High school sex fiends come in

so many varieties - the

pinching, butt-slapping gym

teacher, the self-servicing

schnook who teaches AP biology,

the love-struck baby factory, the

too-friendly vice principal who

looks like Uncle Junior from The

Sopranos - that you'd think

students would applaud the

discovery of a new and

relatively benign variety. But

when a student at Colorado's

Douglas County High School

"apparently found" a hunting

trip photo of an assistant

principal posing naked over a

dead antelope, the students

passed up the time-honored

tradition of cafeteria japery

and denunciations on the

bathroom walls in favor of a

media-friendly "Honk Your Horn

to Stop the Porn" rally. "It's

not right. It's sick,'' said one

student. "We don't want those

kinds of people teaching us."

After recovered memory therapy,

senior Andrew Nelson recalled a

horrific detention assigned by

the au naturel backwoodsman:

"The atmosphere was just creepy

and stuff. This guy's punishing

me, and the guy's got nude

pictures of himself hunting!"

Sophomore Christi Young's

summation spelled out the case's

high stakes: "We want the

parents to know who's

controlling us when we're in the

school five days a week, seven

hours a day or whatever." It's

not the junior antisex league's

stridency that bothers us so

much as its misguidedness. With

high schools graduating kids who

can barely fuck at fourth-grade

proficiency levels, can we

afford to let these New Virgins

run the classroom?

After years of seeing

auteur-brother duos proliferate

from the indie kitchen table of

Joel and Ethan Coen into the

Farrelly/Hughes/Wachowski movie

frat house, it was probably

inevitable that a sister act

would take Hollywood by storm.

Still, putting UCLA grads Sue

and Alicia Fleagleman in charge

of a live-action feature film of

Todd Haynes' all-Barbie

underground classic Superstar:

The Karen Carpenter Story seems

like 1999's most inspired idea

so far. The Sisters' inspired

Web site just confirms our

suspicion that the girls are

equal parts savant and idiot.

And they already have the

critical element for family-film

arts mystique. In conversations,

they "finish each others

sentences," so over the phone

it's impossible to know (or

care) which one you're talking

The concept of the reality check

has attained an awful half-life

far beyond its employment in

Mervyn's commercials or by Dow

naysayers. Right now the

Standish Group is offering a

luxurious security blanket to

anybody who has successfully

potty-trained Linus Torvalds'

freeware brainchild. And the

latest to board the clue train

is, well, Clue Train, a site

designed to provide moral

support to the disenfranchised

Web masses (and promotion for

The Sphere) by offering up a

ringing denunciation of

corporatese and an updated

version of Luther's 95 Theses

for people who don't have any

serious papal abuses to worry

about. Frankly, we're big fans of

Clue Train's brand of

anti-pabulum pabulum: "Markets

consist of human beings, not

demographic sectors"; "We are

immune to advertising. Just

forget it"; and best of all, "We

can't go on together with

suspicious minds." But it raises

some questions: Haven't we heard

all this, again and again, less

than a year ago? And more

important, is this some kind of

joke? Or is unintended comedy

the new price we have to pay for

keepin' it real?