So you're a mature, successful,

and comely public relations

professional, and you've just

landed a date with a

swashbuckling billionaire. Don't

you want to tell the world?

Elizabeth Ferrarini, a

Boston-based, high-tech publicist

and "self-styled online romance

expert," used all her

wiles to convince

Oracle founder Larry Ellison

to have dinner a few months ago

and is now busy circulating a

press release that explains how

she pulled it off. Apparently,

the party favor that melted the

database mogul's flinty heart

was a 6-by-5-inch, die-cut

cardboard "mouse house" in the

form of "a Japanese temple

similar in style to Ellison's

home." In a wide-ranging

interview with Suck, Ferrarini

explained how she and the

unlucky-in-love Larry began an

email romance centering on their

shared appreciation for poetry

(A. E. Houseman and E. A. Poe,

with Ferrarini contributing a

couplet of her own: "Will you

look in my eyes / And tell me no

lies?"). Then they took the

plunge for dinner (shrimp

cocktail apps, unidentified fish

main course) at Ellison's

Pacific Heights crash pad ("very

beautiful, with a one-way glass

expanse that overlooks the bay,

white leather furniture, white

floors ... I was in awe, is all

I can tell anyone"). Although

the date ended abruptly due to

an Ellison "family emergency,"

Ferrarini reveals that yes, she

did play on Ellison's well-known

love of japonisme by reading

Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a

Geisha prior to the date. "My

attitude was not to applaud

everything he said," says

Ferrarini, "but to give him some

wisdom."

What kind of wisdom?

"One thing I wrote to him was

he's not Spielberg, and Oracle

is not Dreamworks. Spielberg has

worked to bring about change, to

eliminate prejudice. Larry

Ellison is not known as a

philanthropist, not known as a

JFK, not known as a Spielberg.

He's known as somebody who lives

on the edge and maybe is a

little selfish. Spielberg went

back to the roots of his culture

and his religion to bring about

worldwide understanding with

Schindler's List. I told

Ellison, 'It's time to leave a

legacy. You're 54 years old, and

you're not going to leave a

legacy with fast toys.'"

Does Larry have that Asian-women

fixation people are always

talking about?

"I could not tell you. There was

a book on the coffee table that

had to do with some aspect of

Japan."

Did the date convince you that

network computers are the

future?

"Not totally, no. Because to me,

Oracle and Microsoft have to

work together.... He has a good

shot at ruling what I call the

'I-way,' and my message to him

was not to be an anarchist but

to look at what he can do to

make change for human good."

Did Larry brag about his victory

in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht

race?

"The date was before the race. I

sent him a message after the

accident and said to him it was

a race that no one won. He did

get to the finish line, and he

was in tears. I think this was

an opportunity to reflect."

Would you be interested in

another date?

"I've read a lot about the

public person, what's in his

life. There are a lot of things

I'm never going to understand.

Like why was I sought out when

there is somebody in his life

and has been someone for several

years [romance novelist Melanie

Craft, who accompanied Ellison

to a White House dinner]? I read

little clips in Vanity Fair that

say she's going to be the next

Mrs. Ellison."

Has Larry publicly acknowledged

that the date took place?

No. I have. (Laughs)

Are you planning to forge emails

and sue Larry?

"Everything I have can be

proven.... I'm a little older than most

of the women in Larry's life; I

go out with lots of professional

men. I have money. I'm very

visible. I'm looking for someone

really interesting, maybe an

intellectual match."

Potential intellectual matches

can contact Elizabeth through

Webb Model Management.

If a discussion of Super Bowl

advertising doesn't bore your

target market into a state of

wallet-loosening hypnosis, a

treatise on Y2K certainly will.

So Apple deserves some credit

for blending the two themes into

an irresistible game-time

Quaalude. The resurgent

company's HAL ad, in which the

overworked electronic brain from

2001 gloats over Apple's

millennial readiness, was

initially designed to be "the

first cinematic,

made-for-the-Web advertisement -

a TV commercial that's not for

TV." Although that idea crashed

after it was discovered that Mac

cloner Micron had already

produced a full-scale Webvert of

its own, Apple began receiving

"hundreds and then thousands of

emails from people pleading for

HAL to appear on national

broadcast television." So moved

were Jobs and Company by this

spontaneous outpouring that they

redirected the ad toward a juicy

post-kickoff spot. Hopefully

this masterstroke will move us

into an age when every

Clio-worthy belch about the

state of advertising doesn't

feel obliged to address the

legendary "1984" spot, but the

odds for success through TV

exposure are growing longer. J.

Peterman, flacked relentlessly

on Seinfeld for several years, went

belly up this week, and

Progressive Insurance's

Super Bowl spot featuring a

fairly long-in-the-tooth E.T. is

already fabled as the

butt-ugliest advertisement since

Dick was retired. And then

there's always the risk of ads

being outshined by a decent or

at least bitterly contested

game. But hey, shit happens when

you think different.

Attention all men: If Larry

Ellison can reel in the chicks,

why can't you? Ecstasy - The

Seduction Audio Cassette Tape!

is the latest product for the

up-and-coming stud. It comes

with thumbs-up testimonials from

J. K. of Des Moines, Iowa, ("I

never met so many women so happy

to sleep with me!") and H. P. of

Manhattan ("WOW. Thanks for a

sexual experience I did not

dream possible without drugs.").

While a customer service rep for

the Tape's manufacturer,

Florida-based Euphoria Products,

was unable to provide a

money-back guarantee for the

product, we're happy to report

that Ideal Books has a super

offer on the Ecstasy Tape along

with several other products that

should put even the most

acne-scarred geek on the road to

romance. There's How to Give a

Woman Oral Sex for the Don

Giovanni with a caring side; How

to Command, Control, and

Influence People for the

strong-armed seduction; How to

Win the Lottery and Sweepstakes

for a distinctly Ellisonian

appeal; and How to Control Your

Coolest Dreams for when none of

the above work out. And when

your countless conquests have

finally made you completely

jaded about women, add some

variety to your life by picking

up a copy of How to Give the

Ultimate Blow Job.

The Chicago Sun-Times is about

to deliver the next

big-shouldered shove to the

increasingly irrelevant

Newspaper Guild. Unionized

Sun-Times employees are

objecting to a plan for the

paper to begin swapping stories

with the scab-staffed Arlington

Heights Daily Herald and

awarding a larger chunk of

regular reporting duties to

J-school dweebs from

Northwestern University. The

dueling claims made by labor and

management make it hard to tell

who's in the right, so we

reviewed a selection of comments

from Roger Ebert, the paper's

most prominent columnist, for

his views on the struggle for

workers' rights and the eternal

clash of the classes:

Hoffa

points for union organizing just

by contrasting the cabs and road

stops of the drivers with the

world of privilege inhabited by

the insiders.

Gung Ho

a movie in which the Japanese

are mostly used for the

mechanical requirements of the

plot, and the Americans are

constructed from durable but

boring stereotypes."

Battleship Potemkin

depends for its power upon the

social situation in which it is

shown."

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

very end of the film, there's

dialog about the condition of

foreign workers in Germany: not

a 'message,' but a reflection of

reality."

Modern Times

considered [one of] Chaplin's

two greatest works."

Doctor Zhivago

historical context ... is seen

mostly as a sideshow."

My Fair Lady

sentimentality about the

rags-to-riches rise of Eliza

Doolittle, an unwashed Cockney

who is plucked from Covent

Garden and transformed into a

'lady' by Professor Henry

Higgins."

Beneath the Valley of the

Ultra-Vixens (screenplay by

Ebert, under the pseudonym R.

Hyde)

Sal, an Amazon, sucks dry the

marrow of the laboring classes."