I’m talking about the argument over N.F.L. touchdown dances and other outcroppings of fun in this sport that takes itself so seriously.

As the Super Bowl approaches, the sports prudes are at it again. Consider the deep distress with which an otherwise intelligent local sports media columnist reacted to Fox TV’s coverage of a recent playoff game, which featured—brace yourself—repeated cutaway shots of a woman in a cutoff shirt with an NSFW slogan magic-markered on her bare belly.

Just when a shaken nation was recovering from the trauma of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl horror!

But this was far worse: The Janet Jackson incident took place during a half-time show. Here the camera cut away to this deeply, shamefully immoral and frivolous image of a bare belly during the profoundly serious, extremely socially significant game itself! When we should all have been focusing on the tactical shifts of the game plan!

People! Where are your priorities!

What’s really disturbing about this, of course, is the mindset of a purported grownup who can get all exercised about how troubling this is. Lighten up, dude. It’s a game, you’re not covering the State of the Union.

But this isn’t an isolated incident; it’s emblematic of the attitude of the entire National Football League, a bureaucracy of hacks in suits habitually overimpressed with the grandeur of their enterprise, a small-minded bureaucracy which last year issued one of the most laughably stupid rulings in the history of the sport: the ban on what they called “prolonged or excessive celebrations” by players celebrating touchdowns or big plays on the field.

It was this ban, announced last March, that led to the N.F.L. being dubbed the “No Fun League” by players and fans. But the killjoy N.F.L. bureaucrats, in their campaign to extinguish playfulness and joyfulness—because it might threaten their granitic image of the game’s gravitas—seem to be unable to distinguish a football game from a meeting of say, the U.N. Security Council.

True, it would probably be inappropriate if, after exercising a veto in that august chamber, the Russian U.N. ambassador did a “sack dance.” But the N.F.L. and much of the sports media treat it like an equivalent issue.

In fact, as I’m writing this, the Saints’ rookie running back, Reggie Bush, just scored a touchdown for New Orleans against the Bears and—racing toward the goal line after a beautiful catch and run—did a total frontal somersault flip into the end zone for the score, and then went into a complex, slow-motion imitation jog/dance that was both celebration and parody of celebration and totally cool in every respect.

I can picture the entire old-school sports media having a virtual cow when it happened. And, indeed, some did point to Reggie Bush’s conduct in the course of that scoring play as a terrible turning point. In fact, Reggie Bush himself apologized for letting himself get “caught up in the emotion of the game.” And yet emotions are what make great sports clashes different from combat by robots or digital images in video games. Emotions may well be the reason Reggie Bush got as far as the goal line he flipped over in the first place.

I don’t necessarily believe the world needs a micro-analysis of this moment, but, as ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning team pointed out to their credit the day after the game, there was nothing wrong with the flip and the dance; rather, Reggie Bush’s real mistake came 10 yards before he scored, when he turned and taunted the Bears’ scary linebacker, Brian Urlacher, who was futilely chasing him—thus incensing the Bears’ entire team, which went on to win the game.

On the other hand, what made Cassius Clay into the Muhammad Ali we know and love if it wasn’t his daring death-defying taunting of his opponents? The old-school sports establishment came down on him for “prolonged and excessive celebrations,” too. Live by taunting, die by taunting—the game is psychological as well as physical, and sometimes you intimidate by taunting, sometimes you suffer from taunting, but it’s all part of the drama.

Oh, the Humanity!

I had thought the sports-prude attitude had finally died of old age, but look at how everybody got all outraged all over again during the A.F.C. divisional playoffs, when some of the victorious Patriots had the nerve—the unmitigated gall, the shamelessness—to do a victory dance on (sit down so you don’t faint) the San Diego Chargers’ midfield colored chalk logo at the end of the game!

Yes, they disrespected the sacred chalk logo! I swear this sacrilege actually happened and was shown on national TV, and it was as if certain sports commentators’ heads exploded. They treated it like the Saddam execution cell-phone video of sports. Oh, the humanity!

Never mind that the Satanic glee the Pats players were exhibiting was an attempt to mock the sack dance of one of the Chargers players (Shawne Merriman)—so that, in a witty, meta way, the Patriots were exercising a critique of sack-dancery. But instead of applause for their ingenuity, the Patriots got the same old tired condemnation: that they didn’t show “class.”

What gets to me was the careless use of the word “class” and “classlessness,” words that are thrown around by clueless sportswriters writing about this subject. Did Muhammad Ali lack class? No, his grace and wit transcended the jock-sniffing boxing writers.

In fact, it’s kind of obvious to any observer that it’s not about class, but about race. Most often, nerdy white guys who feel inferior to large, gifted, (mostly) black athletes and thus try to find some way to feel superior to them.

Meanwhile, all the opprobrium obscures the fact that touchdown dances are one of the most entertaining and, in a way, athletic aspects of the game. I mean, breathes there a soul so dead that he cannot appreciate the wit of the Ickey Shuffle?

Yet apparently these dead souls abound. Remember the Ickey Shuffle? Everything about it was pure delight. For those who don’t remember, it was one of the first touchdown dances, and it featured a massive 250-pound Cincinnati Bengals fullback named Elbert (Ickey) Woods delicately shuffling his bulk back and forth in a slightly off-center, comically tilting yet debonair, even Fred Astaire­–like fashion.

The subtle mockery of a freight-car-sized fullback performing these dainty little dance movements was a witty wink-and-nod at the cult of massive body violence in the N.F.L. I may have the chronology wrong, but it seemed to me at the time that it was a response to the crude posturing of Mark Gastineau’s dumb-jock “sack dance.” The best touchdown dances belong to the aesthetic of satire. And yet the clueless N.F.L. actually outlawed the Ickey Shuffle! It was dangerous to the extreme dignity of the game.

A short course in end-zone celebrations might have to include the wholesome collective gung-ho variations, such as the Fun Bunch group-jump, where the Washington Redskins’ offense would gather around the goalposts for a choreographed high-five-ish group love-in. And Green Bay’s Lambeau Leap, which soon got old for me thanks to its obligatory quality: Every time someone from the Packers scored, they had to leap into the end-zone stands to be mauled by drunken fans. No spontaneity!

The Ickey Shuffle was succeeded by various versions of the Electric Slide, the elbow-flapping slapstick of the Dirty Bird and the like.

It makes you wonder why the No Fun League encourages soft-core cheerleaders and face-painting fan-geeks, yet puts their players in straitjackets. Come on! The celebratory impulse and gesture are part of the American national character. We don’t need no stinkin’ stiff upper lip. Didn’t we learn anything from Prohibition and the idiocy of Comstockery?

But for innovation and variation, nothing recently has matched the veritable one-man crime wave of touchdown-celebration freak shows courtesy of controversial, much-maligned and (thus) much-traveled star wide receiver Terrell Owens, the bête noire of sports prudes everywhere. Mr. Owens is the guy known for scoring a touchdown and then taking out a Sharpie pen he’d stuck in his socks, autographing the ball and ostentatiously handing it to his financial consultant; on another occasion, he borrowed a cheerleader’s pompoms to celebrate himself. And then there’s Joe Horn, who used his moment of touchdown triumph to demonstratively take out a cell phone and call his family to break the news.

N.F.L. Brain Damage

What’s really outrageous and hypocritical on the part of these No Fun League bureaucrats is that they’ve sanctioned a game where the one thing that is permitted to be “prolonged or excessive”—and reverently celebrated—is vicious, crippling violence.

Recent studies of the cumulative effect of traumatic brain injuries of the kind sustained in concussions by professional football players (as reported in ESPN the Magazine) suggest that previously neglected brain damage—especially to the pituitary gland—is even more widespread than realized. But the N.F.L. suits are too busy policing end-zone celebrations to do anything about the kind of poorly policed, head-butting, helmet-spearing violence endemic to the league. (They could put a stop to it if they penalized the players $15K as well as 15 yards).

The league winks at violence so it can promote its product with jacked-up, “jacked” violent-hit videos. What fun! Brain damage in the making. It’s O.K. to have fun watching the players’ frontal lobes battered to jelly, but God forbid that they let off a little steam after they make a great play.

In fact, there may be a connection between the two that the N.F.L. suits don’t seem to get. I was talking to a knowledgeable friend who pointed out that in the violent pressure cooker of N.F.L. games, touchdown celebrations are lighthearted ways of letting off steam. And that the ability to let off steam in harmless ways may be a factor in reducing the unnecessarily malicious viciousness of the hits that cause brain damage.

How do we make the No Fun League come to its senses? Somebody has got to make a YouTube video of great N.F.L. touchdown dances. The superb archivists of the game at N.F.L. Films could do it in a heartbeat (maybe they already have). It would demonstrate just how much a part of the game these moments of physical joy are. That athletics isn’t all brute force, but wit and, you know, fun, too.

Bring back the Ickey Shuffle.

Met: January 2003

Engaged: Feb. 3, 2006

Projected Wedding Date: Jan. 14, 2007

Samantha Greene and Jack Woodruff, both 32-year-old M.B.A.’s, will attempt a merger of their souls at Peter White Studio in Chelsea, brokered by the wedding-planning company Always a Bridesmaid. Ms. Greene is the sleek, brunette senior director of strategy and business development for Nickelodeon. Mr. Woodruff is a super-fancy senior analyst for Trivium Capital Management.

The couple met halfway through their first year at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business. The aloofly handsome Mr. Woodruff had a “player” reputation that preceded him: Ms. Greene was convinced he had wronged one of her friends, and when they were introduced one evening, she muttered through gritted teeth: “I know who you are, and I hate you.”

Woo-hoo! Mr. Woodruff thought. The game is on! And he spent the rest of the semester trying to “win” her.

By the last day of classes, they were batting eyes over Budweisers at Off the Wagon, a dive in the West Village. “I think Jack’s flirting with me,” Ms. Greene said to her supposedly spurned friend in the ladies’ room.

“Go for it!” the friend snorted.

When Ms. Greene got back to the table, Mr. Woodruff told her he was about to go on vacation with another woman. “I was like, ‘O.K., back off,’” Ms. Greene said. “‘We can be friends, we can chat, but nothing will ever happen between us if you’re dating someone else.’” That’s tellin’ him, sister ….

Still, they e-mailed all summer from their respective internships, and one day Mr. Woodruff invited Ms. Greene to dinner at an Upper East Side bar. She brought colleagues along to chaperone. “I was very attracted to him at this point, so it was dangerous, because I would never want to be the root of someone else’s cheating,” she said. But it was an unnecessary precaution; he and his chica had split.

On another occasion, Mr. Woodruff asked Ms. Greene to give a tour of the West Village to a sports-agent friend and his quarterback client, Carson Palmer from the Cincinnati Bengals. The group wound up at the Blind Tiger Ale House, the sudden sweethearts from the Stern school drunkenly groping one another.

Ms. Greene had been living in a walkup on Perry Street for half a dozen years, and after two more dating Mr. Woodruff, she was impatient to trade up. Though they co-hosted a graduation party, their mothers eagerly anticipating “the announcement,” the relationship abruptly ended soon thereafter.

“I was very much in the mind-set that I’m not getting any younger,” Ms. Greene said. “I thought either this is going to go the distance or it wasn’t, and Jack kept hedging and hedging and hedging.”

Three months later, Mr. Woodruff began a campaign to win her back. But neither daily delivery of flowers nor an engraved invitation to dinner at Daniel moved her.

“I was always a firm believer that if you break up, you break up for a reason, and you don’t get back together,” Ms. Greene said.

Finally, she agreed to meet him for brunch at L’Express. And the moment she saw his face, her resolve melted like butter on hotcakes.

After a six-month “probation period,” while they were vacationing in Venice, Italy, Ms. Greene again broached the topic of marriage. “Look, I’m waiting for my next bonus,” Mr. Woodruff said. She agreed to wait until the first quarter of ’06 for his proposal (gotta love those M.B.A.’s), which arrived during a surprise trip to London, after they had checked into the Ritz.

“You look beautiful,” Mr. Woodruff told her as she readied herself for dinner at Le Gavroche. “Just one thing’s missing.” Namely: the two-carat, cushion-cut, platinum-set diamond from Fabrikant he was proffering.

“Couldn’t you have asked me before I put on my mascara?” Ms. Greene sobbed.

Anonda Bell and Jeffrey Pzena

Met: April 2004

Engaged: October 2005

Projected Wedding Date: May 20, 2006

It was an evening of “speed dating” at the Bubble Lounge, and the place was atwitter with single gals parked at tables, waiting for a musical-chairs-style progression of men, each allowed only three minutes to pitch his particular brand of woo. When Jeffrey Pzena sat down across from Anonda Bell, an audacious Aussie (is there any other kind?), he was immediately charmed by her accent, slender figure and brown bobbed hair. Likewise, she found herself taken by his impish grin and bald pate—and so they exchanged e-mail addresses.

Soon afterward, Mr. Pzena, the C.F.A. of Humble Monkey, a technology consulting firm, went to Belize to help set up an eco-resort. When he returned, he got in touch with Ms. Bell, and they met for drinks at the Rocking Horse Mexican Café in Chelsea. It went well. Date No. 2: a car rally in New Jersey (we don’t even want to ask what a “car rally” is, but we suspect it isn’t very eco-friendly!).

Then reality hit: Ms. Bell, a curator, was only in town on business, returning Down Under, where she worked for the National Gallery of Victoria, in a matter of weeks; Mr. Pzena, meanwhile, had further business in Belize.

“Why don’t you come with me?” he asked.

“I didn’t even know where Belize was,” Ms. Bell, 36, told the Love Beat. But after consulting her mother—“Give it a go!” Ma Bell’s sage counsel—the young woman boarded a plane before the week was out, finding herself “in the middle of the jungle in Central America.”

On their first night there together, they ambled through swamps and fell asleep in a tent to the sound of screeching monkeys. “It was an interesting third date,” said Ms. Bell, understating things.

Later in the trip, Mr. Pzena’s company held a good old-fashioned pig roast, cooking the poor animal alive. Throughout the day, Ms. Bell was playing with the Belizean children he’d invited, taking their pictures and letting them play with her camera. By the end of the evening, though somewhat carnophobic, she was hacking up leftovers for doggie bags to give to the natives. “There aren’t too many people who could get dropped into just anywhere in the world and be completely fine,” admiringly said Mr. Pzena, 39, speaking as another veteran of the dating jungle. “It was kind of nice.”

When he saw her fixing a generator with a paper clip, he could no longer contain himself and declared, “I love you!”

Four months later, Ms. Bell’s job contract ended, and she hopped on another plane and moved into Mr. Pzena’s one-bedroom in the Flatiron district, later landing a gig as curator at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island.

The couple was hiking in a Pennsylvanian state park one weekend when Mr. Pzena dropped to one knee in front of a stunning mountain vista, held up a platinum-set, diamond-flanked ruby ring and asked, “Will you marry me?”

Despite the gimmicky way they met, they’re planning an old-fashioned wedding in the backyard of his brother’s house in Short Hills, N.J.

“It’s a big strain to move halfway around the world to be with someone,” said the groom-to-be, “and after a while you want to know what’s going to be happening. I knew that we were good for each other.”

Then came Thursday, Aug. 14, when all of New York City, along with parts of Canada and the midwestern United States, went dark. Mr. Goodwin, left in charge while Mr. Kosner was vacationing, oversaw the paper's 27-page blackout special-even as power at the News , pumped by a diesel-fueled generator, flickered in and out-with comprehensive city coverage that included stories on the causes of the blackout, the effects on subways and traffic, reports on price-gouging and a blow-by-blow assessment of how Mayor Michael Bloomberg deported himself.

In the process, according to sources at the News with knowledge of the situation, Mr. Goodwin re-established himself as the front-runner to take over when Mr. Kosner steps down from the job in March 2004.

"Let me put it this way," said one. "The horse race is by no means over, but he's pulled ahead. He definitely distinguished himself. He put out a great paper, and the boss definitely noticed."

He's certainly been trying. In the weeks that have followed Mr. Kosner's announcement, sources said Mr. Goodwin has assumed more and more power in directing the paper, in what many saw as an unofficial tryout for the job. While News president and chief executive Les Goodstein directed advertising and production efforts-and made sure the physical plant kept the newsroom operating on diesel power during the blackout-Mr. Goodwin was earning fans, at least temporarily, in a newsroom that at times he's alienated with his hardball office politics, as well as what many felt was a non-impartial, pro-Giuliani news stance during the former Mayor's reign.

"I have to say he did a great job," said one News source who is ordinarily not Mr. Goodwin's biggest fan. "He dispatched people here and there. He ordered all the features reporters out into the street. Had the computer guys hopping. It was an amazing evening."

It didn't hurt that while the News ' Jersey City printing plant was able to print one million copies (roughly 300,000 more than usual), the Bronx printing plant of the archrival New York Post lost power, forcing the paper to devote only seven pages to the blackout, while printing only half of its usual press run from the Bergen Record 's printing facility in New Jersey.

Mr. Kosner-who, along with New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and Post editor in chief Col Allan, was on vacation at the time of the blackout-said the paper planned to nominate the Friday, Aug. 15, issue for a Pulitzer Prize in spot news. When asked if Mr. Goodwin's performance helped his chances, Mr. Kosner said: "Anytime Michael fills in in this environment, it could be thought of this way. He's not auditioning for me; I know what he can do. He put out a great paper and showed what he could do on a fantastic news story. How can it hurt?"

Mr. Goodwin himself was on vacation the week of Aug. 17 and was unavailable for comment. Ken Frydman, spokesman for the News , and Mr. Zuckerman declined to discuss the succession issue, and gave credit only to the News ' staff as a whole.

"Everyone involved with the paper that day did a great job under the most adverse conditions," Mr. Frydman said, "from the editorial to the distribution to the production to the physical-plant staff, which made sure the power went running, both here and in New Jersey."

She goes straight for Arts and Leisure, I check out the porn …

On Sunday, Aug. 17, The New York Times , as part of a special Arts and Leisure section devoted to DVD's, ran an above-the-fold feature by Dana Kennedy entitled "The Fantasy of Interactive Porn Becomes a Reality," accompanied by an enormous color photograph of two clothesless, sudsy women making out in what appears to be a hot tub.

But when it comes to adult-film stars, The New York Times seems better with faces than with names. While a story on the same page featuring Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz named the two actors, the caption accompanying the photo of the two women read only: "A scene from a pornography DVD. The new technology has changed the nature of porn movies: many have bonus features that let viewers direct."

When contacted, Wunderkind Arts and Leisure editor Jodi Kantor referred the matter to Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, who said: "We used the picture because it was the most appropriate of the several available to us. And we didn't use the names because we weren't given them. Since the story was about the genre and technology, not the actresses, we didn't think the names were absolutely necessary, though more information is better than less."

As a public service, Off the Record's crack research department worked for, er, days to determine the identities of the Arts and Leisure cover subjects: The photo shows Vivid Video actresses Jenna Jameson (blonde, left) and Kobe Tai from their new film, Jenna Loves Kobe . The movie marks Ms. Tai's return to adult film following a three-year break. It is also first time the two have worked together.

The Times' enthusiasm for adult themes isn't limited to blue movies.

Also in the Aug. 17 edition of The New York Times came a Week in Review piece by Times Hollywood chronicler and sometimes Gulf War embed Bernard Weinraub entitled, "This Story Is Not Rated R. Everybody Please Read It." In it, Mr. Weinraub makes the argument that the PG-13 rating issued to movies by the Motion Picture Association of America is "now almost slavishly sought after, even by filmmakers who may have shunned it 20 or 30 years ago as too chaste." He even goes on to cite the remarks of screenwriter Robert Towne, whom Mr. Weinraub recounts as saying that "Thirty years ago … he and other writers went out of their way to make R-rated movies, exploring adult themes for adult audiences. Mr. Towne, who won an Academy Award for 'Chinatown,' and wrote such 1970's hits as 'Shampoo' and 'The Last Detail,' said the notion of writing a PG-13 film at the time appalled him and his friends.

"By all accounts, the wide release of 'Jaws,' the 1975 film directed by Steven Spielberg, incited the hunger among studios for PG-13 films," Mr. Weinraub wrote.

Um, yeah. Here's the thing: While the Motion Picture Association of America created the original PG rating in 1970, PG-13 didn't come into existence until July 1984 (for those who don't do math: 19 years ago, and nine years after the release of Jaws ). The first movie to appear with a PG-13 label was Red Dawn with the brilliant and unfairly forgotten C. Thomas Howell and Patrick Swayze.

Mr. Weinraub was away and didn't return an e-mail and phone call seeking comment. Alison Silver, Mr. Weinraub's editor on the piece, likewise didn't return a phone call seeking comment. Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said she couldn't check on the story before our deadline, but added: "If we were wrong, we will, of course, run a correction. That is our policy."

Over its 49-year history, the Sports Illustrated cover curse has spelled misfortune for many of its featured subjects, bringing loss and injury to athletes and teams that were successful and happy and healthy only a week before.

(Off the Record still blames SI for the mighty Cincinnati Bengals' last-minute collapse in Super Bowl XXIII, after the magazine featured Bengals fullback Ickey Woods pumping his fist on the cover. Thirty-four seconds. Thirty-four …. )

But recently, the very prospect of an appearance on the cover of SI appears to have worked its black magic.

For its forthcoming N.F.L. preview issue, SI had picked the mug of superhuman Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.

"We had finished the cover shot," said SI managing editor Terry McDonell. "We had finished a lot of things and were where we wanted to be."

Then, on Saturday, Aug. 16, in a blow heard by fantasy-football general managers across the cosmos, Mr. Vick fractured his right fibula in a pre-season game against the Ravens. The moment it happened, Mr. McDonell began receiving e-mails from his staff as they pondered having to scrap the centerpiece of a project that takes months of reporting and research to put out.

"We all just felt really terrible for him," Mr. McDonell said of Mr. Vick. "Hopefully, he'll be back by the fifth or sixth game. Michael Vick can expect to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated at another point."

Mr. McDonell declined to divulge the identity of the stand-in cover boy, though according to sources at the magazine, dreamy Rams quarterback Kurt Wanner is the likely choice. Condolences can be sent to Coach Mike Mantz c/o the St. Louis Rams, St. Louis, Mo.

Let John Burns have Baghdad. We have Michael's.

On Sunday, Aug. 10, Pulitzer Prize winner (and Off the Record's fellow Talawanda High School alum) Gretchen Morgenson came out with a piece entitled "Financial Disclosure, the Barry Diller Way" that, among other things, attacked Mr. Diller for making the earnings statements of his Internet conglomerate InterActiveCorp purposely complex, and charged that the company had inflated its earnings.

On Aug. 11, Mr. Diller shot back. In a letter to Times editors that he concurrently made public, Mr. Diller wrote: "It is unfortunate that newspapers-unlike public companies-appear not to be bound by the material misstatement and omission requirements of the federal securities laws." ( The Times stands by its story.)

The following day, Tuesday, Aug. 12, Mr. Diller lunched at Michael's, seated- surprise!-at a table adjacent to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

"Was it a happy accident?" Michael's service director Bill Rhodes said. "No, I wouldn't put it that way. It was just the way the way the tables fell."

A spokesperson said Mr. Diller was unavailable for comment. Likewise, Mr. Sulzberger, through a spokesperson, said: "The only thing better than running into him at lunch would be having lunch with Barry."

Miss Kitty (née Karina Figueroa) was doing most of the dirty talking-she's fond of "big cock"-and name-dropping (Tommy Lee, Kid Rock). I was mesmerized. After she flashed her breasts a few times, I decided they were the best ones in New York City. I had to meet her.

Miss Kitty occasionally tapes The Goddess Show at the Cutting Room on West 24th Street. I went to a taping a couple weeks back. She sat on a stage between two Styrofoam Greek columns. She wore a white and gold wraparound chiffon dress.

"Tonight's show, there's something for everyone," Miss Kitty said. "Although I'm not going to show you my tits. Not just yet, of course. Unless, of course, you applaud for me to show you my tits. "

The several dozen audience members, mostly men, clapped.

"Stick around and wait till the end of the show," Miss Kitty snapped. Then one of the Greek columns fell over. But she kept her cool. A stocky guy in a toga hoisted Miss Kitty into the air. While aloft, one of her boobies spilled out. The crowd whoo'd.

Later on, after the taping was over, I asked Miss Kitty myself: Did she have the best boobs in New York?

"I do," she said. "Come look at them, goddamn it."

I got closer. Both of her breasts were exposed, inches from my shaky paws.

"What do you think?" she said. "They've got a little glitter on them right now, but they're perky, they're beautiful, they're just there . They speak volumes. They're just speaking to you."

I could barely restrain myself. Did she like it when a guy spent a whole lotta time on them, like 25 minutes?

"Actually, I really don't like it when someone sucks on the nipple," she said. "I like it around the nipples. If they suck on the nipple, minus 10 points. But around the nipple, 10 points for sure."

Miss Kitty told me she was molested by a priest when she was 16, soon after trying to commit suicide. "My family called the family priest because they thought he was going to heal me, I don't know why. So he's going like this to me"-she massaged her nice tummy-"and he's like, 'I want you to see Jesus, Jesus is going to heal you.' And he started feeling up my tits and saying, 'Do you see Jesus?'"

Were they nice breasts at that point?

"No, they weren't fully developed yet," Miss Kitty said. "But they were getting there."

A couple days later, I took Miss Kitty to a party at Steven Green's apartment in the Essex House where Bobby Short was performing. Out on the terrace, she took off her jacket. She was wearing a denim jumper with most of the buttons on top unfastened, J.-Lo-at-the-Grammys style.

"I never wear bras anymore," Miss Kitty said. "Bras are over."

"Can I see them?"

"No!"

Men were staring now. "All the guys are just looking at me like, 'Thank God you walked in, baby, you saved the evening.'" She thought about just taking off her top. "I have to have a moment where the spotlight is on me and I'm ready to leave, on the way out."

Back inside for some champagne, she ran into a waiter who recognized her from a strip club, Shakers in New Jersey (she retired from stripping a few months ago to focus all her energies on The Goddess Show , her singing career and underground-party promotion). She met style guru Montgomery Frazier, who suggested she cut her hair short for a "chic Sally Bowles" look. Mr. Frazier examined Miss Kitty's breasts at my request. "They're certainly real, and they're very there ," he said. "They're really there."

After the party, Miss Kitty and I stopped by a deli to pick up some veggie chips and a Whatchamacallit candy bar. "It's good for my PMS," she said.

Miss Kitty devoured her junk food. "Mmmmm, fucking awesome. Mmmmmm, it's time to pig out."

It's time to break something else out, too, if you know what I mean, I said.

"No! You saw them Tuesday night," Miss Kitty said. "You'll see them again; they'll peek out for you. All right, I feel bad. You're making me feel guilty now. Here, here's one for you." She pulled out a breast. "One for the road …. If you do a good story, you get another."

-George Gurley

Boomerang

Boomer Esiason strolled into the makeup room at the CBS studios on 59th and Fifth and plopped his long legs into a chair. The former Jets, Cincinnati Bengals and Arizona Cardinals quarterback was dressed in a saffron-colored six-button silk suit and a pair of blue gator shoes, which signaled that a) he had given up football for organized crime, or b) he had become a mambo singer, or c) he had lost a bet with his CBS NFL Today colleague, the sartorial eccentric Deion Sanders.

It was c). "You're a good-looking man!" Mr. Sanders roared when he saw the corn-haired Mr. Esiason. His Neonness was attired in a similar get-up. "This is a masterpiece that I've created! After this, you will not be known as the 'insurance man.'"

"Gimme some color, baby," Mr. Esiason said to the makeup artist. "I've got my bling-bling going."

It had already been a colorful season for Mr. Esiason. In addition to his NFL Today duties, he'd been hosting his own talk show on the MSG network. A few weeks before, The Boomer Esiason Show had its first headline-grabbing controversy: Guest Andy Rooney had come on and ridiculed females working as sideline reporters in football. "I was shocked," Mr. Esiason said. "I don't think he realized the effect it was gonna have."

Mr. Esiason didn't agree with Mr. Rooney's commentary, but he seemed pleased to be back in the news. After a promising start, the Long Island native had spent a couple of years in post-football purgatory; plucked fresh from his playing career for the Monday Night Football booth, he'd clashed with co-host Al Michaels and found himself jettisoned for Dennis Miller and Dan Fouts after two seasons. He took lower-profile jobs in MNF 's radio booth (which he still does) and working as an analyst for the Fox Sports Network. Once a golden boy, he'd rebuilt himself as an angry man, a pro-sports truth-teller who didn't worry about whom he offended.

"The fact is, I'm a New Yorker at heart," Mr. Esiason said. "I'm cynical by nature and when I do TV, I take that angle …. Those of us who are able to speak our mind and not worry about the consequences are much more likely to succeed."

After the noon NFL Today pregame show on the plaza outside the G.M. building, Mr. Esiason headed inside and spent the afternoon watching that day's games with anchor Jim Nantz and current New York Giant Tiki Barber, who had the day off.

"I'm telling you," Mr. Esiason told Mr. Barber as they watched former Jets quarterback Ray Lucas chuck an interception for the Dolphins. "You look at the shit out there, it's unbelievable."

Mr. Esiason mentioned that Giants offensive-line coach Jim McNally had been in Cincinnati during his tenure with the Bengals. "Jimmy likes to have those guys that are robots," he said.

"He's the highest-paid assistant that's a non-coordinator," Mr. Barber said.

"Well, I know why," Mr. Esiason said. "It's one of the lowest-paid offensive lines in the league. All the money goes to him. He wants guys he can boss around."

Mr. Esiason paused. "That's the cynic in me."

"That's the New York in you," said Mr. Barber. "I know. Living here has started to make me cynical, too."

-Sridhar Pappu