The U.S. Senate building, Washington, D.C. Late night. An office, dark except for a pool of light from a knockoff Tiffany lamp. Rain slashing against windows.

THE AIDE: Edwards continues to climb, I’m afraid. He’s at 21 percent in New Hampshire to your 27 percent. He’s getting a real bounce from the missus’ cancer recurrence.

THE SENATOR: Fuck. Why do these bad things always happen to me? Why? Why? Why? O.K., Einstein, what’s next?

THE AIDE: We’re going to hit Hollywood twice more before Memorial Day—the Burkle fund-raiser helped more than we could have wished.

THE SENATOR: It sure did—$2.6 million. Count that, Obama, you cocksucker! Let’s send Burkle something nice.

THE AIDE: Well, I’m not sure an overtly public rapport with Mr. Burkle is advisable at the moment, Senator. You see, it’s tricky—here’s a man—Burkle—who’s rumored to—well, I mean, we all know these are completely unfounded rumors, false allegations—but here’s a man who’s rumored to … on occasion introduce … young women … to Mr. Clinton. And so some of the team felt there was perhaps a little too much irony in having that same man hosting a party for you ….

THE SENATOR: They can blow me. Keep your friends close, but keep your husband’s pimp closer, I always say. Haw haw haw …. Now get me another bowl of nuts in here.

THE AIDE: Yes … err … ma’am. I have to say, though, even I was a bit surprised that you let Barbra Streisand—a woman who was—again completely false, but—well, there have been rumors that she had relations when she slept over in the Lincoln Bedroom … with President Clinton …. And there she is, your guest of honor at the Burkle fund-raiser …. Even I found that one hard to untangle ….

THE SENATOR: Well, it’s not your job to untangle things, is it? Your job is to explain to me why Obama raised as much money in the first quarter as I did—and if he keeps doing so, your job will be to top off the milkshakes at Burger King. Do I make myself clear?

THE AIDE: Yes, Senator.

THE SENATOR: Now listen, I’m hearing that Mr. Clinton is being a tad indiscreet. Get a message to him, through Wolfie or Terrence, that if I read, see or even smell anything in the press about his Chappaqua goomah, it’s not going to be pretty. Tell him if he becomes a liability to this cause, I will not hesitate to finish him—and anyone else who’s unlucky enough to be in the room with him at the time. Got that? Don’t write it down—I want this communicated verbally, in person.

THE AIDE: Umm …. Terrence?

THE SENATOR: McAuliffe.

THE AIDE: Ah, yes. O.K. But—finish him?—as in “divorce”?

THE SENATOR: Divorce is bad for business. Ex-husbands can be as troublesome as current husbands. Just tell Terrence—he’ll know what I mean. And tell Huma I want daiquiris tonight—the good kind, like the ones we had in St. Croix.

Why Are We in Iraq?

How did our nation descend into a tragic state of “permawar” (military conflict without end)? I can only blame one sector of society: sports.

The job of athletic events is to divert young men and provide a substitute for warfare. But TV, corporate pressure and rising salaries for players have robbed American sports of their appeal. Watching a group of millionaires chase a sphere does not exactly stir the blood.

The war in Iraq began right after the Super Bowl of 2003. Let us examine that contest. Held on Jan. 26, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers trounced the Oakland Raiders, 48-21, at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium. (Even the phrase “Qualcomm Stadium” is dispiriting.)

After this pallid contest, Americans were eager for a heroic war against an evil, mustachioed dictator.

Revive American football! End military conquest!

—Sparrow

Waverly Inns

We’re told that a night at the Waverly Inn—Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s exclusive, clubby restaurant in the West Village—might run you about $100 a head. But for that money, of course, you do get white-hot, priceless celebrity moments, such as overhearing a bombshell gossip reporter telling about the time she played Twister with another woman for a big Hollywood producer. Still, for about the same price, you might consider a night at the other Waverly Inn—the one in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Sure, they don’t have $55 macaroni and cheese with shaved white truffles—but they do offer some nice touches. Such as: A human being picks up the phone! Plus, for the price of dinner at Graydon’s joint, you can book yourself the $279 “Romance Package”: post-coital nibbling from the gourmet snack pack, washed down with white wine—while sitting in your Jacuzzi decorated with long-stem roses. And hey, wait a minute—that’s Canadian dollars, which means just $242 in U.S. currency!

And while it might not be packed to the gills with Manhattan’s swankest sophisticates, this Waverly Inn has seen its share of celebs, as its Web site will tell you: “Famed Irish poet Oscar Wilde stopped over in Halifax and stayed at the Waverly Inn. Compared to the other guests, Wilde must have been outrageous …. ” We bet!

If that’s too rich for your blood, try the Waverly Inn that always has a table waiting by the harbor, off Highway 42 along Lake Michigan. That’s where you’ll find the Waverly Inn Pub & Pizzeria, a 115-year-old establishment boasting perks as yet undreamed of by Graydon & Co: karaoke, darts and pool. And give the nanny the night off: The kids are welcome!

Finally, if you prefer inhaling the misty mountain air over a whiff of Graydon’s cigarette smoke, try the Waverly Inn ($139.50 per night) that’s tucked in the mountains of historic Hendersonville, N.C. If you book one of its 14 rooms, you get an evening social hour with free beverages!

How’s business compared to, say, Mr. Carter’s celebrity playpen?

“Umm, well, this Waverly Inn has been here for 108 years,” said Darla, the innkeeper. “We’re close to area shopping and restaurants, and it’s a pleasant little place.”

—Nicole Brydson

Mr. Zinczenko's deadpan routine was performed on the way back to his modest, homely offices on Third Avenue from a five-minute spot at CBS's Early Show , where he introduced models named Stephen and Mel and Chris and Chad and Tim sporting this fall's entries from Tommy Hilfiger and Banana Republic and Armani and Nautica and Polo Ralph Lauren. Watching Mr. Zinczenko, himself wearing this season's Prada suit with an open-collared lime green shirt, discuss an orange jacket and its role in, er, layering, it seemed not improbable that he too could stand up and do a half-pivot at the end of the makeshift catwalk.

That's not because he's handsome. (He is.) It's because Mr. Zinczenko, perhaps more than any editor in this city, is a retro-fitted throwback to the New York editor of the 1950's. Le magazine, c'est moi : He is the physical and mental realization of every diet tip, ab workout, heart-disease-prevention feature and fashion spread that Men's Health serves up to its readers month after month. He's muscular, but not super-buff. He calls young, hard-driving Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden his "inspiration." He stays out late but shows up to work before anyone else. He's straight, but damn if he doesn't know his thread counts.

It was three years ago that Steve Murphy, president and chief executive of the Emmaus, Penn.–based Rodale (known for profitable, if not entirely sexy, titles like Backpacker and Scuba Diving Magazine ) tapped Mr. Zinczenko, all of 30 years old, to head the magazine. Today, he oversees a total circulation of 1.7 million. Last year, Men's Health sold 445,000 copies on the newsstand-a 7 percent increase from 2001. In 2002, in the midst of an apocalyptic advertising market, Men's Health increased its ad pages by 22 percent. This year, so far, they're up by another 22 percent.

And why not? Mr. Zinczenko has emerged as a kind of bright avatar for the 34-year-old, midnight-blue-shirt-and-khaki-wearing office-park consultant. Emboldened by a less-than-swell childhood and memories of a father who died too young, Mr. Zinczenko has transcended his pudgy, unremarkable beginnings in Western Pennsylvania and remade himself into a fit and fashionable über -man who, by the way, dates Rose McGowan.

"I wasn't always healthy," Mr. Zinczenko said. "I was overweight as a teen and pre-teen, and I saw my father as he kind of experienced the effects of bad life choices. He was an example of somebody who had everything: diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure. He was obese. I think this magazine is the only magazine that helps guys live their lives better.

"We're not jerking off Johnny Depp for 6,000 words," Mr. Zinczenko said, not so subtly referring to a recent issue of GQ . "We're saving lives."

In the dowdy, New-England-in-spring-colored offices of Rodale, between 45th and 46th streets, where Mr. Zinczenko spends half the week (he usually works the first half in Emmaus), it was clear that he had dumped his head in a large vat of the Men's Health Kool-Aid. He said he usually begins his working day at 7:30 a.m., and will work until 7 or 8 at night. Still, he works out nearly every day. In Emmaus, Mr. Zinczenko said, he and members of the editorial staff have a daily meeting that occurs, um, while taking a group run. In New York, Mr. Zinczenko joked, he's a strict adherent to the "zone diet," with the zone in question being "the front room at Elaine's."

"If the magazine were a celebrity," Mr. Zinczenko said, "I think it would be a young Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones era: a regular guy faced with extraordinary circumstances and relying on his wit and resources to master them. Harrison Ford is always slightly confused, but you know he's going to figure it out anyway."

It doesn't take much to figure out Men's Health . Looking at a wall of magazine covers that seems to form a giant, dizzying collage, grainy black-and-white photographs of shirtless men encircled by taglines like "Muscle Up" and "Foods That Fight Fat," Mr. Zinczenko remarked: "Well, you can certainly see similarities."

"I think the reason our magazine isn't known for great writing is that we do many other things well," Mr. Zinczenko said. "We don't make a big deal of ourselves. We don't put Sebastian Junger or Paul Theroux or David Halberstam on the cover when they write for us, because the readers are more interested in what they have to offer than the celebrity names of the writers.

"At newsstand, a magazine like Men's Health really stands out," Mr. Zinczenko continued. "You can identify it instantly. It's often had the same elements. It's a black-and-white photo of a guy-usually on his own, smiling and shirtless-with coverlines flush left and off the body. We're selling these great promises that we're actually delivering inside the magazine. When you're doing that, when you're addressing the things that matter most, is when you're going to do very well."

Mr. Murphy, the man who tapped Mr. Zinczenko for the job, said that while he was happy with his young star's development of the editorial content, it didn't hurt to have a handsome, relentless pitchman for the magazine's brand.

"The quality of the editorial in the magazine is the primary goal," Mr. Murphy said. "If, at the same time, someone has a talent for representing the brand and taking the message out to the public, that's fantastic. He's successful at that as well. But that success comes from the fact that he's not kidding. He really believes what he's talking about."

By the time Mr. Zinczenko was 6, his mother and father had divorced, and he and his older brother Eric (now the publisher of Backpacker ) had moved with their mom from Allentown, Penn., to Bethlehem, one town over. While she was working two or three jobs at a time to make ends meet, the Zinczenko brothers became latchkey kids "that got locked out." They spent a lot of time out of the house, "wrestling, roaming the neighborhood, causing trouble." After high school, he stayed local-Moravian College-spending a semester working for Arlen Specter's press office in Washington, D.C. He edited the school paper and became a correspondent for something called Campus Voice . He wrote op-ed pieces for the Los Angeles Times and USA Today and, in 1991, was named college journalist of the year by American Express.

That same year, the scholarship he thought he'd earned to attend journalism school at Columbia University turned out to be loan, and he went looking for work. He said Kurt Andersen told him he'd be happy to have him at Spy , but could only pay him $10,000; he couldn't bear the thought of toiling at PC World for the rest of his life when an offer did come. Approaching John Rasmus, then putting together a new project, Men's Journal , for Jann Wenner, he and Mr. Rasmus reached what Mr. Zinczenko now refers to as his "$6-an-hour deal," with the understanding that when the magazine launched, he'd be given a fair shake.

"Because I couldn't afford to live in New York, I was living in Pennsylvania and taking a transbridge bus in Bethlehem every morning," Mr. Zinczenko said. "Every morning, I would take the 5:30 bus that would pull into Penn Station at 7:10, and I would get into the office at 7:30." At night, Mr. Zinczenko said, he would take the 7 or 8 o'clock bus back and be home by 9 or 10 at night.

"It was a really tough time," he remembered. "It sucks to be on buses constantly, and I wasn't sleeping much. You'd end up falling asleep on the bus and you're really cramped, and I developed some lower-back pains from constantly vibrating 95 miles in each direction every day."

After Men's Journal launched, Mr. Zinczenko became the editor for the back-of-the-book sections of the magazine and actually moved into the city. But by then, he'd fallen in love. With Men's Health .

"There was an instant connection," Mr. Zinczenko said. "I saw the future. This magazine was absolutely amazing. I loved the incredible relevance. It wasn't hip. It wasn't sexy and it wasn't hip. But it was its very unhipness that made it hip. I just said, 'This magazine's fucking great-they're really onto something!' I had never seen a magazine like that."

In March 1993, after Mr. Zinczenko said he'd turned down offers to work for the magazine five or six times, he went to Men's Health as an associate editor, and came home to Allentown. He said he didn't anticipate how much he would miss New York after returning home.

"I could sit there and look at my paycheck, and look at my title on the masthead and all the new responsibilities, and say otherwise," Mr. Zinczenko said. "There was still this feeling, because this was my hometown, that I hadn't really gone anywhere."

But every time Mr. Zinczenko thought about going anywhere else, he was assuaged with another promotion, another set of responsibilities. Within a year, he moved from associate editor to senior editor. A year and half after that, he became the managing editor of Men's Health International and eventually executive editor of the Men's Health international editions. When Rodale decided to launch Men's Health in France in 1999, they picked Mr. Zinczenko to start the project.

"I don't know the language, and we have eight weeks to get out the first issue," Mr. Zinczenko recalled. "I get over there, and we have eight weeks to launch this magazine. We have office space that we just got, and no furniture. So I'm like putting $4,000 computers on my Visa-on my personal Visa. I don't know the language. I feel like I can't cross the street without risking my life. I can't order anything. I'm on the subway system and I'm totally lost because I'm like, 'I don't want to go to fucking Sortie .'"

After a brief return to the States, Rodale sent Mr. Zinczenko to Milan for nine months to help start the Italian edition. In August 2000, without warning and one change of clothes, Mr. Murphy called him back to the States for a meeting. Not only would he become the new editor in chief of Men's Health , he would be in charge of "the brand"-becoming the über -boss directly in charge of the magazine's book division and television ventures, as well as the Men's Health editions across the world.

Mr. Zinczenko quickly went about reformatting the magazine, introducing more journalistically rigorous features on alcoholism and heart disease, and making the book a focused, almost point-and-click guidebook on how to be a man. He tripled the fashion coverage of the magazine because, he reckoned, men who "want to look great naked want to look great clothed."

This has not escaped notice. In November 2002, American Media's David Pecker acquired Men's Fitness and announced that he would use his company's vast distribution network to try and compete more fully with Men's Health . When Charlie Rutman, president of Carat North America, the media buying firm, dropped by the office on August 27 as a "fan" ("This isn't business," Mr. Rutman said. "I just love the magazine and had to meet this guy"), Mr. Zinczenko called Mr. Pecker's title a "dog that humps your leg-it's distracting, but it doesn't really hurt you."

"It's going to be a bloody battle," Mr. Zinczenko said. "But it's going to be all their blood."

Speaking late in the evening on Friday, Aug. 29, Mr. Zinczenko was less kind talking about another men's title.

" Esquire is a magazine without a mission, and that's really the great disability that they have," Mr. Zinczenko said. "They don't have any idea of who's supposed to be reading it and why. It's a men's magazine, but half its readership is female, and it's only got about 700,000 readers-and to get those, they have to offer it at $7 a year. They essentially have to pay people to take the magazine into their homes. [ Esquire editor-in-chief ] David Granger gets a great story in his mind by asking his writers what they fear, and then he tells them to write about that. And I think it shows."

Mr. Granger, for his part, said Mr. Zinczenko had "mischaracterized our business strategy and ignores the two to three years of tremendous growth of subscription and newsstand sales.

"It sounds to me like he's envious of the freedom Esquire has and the narrowness he has to work in," Mr. Granger said. "I'm amazed and flattered about that 'fear' thing. I told that at an [American Society of Magazine Editors] lunch like 10 years ago. How the fuck would he remember that?"

On Wednesday, Aug. 27, while sitting in a corner booth at Fresco, Mr. Zinczenko was approached by Bill Stanton, the burly, tanned security consultant and Elaine's regular. Mr. Stanton, waiting for publisher Judith Regan, explained that Mr. Zinczenko had put him on a diet for a book due out in March 2004. The two were supposed to go out the night before with Brett Ratner and Venus Williams, Mr. Stanton said, but couldn't because of Mr. Zinczenko's early-morning TV appearance.

"Let me tell you something," Mr. Stanton said. "Fresco is at the epicenter of people in media and publishing. And you're at Table 1."

Mr. Zinczenko, looking as if he was blushing slightly, brushed off Mr. Stanton's boasts and, before he left, instructed: "Do me a favor and lose the weight. We can't have a book where you're 30 pounds heavier in the 'after' picture than the 'before.'"

Somewhere during the time Mr. Zinczenko was reshaping his magazine, he also reshaped himself into a Page Six man-about-town and partygoer, the mysterious, dreamy man who emerges from the wilderness of Pennsylvania to hold court in the front room of Elaine's. A celebrity editor baring lat-pull recommendations.

"I don't know exactly when that happened," Mr. Zinczenko said. "I knew that the visibility of the magazine had to change. I knew I needed to become a lot more visible. I knew there wasn't any point to making a lot of changes to the magazine if people didn't notice. I knew I need to be screaming from the rooftops. Now I think we can step away from that and let the magazine speak for itself on its own merits."

Later, asked if the Men's Health lifestyle could co-exist with the man-on-the-town life, he said: "I work really hard, and I take the information we publish to heart every day. I'm usually careful about what I eat; my social life is the reward for that. In terms of my business life, I think they're well integrated. The sad fact is that there's nothing I like more than talking about magazines. So when I'm out and about, I'm enjoying myself, but it usually feeds back into my working life. But the people I'm out with are publishers and authors and other magazine editors and writers and entertainers and sometimes celebrities. It all sort of feeds back into publishing. It's one of the things that I love about working in magazines: You really cross over into all of these other worlds.

"I feel important or well-known in the media or publishing world," Mr. Zinczenko continued. "But I'm not a celebrity, and I'm reminded of that every time I'm out with Rose. I'm the 'unidentified partygoer' when I'm with her."

When it comes to Ms. McGowan, a regular on the WB series Charmed whom he's been dating for a year, Mr. Zinczenko presents a relationship that's less Gucci and more L.L. Bean. Since dating, he said, they've never spent a weekend apart-shuttling back and forth from Los Angeles to the West Village apartment where he spends weekends (and not, usually, at the Pennsylvania apartment he rents on the second floor of a Tudor-style house for $700 a month). They work out together. They watch old movies- The Thin Man was a recent viewing. Pete Bonventre, editorial director of Entertainment Weekly and Mr. Zinczenko's friend, thinks it's for keeps.

"I don't know if this is a record for Dave," Mr. Bonventre said, "to be with one woman for a year. Two, three years ago, there was always someone new and lovely-always some new deb with him. This one's really lasted."

Will it be the same with magazines?

"After a while, working on a magazine like that and trying to find new ways to sell how to build your abs and what foods to eat-you want to see what else you can do," Mr. Bonventre said. "Like any man, he asks himself, 'Can I do something else well? Can I be the editor of Time ? The editor of Esquire ? The editor of Sports Illustrated ?' He thinks about that. I keep telling him not to be in a rush, just to sit back and do what you're doing."

An early favorite to replace Art Cooper at GQ (Mr. Zinczenko was eating lunch with Mr. Cooper when he suffered his fatal stroke at the Four Seasons in June), Mr. Zinczenko, according to friends like Mr. Bonventre, ultimately "just wants a bigger magazine."

Mr. Zinczenko, who said he was "flattered" by Condé Nast's interest in him for the GQ job, said the power afforded him in running Men's Health was enough to make him want to stay at the magazine, for now and into the foreseeable future.

"Even my friends at other magazines sometimes fail to grasp the power and reach of the Men's Health brand," Mr. Zinczenko said. "Fact is, I'm not eager to step down from atop a massive global enterprise to take over an old-style magazine-be it Sports Illustrated , Esquire , Mad or Outlaw Biker -that runs on the same business model that it did in 1962.

"What we're doing here today is so much more than simply running a magazine."

On Tuesday, Sept. 2, new Times culture czar Adam Moss undertook his first personnel move-replacing himself-when he named his longtime deputy Gerald Marzorati to become editor of The Times Magazine .

Mr. Marzorati, the magazine's editorial director since April 1998, said that Mr. Moss had let him know on the evening of Aug. 27.

"I think if you get a job after being there nine years, they're not looking for a change agent," Mr. Marzorati said, echoing (with a bit of sarcasm) the now-notorious sobriquet that former executive editor Howell Raines awarded himself on Charlie Rose after his departure in the wake of the Blair affair.

It's back to basics for The New York Times these days, with "news value" and "reporting" the watchwords. That could complicate things for the magazine.

Asked about the importance of news for the magazine, Mr. Marzorati said: "I think it's difficult-first, because of the early deadlines. Second, we come wrapped every Sunday in layers and layers of the most widely respected news report in the world. I think the way we can approach news is to look for narrative and essays that in some ways have news as their heart and their content."

The man who helped bring us America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story is prospecting a movie based on the life of infamous fabricator and former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair.

According to people familiar with the situation, the Showtime cable network is considering the project being pitched by Jon Maas, who wrote the screenplay for the TBS Kennedy movie that appeared earlier this year. The movie, according to sources, would focus on Mr. Blair's life.

According to sources, Mr. Maas has talked to former Newsweek reporter Seth Mnookin about basing the movie on his cover story "Times Bomb," which appeared in Newsweek 's May 26 issue.

No contracts have been signed, but according to a source, Mr. Maas reached out to Mr. Blair to talk to him for the project. Mr. Blair referred the matter to his agent, David Vigliano, who is representing him for as he pursues his own deal.

Mr. Mnookin, for his part, recently left Newsweek to write a book about The Times for Random House.

Messrs. Mnookin, Maas and Blair declined to comment on the situation. But it doesn't look at the outset like Mr. Blair will profit from a movie-at least not the way things are going so far. Mr. Vigliano said he was unaware of any Showtime endeavor. A Showtime spokesman said he was unable to comment at deadline.

He decided not to attend a friend's Super Bowl party.

Instead, Mr. Milonakis picked up a guitar he can't really play, turned on a video camera in his bedroom and began to sing a really, really, really stupid song.

The Super Bowl is gay, he sang.

The Super Bowl is gay.

Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl

Is gaaaaaaay.

At the top of his lungs, Mr. Milonakis went on to condemn the following things as "gay": the Oakland Raiders, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, water, cologne, DVD players, DVD's, stray cats, the sky, cottage cheese, yogurt, shirts, McDonald's, K.F.C., vacuum cleaners, dollar bills, coins, scanners and CD burners, among others. He concluded by singing, "We're all gaaaaaay !"

Then Mr. Milonakis posted the video, called "The Super Bowl Is Gay," on an Internet Web site, angrynakedpat.com, which contained a reservoir of his short, juvenile films.

That was it. Word spread, and "The Super Bowl Is Gay" received zillions of hits on the Internet. A writer for ABC's new late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live , spotted it and got Mr. Milonakis on the program. Mr. Kimmel joked that he wants to adopt him. He's shown "The Super Bowl Is Gay" and two other videos Mr. Milonakis made, and wants him to cover spring break in Florida. MTV is calling. A guitarist from Ozzy Osbourne's band who's starting his own group wants Mr. Milonakis to sing "The Super Bowl Is Gay" before he plays. Adult women are sending him their photographs saying, "We love you, Andy."

"It's so weird," the brown-haired, brown-eyed Mr. Milonakis said the other day, posing for a photograph on Madison Avenue. "College kids are trying to entice me to come to their college by taking pictures of hot girls. They're like, 'Come party with us! Here's a picture of really hot girls you can't have sex with!'"

Mr. Milonakis may never become a household name. "The Super Bowl Is Gay" is not everyone's taste, to say the least. "I can film my ass farting and it would probably get more of a laugh than this," wrote one critic on the video site ifilm.com. "This kid has more issues than Entertainment Weekly ," wrote another.

But "this kid" from Queens is blowing up. Now people are asking questions about the seemingly precocious Mr. Milonakis, wondering where the hell he came from, what his background is, how he got so much attention so fast, why Mr. Kimmel says: "I love Andy more than I love my own children."

"It's crazy," Mr. Milonakis said.

And so it makes you wonder: Who is Andy Milonakis? And what would have happened if he had just gone to that Super Bowl Party?

"This week has been the most stressful week of my life," Mr. Milonakis said. It was Sunday, March 9, and Mr. Milonakis, looking a little wiped, was picking at brunch in a restaurant near Union Square.

"I'm getting these e-mails," he said. "'You should put out a DVD!' 'You should do a comedy album.' And I don't know how many of them are shady and how many of them are real opportunities. Right now I'm just letting things pass me by, because I don't want to meet with some shady guy who has bad intentions."

Mr. Milonakis fixed an eye on a reporter across the table. "Like you ."

Three nights before, "The Super Bowl Is Gay" had made its debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live . "That kid is going to be a star," said Mr. Kimmel. Mr. Kimmel's first guest, Roseanne, agreed. "He could very well be a star," she said.

The next night, Mr. Kimmel showed a second video of Mr. Milonakis and offered a warning: "Let me tell you something, Leno, if you get that kid before us, I'm going to beat your face in-I swear to God!"

Until a couple weeks ago, Mr. Milonakis had been just another smart aleck who was good with computers and had a funny Web site. A while ago, he'd created a Web parody in which he pretended to be a bitter child actor (named Andy Milonakis). It was rife with head shots, glory tales of commercial gigs, intentional spelling mistakes and horrible grammar. Visitors to the site sent him tormenting e-mails. "The only commercial I ever want to see you in is one where you are in a pool with a concrete block chained to your neck," one person wrote.

Later, Mr. Milonakis hooked up with a screenwriter named Brian Lynch to do angrynakedpat.com. At first Mr. Milonakis did a comic strip, but then he started making little movies. Most of them were silly, stream-of-consciousness bits that resembled the stuff kids make up during long, sugar-deprived car rides. There was Cuppy, the kid who had one $8,000 fake eye and a paper cup for the other eye. There was Dr. Curly, about a kid who loses his friend Dr. Curly, who is a … slice of ham. There was Chunky Peanut Butter Boy, about a lonely kid shunned because he has chunky peanut butter smeared on his face. "Don't run away from me because it hurts," the Peanut Butter Boy said.

What some of Mr. Milonakis' fans may not have known is that the Chunky Peanut Butter Boy and Cuppy and the "Super Bowl Is Gay" kid isn't a kid at all. Mr. Milonakis has a medical condition-"a growth-hormone thing," he said-that makes him look considerably younger than his age. He could easily pass for a wise-ass junior high schooler.

But Mr. Milonakis isn't a wise-ass junior high schooler. At 27, he's a wise-ass network administrator at a midtown accounting firm who's been quietly moonlighting in comedy for years.

Mr. Milonakis was completely up front about his age-it's no secret-but didn't want to go into great detail about his condition. Too " Barbara Walters Special ," as he put it. "I do comedy," he said. Though his appearance did make it "harder to get girls," he said he's in good health. "I don't have any liver or kidney disease like Gary Coleman," he said.

Still, Mr. Milonakis agreed that part of his comedic appeal is his youthful look. His goofy videos don't seem like the work of a Westchester-raised computer whiz who's several years removed from a stint in community college. Part of the fun of watching something like "Super Bowl" is believing it's done by some detention-hall demon suspended from school.

Even Mr. Milonakis' friends get a kick out of the contrast between his comedy and his appearance. Pal Eric Appel was confused when he first encountered Mr. Milonakis in a bar. "I always used to see this kid who looked like he was 12, smoking cigarettes and drinking beers," Mr. Appel said. "I was always wondering what the hell he was doing there."

" Of course some of the humor comes from my appearance," Mr. Milonakis said. "That's fine. Everyone has a little shtick." But he felt it wasn't the only reason it worked. "Some people think that my stuff is just getting seen because I look so young," he said. "But a lot of people like it because they like it. Hopefully it's more of the latter."

It is. Mr. Milonakis' comedy is genuinely funny; it's not just him milking his baby face. His short films are obnoxious at times, arch at others and often absurd, but they're utterly original, chancy and refreshingly weird-think early Saturday Night Live Adam Sandler meets Cabin Boy . It's not totally accessible; some people hate it or don't get him at all. But the ones that do love him.

Mr. Milonakis made nearly 70 short films before "Super Bowl" took off. He was somewhat perplexed by its success.

"I think it's probably more mainstream than a lot of my things," he said. Then he stopped himself. "I'm talking about my stuff like it's this amazing art," he said. "They're these retarded videos. I wake up, have my messy hair and get a guitar that I don't know how to play and go crazy for 20 minutes."

"Super Bowl" was not, as some have suggested, a protest against the usually dull N.F.L. title game, Mr. Milonakis said. As for the other items singled out for their gayness-coins, DVD's, cologne et al.-most were just items he saw in his room as he was singing. "You can see my eyes wandering, looking for things to call gay," Mr. Milonakis said.

As for the word "gay" itself, Mr. Milonakis said he mostly used it in the adolescent sense-e.g., That TV show is so gay -but there are parts where he clearly refers to homosexuality. He uses the epithet "faggot" at one point, and at another claims that "orange juice is gay" and that "orange juice raped" his father. Later on, he claims to like "ladies" and "penis," then sings that he is gay himself.

It's silly and confusing, and Mr. Milonakis seemed oblivious to whether or not people might be offended by the song. He wasn't trying to provoke-it was just nonsense babbling, he said. "I wish some of the stuff I did had more meaning," he said. "I feel like an idiot."

Mr. Milonakis put the video up on Super Bowl Sunday itself. He got a couple of compliments; then a few weeks passed. In mid-February, he noticed a posting on a message board that said: "Hey Andy, your 'Super Bowl is Gay' video is circulating the Internet.'"

"So I looked at my stats," Mr. Milonakis said. "And one day it was like 800 people saw it. And then the next day it was 8,000. And the day after that, double, and the day after that it doubled again. It kept exploding."

It was the biggest success of Mr. Milonakis' nascent comedy career. He'd been doing some stand-up and improv theater and taking comedy classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade, but suddenly he was getting loads of e-mail and doing radio interviews. Then he came home to Queens from a bar one night and saw an e-mail from Jimmy Kimmel Live.

"I was like, 'Holy shit!'" Mr. Milonakis said. "'I hope it's not some spam e-mail: Come and see the Jimmy Kimmel show! '"

It wasn't spam. Mr. Kimmel showed Mr. Milonakis' video. The Web page got even more hits. Mr. Milonakis said he now owed more than $5,000 in "overages" to the company that provided his server. Offers were beginning to trickle in. Mr. Milonakis' family, who'd wondered what he'd been up to with all those videos, was thrilled. "My dad's like, 'I watched your skit, but why do you have to say your dad is gay at the end?' It was pretty funny," he said.

"I'm so happy for him," said Andy's mother, Kathy Milonakis. "When you're a kid and you look a lot younger, it's not that easy. Kids can be brutal. But he seemed to come through it O.K."

What did Mom think of "The Super Bowl Is Gay"? "It went waaay over my head," Ms. Milonakis said. "I didn't get it at all."

As the attention continued, Mr. Milonakis experienced the tell-tale sign that he was getting big: People he knew started acting weird around him. Comics asked him to send stuff to Mr. Kimmel.

"Andy is exactly the same," said Brian Lynch, his colleague at angrynakedpat.com and a writer whose credits include Scary Movie 3. "But I think everyone around him either got bitter about his success or wondered what it could mean to them."

Mr. Milonakis called it all "overwhelming."

"I've never been around anything like it," said his friend, Mr. Appel. "He's like the new dancing baby."

Right now, Mr. Milonakis was just tired. The previous night, he'd been up until 4:30 a.m. He had an improv show that night. He'd been missing some work to do comedy. He didn't like doing that. "They're very understanding," he said of his employers. "They're really cool."

"It's been exciting, but I've been more stressed out than I've ever been," Mr. Milonakis said. "Hopefully, that will change."

A few days later, the phone rang and it was Mr. Milonakis. "I got a nice twist for you," he said. "I lost my job."

He was right; he had been missing too much time at the accounting firm. He said he understood. He said he actually felt bad for the guy who had to give him the news.

"I kind of saw it coming," Mr. Milonakis said. "It's kind of a big relief, because all this good stuff is going on, and I didn't have enough time to devote to it."

The day he got canned, he went to the check-cashing store, cashed his check, and bought a six-pack of beer and some cigarettes. "It just seemed like a fun thing to do," he said. "Get a little drunk and smoke."

That same night, around 10:30 p.m., the phone rang; it was the gang from Jimmy Kimmel Live . The show was 90 minutes to air and they wanted to run another one of his videos-one where Mr. Milonakis does a series of phony, nonsensical foreign accents-and they needed him to sign a release form.

He had to take a car service to a Kinko's and fax the release form to Los Angeles.

"I got there and some asshole was complaining about copies," Mr. Milonakis said. "I'm like, 'C'mon, asshole-fuck your copies!'"

The fax made it through, and Andy Milonakis made it back to Queens in time to watch himself on national television for the third time in a week.

So it would seem. And yet former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, a savvy guy and a public official of great accomplishment, has chosen to get into a public squabble with his former boss. Mr. Bratton charged that the Mayor has polarized the city on racial grounds. That is the very charge made by the likes of Al Sharpton, whose choice of company (Louis Farrakhan comes to mind) and rhetoric (watch out, you white interlopers!) betrays his claims to credibility. Does Mr. Bratton agree with Mr. Sharpton? It's hard to believe.

The former commissioner's remarks suggest that he has something yet to learn about the world of electoral politics, particularly in this city. While he did a fantastic job during his short tenure as Police Commissioner, he is, after all, something of a political novice in a city that he can't quite call his own, not yet anyway.

If Mr. Bratton wants to start a new career as an elected official, he should reconsider his choice of an entry-level position. Instead of running for Mayor as a newly minted Republican, Mr. Bratton ought to run for Public Advocate next year. The incumbent, Mark Green, will have to vacate the office because of term limits-Mr. Green will run for Mayor, along with a handful of other political veterans, on the Democratic line. As Public Advocate, Mr. Bratton not only would demonstrate his as-yet-untested electability, but he would get a firsthand look behind the curtains in City Hall. It's a move that would make sense for Mr. Bratton and for the city.

There's no doubt Mr. Bratton would be an attractive and effective Public Advocate. He would be a nonpartisan, nonideological monitor of City Hall's performance, and he would get a chance to establish expertise on the wealth of issues not related to law enforcement.

Then, after four years, Mr. Bratton would have the knowledge, credibility and proven electability to mount a serious Mayoral campaign.

For now, though, Bill Bratton ought to remember that it was Rudolph Giuliani who brought him to New York from Boston.

The True Cost of Easy Divorce

Children whose parents stay together, even when the marriage is bad, are, for the most part, better off than children whose parents split. That's the stunning conclusion of a study given cover treatment in a recent issue of Time . According to Dr. Judith Wallerstein, who has studied the effects of divorce over the last 25 years, children whose parents divorce are more likely to have difficulty forming relationships of their own, and even those who seem to have emotionally survived the breakup say they wouldn't wish their childhood on their own children.

Since the 1970's, conventional wisdom has had it that children are better off if a bad marriage ends. That reassurance no doubt has eased the guilt of many parents too lazy to do the hard work required of modern marriage. Persuaded that their kids were better off, fathers lingered around the water cooler to chat up female colleagues whose youth and charms offered an easy escape from the burdens of domestic life.

Dr. Wallerstein's study suggests that self-indulgence has not come without collateral damage. Her findings ought to remind parents that there is no such thing as a friendly family breakup.

Remember the Titans!

The last time the New York Jets had four wins and no losses was … well, it's never happened, not when they were known as the New York Titans, not when they were on their way to the Super Bowl, not once in the team's 40-year history. The National Football League season is only a month old, but it doesn't seem too optimistic to say that the Jets may brighten many a fall afternoon this year.

The team's thrilling 21-17 victory over the highly regarded Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sept. 24 showed that this team has the courage, spirit, talent and, yes, good fortune required of the N.F.L.'s elite teams. They didn't play especially well for 58 minutes, and yet, in slightly more than 60 seconds, they went from nearly certain losers, trailing 17-6, to improbable victors. That's the stuff championship dreams are made of.

Before, during and after the Bucs game, much was made of the drama involving former Jets receiver Keyshawn Johnson, who now plays for Tampa Bay and has nothing good to say about some of his former teammates. What's far more interesting, however, is the way the Jets have responded after a tumultuous winter. Legendary coach Bill Parcells quit at the end of last season, handing the job to his favorite assistant, Bill Belichick. In one of the most bizarre moments in the history of a team that has had its share of them, the news conference called to announce Mr. Belichick's promotion ended with Mr. Belichick announcing his resignation. Mr. Parcells, now in the Jets' front office, had to start his search over again, eventually hiring Al Groh. Then the team traded Mr. Johnson, an All-Pro receiver, over a contract dispute.

Usually nothing good can come of such turmoil. Yet the Jets have been able to put aside off-the-field antics and have kept their focus on what matters.

And what matters is that the Jets are 4 and 0, one of only three unbeaten teams in the N.F.L., and are in first place.

Jets fans know that nobody has ever gone broke betting against their team in its legendary battles with misfortune. Still, though, the leaves are beginning to turn, and the Jets are undefeated.

A small wager on hope would seem to be in order.

And then it happens. The door to the box opens, and George Steinbrenner steps out onto a small terrace and begins signing autographs. The fans giggle and squeal in the presence of greatness. Mr. Steinbrenner smiles. He is pleasant. He is genial.

He is a rock star, a civic savior, a beloved celebrity!

Who knew? The George Steinbrenner of Tampa, his adopted hometown, is a far cry from the Boss, the vein-popping, half-mad tyrant who has spent a quarter-century supplying back-page headlines for the New York tabloids. In Tampa, the newspapers, the politicians, the power brokers-they all love George. When Mr. Steinbrenner was presented with the key to the city, his friend the mayor said the gesture was redundant. And he wasn't kidding. During Gasparilla, the Tampa equivalent of Mardi Gras, Mr. Steinbrenner rides through downtown on a Yankees float to tumultuous cheering. Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida sits beside Mr. Steinbrenner during the Florida State Fair (Mr. Steinbrenner is chairman of the Florida State Fair Authority) and thanks the owner for living in the Sunshine State. Editorial writers churn out glowing tributes to the man who has put their city on the sports map. "He's given a great deal to this community," said Mayor Greco. "Tampa is home for him. I recall sitting one day in the box with him at the stadium and he said, 'You know, look at this. Why wouldn't anybody want to live here. It's a wonderful place.' And George is not prone to saying those kind of things too often."

Even the strippers at Odyssey 2001, a gentleman's club popular with the Yankees' minor league team and its coaching staff, love George-not that they actually know him, of course. Or have ever seen him in the, er, flesh. It's just that Mr. Steinbrenner is a one-man industry, and he certainly has a trickle-down effect. "Oh, they all come in here, it's great for business," said "Porcelain," a dancer who has entertained some Yankee farmhands.

Tampa brings out the George we've never gotten to know, not after 25 memorable years. If you want the essential George, the real George, you won't find him in the owner's box at Yankee Stadium, at a power breakfast at the Regency, or at the bar at Elaine's. You'll find him in Tampa, the place he has called home for a quarter-century, the city that became the winter home of the Yankees in 1996. And you'll realize then that George Steinbrenner is, after all, a Floridian .

Actually, he is more than a mere resident. He is a local hero and idol of the masses. He owns the 257-room Radisson Bay Harbor Inn, one of the city's premier hotels. He lavishes money on charities like the Boys and Girls Club, which named its administrative building in his honor. A wing at a local hospital bears his name. He single-handedly saved middle-school sports programs threatened by budget cuts. And he helped a deaf boy regain his hearing.

Mention Mr. Steinbrenner's name to the people of Tampa and their voices turn solemn and reverential, passing along stories they have heard about his generosity-how he anonymously pays for his employee's medical bills, how he writes personalized condolence cards to strangers whose tale of woe he might have read about in the morning paper.

And what does Mr. Steinbrenner get for all this? The one thing he has never, ever received in New York: love.

When Mr. Steinbrenner and Tampa met in 1975, both the man and the city were on the skids. Tampa was a bush-league town with a bad reputation, still reeling from Estes Kefauver's investigations into its mob ties during the 1950's. Mr. Steinbrenner, the feisty son of a shipbuilding magnate from Cleveland, had troubles of his own, having been suspended from baseball in 1974 by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn for making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's Presidential re-election campaign (Ronald Reagan pardoned him in 1989). Fleeing his native Cleveland, Mr. Steinbrenner scoured the whole of Florida, looking for a place to dock his shipbuilding business, American Ship Building Company, and build his legend.

Nobody was surprised when he finally settled on Tampa. For all its strip-mall dreariness, Tampa is an old-school Southern town, where if you're rich and you're white, you're automatically a member of the gentry. And Tampans don't ask too many questions of its aristocrats.

Even as Mr. Steinbrenner was setting up shop, the city was beginning to view sports as a way to acquire a big-league image. (Over the next 20 years, Tampa would win franchises in the National Football League, National Hockey League and Major League Baseball.) Indeed, the city allowed itself to be re-created as a construct known as Tampa Bay. Don't look for Tampa Bay on a map. Look for it instead in sports-marketing reports. It was a marketing genius from the defunct North American Soccer League who decided to expand Tampa's boundaries to include nearby St. Petersburg and Clearwater in one lump by calling the city's soccer team the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Now, all three of its major-league teams identify themselves as Tampa Bay, a city that doesn't exist.

As with many other small cities new to the expanded major-league world, Tampa's power elite is closely linked to sports. It is a world in which public funds flow readily, where lawyers, politicians and socialites bask in the reflected glory of hero-jocks. And Mr. Steinbrenner is at the center of it.

"When George arrived here, he aligned himself with the old Tampa people," said Tom McEwen, a sports columnist with the Tampa Tribune and a longtime friend of Mr. Steinbrenner. "Lawyers and judges and mayors-people of influence and people of substance, longtime Tampa families. They're friends of his." So when Mr. Steinbrenner needed to win the approval of 12 state agencies to get the land for Legends Field, he didn't have look far for support. Emeline Acton, the Hillsborough County attorney when the Legends Field deal was being worked out, noted that Mr. Steinbrenner has plenty of friends in high places. "George called on his friends in the county commissioners office and those high up in government. He was friends with [then-Lieut. Gov.] Buddy McKay and [then-Gov.] Lawton Chiles. He was able to get the deal worked out."

It was during Mr. Steinbrenner's brief courtship of Tampa in 1975 that the Yankee owner met Mr. McEwen, who was and remains the most influential columnist in the city. They became friends-when their children were younger, Mr. Steinbrenner and Mr. McEwen and their families spent Christmas Eve together. Mr. McEwen became instrumental in swaying public opinion in favor of spending taxpayer dollars for various sports projects, including construction of the Yankees' training facility, Legends Field. And he is unapologetic about his role as a partisan booster. "Some people frown on this, but my publisher told me to get involved civically," he said. "He endorsed the fact that I pursued things-like getting the franchises. I wrote about George and the Yankees because we all wanted them here."

Tampa's F.O.G. (Friends of George) said he's simply misunderstood in New York. "I know when I go to New York and I say I know George Steinbrenner-they don't really know him," said Mr. Greco. "They don't know him as we know him. I know the man. And this is his home."

"He can be very baronical and very regal," Mr. McEwen conceded. "He'd love to be king. I always introduce him as the guy who was born on July the 4th. That's all right, but he would have preferred Dec. 25. There's the awful side of George and the good side of George. He reacts just as strongly to the bad as the good."

Mr. McEwen clearly prefers to dwell on the good, and he has the sort of stories Tampa loves to hear about their favorite citizen. "George was signing autographs for kids after a Yankee minor league game and two little kids stick little pieces of paper up for George to sign," Mr. McEwen said. "But one kid doesn't say anything and George says, 'What's the matter kid, cat got your tongue?' And the other kid says, 'Mr. Steinbrenner, I'm sorry but he can't speak. He can't hear, so he can't speak.' In no time the kid was on his way to New York and got [fitted for] hearing aids. And George put him up in a hotel and he went to the Yankee game. Then they brought him back here to get a speech therapist. There are a lot of stories like that."

And then there's the Elaine's of Tampa, where Mr. Steinbrenner regularly presides. During his early years in Tampa, Mr. Steinbrenner met Malio Iavarone, owner of Malio's Steak House, where the city's elite gather for dinner and cocktails. Mr. Iavarone, who counts among his friends baseball legends Lou Piniella, Steve Garvey, Tony LaRussa and Johnny Bench ("I was at his wedding. Wonderful!"), provides Mr. Steinbrenner with a dimly lit watering hole, and Mr. Steinbrenner in turn gives the place celebrity status. Malio's is where deals are brokered, favors are granted and friendships are made (and broken), all under the auspices of Mr. Iavarone's peculiar Southern discretion, which simultaneously conceals and promotes his celebrity guests. Only a few weeks ago, Mr. Steinbrenner and 30 of his closest advisers gathered in Malio's George M. Steinbrenner III Suite (located next to the room named after Mr. Piniella) and decided to trade popular pitcher David Wells for future Hall of Famer Roger Clemens.

Malio's also was the scene of another historic deal when, in 1983, Burt Reynolds became enchanted with hostess Pam Seales, who ultimately stole the actor away from Loni Anderson. Malio's walls are plastered with autographed pictures of Yankee players and local politicians. One picture shows Mr. Iavarone, Mr. McEwen, Mr. McKay and Mr. Steinbrenner in an embrace following the Yankees' World Series victory in 1977. When he's not negotiating million-dollar deals in his own suite, Mr. Steinbrenner holds court in a secluded booth. "People are always leaving the table backing away, you know, shuffling backwards, saying, 'Thank you, thank you, George. I won't let you down,'" said Mr. Iavarone. "I've seen big guys come in here and walk out like a little mouse. When George comes to the place, the whole bar lights up." And Mr. Steinbrenner brings the goods, too. "George spends all kind of money here," Mr. Iavarone said. "All the players spend money, all over the place. It's the Yankees, man. You see all the ballplayers in here. Where you gonna see that?"

George Levy, a 65-year-old man with thinning black hair and a gravelly voice, runs a trophy shop in Tampa and is Mr. Steinbrenner's tennis partner. Mr. Levy was another key organizer of Tampa's sports boom. He was behind a citizens' campaign in favor- in favor! -of a tax increase to pay for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' new Raymond James Stadium. He was recently named Citizen of the Year by the Civitan Club, joining his twin brother, Leonard, who was awarded the honor in 1995, and Mr. Steinbrenner, who was given the award in 1993. Mr. McEwen, another old friend, hosted this year's ceremony. (Get the picture? This is a small town.)

From his office at the back of a shop in a shopping mall, Mr. Levy deciphered his cryptic friend as he shot through a pack of Merit Ultima 100's. A picture of himself with Mr. Steinbrenner and Mr. McEwen hung above the desk.

"He likes the image of a tough guy," Mr. Levy said. He told a story about a call he received when he screwed up a plaque that Mr. Steinbrenner commissioned. "We wrote George W. Steinbrenner instead of George M. Steinbrenner," Mr. Levy said. "So he calls me up and went into this long thing … 'Let me tell you something. Do you know, my granddaughter was looking at this plaque and she was crying.' It was a load of B.S. His granddaughter wasn't even there."

On March 17, Mr. Steinbrenner held a benefit for the Boys and Girls Club of Tampa at the downtown Hyatt Regency. A host of Yankees were on a dais, silently eating their grilled chicken while team memorabilia was auctioned off. Their employer, however, sat in the audience, among his fans-and they are, after all, his fans.

Mr. McEwen and Mr. Levy were seated in their place of honor at Mr. Steinbrenner's table. Chubby Checkers was in attendance, so was the editorial director for the Tampa Tribune , and the chief of police. Tampans came up to Mr. Steinbrenner and paid their respects. He signed more autographs than his players.

The players, after all, are just millionaires passing through.

George Steinbrenner, however, is family.