Round at the ends and high in the middle

Illustration by Adam McCauley

It's been quite a year for the blue watery orb we call home. By inspiring more breast-beating ink from the ranks of punditry than the Balkan War, O.J. Simpson became a permanent brick in the yellow brick road of that cyberspace formerly-known-as the Information Highway.

Miffed at being upstaged by the former football great, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic told the media, "What, are you going to keep me locked up in Dayton, Ohio? I'm not a priest, you know."

Despite this outburst, an accord was signed in Ohio, and peace has fallen on Eastern Europe like Al D'Amato on the White House.

We may never learn the answer to the question: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it make a noise? But we know that Cindy Crawford made a movie, nobody came, and Dean Martin died. Think about it. Not only that: Quebec voted to stay part of Canada, Louis Farrakhan remained Louis Farrakhan, and Anthony Hopkins made scores of jaws drop with his uncanny impersonation of Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's "Nixon," a movie that may inspire more breast-beating ink from the ranks of punditry than the O. J. Simpson trial. This is because the movie is historically inaccurate-- a highly unusual condition for a Hollywood product. Perhaps miffed by being upstaged by a former presidential great, O.J. Simpson announced plans to make an infomercial proclaiming his innocence.

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