The Lexicographer's Rules

"Travolta: always a hack. Always a bad, bad actor. He had a certain ignorant charisma in 'Saturday Night Fever'Ña better movie than people think, reallyÑbut heÕs a one-note actor, and this happy-crazy lunatic schtick heÕs been pulling for the last five films is just awful."

—Lileks. James Lileks drinks the poison and finally watches "Battlefield Earth." He's relieved to find out it's as bad as he hoped it would be.'

"Because the fact is, you are uncool, and no matter what you think, you never will be cool, because feeling awkward is part of the trip. Nobody ever really gets over it, they just cover it up. Your uncoolness is just especially exposed now, but I promise, it won't always feel like your whole body is on fire."

—St. Paul Pioneer Press. Jim Walsh, pop music critic, believes The Face's "Ooh La La" is the perfect song, full of life lessons the young are sure to ignore. '

"My aunt, in Hanoi for the first time, was afraid of having her picture taken. She said: 'No, no!' and turned her face away if someone tried to take a picture of her. I had arranged to telephone a cousin who lives in the country. But when she went to the telephone in her commune, she was afraid to pick it up when it rang. I could not talk to her. I realize that the unfamiliar has become familiar to me."

—Christian Science Monitor. Duyen Van Do, returning to Vietnam after a year and half in the US, marvels at the way he, his country and his perception have been altered. "While visiting a small farm in Illinois last year, I was so surprised at the way pigs were fed. Isn't it hard for the pigs to eat uncooked corn and soybeans, I wondered. In Vietnam, farmers cook the food before giving it to their pigs. This has been the tradition for centuries. Can we change our ways?"'

"It was easy for me to play the villain, because that way I didn't have to act."

—Washington Post. G. Gordon Liddy, in testimony related to the three-decades-old Watergate scandal, hams it up before a courtroom microphone, recounting how he starred in television shows like MacGuyver and Miami Vice, and tells tales. "He told jurors that he refused to testify about Watergate until after the statute of limitations ran out because his father 'didn't raise a rat or a snitch.'"'

"From a conservation perspective, this parkway is a heartbreak. For people who care about efficient government, this road is heartbreak. The people who thought this up should get a lot of credit because it is a brilliant circumvention of good environmental and governmental policy." "

—St. Petersburg Times. Don Crane looks at cypress swamps, pine plantations and pastures and envisions asphault and automobiles. "I was always wondering when all that land would get gobbled up, and we'd never get a chance to build a road."'