But Blind Shaft isn't really a demonstration of brotherhood at all. Rather, it's a brilliantly Brechtian dissection of a corrupt capitalistic enterprise that functions in an ideologically disintegrating and nominally socialist tyranny.

After the film's stunning opening images of an anonymous band of miners, visible only by the searchlights on their helmets, an unexplained and seemingly unmotivated murder occurs in the pits. Two of the miners, Tang (Wang Shuangbao) and his partner Song (Li Yixiang), emerge with a story of a "relative" killed in an alleged cave-in. After threatening to notify the police of the mine owner's negligence, they allow themselves to be bought off with a bribe. It's only gradually that we realize that the two seemingly distraught miners have been running this homicidal scam as a cold-blooded business for some time.

In these early, largely expository scenes, the mine owner is shown to be not merely corrupt, but also wired into a totally mercenary scheme to hire the police to kill the two troublemakers if they insist in raising the ante. However, the two "mourning" miners are too shrewd to overplay their hand. They trudge off to the nearest town, spending their ill-gotten gains on drink and debauchery before setting off to find a new mine, and a new victim, to help replenish their funds.

Up until now, these two rascals have served mostly as comic figures of social satire, largely due to the fact that we never really got to know the only victim shown thus far. But the chill of horror begins when their next target is selected: a guileless, homesick teenager who's searching for work to help him finish his education. Hence the sheer inexorability of the process-the two older men adopt the young boy (with false papers making him 18 instead of 16) so he can work in the mine, so they can murder him-provides us with more suspense than we may be prepared to handle.

Still, from the first shot to the last, we're in the hands of a masterly storyteller who, like Zhang Yimou before him, has the serendipitous gift of unveiling an entire society while following the up-and-down-fortunes of his far-from-virtuous protagonists. And even with his deep understanding of working-class desperation, Mr. Li is thrillingly alive to the miraculous power of pure goodness to shine on a cruel and impoverished world. This enables him to find an ending that is satisfyingly ironic without ever becoming cloyingly sentimental. Let us simply say that Blind Shaft is the best picture I have seen so far this year-which, I admit, at the beginning of February, isn't saying much.

Osama -Rama

Siddia Barmak's Osama , from his own screenplay (in Dari Parsi, with English subtitles) is the first film produced in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over in 1996 and were deposed in 2001. The film plays out as a feminist horror film: Osama (Marina Goldbahari), a young girl who clings fearfully and tearfully to her mother (Zubaida Sahar), is forced by economic necessity to have her hair shorn so she can get a job in a grocery store posing as a boy. But Osama's never too convincing in her imposture, and she finds no reserves of pluck and bravery to carry her through her continuing ordeals, even after she's befriended by a compassionate male street urchin.

It's only a matter of time before she and all the other local boys are picked up by the Taliban and taken to a frighteningly theocratic school, where they're taught nothing but how to recite the Koran and the proper way to wash their genitals. She flunks here, too, but hey-this isn't the SAT's. Needless to say, Osama is eventually arrested and saved from a fearful punishment by a lecherous old mullah who claims her as his latest bride. As the film ends, Osama is facing a fate far worse than death-as her bitter female predecessors never tire of warning her.

Many critics have raved about the film and Ms. Goldbahari's performance as the ill-fated victim of the Taliban's mistreatment of women (and men as well). However, I found Mr. Barmak's direction too by-the-numbers, and Ms. Goldbahari's Osama a one-note performance in her relentlessly whimpering (though perfectly understandable) self-pity. The Taliban were horrible, indeed; I just hope and pray that the Shiites in Iraq don't make Iraqi women yearn for the good old secular days of Saddam Hussein.

I can understand why the Golden Globe people voted for Osama as Best Foreign-Language Film over Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions . It's like voting for an anti-Hitler picture, complete with fashionably pessimistic ending for its foredoomed protagonist. Osama wasn't nominated in the same category by the Academy's voters, but I'm afraid The Barbarian Invasions will lose again to some more obscure entry that is more simplistic and less complex in its emotional arguments. No matter: I still stand by The Barbarian Invasions as the best foreign-language film of last year. You can still see it in the theaters.

Little Man Fin

Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent , from his own screenplay, has received such rapturous raves from people I know and respect that I began to wonder why I had avoided it for so long. Now that I've finally caught up-ostensibly to check up on Patricia Clarkson's performance, which won some awards last year-I think I know why. Movies about physically or mentally challenged protagonists make me nervous, mainly because I feel inhibited in making any adverse character judgments.

As it turns out, Mr. McCarthy stacks the deck for dwarf character Finbar McBride, (played by the very talented actor Peter Dinklage), who's not only the central point-of-view protagonist of the piece but also more sensitive and self-sufficient-yet also more articulate-than any of the emotionally needy characters who surround him. Still, Fin (as he calls himself) wants nothing but to be left alone to pursue his passion for trains; he makes his living as a maker and repairer of toy trains. When Fin's African-American employer, the elderly Henry Styles (Paul Benjamin), dies of a heart attack, Fin is told by the lawyers that the store is being sold for the benefit of Styles' heirs, and that Fin has inherited an abandoned railroad depot that served as Styles' home before he retired from his job as a station agent many years before.

Fin walks down the mostly unused railroad tracks to a largely deserted train station in Newfoundland, N.J. Seen in long shot, Fin's 4-foot-6 body makes him look freakish because of the disproportionate size of his head, which is, of course, dwarf-like rather than anatomically proportioned. Indeed, Fin's head is larger than those of the other characters, so that he tends to dominate visually in close-up.

People laugh when I talk about the size of heads in movies, but that's because most people look at movies without seeing them in the way they look at paintings. Humphrey Bogart (1899-1964) and Alan Ladd (1913-1964) were two legendary tough guys in movies of the 40's who photographed much taller than their comparably short heights. This was partly because they were big enough stars to make other players in the frame stand on a somewhat lower level, and partly because their heads were large enough to project a taller image. Mr. Dinklage projects both size and intelligence in the fascinating reticence of his face. Given the fact that he has previously acted in a play written and directed by Mr. McCarthy, it's not surprising that The Station Agent is built completely around Fin's character and his gradual awakening to the need for companionship, from two characters even lonelier and more frustrated than he: Patrica Clarkson's Olivia Harris, a mother grieving for her dead child, and Bobby Cannavale's Joe Oramas, a desperately talkative hot-dog vendor with an ailing Latino father whom we never see.

Olivia comes across as more ditzy than cute when she nearly runs Fin over with her station wagon not once but twice, while Joe won't leave him alone. After a while, I began to weary of the thin texture of the narrative, with its small handful of characters and its conveniently depopulated empty spaces. Fin is traumatically reminded of his limitations when he attempts to prevent the manhandling of a pretty and pregnant librarian named Emily (Michelle Williams) by her angry boyfriend,whocontemptuously shoves Fin aside with ridiculously little effort. Fin is later consoled sexually by the kind-hearted Emily in a sweet gesture of gratitude for her little friend's gallantry. This is all very nice, and I'm happy that everyone in the film finds a measure of contentment in a very relaxed form of friendship. Mr. McCarthy reports in the production notes that he knew he was taking a risk when he cast "a dwarf as a true leading man, not a sidekick or there for comic effect." He needn't have worried. Actually, only a dwarf could keep the audience's attention through all the atmospheric interludes of inaction-and a marvelously gifted dwarf, at that.

Charlie's Ego

Richard Schickel's new documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charlie Chaplin , is opening at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Friday, Feb. 13, and I urge everyone to see it, though I must again declare a conflict of interest: Mr. Schickel is a personal friend, and I appear in the film as one of the talking heads discussing Chaplin's life and art. But I promise that I'm not on very often, though I should mention who else is: directors like Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Milos Forman and Richard Attenborough; performers like Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Marcel Marceau and Bill Irwin; critics and biographers like David Thompson, Jeanine Basinger, David Robinson and Jeffrey Vance; andevenChaplin'scollaborators (David Raksin, Norman Lloyd, Claire Bloom) and children (Sydney, Geraldine and Michael).

The film follows Chaplin (1899-1977) from his first screen appearance in Henry Lehrman's Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914 to his last days in Switzerland. According to Mr. Schickel, Chaplin from the start was "driven by his relentless ego, by his helpless need for an audience to dominate, to lead. All the tragedies of his life stemmed from those drives and needs." Superlatives come very easily in any discussion of Chaplin's career, but what's most valuable in this documentary are the nuances.

Whatever we do, we'll be thinking about the bereaved, of course, especially those who lost comrades and loved ones in the uniformed services. As everyone who lives here knows, those thoughts require no prompting from the media and occur with a random frequency, regardless of dates and ceremonies. If I do turn on the TV during the day, it will probably be to hear the firefighters and the cops play their bagpipes at Ground Zero.

The spirit of last autumn in New York, however blunted by our return to daily routines, hasn't disappeared. The feelings we all experience when we walk past a firehouse represent a change that will last for a generation, and possibly much longer.

The attack took place on a Tuesday morning, which for me meant the imperative of a deadline. Later, some readers responded angrily that the column I wrote after watching the Twin Towers fall was too political, too critical, too partisan. On reflection, I came to understand that reaction. Although I wouldn't withdraw a word, I can see why others might have found those words inappropriate to the emotions of the moment.

But this anniversary occurs in a season that is inescapably political, and its observance will be employed for purposes of state and of party. To assess the past 12 months in those terms, and to analyze their impact on the future, is in no way disrespectful of private grief or patriotic unity. It is what citizens do in a democracy.

Any assessment of this historic year should, in fairness, take account of the Bush administration's achievements. The destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was a just war, conducted with fewer civilian casualties than many expected. It destroyed the main sanctuaries of the totalitarian enemy and disrupted their capacity to attack again. As the nation's leaders in that conflict, George W. Bush and his aides can rightly claim the victory (even though its swift, certain execution utterly disproved his campaign complaints about the condition of the armed forces under his predecessor).

Mr. Bush also deserves considerable credit for what didn't happen to American Muslims and Arabs (and those who merely look as if they could be Muslims and Arabs). He protected them with Presidential authority and prestige from the mass recriminations they might have suffered in a nation alarmed and infuriated by Islamic fundamentalism.

Those laudable accomplishments, however, do not expunge the administration's responsibility for the most sustained assault on constitutional liberty in decades. The President's defense of Arab-Americans as a group is overshadowed by the actions of his Attorney General, who has held hundreds of individuals imprisoned for months while refusing to name them or describe their offenses. Open courtrooms have been transformed into secret chambers. The administration has arrogated to itself the power to arrest any citizen suspected of connections with terrorism, by its definition, and hold that person indefinitely, granting no access to an attorney or a court. Indeed, it claims the power to do so without public explanation, and has defied judicial orders to redress these offenses.

This government has even attempted to enlist millions of postal workers and meter readers to spy on the rest of us. That initiative has been withdrawn for the time being. Yet it is still misusing the establishment of its ominously named Department of Homeland Security to break unions while undermining whistleblower and freedom-of-information laws. In the supposed defense of liberty under the rule of law, both law and liberty are being destroyed.

The same attitude that flouts the Constitution is undermining America's relationships with traditional allies and undermining the nation's stature abroad. Afghanistan has hardly been secured against the scattered forces of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden is still assumed to be at large, and Al Qaeda retains sufficient resources to provoke an orange alert. Yet the attention of the administration has rather prematurely turned elsewhere.

The determination of the President and his aides to invade Iraq is hardly disguised by their belated "consultations" with various foreign heads of state. Their insistent focus on a war resolution-in the weeks before a national election where the President's party fears losses because of domestic issues-has only provoked additional doubt about Mr. Bush's "pre-emptive" policy. And their stated opinion that he can wage war without Congressional assent has only amplified their contempt for any constraints on their power.

Among the most vexing questions confronted this year by New Yorkers and all Americans is how best to honor the memory of our dead. To build a concrete monument, while surrendering Constitutional freedom and democratic order, will do them no honor at all.

We're told that the interrogators in those countries "have a better understanding of Islamist groups, their contacts, customs and language." Oh, and one more thing: They use torture-and that's what gets my goat. There are Americans who can do that, but there go the globalists again, shipping our jobs overseas. We have many Americans who can do the work, like airport-security personnel who are standing around waiting for the next batch of passengers. They're qualified, God only knows. And what about the contracts for manufacturing thumbscrews, testicle-shockers and nipple-squeezers? Are they going to the Chinese? Look no further for the cause of industrial decline.

What's going on here? We're hiring the Syrians, whom we've been taught to hate for years because they're un-American, anti-Israeli rats, to do our intelligence work. Is this more Rumsfeldian ruthlessness? Well, don't ask questions, because once you start, you'll drive yourself nuts. The way to prevent yourself from asking questions is to repeat the Pledge of Allegiance (with or without the "under God" phrase) the way some Catholics will recite the Hail Mary to chase away impure thoughts. If the temptation to ask seems to be getting the better of you, try saluting a flag, singing a patriotic song or thinking how you can honor, show respect or celebrate the various things the President expects you to revere. Or get a small group of friends and neighbors together and chant: "U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.! Let's get ready to rumble !"

And speaking of rumbling: There's been a lot of rumbling of late about rumbling into Iraq. The purpose of an Iraqi rumble would be to get rid of their weapons of mass destruction, or "WOMD's," as Donald Rumsfeld calls them, because we and we alone-or us and us alone-have the ethics and the judgment to possess them.

That would sound good if it weren't so laughable. No, I'm not talking about our superior ethics. Who can argue about that? Nor am I talking about our judgment, which is as infallible as you can get-unless you're the Pope, and he doesn't have any WOMD's.

No, it's laughable because we've had a monopoly on failing to control all the world's WOMD's for more than half a century. Donald Let's-Get-Ready-to-Rumblesfeld and the rest of that clenched-jaw crowd might do some recollecting of our sorry history in that regard, dating back to the time we failed to keep them out of the hands of the Soviets. You can say, "But, but, but … the Communists stole the secret from us!" Which just makes my point. After the Reds filched the secret of the atomic bomb, we ratcheted up to the hydrogen bomb, but the Soviets had one of their own shortly thereafter, without even the courtesy of a design from us.

Now the French, the Brits, the Israelis, the Pakistanis, the Indians, the South Africans, the Chinese-and doubtless one or two countries I've missed-all have bombs of their own. So there you have it: 50 years of failure. However, if there's one thing American politicians do well, it's refuse to learn from experience. Take, for example, our policy on Cuba: Besides making Cubans miserable, the 40 years of boycotting that country seem to have accomplished little-except, perhaps, leaving us with the possibility that Fidel Castro will become the first centenarian dictator. U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.! And we tell others we're a practical, pragmatic people.

There is one good reason for attacking Iraq: Saddam, the old schmuck, may not have any WOMD's-or, if he does, he may only have a few, and no means of using them against anyone but his own people, which he's been known to do when he gets cranky. It was The Washington Post which published the story saying that some American generals have major doubts that there's any kick left in the Iraqi mule. They believe that Saddam's WOMD's lack much in the way of D-power, and that it's best to leave things as they are. Just keep the blockade up and keep cool with Coolidge. In this, the generals are mistaken. The reason for attacking Saddam is because he doesn't have WOMD's. It's what they call in Washington a "win-win situation": Saddam's impotence will provide a factual basis for the President's saying that our war aims are accomplished, that Saddam is now WOMD-less. He can skip over Saddam's having been WOMD-less to start with.

America and President Bush need a win. There are only so many times you can hand out medals to the NYPD and have everybody brush away the tears. You can already hear a few malcontents mumbling that flying isn't safer, only nastier. While the Democrats lack the spine to complain, independents are beginning to murmur that, so far, the War on Terror's only accomplishment is the forthcoming gigantic Department of Homeland Security muddle.

That is not a fair evaluation. There have been other accomplishments. Everyone drew much benefit from those inspirational press conferences delivered by Mr. Rumblesfeld at the Pentagon, which compare so favorably to the dishwater dumped out every day at the White House by Ari Four-Flusher, the flaccid flak. Give credit where credit is due: The Taliban are gone. From a P.R. point of view, it would've been nicer if they had fought back, but let us gather the flowers where they grow.

Where no flowers grow, it is possible to point the finger at the last administration. President Clinton had some pretty pale victories, not even counting Somalia. His Haiti enterprise has worked out so well that foreign aid has been discontinued pending a modicum of decent behavior on the part of the new despots. In the Balkans, where the military intervention was too late and too feeble to prevent mass murder, the outcome now is the ethnic cleansing the United States said it wouldn't tolerate. So, you Democrats: no cock-a-doodle-do's from you.

As for the present: God, we need to go to war against Iraq. It'll take our minds off Afghanistan. Every three or four days those damn people, instead of being grateful, bitch about something else going wrong. When are they going to stop complaining about those civilians who got killed by accident at that wedding? For God's sake, it was only 48 dead and 117 injured! The way they go on, they make it sound like a massacre. Who knows? The groom might have been linked to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, whose modus operandi is to hide the mortars in the nursery schools and blame us for the dead babies. It's unconscionable.

So expect no gratitude from Kabul. They connived with that United Nations investigation, which claims the American military took off with the evidence of who killed whom at that wedding and why. The implication is that our government covered up what happened. Talk about preposterous! The next thing will be the U.N. investigating Amtrak accidents and blaming it on the Marines.

This stuff, this anti-American news, it can get to a person. You really have to work at getting rid of all doubts and negative ideas. Go to church or temple (mosque might not be so good). Another way to clear the mind of temptation-the temptation to think and question-is to belt out a stanza of "God Bless America." You have no idea how much good it can do.

Members of the Catholic Church's hierarchy have acted with gross incompetence-that point is so clear that the bishops have few if any defenders even among the devout, and even among the vast majority of priests who are not and never have been child molesters. Good priests are as horrified as their congregations-and given that some of those congregations are in neighborhoods where no elite opinion-formers dare trespass, it's worth noting that Catholic priests continue to minister to the poor, the grieving and the forgotten, even as they're subjected to undeserved ridicule.

A priest friend of mine-whose name I won't mention because we were talking off the record-said with palpable sadness that he doesn't wear his clerical Roman collar when he ventures out in Manhattan these days. He's self-conscious, and more than a little angry with the bishops and archbishops who have dealt so miserably with this terrible problem. At Mass a couple of weeks ago, my friend apologized for the shame and scandal a few priests and bishops have brought on an institution so many lay people still look to for consolation, for inspiration and, yes, for moral and ethical guidance.

My friend and I talked a little bit about a mutual friend of ours, a priest whose job it is to help recruit and train young priests. "How would you like that job these days?" my friend asked. He talked, too, about the uncounted ways this scandal has changed the dynamic between parish priests and their congregations. "Look, I know guys who'd like to take kids to a ball game, to show interest in the lives of the kids in the parish. They can't do that now," he said. "And when you talk about vocations, priests are supposed to be examples for young men. But that's tough now."

Perhaps it would have been a little easier if Cardinal John O'Connor and Cardinal Joseph Bernadin of Chicago were alive. O'Connor was a terrific pastor and a so-so bureaucrat. He spent a lifetime confronting unpleasant truths regardless of the consequences, and very likely would not have responded in lawyerly fashion to allegations and cover-ups. It's the bureaucrats who've gotten the church into this mess, not the genuine pastors.

Cardinal Bernadin, you may remember, actually was accused of sexual abuse years ago by a onetime seminarian who was under the spell of the recovered-memory hucksters. One of Bernadin's close friends, writer and ex-priest Eugene Kennedy, recalled that the cardinal dispensed with the advice of lawyers and public-relations experts who urged all manner of spin-control tactics. Instead, he confronted a ravenous press corps, denied the charges and expressed sympathy for his accuser. The charge, it turned out, was false. Bernadin publicly embraced his accuser, who later died of AIDS.

That's leadership, but Bernadin and O'Connor-two very different archbishops with very different styles-are gone now, and too many of those in power act like middle managers rather than teachers and pastors, servants of the servants of God. Cardinal Edward Egan's homily on Palm Sunday had the right language and the right tone: He vowed that sexual abuse in the priesthood would be "wiped out," and he spoke with feeling about the crimes committed against children. But the messenger himself remains covered in shadow. He inherited a scandal in Bridgeport, Conn., and did not cover himself with glory when he had to deal with the consequences.

But at least the cardinal has not taken the low road of blaming the media-a journey his colleague in Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, and others have undertaken at no small cost to their credibility. This is not a media-driven story; it's driven by sin, criminality and a shocking breach of trust.

As the scandal continues to unfold, as outraged lay people make it clear that they will no longer tolerate dissembling from their bishops, parish priests will continue to comfort, guide and teach-even as the larger world makes cruel jokes at their expense. They will continue to baptize the newborn, marry the young and bury the dead. And they'll do so for years to come, knowing that their way of life is open to question and even ridicule.

They knew when they were ordained that theirs would be a lonely calling. They had no idea just how lonely it would be.

Now picture your phone ringing.

"Hello," you say innocently.

On the other end, you hear: "Hello, I'm your cousin's husband's mother's doctor," or "I do accounting for the man who used to sell handbags in your father's showroom, but he doesn't know me very well."

Wanting to be a good sport, you talk to the person for anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. Listening as they say such things as, "All I know about you is that you've got all your limbs and you're not deformed," or "You wear a heart monitor to work out? Let me ask you a question: Do you ever wear your heart monitor when you're having sex?"

You agree to meet this person at a bar or restaurant. Don't forget, you will be entirely alone for the next 45 minutes to three-plus hours. No spouse, no kids, no friends. You are on your own, like sitting next to a complete stranger on a long plane ride, except at the end of the flight, instead of escaping to someplace sunny and exotic, you're just going home. You smile politely as they say, "You didn't know pornos were available on DVD? Where have you been? I have hundreds," or "My last girlfriend and I broke up less than a month ago. She said if she finds me with anyone, she'll kill me. And you."

You eat your salad quickly.

Now imagine having people tell you the next day, "You should go out with him again. How can you tell anything after one date? You never know. "

Because I get told " You never know " so often, I've decided to tell these well-meaning people–the same ones who claim to know countless couples who hated each other on the first date before falling madly in love, although they can never name even one–just exactly how you do know .

First, let's start with the logic frequently used in fixing up single people: the "he's single, you're single, you never know " approach. This is when being single feels an awful lot like being in a bad science-fiction film, the kind where people in hooded polyester body suits mill about in a dreary moon colony, stripped of any specificity and identity and mated with each other as "Woman X5419, meet Man G6453. Proceed." Going back to the role-playing for a moment, imagine if someone said, vis-à-vis a possible friendship, "You're married, they're married, you'll have lots in common!" Sounds a little random, doesn't it? Which may explain why we proceed cautiously.

The next step is the phone call. For some, the answer is to keep it brief. "My No. 1 rule is, never talk on the phone with someone you haven't dated before or seen," said a lawyer friend. "I've got a friend who talks so much before a date, by the time he goes out with her, she's his best friend. Then when they meet and he's not into her, he has to break up with his new best friend."

An investment banker who spends his free time writing rhyming verse had a different approach. "I usually talk to them so much on the phone, it's really like a first date. So the first date is really the second date, and you know after the second date." I asked a woman who said she feels like she has "nosebleed seats to her own life" if she'd ever known simply from the phone that someone wasn't for her. "Once," she said. "When this guy started describing his colon exam in detail."

I wanted to know if people thought it was fair to reject someone because of bad phone conversations. "If you really don't like someone on the phone, don't go out with them," said a woman who's been on over 50 blind dates. "People shouldn't go on dates against their will. This isn't the Taliban of dating."

As for the actual dates, I am often asked how I can tell anything when a first date is just a "first impression." "'First impression' implies a couple of minutes," a male music teacher said. "After a whole evening, you know what's up. You have her undivided attention for three hours. You can know from one date." The woman with nosebleed seats said that on first dates, "I feel like a circus seal performing. But when you're not attracted to them, that's when you really have to perform." "The physical is undeniable," said the lawyer. "I feel shallow saying that, but if the physical is zero there's no chance."

Physical attraction might seem obvious, but you can't imagine how often I get asked how I can be so sure I'm not attracted to someone after just one date. This is usually followed by the words "You're too picky"–although the same people who tell me I'm too picky are the ones who say I'm not picky enough.

"I don't get the 'You're just too picky' line of thought," said a feisty brunette. "I think it's actually a hostile statement. They really mean 'Just find someone already like I have and shut up, so I don't have to deal with this anymore.'"

One of my best friends told me recently that "my father said it's not the men you don't pick I'm worried about, it's the ones you do pick." As she spoke, she proceeded to eat a loaf of bread with butter. "People relay their fears onto you. It's like they're saying, 'When you were 25 we wouldn't have said you were too picky, but now we're getting scared and you should be, too–so start settling.'"

The rhyming banker said, "What does 'too picky' mean? You're too picky in who you want to spend the rest of your life with?" He said that he often felt like his married friends were trying to educate him in the realities of love. "They try to tell us we're unrealistic and too romantic," he said. "But we understand we won't get everything. We know what we can live with."

I've always suspected that when people say "You never know," they're really saying, "You never know, you , because if you had better judgment, you'd be married like me." For all the people who have to respond to the "how do you know?" question as often as I do, I think it's important to point out that people who allow themselves to be fixed up actually want to meet someone, and are therefore the ones most likely to give the process the fairest shot every step of the way. One could also reasonably make the point that if you go out with someone twice, why not go out 50 times? Take a road trip to the Berkshires, even. You might deeply hate the person by then, but at least you'll get to see Tanglewood. Also, if you're asking how we know if we like another person, why not go for broke and ask how we know if we like anything. "How do you know that you like Irving Penn's photographs? Gramercy Tavern? That you're not on fire right now? How do you know anything at all, really?"

Have I made my point?

Year by celebrating Tony Kushner's great new play of our anguished times, Homebody/Kabul . I cannot think of a more

important drama in the last decade-since, in fact, the same awesomely

articulate dramatist astonished us with his vast epic of the 90's, Angels in America . His new play is a

magnificent achievement on every challenging,deeply compassionate level. It

confirms Mr. Kushner's place-if confirmation beneeded-asour

leadingplaywright,to whom attention will always gladly be paid.

Restassured,he must bedoingsomething right when The Wall Street Journal dismisses Homebody/Kabul as something sordid that

"might as well have been created by a Taliban playwright." Mullah Kushner, the

mad warlord of Off Broadway, has firstly created a fantastic act of dramatic

clairvoyancy by setting the heart of the play in Afghanistan in 1998-2000.

There's nothing opportunistic about this. It was written before Sept. 11 (and

Mr. Kushner has always taken an interest in a world beyond the safely, cozily

bourgeois). There are some scary moments. An educated Muslim woman, driven to

the edge of madness in Kabul during the era of American support for the

Taliban, threatens a Westerner: "You love the Taliban so much, bringthemtoNew York! Well,don'tworry, they're coming to New York! Americans!"

But the ghostly timelinessoftheplay shouldn't blind us to its

enduring value. In the drama's narrative sweep and ambition, in its muted

yearning and desperate sense of search, Homebody/Kabul

is a journey without maps to the ravaged, symbolic center of a fucked-up

universe. Mr. Kushner, whose epic dramas are within the state-of-the-nation

tradition of George Bernard Shaw, links a public debate about the state of the

world to private wounds. (What saves Mr. Kushner from becoming another Shaw,

for one is surely enough, is his Jewish humanism). The troubled, lost

Westerners within Homebody/Kabul are

as much at endless war with themselves, and each other, as Afghanistan is the

hell on earth where people forget even their own names.

As always with this playwright of ideas and commitment, the play

compels us to look freshly at tinderbox issues that exist on several intriguing

levels. Homebody/Kabul is about lost

civilizations and unsolvable paradoxes, furious differences and opposites and

disintegrating, rotting pidgin cultures. It's about desolation and love in

land-mined places, child murderers and fanatics, tranquilized existence and

opium highs, travel in the largest sense of the word-travel of the mind and

soul. To where? An unknowable mystery, perhaps, where all confusion is

banished. "A door marked nevermore that was not there before," as the Afghan

fan of the golden songs of Sinatra puts it. "It is hard you will find to be

narrow of mind."

Homebody/Kabul is also,

most crucially, about the clashing symbol and Babel of language itself. The

dreamy, seductive opening monologue of the eccentric middle-aged British lady

known only as the Homebody is dizzy with the pleasure of words. "Oh, I love the

world!" she declares (though that it isn't strictly true). "I love love love

love the world!" But what this warm, dotty, intellectual misfit on antidepressants

loves more than anything is the power of words and the joy they give her. She

happily drowns in them, the more arcane the better, as if in search of lost

meaning.

Her mess of a daughter, Priscilla-adrift in her early 20's after

a suicide attempt at 18-is angrily inarticulate and coarse. Words go sour on

her; they are of no use. Her unloving father, a repressed Britisher in his 40's

named Milton, is a computer engineer whose science "joins the opposites." But

then, the language of science invariably befuddles the layman.

During the play, we hear the opposing foreign tongues of Pashto,

Dari, French and, of course, English, when no one can literally make themselves

understood, except in watery translation. Language loses its meaning, corrupted

and       of all vitality and life, like

ethnic cleansing. The near-mad Afghan woman, Mahala, is a librarian in a

ravaged land without libraries. She has forgotten even the syllables of her own

language. The Tajik Afghan poet and guide, Khwaja, writes in the dead universal

language of Esperanto, a language without history-"and hence," he explains

dryly, "no history of oppression." And the Sufi marabout we meet along the way

is in search of a lost language of paradise, a path to knowledge and

understanding where words might be reborn in innocence.

At the surprising outset, Mr. Kushner throws down an ace with the

Homebody's hour-long monologue, saturated with its dazzling distractions and

erudition. Has there ever been an opening to a major play like it? "Our story

begins at the very dawn of history, circa 3,000 B.C.," the British lady in the

string of pearls begins, reading in her witty, animated way from an outdated

1965 guidebook about the ancient city of Kabul. There will be certain

scintillating diversions from her fluttery guided tour, most dramatically in

her breathtaking description of the day she purchased 10 festive party hats

made by people who believe in magic.

In the tiny London souvenir store, the Homebody imagines or

experiences-for both can be one and the same thing-that she can speak fluent

Pashto and, led by the maimed Afghan hat-seller to Kabul, makes love to him.

Wonderfully acted by Linda Emond, who's just about as perfect as any actress

can be, the monologue closes with her eccentric Homebody singing along to

Sinatra's "It's Nice to Go Trav'ling." "Such an awful awful man, such perfect

perfect music! A paradox!" she announces, only to stagger us again by turning

to a 17th-

century Persian love poem touched by the unearthly strangeness and beauty of

Kabul:

I sing to the gardens of

Kabul;

Even Paradise is jealous of

their greenery.

The Homebody/Kabul

opening has been compared approvingly by some to the Talking Heads monologues of Alan Bennett, which is like comparing

Mr. Kushner to the Queen Mother. Mr. Bennett is a beloved, eccentric British

miniaturist whose specialty is the theater of social embarrassment. Eroticism

isn't within his narrowly appealing repertoire, nor the dangerous, fabulist

dreams that go to the central mystery of Mr. Kushner's drama, which next takes

flight with the apparent death of the Homebody while visiting Kabul.

Was she hacked to pieces, caught in the crossfire of history when

President Clinton began bombing Afghanistan? Or is this urban romantic of drab

suburban London still alive? Is she a Muslim convert, now voluntarily devoid of

books-words!-her music-Sinatra!-and all things Western? Is she married to an

Afghan?

The second and third acts take us in search of the answers when

Homebody's daughter, Priscilla (Kelly Hutchinson, exactly right as the shrill,

graceless brat), searches for the body of her mother. Mr. Kushner is often at

his vivid best with characters for whom he has the least sympathy. Remember Roy

Cohn, the Antichrist of Angels in America ?

The stoned, confessional scenes between Homebody's husband, Milton, and the

dissolute, self-obliterating Quango, the opium addict and unofficial liaison

for the British government in Kabul, are brilliantly performed by Dylan Baker

and Bill Camp, respectively. It's like watching a meltdown of the damned.

There's so much fine work to admire here: the sly, dry humor of

Yusef Bulos' Tajik poet (and spy); the overwhelming tragedy of Sean T.

Krishnan's Zai, in mourning for his homeland, as well as Mr. Krishnan's

portrait of the marabout-for all such quests must have a Wise Man-who guards

the mythical grave of Cain in a valley of mines. The meeting between the

marabout and an ashamed Priscilla is particularly affecting; the dignified,

frightening authority of Firdous Bamji's mullah could scarcely be better; and

the shattering performance of Rita Wolf as Mahala, the Muslim librarian driven

mad by Taliban killers-"I have nothing to read!"-brims with tears of unbearable

emotion.

I have done less than justice

to the director, Declan Donnellan, and his longtime designer, Nick Ormerod. The

most gifted Mr. Donnellan directed Angels

in America to great acclaim in London at the Royal National Theater. An

early disciple of Peter Brook, the internationalism of Homebody/Kabul holds no fear for him. His assured sense of rhythm,

the energy and pulse of the entire piece, are a tribute to his generous talent.

I have run out of space and superlatives. At close to four hours

with two intermissions, Homebody/Kabul

(at the New York Theater Workshop) isn't for the Mamma Mia! crowd, obviously. But in such company as this, time

doesn't matter. Besides, we all know of the 80-minute drama that lasts an

eternity. I must report I've rarely experienced a theater audience listening so

intently to a play that you can hear the silence-as if we, too, need to better

understand the world and grieve under its convulsive, weary weight.

As I say, Tony Kushner's Homebody/

Kabul is the most remarkable play in a decade-without doubt the most

important of our time.

He joined a foreign army–and perhaps an international-terrorist subset of that army–that initiated hostilities against the United States, including the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. He participated in armed violence against American allies in Afghanistan. Before his ultimate surrender, he took part in a prison uprising against those allies, which resulted in the horrible killing of an American intelligence agent.

Mr. Walker is therefore a traitor who deserves the same fate as Timothy McVeigh or worse, isn't he? The only questions remaining are what kind of legal formalities should precede his execution, and whether that satisfying conclusion to the Walker story ought to be televised, perhaps with Bill O'Reilly or some other cable gasbag as master of ceremonies.

So much for those quaint, old-fashioned American notions about the presumption of innocence–now junked, amid wartime hysteria and patriotic posturing, along with other antique provisions of the Constitution. When the Attorney General questions the loyalty of anyone who dissents against his actions, who will dare to stand up for the rights of a turncoat caught in the ranks of the Taliban?

It is easy to condemn any young American who turns against his country, as Mr. Walker evidently did, and even easier to condemn his decision to join the Taliban in oppressing their own people. In doing so, he may well have committed crimes against both the United States and Afghanistan.

Yet there are still many questions left unanswered concerning Mr. Walker, beginning with the still mysterious circumstances under which he came to join the Taliban militia and ending with his exact role in the prison riot that led to C.I.A. operative Johnny (Mike) Spann's death. What did Mr. Walker know about the events of Sept. 11 before his capture? When did he learn that the United States was effectively at war with his Afghan and Arab hosts? What would have happened to him if he had tried to leave? What were his intentions and his mental condition?

None of the reporting so far offers the basis for any fair conclusions–and in any case, he is entitled to a process more rational, orderly and unbiased than trial by sound bite.

The lynch-mob mood surrounding the discussion of Mr. Walker's fate shows how casually the concept of constitutional rights can be abandoned, even in a country where those ideas have developed for more than two centuries. More than a few people who should know better–who do know better–have leaped to denounce the "American Taliban" as if he had not only been indicted but tried and convicted.

Restraint is not to be expected, of course, from the New York Post , which instantly placed Mr. Walker in the headline category of "traitor" and "rat." The tabloid's star columnist has urged authorities to "put him before a military tribunal, get him up against the wall and drill him like a sieve." This is gin-mill justice, as understood by the flag-flapping foreign recruits of the Murdoch organization.

Nor is it shocking that Trent Lott, the Senate Minority Leader, would inflame mob emotion in the style of his friends at the Council of Conservative Citizens. While admitting on Fox News Sunday that he doesn't know "all the facts," the Senate Minority Leader called Mr. Walker "treacherous and treasonous" and said he "obviously is guilty of some really horrible things. He should be tried and at the very minimum, I believe, should be sentenced to jail." Nobody bothered to ask Mr. Lott what the purpose of the trial would be, since he is ready to send the man to jail or possibly the death chamber.

It was more troubling to hear similar pandering from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a person who has herself been subjected to the American media's version of summary justice. "I certainly consider him to have been a traitor to our country," she said on Meet the Press , adding that she didn't mean to suggest what kind of "legal action should be taken." She might instead have followed the better example of Republicans like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who wisely withheld judgment, or her Senate colleague Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

It was Mr. Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran, who listened to Mr. Lott's remarks and then had the courage to say what needs to be said about John Walker: "No question he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong people. And why he was there, the motive behind that, we need to let that play out. We need to talk with him, as we are talking to him. I'm not one who is going to immediately charge him with treason …. I think we need to be a little careful here."

And I've felt like I've been fighting on two fronts, in the murkily impenetrable landscape of Afghanistan and among the even grimmer liberal pessimists of Manhattan. At a dinner party a few weeks ago, when journalists were in full quagmire moan, the guest on my left, a venerable gentleman in the arts, raised his glass. "Here's to peace," he proposed, and all of the others feelingly echoed his toast. Almost all: When I said, "Here's to victory," and my husband seconded me, there was a resounding silence. Then voices rose in argument, the two of us very much outnumbered-but not outvoiced-by those who felt that even one Afghani death would discredit our bombing attack on the Taliban. Never mind that before the bombs, families were fleeing and thousands of children were dying of starvation under its rule; never mind that the point of such an assault, whatever its "collateral" damage, was ultimately to save and preserve a great many more lives; never mind that for three years now, mass e-mailings had been passionately protesting the treatment of women by the Taliban and calling for action (like what? Asking Congressmen or the U.N. Security Council to sit down with the mullahs' consigliere to discuss education policy?)

This was before ground forces began moving in and children were allowed to fly kites for the first time. I know momentous problems lie in wait, not the least being the behavior of our allies, the Northern Alliance and the unpredictable Pashtun. But the destruction of the Twin Towers and the incineration of so many innocent victims signaled an irreconcilable conflict. It's not the specific criticisms of American policy that I minded so much as the tone and emphasis, and the impulse of otherwise intelligent people to switch the subject from the lethal hostilities initiated by a criminal conspiracy to our mitigating guilt. Until 9/11, arguments around the dinner table tended toward mild differences among us blue-state types on such issues as Middle East policy and what to do about the settlements; unanimous outrage at the depredations of the Republican Party (Ashcroft, the religious right, the stimulus package; the administration's conflict-of-interest with business, and especially the Big Oil interests) and the pathetic lack of resolve of the Democratic Party. But suddenly we were divided, and I found myself a once polite and deferential dinner guest turned angry patriot. People I thought of as friends began to send hate e-mail, like copies of Arundhati Roy's venomous attack on the U.S.

When the subject of the war came up (and how could it not?), the knee-jerk protest went as follows: 1) yes, the Taliban is terrible, but this isn't the right way to go about it (what is?) and we'll never find Osama bin Laden (so we shouldn't try?); 2) yes, the Taliban is terrible, but we're just as bad in our own way, bullies that we are, unilateralists, etc., etc.

It was this theme and its multiple variants that drove me up a wall. Mr. bin Laden had taken comfort at finding a fifth column in our midst, fulfilling his hopes of undermining our morale by exposing our soft underbelly, our inability to accept death in the interest of a higher purpose. That we can't say the words "higher purpose" without a secular smirk may in itself be the fatal weakness in our society.

I was reminded of George Orwell's criticism of the British intelligentsia during World War II. He derided the "irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power." He talked about the flabby pacifists of the left, the "emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality."

As long as we blame every global uprising on U.S. "imperialism," then we patronize other countries and ethnic groups by infantilizing them, removing their autonomy, depriving them of the right and obligation to criticize themselves.

Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis' article in the Nov. 19 New Yorker should be required reading for every armchair pundit. An update of his prophetic 1990 article for The Atlantic Monthly about the age-old struggle between Islam and Christendom as it was then approaching its current phase, Mr. Lewis has shown how the fanatical war to recover a lost glory far transcends the specific issues and policies of individual countries. The Soviet Union was far more repressive of its Muslim populations, committing Islam's cardinal sin of having infidels dominate true believers, but Russia simply held no attraction for the Muslim masses and was therefore never a target. What comes through in Mr. Lewis' and every other knowledgeable account is how little we understand the forces arrayed against us, how compulsively we force our own liberal, a historical consciousness on the dark, implacable passions of the other side.

Yet not since Mao's little red book has auto-critique been so fashionable. We can all sit around and thrash out the intricacies of the Koran, stand up and confess our impurities and addictions: to getting and spending, Western-style; to theater and movies, television and books and art and sophisticated drugs and high-tech medical treatment; to our more worldly religions and our veneration of rationalism. Maybe we could even trash a couple of Buddha statues as an acknowledgment of our culpability for carrying the treasures of other cultures to the safety of our museums.

To put ourselves in their shoes, our women could wear shawls and stay home say three days a week; our men could grow beards, pray five times a day and shave their armpits. And most importantly, whenever the conversation turns to Mr. bin Laden, we should revert to self-flagellation; we should stand in the corner and repeat, over and over again, "We're the bad guys." Not goodhearted empathetic us , of course, but our parents, the folks in the White House and the administration, the military and the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. For to many on the left, those daddy surrogates-not the Islamic extremists-are the real them . And the us is the smart, the hip, the intellectual, the peace-lovers with utopian yearnings and a sneaking admiration for cave-dwelling hair-shirt demagogues like Mr. bin Laden.

I'm uncomfortable with flag-waving and the down-home hayseed vernacular of our rhetorically challenged President, but I'd rather see knees jerk in the direction of jingoism than defeatism.

had a bad two weeks. After the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif, they began fleeing their

positions pell-mell. Some of their remnants holed up in two towns, Kunduz and Kandahar,

hoping perhaps to use the wretched civilians as human shields against American

bombs. Escaping turncoats report that the foreign gunmen of Al Qaeda were

shooting their Afghan Taliban allies who planned to defect. So the damned in

Dante berate, attack and even eat each other. Other Taliban and Al Qaeda units

were reportedly hoping to escape to Pakistan

or into the mountainous interior of Afghanistan,

there to wage guerrilla warfare. Truly, their courage is matched only by their

piety.

In their wake, their former

subjects enjoyed formerly forbidden pleasures. It is a measure of Taliban

rigidity and Al Qaeda ruthlessness how simple these pleasures were. Women

sunned their faces in public. Men traded cards of Indian movie stars. People

listened to music, or dug out old TV's and VCR's. Barbershops worked overtime.

My favorite comment came from the man interviewed by The New York Times who

said he had nothing against beards; he'd even kept his mustache. But he didn't

like being told what he had to wear. Another dream of purity and power goes

down in a heap of trimmings.

We were terrorists, remember? We were arrogant, remember that

one, too? The world hated us for our terrorism and our arrogance-you know the

spiel, it's on a loop, all set to play the next time we think of doing anything

in the world. Remember this: We just wanted to kill our enemies and avenge our

dead. As a result, women in Kabul

can walk outside.

What next? We must hunt down the Al Qaeda operation with the

thoroughness of

exterminators. "Mr. bin Laden," as The

Times , faithful to its style book,

calls him, must be found and shot, or vice versa. His agents must be rolled up

worldwide, from the Philippines

to Spain to the

United States.

The complaints over the possibility of using military tribunals to try

suspected soldiers of terror here are unwarranted. Combatants have always

gotten special treatment. What was Nuremberg-night

court?

We also need to defeat or

disarm Al Qaeda's sponsors. Iraq, with its evident grudge and its chemical, germ

and atomic-research programs, is the obvious suspect. If the source of the

anthrax letters turns out to be domestic, Iraq may still be involved: It would be clever

intelligence work to join forces with America's McVeighites, in the common purpose of bringing

down ZOG. Beyond Iraq, with its military know-how, stands Saudi Arabia, with its irresponsible reserves of cash. The

Saudis, who have built enough palaces and paid off enough gambling debts even

for the 7,000 princes of their royal family, have sent their surplus money into

the world to subsidize crude anti-American educational systems that produce the

potential recruits for "Mr. bin Laden," Saudi Arabia's favorite son. Colin

Powell must let them know that this must stop; if it doesn't, we have the

address of the Hashemite family, the previous guardians of Mecca and Medina.

Will President Bush see his war through to its end? During the

2000 election cycle, each candidate was asked what his favorite book was. Al

Gore, as I recall, picked The Red and the

Black , Stendhal's study of the bright young man who must lead an inauthentic

life-an interesting choice. Mr. Bush picked an even more interesting book -The Raven , by Marquis James, a 1929

biography of Sam Houston. I had never known anything about Sam Houston; what I

learned from The Raven was that he

went through a period of his life when, after being a successful Tennessee

politician, the bottom fell out. The woman he loved wouldn't marry him; he took

to drink and moved to Indian territory, becoming an

honorary Cherokee. Then something caused him to move to Texas,

where he found his mission and his identity. The story of Houston's

struggle with drink must have obvious resonance to President Bush, who's had

the same struggle; Houston, unlike

Mr. Bush's spotless father, could be a flawed but triumphant paternal figure.

After Sept. 11, one read that Mr. Bush believes the terror war has given him

his mission in life; perhaps it is his Texas.

The images of the celebrating Afghans raise even deeper

questions: Is there a human nature? If so, what is it worth? Extreme

relativists posit a multiplicity of solitudes-cultural others that cannot

understand or judge anything beyond their own borders. A strain in most major

religions acknowledges a common humanity, but asserts that it is radically

corrupt. Jonathan Edwards told his parishioners that they were as disgusting in

God's eyes as spiders, and deserved hell flames.

It is always a temptation, when fighting foreign enemies, to

imagine them sunk in the toils of their systems. Culture colors much, and

politics can color a lot more. But all things being equal, people would rather

not be brutalized. When we think of the Islamist other, we must remember the

women who looked at the sun.

It is equally natural, though,

to lash out at repeated frustrations. To the anti-American frog chorus which

says we have brought this all on ourselves, we can truthfully

answer that we have, in one respect: We have paid too much deference to

dictators and traditional despots in the Middle East. It was convenient for us, of course, and we

assumed that was all their people were good for. Our own convenience should be

consulted; it is not our business to run, or to instruct, the world. The world

will not sit still for it in any case. But when our interests cause us to

intervene, then we must accept the responsibilities that come with

intervention. We fought a war to liberate Kuwait, then let Saddam Hussein remain in power, to

threaten us and to terrorize his own citizens. We subsidized the Afghan

resistance to the Soviet

Union, then left them to

the mischievous and bungling hands of Pakistani intelligence, and to the

struggles of their own warlords. A decade and thousands of dead Americans

later, we must leave the neighborhood in better shape than we found it.

I was lying to him. We were backstage at Feinstein's at the Regency Hotel, where Mr. Williams is

performing until Nov.24. A waiter came by with champagne, and Mr. Williams in

recovery himself after lost years of drug and alcohol abuse-indicated that I

should help myself.

No, thanks, I said. I was planning an early night, I said, lying,

to get ready for my interview with him the following afternoon. But if I had

told Mr. Williams the truth-that several hours later, at 5:45 a.m., I'd be in a

bar drinking whiskey, smoking pot through a carved-out apple and having a

serious conversation about Dire Straits-I'm not sure he would have agreed to

see me.

But lying to a man in recovery doesn't get you very far, and

recovery is a big part of Mr. Williams' life. Onstage that night, the 61-year-old,

5-foot-2 entertainer-whose songs have been recorded by Bing Crosby, Frank

Sinatra, Diana Ross, Elvis Presley, John Denver, David Bowie, Ella Fitzgerald,

Gladys Knight, Ray Charles and Art Garfunkel-got laughs with references to his

under-the-influence past.

"I'm relatively relaxed," Mr. Williams told the middle-aged crowd

at one point during the show, which included his hits like "The Rainbow

Connection" from The Muppet Movie and

"What Would They Say?" from The Boy in

the Plastic Bubble .

"You know, I thought about it. I go, 'What's to worry about? The Times

isn't going to ruin your career. You did that yourself years ago.'"

The next day, at 2 p.m., Mr. Williams was in his hotel room at

the Regency. He wore a dark sweater, black pants and black tennis shoes. He had

a goatee and thick spiky hair. "I'm always controversial, and I love to talk

about recovery and all that," he said, before offering me a Diet Coke or

coffee. He said he was worried about getting "porky" from room service.

"When I got sober, I weighed 187," he said. "I weigh 137 now.

When I'd run out of cocaine, I'd eat everything. I was a serious cocaine

addict, and then all the empty calories in vodka."

How bad did things get? Bad enough that he wrote the songs for The Muppet Christmas Carol while on

drugs.

"I used to fall off stages,"

he said. "I raced cars. At the Long Beach Grand Prix, I used to have a tube of

cocaine on the straightaway while I was racing. Nuts. I made a hundred jumps; I

was a sky diver. I loved the adrenaline. We would have a hit in the DC-4 before

we'd jump, and 80 seconds of free fall felt like a summer vacation …. "

Mr. Williams was born in 1940

in Omaha, Neb., and had a "crappy" childhood. He was given hormone injections,

which backfired and stunted his growth. When he was 13, his father, an

architectural engineer, was killed in an alcohol-related car wreck. He was

shipped off to live with an aunt and uncle in Long Beach, Calif. By ninth

grade, he'd attended nine schools. He was always the new kid. "And I was crazy,"

he said. "I'd whack somebody big right away in a public place, where they'd

stop the fight right away." After high school, he worked for an insurance

company, as a jockey and as a stunt parachutist in a touring company.

Mr. Williams' first movie role

was as a 10-year-old in The Loved One ,

with Jonathan Winters and John Gielgud. He was 24. While on the set of The Chase , with Marlon Brando and Robert Redford, he started writing songs,

one of which was featured in the film. He auditioned, unsuccessfully, to become

one of the Monkees, but soon he was writing hits for the Carpenters ("We've

Only Just Begun", "Rainy Days and Mondays") and Three Dog Night ("An

Old-Fashioned Love Song").

The 70's were a magical time. He acted in Battle for the Planet of the Apes and appeared on The Tonight Show in his ape makeup and

sang a love ballad. He played Little Enos in the Smokey and the Bandit movies. He wrote the Love Boat theme. He was nominated for six Academy Awards and won

one in 1977 for "Evergreen," which Barbra Streisand sang in A Star Is Born.

He hit a wall in the 1980's, when the vodka and cocaine got out

of hand. He did manage to write some intentionally bad-and brilliantly so-songs

for Ishtar, the Warren Beatty–Dustin

Hoffman bomb.  Lyrics such as: "She said come look, / There's a wardrobe of

love in my eyes /  Take your time, look

around, / Try to find something your size."

While Ishtar was being

filmed in Morocco, Mr. Williams fell over in a nightclub, hit his head and

nearly died.

"I'd wake up in the morning, and I'd find a suicide note written

and a gun out," he said. "And I would have no memory of the night before."

Mr. Williams also used to party with Robert Mitchum, against the

wishes of his wife, Dorothy.

"He was about a half-mile away, and I would call and it would be

like"-Mr. Williams' voice deepened- "'Doughboy, what's up?'

"And I'd go, 'Stephen Stills is here, and he wants to meet you.'

"He'd go, 'Stephen Stills, that would be, uh …. '

"And I'd say, 'From Crosby, Stills and Nash!'

"He'd go, 'Anything, uh, going on over there?'

"I'd go, 'Yes, indeed.'

"He'd say, 'I'll see if I can cruise by.' And he'd come."

On Sept. 22, 1989, Mr.

Williams stopped drinking and drugging and sought help. "When I got sober 11

years ago, I thought I was done," he said. In the early 90's, he was nominated

for a Grammy and played Andy Warhol's press agent in Oliver Stone's The Doors , but his passion was gone.

"Everybody would come up to me on the street and say, 'Are you writing? Are you

writing?' And it became a burden. I just went, 'No, I don't do that anymore.'"

His career is doing much better these days. He's writing the

title song for the film of Tom Clancy's The

Sum of All Fears , starring Ben Affleck, and earlier this year he was

inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, along with Eric Clapton and Willie

Nelson. He's got a part in the upcoming Rules

of Attraction, based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel. He had a three-month

role as a villain on The Bold and the

Beautiful.

"Music has happened for me again," Mr. Williams said.

He lives right above the Sunset Strip in a big house that once

belonged to Peter Lorre, who died in the den. He plays bad golf, reads

mysteries and hangs out with Richard Dreyfuss.

His second wife, Hildy, showed

up at the Regency. She's the daughter of character actor Keenan Wynn, who

appeared in Dr. Strangelove. Mr.

Williams met her in recovery. They've been married 10 years.

That was about when I confessed that I'd stayed out till dawn the

night before.

"Oh, yes?" Mr. Williams said. "Do you have a problem with it,

George?"

"Let's end it with that," I said.

"Can I help you?"

"That's a great ending."

We stood up. "So if you decide you have a problem, call me," he

said, handing me his card. "So you think you have a problem, George?"

"Well, I think I need to slow

down, definitely."

"I'm here until the 24th-do you want to go to a meeting?"

"Uh, can I have two more years?"

"You can have two more years. You probably have the rest of your

life."

HARD SCRABBLE

If the Northern Alliance is going to have any hope of whupping

the Taliban, they're going to need better soldiers, better weapons, better

strategies and a better name. "Northern Alliance" is like the name of a

Canadian semipro hockey league or a splinter group in Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace.

So we put the task of retitling the Northern Alliance to a pair

of professional naming experts, plus one guest amateur. Here are the results:

From Mitchell Erick, a naming expert at Alianda Inc., an advertising

agency:

Freedom Brigade

Pashtun Peacekeepers

Mighty Mujahideen

Rebel Commanders

The 51st State

The Very Good Friends of the United States

LBAT (Less Barbaric Alternative to the Taliban)

Village Vanguard

Honor Guards

People Protectors

The Afghan Hounds

From Jean Lawrence, a

self-employed naming consultant based in Arizona:

Triumphant Sword

All-Afghan Freedom Party

Tribal Power

Battle Alliance

Chieftain Alliance

War & Peace Alliance

Tribal Front

United Tribal Front

From Molly Singer, my

12-year-old cousin:

The League of Their Own

The Rebellious Something or Other

The Rebellious Fighting Squad

The Anti-Tali

The Good Guys

A Thousand Dozen Good Eggs.

-Ian Blecher