THERE IS A COMMERCIAL ON THE AIRWAVES for a spray-on deodorant called "Axe." This is a manly-man product aimed at masculine men who wish to smell manly. The commercial shows a man in an elevator putting the finishing touches on his ensemble. In an elevator? Well, whatever -- let's say he's late for work. His shirt is unbuttoned and he is spraying Axe on his manly chest. He buttons up, and gets off the elevator just as Mr. Milquetoast gets on. A pretty young woman also boards at that time. After a moment, she sniffs the air. She looks at Mr. Milquetoast. She makes a visible attempt to control herself. She fails, and presses the "Stop" button on the elevator. Cut to: The two of them, readjusting themselves. Mr. Milquetoast is in more need of readjustment than the woman. The elevator stops, the young woman disembarks, and just as the elevator doors close again, a hand reaches in. We don't see this new person, but it is definitely another young female -- we see a glimpse of dress. The camera is more interested in what the woman has with her: A large dog. Wearing a pink bow. Licking her chops. End of commercial. Axe: The Deodorant That Will Get You Molested By German Shephards. Sounds like a winning tag line to me!

THIS BLOG IS JUST A FEW DAYS OLD and already I'm sick of trying to come up with titles for each entry -- poof! No more! Titles be gone! By this morning, the last of the snow and ice had vanished from the Earth. And the Weather Gods looked at the calendar and said, "What?! That can't be right!" Pow. A fresh coating for one and all, including a special delivery of teeny tiny hailstones that made me wish my umbrella was made out of sheet metal. The roads were covered in horrible brown slush by noon, and by 2:00 my office was closed and my boss had sent everyone home. Snow day! Came home and worked on my Web site a bit. My working knowledge of HTML is scanty at best, and the last time I updated my Web site was... oh, who knows. Plus my HTML book is still packed away somewhere. In sum, my Web site is not exactly bubbling with progress. The goal is to have a menu in a frame down the left hand side, with everything, including this blog, loading in the larger main screen. Easy peasy, right? Not for me. I've got the left frame set up right, but then everything wanted to load into that frame. Then my HTML apparently demanded that a new screen open up on every click of the mouse. Why have just one browser open when you can have six! The more the merrier! Now the blog loads into the right place, but in the wrong proportions -- the whole right side of the screen is ignored. It's an HTML no-man's land. I'll work on it over the weekend. Eventually I always stumble into success. Or, more likely, stumble into a compromise that I can live with. Yes. That's exactly what I meant. A thick black bar on every page! It's ART.

Progress! Maybe! Once or twice a week, there is Playgroup. It's held in a church, and it's another branch of the Connecticut birth-to-3 program in which Alex and many other developmentally disadvantaged toddlers are enrolled. It is called the Playgroup, but if Alex could speak, and if we let him say dirty words, he would have a wide variety of other names for it. Fragile X kids are often uncomfortable in crowds, and 25 little kids running pell-mell around the place is definitely a crowd. Alex spent the first several Playgroups wailing in that patented no one understands my misery! way that babies have. For all he knew, this was his new home -- we were never going back to his room full of toys, or his blue booster seat, or his Baby Mozart videos. Just him and two dozen little lunatics, forever! Waaaaa! And so it went for several months. Alex isn't old enough to "dread" things yet, but Janinne is, and she's come to dread Playgroup enough for both of them. Am I really going to take him back there again? He hates it, and he doesn't interact with anybody, and it's so depressing watching the kids his age or younger who run around so well, and chat with their mommies... The last few times, Alex hasn't been as heart-achingly miserable -- just a little overwhelmed, a little dizzy from all the hubbub. And today, some actual progress. Confirmed! Alex participating in snack time -- taking not one but two cookies. (He declined the juice.) Confirmed! Alex taking a single trepidatious step up the ladder to the slide before backing away. Previously, he treated the slide as something that should never be approached without a haz-mat suit. Confirmed! The long yellow plastic Fun Tunnel -- which actually looks like a haz-mat device -- is another piece of equipment Alex would never dream of using... but today he sat at one end and watched all the other kids crawl through it. And when one of those kids began rolling around, shaking the whole Tunnel back and forth, Alex laughed riotously at this genius touch of physical comedy. Laughing! At Playgroup! (Janinne reports there was another newcomer at today's Playgroup, a boy around Alex's age. Sat in the corner and shrieked the whole time. And so the cycle begins anew.) The day Janinne calls me to announce that Alex has actually crawled through the plastic Fun Tunnel, I'll go home early so we can celebrate. In other Playgroup news, Alex's non-screaming behavior actually allowed Janinne to converse with the other moms there. One mom complained with a sigh about her husband's job, about how he has to travel so often. Aww -- what does he do? asked someone. He's an arms inspector in Iraq. This does not strike me as a position with a great deal of job security. The extreme opposite, in fact. UPDATE: I am informed that it is not two dozen kids at Playgroup but rather... five. Well, I'm sure it looks like two dozen when you're only three feet tall.

Flush the bowls There was an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago about college sports. The Times is often (rightfully) accused of bias, and this bias usually takes the form of sneaky little adjectives in an otherwise straightforward piece -- a Republican senator might be "strident" while a Democrat "forceful." (To give a real-life example, the Times recently referred to the upcoming "aggressive Republican Senate." Doesn't the GOP have a single-vote majority? How aggressive can they possibly get? [Thanks to Kausfiles.]) Where was I? Oh, right, college sports. Anyway, this was not a sneaky-bias kind of article. This author, Michael Sokolove, wore his bias like a sandwich board and paraded about holding placards. It's amazing the University of South Florida let him on campus. USF, in order to get itself a more national reputation, is trying to break in to the upper echelons of college sports. Sokolove pretty much comes to the conclusion that they could save themselves a great deal of time and worry by simply flushing 100 million dollars down the toilet. He points out that even the largest programs are hanging on by their fingernails, financially. Only a couple of truly successful, deep-rooted programs -- I believe he mentions Notre Dame -- are profitable, or breaking even. Not failing miserably, in any event. What I have never understood is the mentality of college sports. When Bobby Knight got fired from Indiana, there were interviews with angry students who had chosen Indiana because of Bobby Knight and were now considering transferring. These weren't students on the basketball team; they just liked basketball. They chose their school exclusively because it had a violently colorful basketball coach. Is it possible to have one's priorities any more perfectly, exactly backward? It's like choosing a school because it has an absolutely beautiful cafeteria. What am I majoring in? Who cares! Let's eat! Sokolove makes it clear that going the college sports route does increase an administration's ability to raise money... for college sports. All the other programs -- you know, the learnin' ones -- don't see much. Yes, it does enhance a college's reputation, but in a completely arbitrary way. So what if a given college has a great football team? How is the freaking EDUCATION? What really gets me about the whole thing is that you can't pay the athletes. That would be wrong! That would be treating this multi-billion-dollar business like... well, like a business, or something. Yes, the kids get a free education, but the graduation rates for college athletes are appalling. And so few turn pro. How many of these kids get to the end of their four years and say, What the hell was I just doing? I say give them some real money -- not in the form of an illegal Corvette, but in the form of a trust fund they can access after they turn 21. Or -- ooh! -- in the form of a trust fund they can access after they graduate with a 3.0 grade point average. Since I'm dreaming anyway. Sigh. So. Let's see, have I met this evening's goal of offering a completely unreasonable solution to something 99% of America doesn't consider a problem? Looks like it! Mission accomplished!

National Precrime? I've seen many of the plot holes in Minority Report pointed out, but having just watched it again for a second time, one hole in particular jumps out: As the movie opens, there are efforts to take the precrime division from its roots in D.C. and turn it into a national program. How exactly were they going to do this? They've only got the three pre-cogs. It's a big country. What was the plan? To hook up the whole damn continental US to these three psychic brains? They'd be beef jerky in a week. (You heard me: Beef jerky! No, I don't know what I mean, either.) And what happens when the pre-cogs die? The three of them, it is made clear, are nothing more than a genetic accident. Could other pre-cogs be manufactured? It doesn't even seem as if anyone is working on the issue. The short-sightedness of these people is just amazing, considering they are attempting nothing less than to prevent every single murder in the country. Ah well. Just a movie, and a darn good one, warts and all. The bit with the spiders running amok through the tenement -- just smashing. Oh: Sorry: One more hole, pointed out by a friend: The Pre-Crime Division didn't erase John Anderton's authorization codes from its security system? So he's wanted for (pre-)murder, but he can still come waltzing into the building because someone forgot to change the locks? Holy smokes, let's think here, people. Happy new year to you all. (Which, considering I have told all of three people about this blog, is probably three of you. You know who you are.)

Yay. Had a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle accepted by Will Shortz. This will be my second Sunday puzzle -- although my first one was completed only with the generous assistance of various friends and colleagues. Hell, someone else did the entire fill, and allowed me to take all the credit. I always thought there should have been an asterisk over my name for that supposed "debut." But this time the puzzle is all mine, and by gosh I'm proud of it. Will writes glowing acceptance letters, too -- he said my puzzle was "handsome" with a "fresh, tight theme" and a "dynamite fill" which should clearly be awarded the "Nobel Prize for crossword construction." All right, no, but he was very complimentary. Hell, the one time I had a puzzle rejected by him, it took me two readings to understand that he had, in fact, rejected the puzzle -- even that puzzle was "fresh and imaginative." I wasn't a constructor back in the days of Eugene Maleska, Will's predecssor at the New York Times, but I understand that Maleska could be just plain mean. I forget which constructor told me of a letter he received in which Maleska directed him to get out of crossword constructing entirely. Additionally -- and I realize I am speaking ill of the dead -- Maleska was bewildered by phrases such as "CAR SEAT" and "STAPLE GUN" and generally assumed that the constructor had made them up. He was much more comfortable in the world of rare African birds and Swedish rivers, the kind of vocabulary that turns a fun-filled crossword puzzle into a grand tour of the yawningly obscure. (There are some people who prefer that kind of crossword puzzle. These people are wrong.) Will brought the crossword into the modern age, and I'm happy to have a small part in his tenure.

Is it 2004 yet? Presently, I am producing a line of toys to be released in fall of 2003. My life has been essentially devoted to these toys since September, which is not, I admit, all that long a time. But mentally, I am finished with these products. The bulk of the work is in the hands of my Chinese counterparts, and all I can do from my end is sweep up loose ends. I don't want to sweep up loose ends -- there are far too many of them, and its depressing to know that I'll never get them all, because they multiply like horror movie monsters. For mercy's sake, don't get them wet or they'll take over the town! What? They multiply like mad even when dry? In the Gremlins movies, the hero manages to eradicate all of the Gremlins simultaneously, with a single cleverly improvised maneuver. My own gremlins have to be dealt with one at a time. There is simply no other way. I am loathe to open my e-mail, lest there be another painful setback in my In box. Which there always is. Loose ends take two forms: My Stupid Mistakes, and The Grievous Miscommunication. Today brought examples of both. My Stupid Mistake is another iteration of one that has been haunting me for weeks. I hired a freelance writer to provide content for one of the many activities on these products. I neglected to tell Mr. Freelance Writer of the simply un-bee-leev-able restrictions we are facing on these devices. On the least expensive of them, we can only fit perhaps 10 characters on a single line of the LCD screen. A Lite-Brite has better resolution. Mr. Freelancer sent in his content and -- aggh! -- most of it is too damn long to use. Has to be edited. Whittled down to size. What a pain. And now, today, just as I believed myself past this problem, I discover more of his content that I simply overlooked previously. That's right: Too long. And I should have sent it to China last week. But I can't -- it'll have to be edited first, line by slow painful line. Grievous Miscommunications happen no matter how well you plan. It is simply a by-product of having half the team in Connecticut and half in Hong Kong. But they irk me just the same. Today's was a particularly aggravating example: One of the activities we are planning for this line of toys is a simple variant on Hangman. On three of the four products in the line, the Hangman puzzle will be preceded by a clue to the answer. On the least expensive product, the one with a screen resolution that comes frighteningly close to being just one giant pixel, we cannot fit a clue. So: Skip it. No clue. No clues in the least expensive product! When I was in Hong Kong, we went over every game in detail, and when we discussed Hangman, and I said the word "clue," -- even in the context of saying, "I don't have a clue," or, "Anybody for a game of Clue?" -- the product manager for the cheapest product would chime in with, "There are no clues in my product." By the time I left China, I knew my name, I knew my address, and I knew that the cheapest product did not have clues in its version of Hangman. Naturally, today I get an e-mail asking me where the clues are for the Hangman data. How is this possible? In the next couple of weeks, assuming I am not fired for My Stupid Mistakes, I will be assigned my responsibilities for the 2004 product line. I am ready for 2004. When first embarking on a new product, perfection is still within reach. No compromises have yet been made, nobody has yet said that the specifications are unworkable, no one has yet said that we can't do it that way because it won't sell in Spain. Anything is possible, and there is no reason on Earth (yet) why this product cannot astonish the world with its brilliance. Who wouldn't rather be at the start of the production cycle than here at its bitter finale? But, tempting as it is, I cannot sit back and wait for the 2004 line to be announced. 2003 is still very much with us, in the form of a wriggling mass of loose ends. Pop! Look! There's another!

Joe Millionaire I'd like to imagine that Fox had to scour the country to find someone so misogynistic as to want to be its Joe Millionaire -- a $19K-a-year construction worker willing to fool women into thinking he's a multi-multi-millionaire. Reality TV has no impact on me -- I'm aware of its faddishness, but I've never felt any desire to watch any of it for more than five consecutive minutes. But Joe Millionaire really burns me up. A group of women are competing for a man they believe to be worth millions. Presumably, they will be winnowed down to a sole winner, who will then be told they her prize is really just some pipe-laying schlub from L.A. Will true love prevail? Will she choose to love him anyway? Criminy, OF COURSE NOT. Fox is promoting the show with the tag line, "Can love survive a little 50 million dollar lie?" But this is not a little lie; it's a great big fat whopper. Any woman would say to this putz, "Screw you! With mustard!" But Fox will edit the show to make it seem like the woman is the villain -- a gold-digger who was never out for anything but money. What bullshit. First of all, this small matter of the salary will not be the only lie Joe Millionaire is going to tell. A suave and debonair man of the world simply does not act like a construction worker. Joe is going to be acting his ass off, pretending to be something he is not. Essentially, the big winner will know nothing about her supposed prize, except that he is willing to participate in a stunt of this nature. Is she supposed to run off with him back to Los Angeles, simply because the cameras are running? She'd be a fool, and I doubt very much that they roped any such fools into the contestant pool. It'll be too much fun for Fox to crucify the winner as a greedy shrew.