for23 October 1996. Updated every WEDNESDAY.

SOUNDS FAMILIAR... Gene Siskel: "I've never really gotten off on being negative, although I am most of the time." [TV Guide, 10/5/96] Tom Hanks, on returning to host Saturday Night Live: "It's great to come back here and see all the people I've avoided like the plague for the last few years while the show sucked. " [Entertainment Weekly, 10/11/96] TV megaproducer Steven Bochco, on his critics: "The overwhelming majority of those folks are dopes." [Entertainment Weekly, 10/11/96] David Lapham, author of comic book series "Stray Bullets": "I'm trying to hurt people emotionally." [Spin, 11/96]

	MIME AND PUNISHMENT "Under a new program to improve traffic safety in downtown Bogotá, [Colombia,] jaywalkers will be pulled over and publicly ridiculed by white-faced mime artists, according to a report yesterday." [Reuters, 10/14/96] CRUEL VS. UNUSUAL A punishing paradigm for a punishing world.

HEADLINE O' THE MONTH "Old Navy May Fill Gray Lady" [San Francisco Chronicle, 10/9/96] OVERSTATEMENT O' THE WEEK McDonald's Executive Chef Andrew Selvaggio: "Arch Deluxe, the first month, [had] 100 million orders. I'm touching that many people's lives." [Newsweek, 10/7/96] INSIGHT DU JOUR Chi Chi Valenti, sysop of "Click & Drag," a weekly New York cyber-fetish performance: "I get all this email from people talking about the configuration of their computers in the same loving, detailed manner that one would talk about a pair of high heels. We realized that people were relating to them in the same way one would to an s/m fetish." [Village Voice, 10/1/96]

COP THAT NAKED ATTITUDE Bruce Sterling: "Throwing off all your clothes is the cheapest, quickest way that was ever invented to cop an attitude. It's also a cool youth culture solidarity move. Young people look great without clothes. Young people don't need them." [Wired, 11/96]

words Polly Esther pictures Terry Colon