's most celebrated curmudgeon, was standing with a microphone at the front of St. Bartholomew's Church, on Park Avenue between 50th and 51st streets.

The Episcopal church was packed with friends and family members who had gathered for the funeral of Walter Cronkite, who had died six days earlier.

Mr. Rooney launched into a war story. He said he first met Cronkite in London, during the Second World War, where both men were reporters. Back then, Mr. Rooney said, the U.S. military used to inform newsmen when they were about to conduct an air raid. These days, he said, you're lucky if they tell you after they've made an air raid.

That got a few chuckles from the many dozen TV news reporters, anchors, producers and executives, who were sitting in the first few rows of pews.

Half an hour earlier, before the start of the service, Tom Brokaw and Maureen Orth had walked together down the center aisle of the church, past Aaron Brown to their right, and Connie Chung to their left. Actor Jerry Stiller walked a few feet behind them, followed by longtime journalist Carl Bernstein.

They passed by a cluster of ABC News stars, including Barbara Walters, Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer and David Westin.

They made their way to the front of the church, and found seats. Nearby was the CBS clique: The Early Show's Zev Shalev sat alongside Harry Smith and Jeff Greenfield, not far from Bill Plante, Russ Mitchell and Dave Price,

Mr. Brokaw shook hands with Matt Lauer, who was sitting with fellow NBC News staffers, including Brian Williams, Ann Curry and Steve Capus.

CNN's John Roberts, who left CBS when he didn't get the job of CBS Evening News anchor, sat by himself. A few rows back was Dan Rather, who inherited that same job from Cronkite, and eventually passed it on to Katie Couric, who sat up front, next to Leslie Moonves.

Now they all looked up at Mr. Rooney, who furrowed his bushy white eyebrows and said that Cronkite's passing had caused him great pain. "Please excuse me, thank you," said Mr. Rooney. And with that, he shuffled away from the microphone, a mere two minutes into his speech.

Sandy Socolow, Cronkite's longtime executive producer and friend, took center stage. He told a series of affectionate anecdotes, highlighting Cronkite's imperfections.

Mr. Socolow recounted the time Cronkite lost his cool on the air at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 and later regretted it. He observed that Cronkite played the clarinet badly and, for some reason, could never pronounce the work "February" correctly. "We would rehearse it for the last few weeks of January," said Mr. Socolow.

He then explained the concept of "magic time," a system of calculations and re-calibrations producers had to employ over the years in order to compensate for Cronkite's irregular sense of timing while reading the news. And finally, he regaled the audience with a story about the time Cronkite decided he no longer needed a script and henceforth, would ad-lib the evening news. "Walter insisted that when it came time to roll the film, he would brush his nose," said Mr. Socolow.

The experiment, Mr. Socolow said, lasted all of two days. Everyone laughed.

Mike Ashford, one of Cronkite's sailing buddies, told stories about his friend's love of the sea, hot popcorn, and cold beer.

Chip Cronkite said he loved  to watch his father work and marveled at his speed—his ability to swing around in his chair during a commercial break and rewrite a story. He said his father was happy and that he was happy for his father. He was glad the old man got his life's story down on paper, penning an autobiography before losing his mental steam. "I'm sorry I insulted him," said Chip, "by saying I was surprised by how funny it was."

At one point, Mr. Socolow recalled that one day, toward the end of his life, Mr. Cronkite received a visit from the patron saint of beaches, sailing and cocktails. Jimmy Buffett, he explained, had landed his waterplane on the East River, not far from Cronkite's apartment. Mr. Buffett then proceeded to serenade the newsman turned sailor with a jamming ukulele.

On Thursday afternoon, there was lots of music, but no ukuleles. Seafaring themes, however, were in abundance. From Hymn 608 ("Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee/ For those in peril on the sea!") to the hymn Finlandia ("My country's skies are bluer than the ocean") to a recitation of a John Masefield poem ("I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life/ To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife.")

When Bill Harbach finished reading the latter poem, he said a final goodbye to his old friend: "Good sailing, Walter."

No bourbon, explained the bartender. Wine?

Mr. Rooney shook his head no, furled his massive white eyebrows, and shuffled off into the crowd. The barkeep, having just witnessed the potential genesis of a future Andy Rooney rant on 60 Minutes (“The problem with cocktails parties today, is that there are no cocktails…) kept a straight face.

A few minutes later, Mr. Rooney stood nearby a plate of cured meats and talked with The New Yorker's Ken Auletta about football. "We're both Giants fans," explained Mr. Auletta. NYTV, who sports a terrycloth Redskins bathrobe at home, looked for conversation elsewhere.

We had gathered on the second floor of Disney's Times Square Studios at 44^th and Broadway to celebrate the newly published book "Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life," which bills itslef as "an intimate portrait of the late, legendary journalist and news anchor, in the words of his family, friends, and collagues." It was edited by Lynn Sherr, a former ABC News correspondent, Kate Darnton, a contributing editor of PublicAffairs, and Kayce Freed Jennings, co-founder of the Documentary Group and the late anchor's wife.

The mood was bittersweet. Photographs of the late newsman flashed on screens across the room. Mr. Jennings delivering the evening news. Mr. Jennings sporting a tuxedo. Mr. Jennings paddling a canoe.

Here and there, ABC talent mixed with members of the Jennings clan. Barbara Walters, looking radiant, stood nearby Christopher Jennings, tall and handsome like his late father. ABC News President David Westin spoke with Peter's sister Sarah. Elsewhere, Charlie Gibson was deep in conversation with Fox News interloper Bill O'Reilly, who once worked for the late Mr. Jennings at ABC.

Eventually, Mr. Westin, dressed in a dark suit, yellow tie and blue dress shirt, stepped to a microphone in one corner of the room.

"It's a terrific book, I'll tell you right now," said Mr. Westin. "Those of us who were fortunate enough to spend time with Peter, knew not only how valuable he was but also, I think, how complicated he was….I think all of us at one point or another probably described him as 'complicated.' I'll be honest, and say, some of the time we said that, it was sort of code for saying, he could be difficult."

Everyone laughed.

"This book, in my view, shows Peter as complicated, in a much truer and fuller way," said Mr. Westin. "Peter had a lot of facets."

Mr. Westin then ceded the spotlight to Peter Osnos, the dapper head of PublicAffairs.

"I think Peter would be pleased by this turnout tonight," said Mr. Osnos. "Peter's legacy remains very strong. Whenever you think about what is good and what can be good about broadcast news, Peter is right up there."

Ms. Jennings, dressed in a dark sports coat over a black knee-length skirt, stepped to the fore. She thanked her colleagues, ABC News, and PublicAffairs.

"Finally, I have to thank Peter," said Ms. Jennings. "What a life he had. For those of us who have to move on…even for a while, how lucky we were."

Her voice cracked slightly. She paused. "Peter is getting restless now," she said. "He'd want me to shut up and for you all to have another glass of wine."

She walked off into the crowd, where she was greeted by well wishers. Mr. Rooney leaned in and said congratulations.

"Very nice," said Mr. Rooney. "Not perfect. But very nice."

The other day after work I walked down that corridor of lower Fifth Avenue that's lousy with "better" retail names everyone recognizes from the malls of their suburban youth (plus a brand-new H&M store), thinking that I might just luck into my wedding accessories the way I lucked into my dress.

Red shoes are going to be a challenge. All the red shoes I saw fell into two categories: stripper shoes in shiny patent leather, with at least three inches of rickety heel, or smarmy, bow-bedecked flats with a negative arch. I should know better than to express opinions about fashion, since my fantasy wardrobe would come from a janitor's uniform catalog, supplemented by bathrobes, but WTF with the Reagan-era shoe styles? Ditto the cheap-looking plastic necklaces and earrings in primary colors, the kind of shit you wouldn't even sell at a garage sale in 1991.

I'm Andy Rooney, and I clearly cannot rely on mass-produced retail for my wedding needs.

"We got our own little world here," said the 83-year-old Mr. Rooney. "It is good-look, we got our own coffee. It certainly is good." In the editing room were four television monitors for editing his weekly Sunday-night segments. Since 1978, he's done over 800.

Mr. Rooney picked up a baseball glove. Didn't he do a segment about hating baseball?

"I do hate baseball," he said, sitting at a walnut desk he made in his woodworking shop upstate.

The phone rang.

"How was the trip to Florida? You should be here when I get in trouble!" Mr. Rooney said, laughing. "Had the one hand operated on, so now I gotta have the other one …. Well, it's better. I can turn a door knob with my right hand now. Jeez, I can't do anything-like holding a toothbrush is hard. All right, I got some guy here talking to me." He hung up.

Earlier this month, Mr. Rooney caught fire for saying this to sportscaster Boomer Esaison on the latter's MSG show: "The only thing that really bugs me about television's coverage is those damn women they have down on the sidelines who don't know what the hell they're talking about. I mean, I'm not a sexist person, but a woman has no business being down there trying to make some comment about a football game."

Don Hewitt, 60 Minutes' executive producer, then suggested that Mr. Rooney do a piece on it for the show. So he did.

"I don't know-I probably should have let it go, but I didn't," Mr. Rooney said.

"I think women have found it difficult to find some compensatory attribute to muscle," he said. "I mean, men are stronger, and this is difficult to argue with. Women, though, are in so many ways, broadly speaking, better human beings. I don't think the world would be in as much trouble as it's in if they had been in charge, and I think the reason they have not been, originally, was muscle.

"I don't know why people don't say what they mean more often," he continued. "There's an awful lot of dissembling …. I am too critical, I recognize that. I don't mind being critical, because there is so much in the world to be critical about. But I have a vindictive streak that is not attractive, even to me."

Does he like being famous?

"It's a pain in the neck," he said. "I like the money, but other than that there's not much good about it. I really dislike being recognized. I mean, if somebody comes up to you and says, 'Hey, I like what you did last Sunday'-well, you can't hate that. But then they want to be best friends. People come up to you in restaurants and say, 'Hey, aren't you Morley Safer?' I got one yesterday I haven't had in a long while-somebody said 'Hi, Harry' to me. Harry Reasoner."

When he told Bernard Goldberg, the author of Bias , that he thought Dan Rather was "transparently liberal," did it cause any problems with CBS?

"They were not happy about that around here at all," he said.

Did Mr. Rather say anything to him?

He nodded. "Does a nod show on this tape machine?" he asked.

How does he stay healthy at 83?

"Drinking," he said, laughing. "I played tennis until I got carpal tunnel." I think it's mostly genes. Also, I think the brain atrophies if you don't use it, like muscles. And having to write something every day-I still get up very early in the morning. My clock is set at 5:27 and it never goes off."

It was time to go. Mr. Rooney wanted to drive upstate to get to work on a chest of drawers he'd abandoned last summer to finish his book.

"I had it all set up in June," he said. "I made the carcass of the chest and I cut the pieces for the drawers, and then I was going to dovetail the sides and put the bottom in. But then my publisher called and said, 'You're going to have that book by Aug. 5, aren't you?'

"I never went back in my shop," said Mr. Rooney. "Every once in a while, I go back in there and think to myself, 'Jesus, I can see somebody coming into my shop a hundred years from now, and the chest is all covered in dust and cobwebs, and they're gonna think whoever did this had this all set up, ready to go, and must have dropped dead or something.' But no, I dropped into the book I had to finish."

The Apartment

Barton Benes' West Village studio apartment is a walk-in curio cabinet. There are African masks on the walls; there's a statue of the Virgin Mary built of dollar bills; there's a straw used by Monica Lewinsky. In the kitchen, alleged bone chips of Catholic saints hang over the balsamic vinegar.

"Here is a human toe that was found on the Williamsburg Bridge," Mr. Benes said to a visitor the other day. "My doctor thinks that it may have fallen off a homeless person with gangrene."

He pointed to a model airplane made out of tiny chunks of jet fuselage. "I found pieces of T.W.A. Flight 800 on the beach on Fire Island, right after it blew up."

Nearby was a ring made out of actor Larry Hagman's gallstones.

"That got me in The National Enquirer ," Mr. Benes said.

The 59-year-old Mr. Benes has H.I.V. and emphysema. When he was particularly ill last spring, he formalized plans to bequeath his 850-square-foot home on Bethune Street to the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, where it will be reconstructed. The apartment will be a permanent exhibit, and Mr. Benes' ashes will be placed inside.

"It makes me comfortable that I get to live in my own pyramid now," said Mr. Benes. "When I am gone, my collection won't be in a museum basement. My brother said that he will still be able to visit me in North Dakota."

In the meantime, the collection of Mr. Benes-who recently published a book called Curiosa: Celebrity Relics, Historical Fossils, and Other Metamorphic Rubbish -is still growing. "People give me things all the time," he said as he pulled open a drawer. "Some woman once sent me fat from her liposuction. I also have a receipt for an expert-witness fee from a media mogul. You can't print his name; he'll sue me."

Another relic was labeled "A gram of Picasso." "I was high one night, and I scribbled on this Picasso lithograph I owned," Mr. Benes explained. "I woke up horrified the next morning. I threw the lithograph into the blender." He put the mulch in old cocaine vials. The vials sold out immediately. "I threw regular paper in the blender and sold 'cut' grams of Picasso," he said.

Mr. Benes' art dealer, Jill Weinberg Adams of Soho's Lennon, Weinberg Gallery, said that the "street value" of one of the Picasso vials is several thousand dollars in Europe.

Mr. Benes said his interest in relics started when he stole the bone of a monk from catacombs in Rome in 1963. "Here is my latest stolen bone," he said, indicating a small souvenir from a Czech church. "It is from the skull of a man who died of the Black Plague in the 14th century."

Mr. Benes once obtained international notoriety for his controversial AIDS art. He made AIDS ribbons out of the ashes of his friend Brenda, who died of the disease. His traveling exhibit Lethal Weapons included a water pistol and a Molotov cocktail filled with his own blood. In 1994, Swedish health officials heated the exhibit's pieces to 160 degrees for safety reasons. Two years later in England, a

Tory councilor tried to shut down the show on moral grounds.

The North Dakota Museum of Art, however, showed Lethal Weapons in 1994 without controversy. "People in North Dakota have no preconceived notion of art," Mr. Benes said. "I think it has to do with the isolation. Whatever they see is art. Even school trips came."

The museum's director, Laurel Reuter, was pleased taht Mr. Benes decided to bequeath his apartment. "We're pretty liberal in North Dakota," Ms. Reuter said over the telephone. She said an archivist from the museum will travel to New York and videotape Mr. Benes' studio to get exact measurements.

"With a small relic, I can make a big sensation," Mr. Benes said. "A small thing can be more meaningful, more moving. I have this new project-somebody gave me a crate lid belonging to Sam Waksal. The crate had contained a telescope. I am going to make it into Martha Stewart–like handicrafts."

-Dylan Foley

"Are you a curmudgeon?" a brave fellow wanted to know.

Mr. Rooney, leaning back pensively in his chair, responded by pointing out that "curmudgeon" was a word that had often been used to describe his highness, H.L. Mencken. "I am so far behind H.L. Mencken in intellect," said Mr. Rooney, "I'm embarrassed to have the same word applied to me."

But the fellow wouldn't give up. "Are you curmudgeon- like ?" he pressed. His question went unanswered, drowned out by roars of laughter.

Perhaps the word "curmudgeon" (or any variation thereof) and its highfalutin' associations were too much for Mr. Rooney to apply to himself. But, as The Transom had found out during a brief chat up in the library, Mr. Rooney seemed quite at peace with being grumpy.

The essayist had been gracious enough to explain his schtick and its effects on the human condition: "I think what I do is tell people things they already knew and didn't know they knew until I mentioned it. And it produces a warm sense of fellow feeling, recognizing that we're not alone in the world," he said.

Warm sense of fellow feeling ? Strange words for a man who has been called "cantankerous" and even "a prickly pear." The Transom ventured, "Some people say they think you're grumpy ...."

"Well, I am grumpy," Mr. Rooney asserted, his wiry brows blowing slightly in the draft. "There's a great deal to be grumpy about in the world."

Such as? Mr. Rooney cleared his throat. "Well, I … you want me to make a list?" he grumbled, "I'll have to sit down. There's … there's … there's too much to be grumpy about. Uh … reporters who come up to you when you're having a good time at a party-that would qualify as something to be grumpy about," he said, chuckling to himself without cracking a smile.

"I can't understand people who accept things that are wrong without at least observing that they are wrong and mentioning it to someone," he continued. "I'm lucky because I can mention it to a lot of people. I've surprised myself that my demeanor has not turned people off more than it has," Mr. Rooney went on to note. Strangely, although the man had taken a dig or two at The Transom in the short span of their conversation, The Transom-supporting the theory-was not turned off.

Later on at dinner, Mr. Rooney's 60 Minutes cronies-Morley Safer, Mike Wallace, Don Hewitt, Ed Bradley and Steve Kroft-took the podium to rain words of praise down onto their colleague. Finally, Walter Cronkite, as the pièce de résistance, sang the ultimate paean to his pal: "He's a su-preme cur-mud-geon!" he bellowed.

As the guests sipped their decaf and scooped up the last bits of their frothy lemon trifles, Mr. Rooney took the floor for one last time. For a moment, he almost seemed overwhelmed by the outpouring of emotion. "I think I'll just go home and cry now," he said, managing to whine and laugh simultaneously-the mark of a supreme curmudgeon.

- Beth Broome

Jennings Goes Pop

On the morning of Nov. 18, while Al Gore's lawyers were filing briefs with the Florida Supreme Court and the Bush camp was carping about it, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was enjoying his first day off since election night.

Wearing a dark-green suit and an olive-colored shirt, looking tan and fresh despite his week of nonstop news, Mr. Jennings sat sandwiched between Andy Warhol biographer Victor Bockris and Velvet Underground bassist and keyboardist John Cale, deep in a discussion that also included Warholites Glenn O'Brien, Bob Colacello and Baby Jane Holzer.

The occasion was a panel devoted to Warhol, the honoree of this year's ArtWalk, a daylong benefit event that also comprised studio visits and silent and live auctions at Pier 59 on 18th Street and the West Side Highway. The pope of pop was being honored for his "commitment for the homeless," a reference, perhaps, to the countless shit-faced out-of-towners who had once crashed on the Factory couch.

Mr. Jennings was moderating and getting the panelists to cough up worthy anecdotes. The socialite Ms. Holzer recalled her first meeting with Warhol in front of Bloomingdale's. He had asked if she wanted to be in movies. She remembered thinking, "Omigod, I was just shopping at Bloomingdale's!"

Mr. Colacello, who edited Warhol's Interview magazine and now writes for Vanity Fair , recounted getting a phone call from a frantic Brigid Berlin during the "essentially boring" O.J. Simpson Bronco chase of 1994 and hearing her scream on the other line, "Turn on your TV! It's an Andy movie!"

Once the last questions had been asked, the panelists and Mr. Jennings streamed out of the room. When the news anchor congratulated the participants, Mr. Bockris noted that "there must be hundreds of us walking around for whom Andy's still a central part of their lives. It's like being in a war." He thought about his comment for a minute, then said: "What do people from the Second World War talk about when they get together? The war. We talk about Andy. Being with Andy was like being in a war."

"Andy's still a mystery to people," Mr. Colacello said. "He'd go to the White House and come back and say, 'I think Betty Ford is on drugs.' And sure enough, six months later…." He shot the news anchor a knowing look. Mr. Jennings, who knew something about war and the White House, didn't say a word.

-Elisabeth Franck

360 Degrees of Fashion

On the evening of Nov. 15, deep in the belly of Chelsea Piers, supermodel Eva Herzigova (of Wonderbra fame) was having her face spackled in preparation for the Smirnoff International Fashion Awards, which she was emceeing that night.

As her svelte makeup artist troweled away, Ms. Herzigova spoke with The Transom about the injustice of having one's name pilfered by those annoying Internet squatters who register everything they can get their keyboards on. The Transom was eager to know about the dirt Ms. Herzigova had seen about herself on the Web. "Oh, there's just, you know, there's just everything. Everything," she said, rather mysteriously. "Such as?" The Transom prodded. "Oh, everything. Where I'm from, how old I am, my parents, how many brothers and sisters … Just everything is wrong. My colors-that I have green eyes, which I don't, I have blue eyes. Then they put these naked pictures on, which I have never done naked pictures. And they put like these black things over and it's like, if you, um, if you pay with your credit card, it's going to, you know, go off. And actually, they just put my face over somebody else's body."

"Is it a decent body, at least?" The Transom was curious. "Yeah … well, yeah, I guess so. I didn't really pay for it, so I didn't check it out," she admitted.

Later, elsewhere under Pier 59's vast roof and on another wavelength altogether, two other kooky grandes dames of the fashion world, Betsey Johnson and Patricia Field, were swirling their drinks. The catwalk had been walked and the awards presented. With the stress of the production behind them, the two gals hammed it up from their judges' chairs at the end of the runway.

The Transom remarked on their complementary get-ups. It so happened that on this particular evening, Ms. Field's fuchsia hair-including her bangs, which were smacked on her forehead like a shingle-matched Ms. Johnson's sparkly top, and Ms. Field's fabulous turquoise dress reverberated quite nicely off Ms. Johnson's gold lamé bag. "Yeah! We match," affirmed Ms. Johnson. "We're, like, soul sisters from way back. We've just known each other for years, and we've been on the same wavelength." And not just any wavelength, apparently. "Oh, a very colorful, rock 'n' roll kind of sexy, out-there wavelength," clarified Ms. Johnson.

"We started out together. In the 60's, right?" Ms. Field asked later, looking over at her friend.

"Pat's younger than I am. I'm her grandmom. I brought her up," sputtered Ms. Johnson.

"You started out on Madison Avenue and I started out in the Village," Ms. Field plowed ahead earnestly.

"Right!" Ms. Johnson laughed. "Haw haw haw! Madison Avenue! That's me! I was an advertising agency mogul-is that what it is? Mogul?" She looked over at Ms. Field, who was crunching an ice cube.

"Yep," confirmed Ms. Field.

"Mogul, logul …" Ms. Johnson tittered giddily, perhaps lost in the memory.

And what did the gals think of the show? "I thought Pat and I were the best!" Ms. Johnson cackled. "No, no, not really, but I just, uhhh, I miss the … uh, well, what was the question?" She laughed, perhaps running out of gas at the end of a long and arguably tedious affair-yet another fashion- awards show plunked down just when the latest month of international fashion shows had mercifully ended.

It was pretty clear that the subdued hues of the evening-the beige and winter-white architectural constructions of the winning designer, Canadian Pao Lim, for example-were not exactly the cartwheeling, minidress-wearing designer's scene. "Um," she said pensively, "it's not my kind of thing, I'm sorry to say. It's too masculine, unsexy and artsy-fartsy."

Ms. Field spoke in more diplomatic terms. "Well, I agreed with some of it," she said of the fashion, "but not all of it. Everyone has their own perspective. It's a circle and there are 360 degrees around there. And it just depends on what side of the circle you see it from. So I respect it. I can't say it was a complete circle of expression, though."

Perhaps the rest of the circle was communing on the other side of Pier 59, where the after-party was raging on. An unamused-looking young woman in a T-shirt that said "Will Fuck for Coke" made her way through the crowd, passing a go-go boy who was doing gymnastics on an elasticized hammock and a live mermaid perched high up on a rock. A young man named Maribou Dandymaster, who was ballroom-dancing with one of the pom-pom-clad Smirnoff girls, stopped for a moment to illuminate his location on the circle. "The fashion was beyond imagination," Mr. Dandymaster exclaimed breathily. "It was beyond haute couture ! Happiness is what we discovered-paraphrase it that way."

- B. Broome

The Transom Also Hears...

That wasn't Saturday Night Live star Will Ferrell at the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn,on Nov. 20, that was United States Attorney General Janet Reno! Ms. Reno was visiting the site as part of a national tour of community centers that she's been making in the waning months of her tenure. While she was there, Ms. Reno attended a court session where a man was arraigned for allegedly stealing a cup of coffee. As he departed the courthouse, The Transom asked if he'd known who was sitting behind him in court. "Yeah," he snarled, "Janet Reno." How did he feel about that? "Got me out of there quicker, thank God," said the defendant, who has to return for a hearing at a later date. "I've been in there too long as it is!"

-Petra Bartosiewicz