Like a precocious sitcom lambkin

turned pipe-hitting menace to

society, Former Child Star

Central is back for another

round of ghoulishness. Frankly,

in the age of the IMDB, tracking the

current whereabouts of Rodney

Allen Rippy would seem like a

redundant exercise. But it turns

out the site's tracking systems

for tomorrow's Adam Riches and

Tiffany Brissettes may be less

significant than its window on

the souls of the stubbornly

unfamous fans who want to

possess the erstwhile screen

urchins. Even more intriguing

are the former stars who

themselves are reduced to

recounting real and imagined

brushes with greatness. Like the

Metallica Drummer video, this is

an artifact demonstrating that

stars are never as interesting

as their fans. For the German stalker

of Kerri Green, the

obscure schmo briefly graced by

a glimpse of Keshia Knight

Pulliam, there is peace that

passes all understanding. And

of course, there's Rupert

Pupkin's maxim: "Better to be

king for a night than schmuck

for a lifetime."

No sooner was the legacy of Hell

House settled than we're

confronted with the "biggest

story in America which till now

has been kept secret." The heirs

of the late Anton LaVey, Black

Priest of the Church of Satan,

have tentatively settled on how

to dispose of LaVey's riches,

which include Vampire Boy and

autographed Marilyn Monroe

posters and a Byzantine phallus.

But if Satan's house is in

order, God's apparently isn't.

For some time now we've been

receiving

josephc64@hotmail.com's

HammerStrikes spam. Apparently,

Joe is convinced not only that

we are "editors unafraid of

religious and political

pressure," but that his story of

the apocalypse ("the biggest

story in the country, and we

challenge anyone of intelligence

to disagree with this

statement") will prepare us for

the Last Day. But the problem

with Joe's commodious vicus of

recirculation, as with all

arcana, is that it's so arcane.

Where is it written that all

tales of the end of the world

have to be so crabbed and

incomprehensible? (Just kidding ...)

If you can figure out what

all the Heroic Age hoo-ha is

about, let us know. On second

thought, just let Joe know.

Man, the Super Bowl's all about

money. Dubious sports fans

pretend to hate games like

Sunday's on the premise that

they are disappointing,

underplayed fiascoes. An

underplayed fiasco allows us to

reaffirm our long-held, always

unquestioned assumption that

there's something inherently

football-diminishing in the

Super Bowl, grandly announcing

that we watch it only for the

ads. In fact, though, the

Commerce Bowl has offered quite

a few dramatic moments, from

Lynn Swann's 1976 showcase

(rightly or wrongly considered

by historians to be the greatest

of all Super Bowls) to last

year's down-to-the-wire standoff

between Denver and Green Bay.

The 1969 Jets Bowl, while not

strictly a good game, justified

the young AFC and conferred on

Joe Namath a stardom that

endured even through his public

appearance in pantyhose (an act

wacky enough to be considered

outré in those innocent

days). Buffalo's missed field

goal in 1991, San Francisco's

last-minute drive in 1989, even

1971's sloppy-but-entertaining

Colts-Cowboys match

(entertaining because sloppy,

actually, slovenly play offers

the TV-bound spectator more

chances for hollering and

exasperation) - all testify to

the viability of America's

greatest television event.

Judged by the law of probability

alone, the Super Bowl is as

likely to be exciting about as

often as any other NFL game or,

for that matter, any other

sporting event. That is, once in

a while. Far more dependable,

though rarely exciting, is

America's true favorite pastime

- complaining about how we have

it too good.

If only the ads were this

dependable. Readers of the

February Brill's Content got

what seemed to be the final

roundup on the saga of

HotJobs.com and its censored ads.

The original concept for a

spot, in which a zoo worker is

accidentally jammed into an

elephant's sphincter, was

famously nixed by Fox's Mother

Hubbard fussbudgets. But with

some footwork that indicated

HotJobs CEO Richard Johnson had

a better grasp on how to make an

ad splash than his agency, the

company seemed to have settled

on a spot in which an office

worker covertly peers at the

company's mouth-watering job

listings. But it turns out even

that decision was subject to

change. And after the two-minute

warning, the company switched

over to its wittier "Security

Guard" spot. "The [secretive

surfing] spot faced potential

censorship problems as well," a

HotJobs spokesman explains. "The

original title was 'Dirty Little

Secret,' and it poked fun at the

idea that people use the

Internet to look at hot sites,

if you know what I mean."

Hubba-hubba, do we ever! In

fact, with the convergence of

ads on HotJobs.com and

Monster.com having convinced

even aspirating animatron Tom

Brokaw that online job listings

are the new hot sector, we're

hoping for relief from unwanted

job applications at Suck.com.

Frankly, the regular pattern of

letters from disgruntled

employees imagining how "cool"

it would be to work at Suck just

makes us bitter and depressed.