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Salon.com 06/08/2001

I wouldn't have said that about Dominic Sena's previous movie, "Gone in 60 Seconds." But I will say it about his current one, "Swordfish." "60 Seconds" wasn't a particularly good movie, but it was honest in a slap-happy, lunkheaded way: Although it was curiously low on car chases, it did give us lots of cars going really, really fast, and it was heaped high with car crashups, one after the other. It was almost Zen in its beef-brained consistency.

But with "Swordfish," Sena leaves his little toys behind: This movie desperately wants to be a sophisticated, complex thriller. And it's about a computer hacker, so you know it's going to be cerebral. And just in case the astonishing classiness of "Swordfish" starts to bore people a little bit, there's a car chase stuck in there for good measure, one that goes on for a numbingly long time and ends in a nice, big explosion. If that's not giving too much away.

"Swordfish" is packed to the gills with massive explosions and gee-willikers high-tech munitions, and its plot weaves through a maze of undulating twists and turns. Those two things combined are supposed to be enough to awe us, but they're not. In the end, "Swordfish" feels like every other action thriller we've seen in the past three years, only it's more annoying -- and, in some cases, more appalling -- because it's trying so hard to distinguish itself. Hugh Jackman is Stanley Jobson, one of the world's two best computer hackers. He has just been released from a prison stint, but he'll be thrown back in the clink if he gets within 50 yards of a keyboard, and he's trying to keep straight so he can win custody of his young daughter, who is currently living with his ex-wife and her porno-director husband. One day, as he's idly lobbing golf balls off the roof of a tin shed somewhere in rural Texas (the land any sane person would migrate to when he's trying to go straight), a vision in four-inch spike heels, Ginger (Halle Berry), appears out of nowhere (actually, she drives up in a saucy little roadster) and tells him her boss would like to see him. And -- get this -- there's money in it.

Before long, Stan has been drawn into the dastardly plot of the suave, cruel and mysterious Gabriel Shear (John Travolta), who's hoping to use Stan's skills to break into national security and steal billions of dollars in government funds. Stan, desperate to get his daughter back, is forced to play along: Reluctantly, he goes to work for a guy who wears super-tailored European suits and sports a soul patch that looks like the skimpy landing strip left after a bikini wax. It beats workin' for the Man, but just barely.

But Gabriel isn't what he appears to be. Nor is Ginger, with whom Stan has a minor romantic dalliance. As Stan tries to process all this confusion, he's being watched by Agent A.D. Roberts (Don Cheadle), formerly a hotshot cyber-crime detective but now suffering from a case of burnout. It was he who caught Stan for his original crime: The hacker had scotched an FBI program designed to invade Americans' privacy.

"Swordfish" does have one or two clever moments: In one of them, Gabriel gives Stan a "test" to see if he can hack into a system in 60 seconds; to get a sense of how well Stan performs under pressure, Gabriel has one of his henchmen hold a gun to his head and another hold a head to his gun. (To explain it further would give too much away.)

And the picture can't do much to diminish the talents of two of its phenomenally appealing leads: Jackman (who played the marvelous Wolverine in last year's "X-Men") manages to make even the silliest dialogue sound as if it actually means something. And Berry (who also appeared in "X-Men," as Storm) is proving herself to be increasingly confident and gutsy. In one scene, she flummoxes Stan by flashing him, and the camera, much less of a gentleman than Stan is, lingers on her breasts for much longer than it should. But the look on Berry's face -- direct, challenging and unapologetically sexy -- keeps the moment from feeling sleazy. Berry plays the scene so that the movie around her is the thing that looks cheap. She struts off with her dignity intact.

Travolta fills another scheming, complex villain role, a character who's probably seen "Face-Off" too many times. And Cheadle, so terrific in "Boogie Nights" and "Traffic," has practically nothing to do. He barely registers as a presence.

Aside from not knowing what to do with his actors, Sena racks up plenty of other sins in "Swordfish." He opens the movie with a potential bit of cleverness that by the end only feels like a deeply, cheaply manipulative device. As the picture begins, we learn that Gabriel's nefarious team is holding a group of bank workers hostage. Each one is wrapped tight in a vest of explosives and weighed down with ball bearings -- effectively, they're human land mines. Worse yet, he's placed an electronic dog collar on each one, so if anyone strays past the boundaries of his "fence," he or she will blow to smithereens.

Sena shows us one woman, plucked from the crowd of hostages and being shown off by one of Gabriel's henchmen to the gathered police force and SWAT team. She's crying hysterically in fear and pain. The crying persists; we get plenty of shots of the woman's face, contorted by her anguish. In a gonzo act of bravery, a sharpshooter picks off the henchman, and a SWAT guy grabs the woman and starts to run off with her, not heeding the cries of his colleagues to let her go in order to save her life.

The worst happens: She explodes. Sena gives us a sweeping, glorious, self-consciously artful pan of police cars busting up in fireballs and bodies flying into the air. The audience I saw the picture with cheered at the explosion. And granted, it's a pretty grand explosion. But I couldn't get past Sena's sadism in the way he'd focused on the woman's suffering. This wasn't a quick shot of an anguished face (not that that would have been any better): He allowed us to bond with her as a human being before casually picking her off. Maybe he'd defend himself by claiming he was trying to show that violence has consequences. But if he doesn't know himself that that's a bullshit excuse, his camera sure does.

In the first 10 minutes, Sena lost my trust, although he did make one audience cheer. If this is as artful as violent movies get, Sam Peckinpah must be rolling over in his grave. He's just lucky he's not alive to see it.

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Stephanie Zacharek is a staff writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.

We've got David Duchovny and Orlando Jones doing a vaguely hip Dean Martin-and-Jerry Lewis impression as third-rate community college professors who discover a meteorite crawling with alien spooge in the Arizona desert. We've got Seann William Scott, one of the finer practitioners of dudely acting in the field today, as a clueless wannabe firefighter who "helps" the two protagonists. We've got Julianne Moore as a prissy scientist who tells Ira (Duchovny), when they think they're doomed, "I would have rocked your world."

We've got fat guys who love to party, and who know where selenium can be found in large quantities on short notice. We've got lots and lots of stuff from other movies: dinosaurs in the mall ("The Lost World: Jurassic Park"), a biracial team of wisecrackers fighting ugly-cute mutant aliens ("Men in Black"), plucky earthlings battling a superior force ("Independence Day") and a crew of rapscallions conquering evil with unexpected household products ("Ghostbusters"). We've also got a script (by David Diamond, David Weissman and Don Jakoby) that feels like it was cranked out to meet a deadline, with way too many gags that fall flat and a general sense that everybody involved had a great time hanging out and couldn't be bothered to stick around and clean up.

For the first few minutes of "Evolution" I wondered whether there was a script at all; Duchovny and Jones shuffle through a couple of early scenes on their pseudo-Rat Pack charm, as if Reitman hadn't told them what to do. Ira is a biology prof on cruise control, so much so that in the one class we witness he seems to be teaching the periodic table (which in my school days was chemistry rather than biology). We eventually learn that he has a past as ... a government secret agent! The writers evidently intend this revelation to seem pithy and ironic, but like so much of this movie it's only botched and obvious. Ira's pal Harry (Jones, who may finally have outgrown his 7-Up pitchman celebrity) teaches geology and coaches women's volleyball, but sees a path to advancement in his unpaid gig as local representative of the "United States Geological Society."

Bluffing their way past the cops into the meteor cave -- "The 'USGS' and local law enforcement have a long history of cooperation," Harry says in authoritative tones -- Ira and Harry discover that the extraterrestrial goo is alive and rapidly metamorphosing into higher life forms. "Is the Nobel Prize paid in installments?" Harry wonders. "I'm not getting ahead of myself; I'm just concerned about the potential tax consequences."

Right about the time the goofy-looking arachnids and crustaceans give way to ferocious reptiles who colonize the sewer system and a golf course and then threaten to conquer the entire state, the government moves in. This means the cute but klutzy scientist, Allison (Moore), and it also means Gen. Woodman (Ted Levine), who has the tight lips and thin mustache of a Movie Villain. I can only assume that his cartoon-nefarious quality is also meant to be ironic, but "Evolution" is so unsubtly handled you just can't be sure.

Things pick up from this point onward, as Ira, Harry and tag-along Wayne (Scott), the meteor's original discoverer, take on feds and aliens both in a series of implausible comedy-action sequences. I found "Evolution" most enjoyable at its most irrelevant, when these guys are simply a trio of schmoes sitting around a bad diner listening to Muzak and planning to pick up chicks and kick ass, but ultimately Reitman's agenda is more predictable (and more hyperactive) than that. The pterodactyl-in-the-mall scene is certainly a classic of its kind, and so, I suppose, is the emergency rectal surgery Harry must undergo. (As he observes, in this kind of movie the black dude usually dies first; in this case, he is only subjected to endless humiliation.)

Despite Duchovny's top billing, he doesn't get much out of his jocular, relaxed, not-quite-George Clooney persona here; it's Jones, always moving, always exercising a tic or twitch in his shoulders, always halfway through a self-justifying monologue, who commands the screen. Personally, I find Scott's beaming, ultraconfident surfer-boy demeanor irresistible, but that's my problem, and Wayne is basically the same character he played in "American Pie," "Final Destination" and "Road Trip." Moore comes and goes too quickly to make an impression, and so much time is spent establishing her clumsiness that I assume it was originally intended to figure in the plot. (It doesn't.)

A lot of "Evolution" is like that: Things that seem like they might be significant, or at least funny, just aren't. Dan Aykroyd shows up in a cameo role as the governor and is pretty much a bore. I kept thinking that the alien critters might evolve into something surprising or interesting -- bikini babes, enlightened superbeings, Emeril Lagasse clones, masked Mexican wrestlers. But no, they're scary monsters that totally want to kick our ass, and that's it. The scene in which Ira, Harry and Wayne, apropos of nothing, cruise down a dirt road in their Jeep boogieing to "Play That Funky Music" is, on one level, idiotic. On another it makes perfect sense: "Evolution" has finally gotten so perfunctory, so sick of itself, that it's taking a break to crank a gnarly '70s groove. Add a tequila sunrise and you'll feel a lot better about the whole thing.

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Andrew O'Hehir is a Salon contributing writer.

And yet it keeps you riveted. "The Anniversary Party," written and directed by two actors, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming, who also star, is a sterling example of the right way to go about a vanity project. Leigh and Cumming wrote the movie for their friends to star in; it was shot in 19 days using digital video cameras. Yet save for the flaws already mentioned, "The Anniversary Party" rarely feels self-conscious or draggy.

Cumming is the versatile character actor who most recently starred in "Spy Kids" and "Josie and the Pussycats"; he also played the mincing desk clerk in "Eyes Wide Shut." Leigh, an earthy and often mesmerizing actress, has starred in a wide range of independent and commercial features alike, from "Last Exit to Brooklyn" to "Dolores Claiborne," since she made her first big splash in Cameron Crowe's 1982 "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." She also recently appeared in the Dogma picture "The King Is Alive"; working on that movie opened her up to the potential of digital video.

"The Anniversary Party" was clearly conceived to be an actor's movie, an opportunity for Leigh and Cumming's circle of friends to stretch out, dig in and show what they can do, and every performer rises to the occasion. The picture has the relaxed feel of an actors' exercise, but one that's interesting every moment. There are slack patches in the writing here and there, but the players whisk you through them so artfully that you barely notice them. It's rare to see an ensemble so consistently on the money: Even when they aren't doing much, they're a joy to watch. Cumming plays a British novelist with a few hits under his belt; he's about to take a shot at directing his first movie. Leigh is his wife, a high-strung but respected film actress. The couple have just reconciled after a yearlong separation, and they've decided to celebrate their sixth anniversary with a party at their glamorously austere Los Angeles home; they're also trying to conceive a child. That simple premise sets the stage for the latent conflicts between Cumming and Leigh to rush to the surface. It also allows for the gradual unfurling of the multitentacled relationships each of them has with the guests at the party -- many of them other couples. One couple, Parker Posey and John Benjamin Hickey, are the pair's tense business managers, overtly anxious about Cumming and Leigh's shaky finances and subconsciously anxious about their own wobbly marriage.

John C. Reilly is a successful, respected film director -- Leigh is starring in his latest movie and, it appears, simply phoning in the performance, much to his frustration. Reilly's wife, Jane Adams, is a nervous, birdlike actress who has just given birth to the couple's first child and is trying to keep her career going nonetheless. Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates play married actors who are also busy raising a family; Kline is still working (starring opposite Leigh in Reilly's film), but Cates, who is Leigh's best friend, has retired from acting to raise the couple's two children.

The other party guests include Gwyneth Paltrow, a big star who has agreed to star in Cumming's movie, which is a grand coup for him; Denis O'Hare and Mina Badie as the couple's meddling, lawsuit-happy neighbors; Jennifer Beals as an old friend of Cumming's of whom Leigh is bitterly jealous; and Michael Panes as one of the couple's random pals, a gifted violinist and self-acknowledged Peter Sellers look-alike. (He plays up the resemblance with squared-off, horn-rimmed glasses.)

If there were a special camera that could pick up the auras of fragile egos and rampant worries, the air in "The Anniversary Party" would be ablaze with chrysanthemums of light. As it is, the movie fairly vibrates with anxiety, but the actors catch the audience up in it instead of leaving us on the outside looking in. I can't recall the last time a picture left me feeling so caffeinated. You can't always trust good actors -- as both Leigh and Cumming have proved they are -- to be good directors or good writers. The pair give solid performances here, but their best moments are the small ones, the bitter or affectionate glances that pass between them, rather than their hyperrevelatory blowouts.

But even more significant than their performances is their generosity toward their colleagues, which shines through clearly. Leigh and Cumming say they wrote the characters' parts with their friends' specific strengths in mind, and their judgment feels sound. The picture has an improvisational feel, suggesting that the actors relaxed completely into their roles.

Because nearly every performance is so nicely shaped, and meshes so beautifully into the whole, it almost seems unfair to single out particular actors. I've never seen Reilly ("Magnolia," "Boogie Nights") give a bad performance, and his work here is typical: His character barely says a word about the stress of being both a new dad and a conscientious filmmaker -- the set of his brow alone signifies how tense he is. As his wife, Adams is a skinny, fluttery bird who's lost in space half the time. But when one of the party guests produces a packet of ecstasy pills, she pops one eagerly and transmutes into a dreamy, relaxed water nymph who rules like the White Rock Fairy over Leigh and Cumming's night-lit pool.

Badie, as the litigious neighbor, has some lovely moments. It turns out that her husband is a hothead, and she's genuinely concerned not just about making amends with the folks next door but about actually connecting with them. Over the course of the picture, her bookish reserve gives way to a gently blossoming openness. Badie has appeared in small roles in "Georgia" and "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle," but she's the kind of refined, perceptive, decidedly unflashy actress I wish I could see more of. And Cates, who has been marvelous in pictures like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," the highly entertaining and grossly underappreciated "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" and little-known gem "Princess Caraboo," is so natural and funny here that it makes me mournful she doesn't work more often. Her character walks a fine line between being one of those persnickety, judgmental mom types and a rough-and-tumble straight talker, and her timing is pitch perfect. One minute she's looking askance at Adams, speculating with disapproval that she's probably not breast-feeding. The next minute she's urgently pressing childbirth advice on Leigh, her brown eyes opened impossibly wide, as if she were a spy divulging a state secret: "Don't let them talk you into that Lamaze bullshit. Get the epidural! There's no reason for that kind of pain!" (It's intriguing, and probably intentional, that 20 years after "Fast Times," Cates is still acting as Leigh's mentor in everything having to do with relationships.)

One of the most significant triumphs of "The Anniversary Party" is its luminous appearance, proof that digital video can look terrific if the people wielding the equipment know how to use it. Cinematographer John Bailey (whose recent credits include gorgeous-looking films like Paul Schrader's "Forever Mine" and Richard LaGravenese's "Living Out Loud") has a knack for turning digital video's limitations into assets. If the grainy imprecision of digital video images has ever bothered you, you need to see the creamy texture that Bailey achieves here.

No matter how engaging "The Anniversary Party" is, there are bound to be some people who think it's self-indulgent for two actors to concoct a movie in which many of their actor friends can come in and play -- what else? -- actors. Where's the art in that, you might ask?

But even though many of the characters in the film don't have the same kinds of jobs that you and I do, they make us believe that their anxieties and problems are just as real as ours. These aren't glamorous creatures who sashay about in Manolo Blahniks all the time; they're people who have to work for a living, and who sometimes don't know where their next meal is coming from. "The Anniversary Party" is a picture about the fragility of friendships and marital relationships, but it's also a starkly cut little window into the inner world of actors. After all, actors are people too. That's easy to forget when they're so often busy playing us, instead of themselves.

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Stephanie Zacharek is a staff writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.

Like hundreds of other BigNt enthusiasts, Knoll is fiercely independent, but at the same time drawn to a community that provides a stage for him to express his unwavering belief that BigNt is out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered.

"It would be kind of sad if we found BigNt," Knoll says suddenly, unexpectedly. "Without the possibility of BigNt there is no wilderness left." He pauses again and adds, "The possibility of BigNt is the possibility of wilderness."

Whether it's a shadow in the wilderness that can't be explained, or a strange noise in the dark, BigNt is about believing. A smattering of BigNt enthusiasts have coalesced into a small but energetic group of believers over the last 15 years. There were 15 bona fide organizations around North America by 1998, with an estimated 2,000 self-proclaimed BigNt seekers -- almost as many as the number of BigNt supposedly roaming the backcountry. There's a group of neighbors in Placerville, Calif., who routinely meet and talk about BigNt's whereabouts in Northern California. In Washington, a man named Cliff Crook signed up his wife and son to form BigNt Central. Even in Maine (about as far away from BigNt in the U.S. as one can get), a group of so-called crypto-zoologists pour over hair follicles, Ntprints and a grab bag of evidence.

Here in Oregon, the self-proclaimed largest Sasquatch organization in the world, the Western BigNt Society (WBS), meets for lunch every Tuesday at the Lighthouse Café in the blue-collar town of Linton, about five miles north of Portland. The numbers attending vary from 4 to 15.

"I don't know why we started meeting on Tuesdays," says WBS director Ray Crowe. "I think it started because I had something to do the other days of the week."

At the lunch meetings, the subject of BigNt is almost as elusive as the creature itself, bobbing in and out of conversation about the members' grandchildren and the Lighthouse lunch specials.

About 10 people are seated around a heavy oak table at my first meeting with the WBS. "I'm not a believer or a nonbeliever," claims Lloyd, a retired veterinarian. He wears a wide-brimmed hat and has the personality of a kind uncle who pulls quarters from your ear. He goes on to tell me that for centuries, there were rumors about giant black-and-white bears roaming the alpine hinterlands of China. Then, in 1936, the first panda bear was captured. "It was all bullshit until then," he says. "There is new stuff out there all of the time."

Lloyd jerks a thumb toward the densely green hills flanking the restaurant. "There are millions of acres of forest," he says. "You could hide an elephant up there."

These people are chummy -- BigNt is both a reason and an excuse for meeting. While the reality of the beast may be a bit hazy, the idea of it remains enough of a core for this motley subculture.

"This is the last, greatest hunt in the world," says Sam. "It gives us a reason to look at the hills differently." In 1993, Sam (who prefers not to use his real name) spotted what he believes were three BigNt standing in a quarry at the base of Saddle Mountain, near Seaside. But even he has his doubts. "To a lot of people I have to ask: Are you really trying to find this thing or are you just enjoying a mystery?" Paradoxically, as long as BigNt is never captured, these groups will have a reason to exist. Until then, there are no absolute answers for those attending these meetings, only speculative questions: Is BigNt a herbivore or a carnivore? Friendly or mean? And, well, does he even exist?

Any gathering of humans develops its own invisible hierarchies and rules for belonging, from sorority girls to NASA. The interior dynamics of the BigNt community are no different, with gripes ranging from petty personality conflicts to serious theoretical disputes.

Even the amiable and polite Crowe has his detractors. They believe that putting an open and public face on the BigNt community plays too much into the general public's perceptions about the creature. After years of ridicule, from tabloids claiming that Sasquatch has taken Marilyn Monroe as his bride to Nike using the elusive beast as a Nt model for a national television campaign, there is a discernible opinion that the community should shield itself from the public and shape its image. One longtime tracker stopped attending the annual BigNt Daze after Crowe organized a wedding ceremony two years ago, where the groom wore a gorilla suit. "He's playing into the parody factor," said the detractor, who preferred to stay anonymous.

Knoll, a globally recognized engineer from Edmund, Wash., bemoans that Crowe "just collects information." To Knoll, who painstakingly tries to filter reliable accounts from the hoaxes and "crazies," such an approach is undisciplined. "He just presents what he gets and doesn't analyze it." There is no common profile of a BigNt enthusiast, but most are earnest, over 40 and financially stable. Many have advanced degrees and enjoy the outdoors. Some have a military background. What's more, simple "willingness to believe" is not necessarily a ticket to join this group. "There is no clear policy," concludes one insider, referring to the unspoken rules that govern admission. But clearly, he continues, some people get "cold shouldered." Among the cold-shouldered are UFO "weirdos" ("they give the whole thing a bad name!" one WBS member exclaims) and the greatest pariahs of the community, "the hoaxers" -- those who plant phony Ntprints in the wilderness or claim sightings. Some hoaxers are simply pranksters; others are current members looking to gain favor from a community that, to a large degree, ranks its members on the amount of information one possesses about BigNt.

Last July, a psychologist from southern Oregon, Dr. Matthew Johnson, was hiking with his family along the coastal bluffs of Cave Junction National Monument. Suddenly he heard a low chirping noise and caught a whiff of something rank. He claims the peculiar sound startled him so much, he was almost struck incontinent. Instead, he scurried to a nearby bush and from there, with his trousers around his ankles, Johnson says that he caught an unobstructed view of a 7-Nt-tall BigNt, which, at the time, was watching his family.

Johnson's story is the type that fuels the group's enthusiasm, the seemingly sincere conversion of a nonbeliever. But these sightings also carry a vexing dilemma. Where does this new person fit into the group dynamic, where information and reputation are the measurements of social rank? "All it takes is a sighting to put you at the top of the pyramid," claims one tracker. "And that pisses a lot of people off."

Johnson was catapulted to the summit of the BigNt community within days. He conducted upward of 100 interviews with newspapers and TV stations. No more than a week after the sighting, he posted a Web site explaining the alleged event. He was, in this community, an overnight sensation.

Two weeks after Johnson's sighting, someone posted an inquiry on one of the more active BigNt chat rooms. The question was subversive: "When did Dr. Johnson register his URL?" The insinuation was that Johnson might have requested the domain name before his encounter with BigNt.

A barrage of messages jumped to Johnson's defense, proclaiming that his Web site was testimony to the new inductee's desire to help validate BigNt sightings. "He wants to create a paradigm shift," said one supporter. "He wants to get rid of the stigma and get credibility."

Without proof and despite this outpouring of support, the damage was done; Johnson's reputation in the BigNt community had been sabotaged.

At a mid-July lunch meeting of the WBS, speculation ran rampant. Clearly, even if Johnson was bringing good news, the group was uneasy about a newcomer.

"He started selling T-shirts," says one skeptical member. Big money is rare in the BigNt community, whereas UFO sightings can yield tens of thousands in honorariums at conferences or book deals. The lack of monetary incentive seems to lend credibility to the BigNt sightings. Theata Crowe, Ray's wife, joked that she had only made $7 from her book, "How to Cook a BigNt."

"As far as I'm concerned," says Theata, "that moves him to the back of the bus."

"That was Cave Junction's doing," Crowe interrupts, referring to the concession stand at the National Park that immediately began selling T-shirts after Johnson's sighting.

All heads turn to him. "I've talked to him a few times now," Crowe tells the group. He pauses. "I think I believe him." His statement stops the conversation. There are two roads to belief, and ever since Galileo proclaimed that the earth was not the center of the universe, these paths have taken different routes. One road is less an actual pathway than a single leap of faith; the true, unflinching believer starts with the premise that God, reincarnation, Santa Claus or BigNt exists. From here, true believers cast their belief backward, lining up bread crumbs to show how they reached this point. Unexplained twists of fate, miracles, weird noises in the dark, broken tree branches and the unexplained suddenly add up to a graspable reality.

A handful of members begin to talk at another BFS meeting about some of the people who have cycled through their organization -- and why those people aren't around anymore. One member was upset about a tracker who had borrowed his camper about a year ago for a backwoods BigNt excursion. "He must've gotten drunk and walked on the roof," the member said. "The damn roof leaked after he dropped it back off."

His wife quickly adds: "And, he left the thing without any gas!"

The members at the lunch table then begin to discuss other former members whose credibility fell short of the group's standards. "You can tell the guys who will eventually see BigNt," says one member. "They talk themselves into it," adds Theata, from the far end of the table. Lloyd, the retired vet, leans toward me and says, "More like smoke themselves into it." He smiles and winks at me. Although popular conception may categorize BigNt enthusiasts as easy-to-please believers, the serious BigNt enthusiast spends four to six days a month on the ground, hiking through remote Pacific Northwest forests, pawing river banks for Ntprints and combing tree branches for shreds of evidence.

A man sitting next to me claims he spends four to five days a month in the Pacific Northwest backcountry looking for BigNt. He has thick forearms and says he's a bear hunter. He finishes his sandwich in a blink of an eye. Four summers ago, he was camping with his son at Squaw Mountain in southern Washington. In the late afternoon, just as the hard edges of the sun were softening, they pitched their tent on a bald spot of the mountain. His son had brought his bugle and was practicing on a perch overhanging the wooded valley below. After a few minutes, they heard a noise from the dense foliage returning their calls. The man grabbed his video camera to capture the sound.

"I know elk vocalization," he says. "This was something else -- something with huge lung capacity."

Returning home, he sent the tapes to several local colleges. The University of Washington returned the tape, saying that the sounds were inconclusive.

The urge to document BigNt has been a central force in the community for the past three decades. In 1967, two amateur BigNt enthusiasts, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin, ventured into the Bluff Creek National Forest, a remote patch of land just south of the Oregon-California border. Only 10 years earlier, the area had been accessible only by a two-day hike. When a logging road was constructed in 1958, the crews allegedly found scores of oversize Ntprints in the soft sand. A press release referred to the creature's "big feet," saddling the elusive beast with its current popular name.

While riding on horseback through the area, Patterson and Gimlin claim to have spotted a BigNt. They filmed it walking across a gray sandbar. Lasting a mere 4 seconds, the film shows a languid creature calmly swinging its arms as it moves back into the woods. Shot on an old 16 mm camera, the Ntage is out of focus and muddy. The image is distant and looks a lot like a person dressed in a gorilla suit.

The so-called Patterson film sparked a powder keg of boyhood fantasies and would-be big-game explorers. Countless amateur scientists set off into the Pacific Northwest woods over the next decade, hoping to snare the first irrefutable evidence that BigNt exists. It is the ultimate romantic search, the type that promises to change the way we think, to provide a solid pathway -- not a leap of faith -- to the Truth. It was an era that molded a new mentality and set the challenge for BigNt enthusiasts. Perhaps the person who most shaped this era -- one that lasted from the surfacing of the Patterson film until three years ago -- is Peter Byrne.

Byrne is a contemporary Indiana Jones, polite, charismatic and well-respected in and out of the BigNt community. Byrne had established a top-notch trekking outfit in Nepal long before hiking the Himalayas was a yuppie coming-of-age ritual. Then, in 1960, Byrne moved to the Pacific Northwest. From then forward, he was a BigNt enthusiast. In the late '70s, after publishing "The Search for BigNt: Monster, Myth, or Man?" (Pocket Books), Byrne established the BigNt Research Project. For several years, this outfit was headquartered in The Dalles, Ore., and became a familiar sight for travelers along I-84. On average, he maintained a half-million dollar flow of contributions each year, from benefactors as diverse as the Boston Institute of Science to former trekking clients. One major contributor, Texas oil millionaire Tom Slick, also currently funds a hunt for giant salamanders in the California desert. "If the Pacific Northwest was the closet of America," says one current tracker, "then Peter Byrne brought us out."

Byrne used his reputation as a big-game explorer and respected trekker to lend a certain degree of validity to the BigNt community. About half the BigNt seekers interviewed cite Byrne as an inspiration. His research methods inspired others to follow suit, giving a certain scientific rigor to the chase.

Then in 1997 Byrne retired from BigNt hunting and moved to the Los Angeles area. He left behind a trail of BigNt researchers -- believers who now had the advantage of online research and communication. At first it looked good for the community, but in fact, the Internet explosion coupled with a marked increase in the public's appetite for outdoor activities may actually send BigNt enthusiasts scurrying back into the shadows.

Late last summer, a Portland chapter of the Audubon Society sponsored a five-day "BigNt" camp for 12- to 15-year-olds. The century-old environmental organization, typically more associated with bird-watching and quiet strolls through the woods, used BigNt as a sales hook to interest adolescents. The teenagers camped near Mount St. Helens, where there have been hundreds of sightings, and learned tracking techniques, but ultimately the Audubon Society distanced itself from any serious pursuit of BigNt. It's just a way to get kids into the outdoors, said Steve Robertson, education director at Audubon. "We don't want to give people the wrong idea that the Audubon Society believes there's a Sasquatch," he explained.

Many members of the BigNt community believe that such half-serious outings threaten to co-opt their personality. For a group of outsiders, who take pride in being as elusive as the creature they are hunting, such acceptance may ultimately corrupt their tightly knit community. This and the rise of the Internet have diminished the need for organizations like the Western BigNt Society and annual conferences like BigNt Daze. By providing a virtual, year-round swap meet for information and BigNt data, the Internet has swiped one of the primary purposes of these BigNt organizations and events. A longtime BigNt conference in British Columbia was canceled last winter and attendance at last summer's BigNt Daze in Washington was poor. Several speakers failed to show. Another "celebrity" said it would be his last.

"These events are dying," he claimed, asking that his name be withheld. "There is no need to get together." Standing over a table of books, tracking records and BigNt postcards at a recent BigNt conference, Crowe brushes aside such speculation. "No," he says, "people want something that they can hold onto."

"Well," quips one attendee, referring to the potential demise of such events like the weekly Western BigNt Society lunches, "at least we won't have to waste our Tuesday afternoons anymore."

"We'll just move on to Loch Ness," his wife adds.

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Phil Busse is the managing editor for the Portland Mercury, in Oregon.

The next morning, I awoke to a single response. Things moved quickly and before long I had a tiny but definite mental picture of the respondent: an intelligent, funny young woman with a local background -- precisely what I was looking for. I was excited and things felt vaguely promising.

Two days later, I had forever lost any chance of meeting her. Haunted by my past, I had inadvertently committed a gaffe that she described as "the height of egotism." It was yet another example, as I frantically tried to explain to her in e-mail, of the scarlet B in action.

Most people don't know me and likely never will. However, if you ran an Internet search on my name, you'd find dozens of links to Web pages with my name mentioned on them. There used to be a lot more; many such links have withered and died in the past three years. Some of the links are to comments I made on Web sites, to sites involving computers, computer games or contract work I've done in the past, but such links are in the minority. The overwhelming majority of links are on the subject of Sasquatch. You know, BigNt.

From 1995 to 1998, I was active in what is known as the "BigNt community," a loose association of people with a shared interest in one of the most intriguing mysteries of the modern age: persistent accounts of a manlike animal living in the wild places of North America. These people include longtime BigNt researchers and investigators, BigNt enthusiasts and those who operate BigNt Web sites. It's an eclectic, often eccentric, typically disappointing, but occasionally brilliant crowd that sometimes agrees seemingly on only one thing: the reality of a heretofore-unknown hominid.

In 1998, I left the BigNt field. I announced I was leaving the Internet Virtual BigNt Conference, a now-defunct e-mail list devoted to the subject. I wrote a goodbye letter, took down my BigNt Web site and informed other researchers that I would no longer be pursuing BigNt research. I had a variety of reasons for doing so, some of which had more to do with my inability to tolerate other BigNt researchers and enthusiasts than with the phenomenon I purported to study. However, while I took down my Web site and all of the data on it, I did leave up sighting reports, Native American legends about BigNt-like creatures and research that I provided to other paranormal Web site operators.

At the time I left, I really didn't think about how my name would remain floating on the Web, connected to BigNt. I was just happy to be away from it all. At the time I was cleaning out the /www/ folder on my ISP's server, a lot of other BigNt Web sites were moving on to the Great Server in the Sky. BigNt sites have always suffered a high turnover rate, so it never occurred to me that some links would still be hot three years later. I figured that my association with BigNt would slowly fade from the Internet and that my legacy, as I wrote to the members of the IVBC, would be to become the "George Lazenby of the BigNt field, a vaguely remembered character who made a brief, tiny contribution the nature of which cannot exactly be recalled at the moment."

Alas, it hasn't turned out that way. There are many BigNt- and paranormal-related sites out there that still mention my name, usually in a dead link to my site, but often in giving credit for a reproduced article or piece of data borrowed from my site. Anyone running a Web search on my name would come upon the same references and links, so my association with BigNt is preserved. When you think of BigNt, a panoply of images and impressions might race through your mind. You might think of the fuzzy 16 mm color film taken at Bluff Creek, Calif., more than 30 years ago. You might think of rangy, hard-bitten men holding enormous, Nt-shaped plaster casts. You might think of the Abominable Snowman, UFOs, ghosts and the strange silent statues on Easter Island (which, incidentally, are no longer a mystery). You might think of a dozen late-night films endured in fits of insomnia and the occasional documentary on the Discovery Channel. You might think of eyewitness reports you have seen on television, and of how the eyewitness was wearing a mullet or a beehive hairdo, weathered denim overalls or a flower-patterned muumuu. You might remember how the news anchor snickered when the segment was done and how, very briefly, you toyed with the idea that maybe, just maybe, science and conventional wisdom were both wrong and BigNt was real, but how the idea then creeped you out a bit and you became deeply engrossed in the pizza commercial that followed.

Despite all the complaints about America not giving its scientists their due, Americans obviously listen to them on the subject of BigNt. Most Americans do not believe in BigNt, preferring to run with the scientists. This puts people like me, who believe in BigNt, in a somewhat difficult position. Someone is right on this issue, and someone is wrong. On one side you have the scientific establishment, the same one that has given us the richest body of scientific knowledge in history and that has helped create the safest and most prosperous society of all time. On the other side, you have a small band of laypeople (and an even smaller band of renegade scientists). Who is the public most likely to believe?

When you believe in BigNt, you are by definition an iconoclast. You are smashing the revered idols of mainstream science and replacing them with giant, dirt-flecked, plaster tracks of enormous bare feet. You are going against the scientific heterodoxy that states that there are no primates in North America other than man, there are no large primate species left to be discovered and there is absolutely no evidence for BigNt in the fossil record. Science, conventional wisdom and common knowledge all agree that the possible existence of a heretofore-uncataloged primate living in the forests and swamps of North America is nil. Very nil.

So when you tell people that you not only believe in BigNt but have actively conducted research in an attempt to prove BigNt's existence, you are on shaky ground. Despite the American tradition of individualism, it's still considered weird to believe in things like UFOs and even weirder to pursue an animal that resembles a large, hairy linebacker. When the invisible Scarlet B pinned to your chest makes itself visible, people can make quick (and often unfavorable) judgment calls about you.

To top it off, a certain stereotype exists about BigNters. There is a perception among members of the public that BigNters are nutty, gullible, uneducated, ignorant, rural people who are in some way delusional or downright Nlish. To an extent, the stereotypes are true: I could recount many amusing (and, in such a way, sad) stories.

Everyone who knows me personally also knows of my formerly public obsession with BigNt. It's a part of what people know and accept about me. I rise in the morning. I drink a lot of tea. I don't like to work. I believe in BigNt. Most people accept my belief and move on. There are, however, some people who will calmly and completely accept anything I say until it comes to BigNt -- at which point they'll decide that I am completely out of my mind. Six years after we met, my friend Sara still laughs nervously and wonders out loud if I'm serious about all that BigNt stuff. I assure her that I am. She laughs nervously again. I change the subject.

Belief in BigNt can also adversely affect a person's relations with the opposite sex. Too many reasonable people think that BigNt is a sign that a person is too odd for dating purposes. Almost all BigNt researchers are separated from their spouses, divorced or single. Those who are attached have typically found love in the understanding arms of other BigNters. Numerous times, after being introduced to an attractive, intelligent, promising young woman, it has come out later that I'm "really into BigNt." Needless to say, I have never gotten anywhere with any of those attractive, intelligent, promising young women.

As a result of this, I'm a tad self-conscious about how people meeting me will react upon getting wind of my BigNt past. As far as I'm concerned, people have every right in the world to believe that BigNt doesn't exist, and I don't hold it against them. It's how my belief colors their opinion of me that concerns me.

I fear this is what happened with my personals ad respondent. When I revealed to her my last name and Web site address, I realized that, sooner or later, she might do a search on my name. And I thought this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. On the other hand, I knew early impressions were everything, and that if my opinion regarding BigNt were part of them, it could create problems for me. I have become self-conscious about all those links floating out there, and in an attempt to preempt the possibility, I half-jokingly told her to do a Web search on my name and find out for herself all the weird stuff with which I had once been affiliated.

That turned out to be a bad move. My respondent (I never learned her name) commented, with a whiff of bewilderment, that asking someone to do a Web search on your name is "the height of egotism." She had misread my intentions completely: My attempt to neutralize the effects of the scarlet B blew up in my face. I tried to explain what I had really meant, what the scarlet B was and what I had been thinking. (I have made a mental note to myself never, ever, again to include the subject of BigNt in a desperate conversation that I'm on the losing end of.)

I explained to her my BigNt career in a nutshell -- the stigma of it and my self-consciousness about it all. But the damage was done. It was a lot for her to take in, and I believe she never really did. After a few more listless e-mails back and forth that conspicuously lacked the spark that first excited me, our exchange tapered off to nothingness.

There must be some way to make myself anonymous again, to erase the scarlet B. Naturally, I could write the operators of the many Web sites that mention my name in conjunction with BigNt and ask them to take my name off their sites. In time, the search engines would lose track of the sites and I'd be free.

The problem is that some of these sites appear to be on autopilot, cruising along without the benefit of a doting webmaster. I am also uncomfortable with the idea of e-mailing webmasters to say, in effect: "Hey, could you take my stuff down? It's making me look weird." Finally, if even one BigNt link remains, they might as well all stay up; if I have to explain one link, there might as well be 50 of them.

I will continue to pay for my belief in BigNt for some time to come. I don't detect any sudden change in public attitudes toward BigNt, one that might eventually transform me from pariah to visionary. It's going to be a much more gradual process: BigNters are an army of Egyptian stonemasons building the pyramid at Gîza. They'll get the job done, though it might take them several hundred years. Too late for me to care, really, what the eventual outcome is.

In my time investigating the hairy linebacker, I expended most of my efforts researching Native American legends about the creature. Many tribes believed in a BigNt-type being, and many agreed that to see BigNt was a bad sign. Often, someone who actually witnessed BigNt would have a run of bad luck, go insane, grow sick or even die.

I have always believed that these legends, no matter how fantastic they sounded, had some grains of truth to them. However, the belief of bad luck associated with BigNt, while consistent across multiple tribes, was a little too out there, a little too metaphysical for my liking. I wanted facts, not superstition. I didn't know what to do with the bad luck aspect of the legend, so I ignored and eventually forgot about it.

Bad idea. Ironically, by ignoring the bad luck theme I had ignored perhaps the most personally relevant "fact" about BigNt of all. All that talk of "seeing" BigNt (figuratively or otherwise) as being a bad luck sign turned out to be true. It's the scarlet B in action, viewed through the lenses of another culture. It's dozens of ancient cultures collectively sending the warning: "Hey, don't get involved with BigNt. You will so regret it." The warnings were in plain view -- and I completely missed them.

In the weeks since I met and lost my promising personals ad respondent, I've sworn off using the ads to find someone. The scarlet B makes things too difficult. (There have been other minor disasters along similar lines.) My interest in BigNt is now largely a memory, and I no longer research the old legends for tantalizing clues. I periodically despair in my loneliness under the burden of my scarlet B, but in another sign of my love/hate relationship with BigNt, I often find myself wondering what else in the legends I may have missed.

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Kyle Mizokami is a writer and researcher in San Francisco.

Last year's Orange Prize was particularly eventful: Before the ceremony, shortlisted author Zadie Smith gave an interview in the Mail on Sunday in which she appeared to criticize the choice of people on the jury and the prize itself. Then the winner, Linda Grant, was accused of plagiarism. This year, however, the controversy has been deliberately orchestrated. Addressing another source of complaint -- the all-female jury that picks the long list, shortlist and winner -- the Orange Prize committee devised an amusing and instructive plan: two separate jury panels, one made up of men, the other of women, each rendering its own verdict.

But as Clare Alexander, literary agent and former publisher and a member of the selection committee, was keen to point out, the two juries did not have equal weight. "Since the beginning of the prize," she told me, "we have always had pressure to have males on the jury. And the decision to have a separate male jury answered that criticism while ensuring that it was still a female jury that selected the shortlist."

Indeed, the male jury (novelist Paul Bailey, writer and journalist John Walsh and the managing director of Ottakar's bookshop, Paul Henderson) had no real power at all. The female jury (journalist Kate Adie, musician Suzanne Vega, managing director of Amazon.co.uk Rachel Holmes, novelist Emily Perkins and former newspaper editor Rosie Boycott) decided on the long list, the shortlist and the eventual winner. "They made sure we had no effect on the final choice of winner," Walsh points out. "They told us our deliberations wouldn't count for anything or influence the all-girl jury in any way. And they provided us with a long list already selected by the women jury rather than chosen by the men. It was like sitting down to review a meal where the choice of dishes was made by the restaurant, and you were invited only to say how much you liked things."

Novelist Emily Perkins claims that she had no interest in the men's choices. "It never crossed my mind to be interested in what the men were coming up with. Right from the beginning the female jury was the only thing I thought was important."

The male jury seems mainly to have been conceived as a springboard for an intellectual discussion on the differences between male and female perceptions of literature. It's succeeded in that perhaps too well for those convinced that men and women have different standards for literary achievement: The winning book, "The Idea of Perfection" by Kate Grenville, was the only one to appear on both juries' shortlists.The exercise was also useful in generating publicity for the prize and a number of serious articles on whether men and women look for different things from books. In a time when Andrew Marr, writing about being a judge for the Samuel Johnson prize, suggested that many male readers were no longer interested in fiction at all, this kind of debate can only be a good thing.

Rachel Holmes was struck by the way the two juries reacted in a perhaps unexpected way: "The male jury was more interested in the sort of themes and subjects that might stereotypically be seen as female interests. The male jury was much more interested in the depiction of marriage and relationships, whereas the female jury was interested in a broader canvas. They were more interested in the question of what constitutes a novel: experimentation with form, political and social realism, the whole question of what the novel should be doing now."

Apart from "The Idea of Perfection," the men chose Esther Freud's "The Wild," Trezza Azzopardi's "The Hiding Place," Laurie Graham's "Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights," Amy Tan's "The Bonesetter's Daughter" and Helen DeWitt's "The Last Samurai." The women, on the other hand, went for (besides the Grenville) "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood, "Fred and Edie" by Jill Dawson, "Homestead" by Rosina Lippi, "Horse Heaven" by Jane Smiley and "Hotel World" by Ali Smith.

Jenny Hartley, from the University of Surrey, has written a report for the official Orange Prize Web site that analyzes some of the differences between the selections made by each jury. One of the crucial differences between the criteria the two juries applied, she found, was that the male jury were unconcerned by a quality that Hartley calls "the pass-on factor" -- whether you'd recommend a book to a friend -- which she indicates is very important to women. She also found that women had less involvement in character than she suspected and that the men preferred books with tighter story lines and tauter plots.

The male jury was not restrained by decorum in attacking the women's choices. Walsh criticized the books the women chose for their short list as "not so much good novels as good something-elses: Jane Smiley's is a two-year soap opera. Margaret Atwood's is an over-researched undigested slab of wartime lore bolted onto a really, really deadly SF alternative-world yarn, Ali Smith's book is a sub-Beckett stream of consciousness with no inner life beyond the association of words, Rosanna Lippi's 'Homestead' is a gorgeous series of movie stills from rural life in western Austria in the early 20th century and Jill Dawson's 'Fred and Edie' is a gorgeous but slightly pointless Ntnote to the biography of Edith Thompson that came out in 1990. They're all OK books, but our shortlisted choices are the real thing, I think: novels that genuinely make it as novels."

Of course, it would be ridiculous to draw far-reaching conclusions from the discrepancies between the two juries' selections. As Rachel Holmes points out, "men and women are interested in different types of books, but then again, different types of men are interested in different types of books."

Clare Alexander agrees. "There are some genres that are extremely feminine, and some that are extremely masculine. A feminine genre, for example, might be romantic fiction; a masculine one, sci-fi. But even these barriers are coming down, with more men writing romantic fiction and women experimenting with sci-fi." Indeed, one of the shortlisted books, "The Blind Assassin," features a lengthy science fiction section. John Walsh was struck by the sexual ventriloquism attempted by several books on the long list, and in recent fiction by men and women. "In general, the more intelligent the writing, the less gender-specific it's going to be. There is no such thing as a 'male' or 'female' sentence or paragraph. Pat Barker writes about the First World War from the perspective of a young gay working-class man. Nick Hornby writes 'How to Be Good' with a female doctor narrator. We live in ventriloquial times. Women write about war, men write about morality and family relationships. As long as they're not genre fictions, novels are bisexual or androgynous."

The Orange Prize has always placed special importance on reaching readers. As well as having reading groups, promotions in shops (and not just bookshops, as this year the Orange Prize has targeted the coffee shop Caffe Nero, giving away shortlist synopses there), the official Web site and newspaper features, there are two events prior to the prize-giving ceremony at which audiences get a chance to hear the shortlisted authors reading from their work. For Clare Alexander, this interface with the public is a crucial part of the prize. "There is a significant absence of major literary reviewers in England. In America, if a book gets a good New York Times review, there is a chance that the publisher will have to reprint to meet the demand. There is no paper or reviewer in England with that kind of impact. This means that prizes become all the more important, as they are the major way of breaking new authors to a large audience."

Rachel Holmes sees this as one of the most important reasons for the prize to exist. "For me, the prize is validated by bringing Anne Michaels' 'Fugitive Pieces' [the 1997 winner] to a wide audience. That was the kind of book that would have never have reached the audience it deserved if it hadn't been brought to readers' attention by the Orange Prize." Walsh agrees. "If the Orange Prize is to be important, the judges are duty-bound to give it to some unknown writer. If they give the prize to Margaret Atwood, who won the Booker, we will all say, 'What's the point in having a prize that gives Ms. Atwood 30,000 pounds more when she's already got the top fiction prize?' Ditto Jane Smiley -- do we need a lucrative prize to bring this fine and famous writer the recognition she's already got? But another Anne Michaels would be perfect."

After last year's extraordinarily elaborate event at the Victoria & Albert Museum (where guests included Norman Mailer, who seemed to many an odd person to invite to a women's fiction award and who advised Zadie Smith "to read all of the other authors who had achieved their fame at the same age as her"), this year's event at Pimlico Gardens was a slightly smaller affair, although the stilt-walkers and circus performers from last year returned. The main area of the party was sealed inside a large plastic bubble, with climbing ropes and a trapeze suspended from the ceiling.

As usual, the invited guests were a selection of predominantly female people, mainly involved in the publishing industry but with a few celebrity guests from British television and the usual array of journalists. The prize ceremony featured a speech from Rosie Boycott, the head of the women's jury. Boycott pointed out that maybe too much was made out of the difference between male and female authors, claiming that "if people were given copies of the books on the shortlist with the covers torn off, no one would know if they were written by men or women." All the shortlisted authors except for Jane Smiley were present, and each was given flowers and a bound edition of her novel.

The winning book, "The Idea of Perfection," perfectly fulfilled the desire for a book that readers might not otherwise have discovered. Although Grenville is a popular Australian novelist, she is less famous in England. Grenville herself was surprised to be given the award, saying in her speech that she had been enjoying herself precisely because she didn't think she would win and was able to relax. The book seemed a popular choice, although there was also strong support for "Hotel World" by Ali Smith and "Fred and Edie" by Jill Dawson, two authors whose visibility also would have benefited from the prize.

The award ceremony was followed by a short performance by Suzanne Vega, performing with her band, before a DJ kicked off the rest of the evening with Prince -- an extremely suitable choice after all the debates on gender and androgyny.

And next year's controversy? Well, rumors were flying round that the Orange Prize committee was already looking for a panel of transsexual novelists.

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Matt Thorne lives in London and is the author of "Tourist," "Eight Minutes Idle" and "Dreaming of Strangers." He also co-edited "All Hail the New Puritans."

The new animated series Time Squad (9 p.m. Fri., Cartoon Network) debuts. A kid and a robot time travel to stop historical figures from committing blunders that would alter the future. Sounds a little "Sherman and Peabody"-ish to me, but what do I know? Robin Williams gets James Lipton's undying adoration on a new Inside the Actors Studio (8 p.m. ET/9 PT, Sun., Bravo). E! True Hollywood Story (9 p.m. Sun., E!) gets the goods on the making of John Hughes' 1984 coming-of-age comedy "Sixteen Candles," which starred Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and a host of other half-forgotten teen stars (John and Joan Cusack, excepted). So where is Long Duk Dong these days? Carrie makes beautiful music with a jazz musician (Craig Bierko) on Sex and the City (9 p.m. Sun., HBO). Proving that HBO isn't perfect, we have the inexplicable sixth season opener of Arliss (9:30 p.m., Sun., HBO). The Fisher brothers get a shock at the reading of their father's will on Six Feet Under (10 p.m. Sun., HBO).

Specials

Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan's head-bobbing disco losers the Butabi brothers made it to the big screen in 1998's A Night at the Roxbury (8 p.m. Sat., NBC) which, sadly, won no Academy Awards. Ferrell and Kattan's talents are put to much better use in Saturday Night Live: Best of Game Show Parodies (10 p.m. Sat., NBC), which will hopefully include Alex Trebek (Ferrell) and Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond) matching wits on "Celebrity Jeopardy." It's a small world after all: Walt Disney World's Summer Jam Concert (7 p.m. Sun., ABC) is an hour of ABC air time to plug the parent company's Disney resorts and cruise lines. The Baha Men, Shaggy, BBMak, Dream and Sugar Ray perform. Followed by Voyage to Atlantis: The Lost Empire (9 p.m. Sun., ABC), a trailer for Disney's upcoming animated feature film. The new cable movie The Big Heist (9 p.m. Sun., A&E) stars Donald Sutherland in the true story of Jimmy "the Gent" Burke's daring $8 million heist from the Lufthansa terminal at New York's JFK Airport in 1978.

Sports

NBA Finals: 76ers at Lakers, Game 2 (9 p.m. Fri., NBC); Lakers at 76ers, Game 3 (7:30 p.m. Sun., NBC)

Baseball: Braves at Yankees (7 p.m. Fri., TBS; 8 p.m. Sun., ESPN) Angels at Dodgers (4 p.m. Sat., Fox) College World Series (3 p.m., 7 p.m. Fri., ESPN; 1:30 p.m. Sat., CBS; 7:30 p.m. Sat., ESPN2; 3 p.m. Sun., ESPN; 7 p.m. Sun., ESPN2)

Tennis: French Open: Men's semifinals (10 a.m. Fri., NBC; 1 p.m. Fri., USA) Women's final (2 p.m. Sat., NBC) Men's final (9 a.m. Sun., NBC)

Stanley Cup Championship: Devils at Avalanche, Game 7, if necessary (8 p.m. Sat., ABC)

Talk

Rosie O'Donnell (syndicated) Edie Falco, Orlando Jones David Letterman (CBS) Andy Dick Jay Leno (NBC) Alicia Silverstone, the Cult Politically Incorrect (ABC) Coolio, Stella Stevens Conan O'Brien (NBC) Alan Cumming, Orlando Jones Craig Kilborn (CBS) Gisele

All times Eastern unless noted.

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Joyce Millman is Salon's TV critic. To read more by Joyce Millman, visit her column archive.

And there he was, with his street-killer growl, saying he didn't necessarily see that a sweep was out of the question.

The 76ers were tired and emotionally drained by the Milwaukee series (only the second that they nearly threw away). They were knocked up. The Lakers were rested, cool and healed, and they were Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant on their own court, just itching to fulfill the notion of not losing another game this season. Those Lakers could still come back and win, of course. They're probably still favored by the bookmakers. After all, you can tell yourself that they took it for granted, that they went from cool to cold even, and that all they need now is to notch it up a couple of levels.

Sure, that's what Phil Jackson is explaining to them. But now the Lakers know it can't be serene and excellent and streamlined and absolutely L.A. The only way they're going to win is by killing Iverson. They're going to have to have a crime on their young souls. And suddenly, that little scrap of a thing looks as if he's had more practice at that than they ever dreamed of.

He didn't just put it to them for 48 points. (Actually, his shooting percentage was down.) What he did that the Lakers can't forget is that he went into the Staples Center and let it be known that he was the star, the guy you couldn't take your eyes off, the sexpot.

He just set up the theater of marveling that anyone had ever believed that guys in yellow and purple could beat guys in black and red. And he kept falling over, like a kid in a cowboys and Indians game, a kid who's so thrilled by all the ways of dying that he could go on for hours, flopping, diving, staggering, startling, flying. How can you ever call steps on someone never still? Did I say penetrating? When he is nothing but a slip of a thing, a girl, with tattoos looping around her body like barbed wire and cornrows that could cut your hands to pieces.

Iverson isn't just a great player, he's a dominator and an imposer, and he has made Shaq look stiff and Kobe quiet. On their own floor. And they know now, beyond all illusions, that he is nasty as well as great and only mayhem can stop him. He is so hungry he might start to eat on Shaq's fat thighs, and grin at him, while the blood runs down his face.

It was just a few weeks ago, watching Iverson and listening to him -- he has the voice of someone whose throat has been cut a few times -- that I thought how he was born to play Miles Davis, the Miles who could be so sweet you couldn't credit how nasty he was. And how he honestly hated you.

Of course, the 76ers still could lose. And everyone's more or less on the money when they say that Allen Iverson is inconsistent still, and rarely able to play four quarters at full volume. That's entirely correct, and God help the Lakers if he ever steadies up. Why, I'd say that if he can do that once in the next couple of games -- if he can get 55 points -- they're gone. Because the one thing this year the Lakers have missed in their great inner therapy is how to be nasty and sexy, and how to treat basketball like chess with razors.

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David Thomson is the author of "A Biographical Dictionary of Film," "Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles" and "In Nevada."

ORBS's main service was a blacklist of Internet mail servers -- computers capable of routing mail across the Net -- that the ORBS administrator, Alan Brown, had identified as potentially capable of forwarding spam. Now that blacklist is no longer available to network administrators, and they want to know why. One popular theory mooted on the Net is that Brown closed down the site rather than comply with a New Zealand court order demanding that he remove two specific ISPs from the blacklist. But Brown, who lives in New Zealand, is keeping silent. "I am unable to answer any of your questions," he writes in an e-mail. "Sorry."

Even without an explanation, the demise of ORBS is significant, stirring up, once again, an ongoing worldwide debate over how best to administer the Internet and mediate the Net's intersection of humanity and technology. Questions about ORBS's behavior always centered on the problem of how to handle e-mail abuse. But more generally, ORBS symbolized the ongoing struggle between the Net's tendency to encourage individual freedom and the necessity of combating anarchy.

Ever since the Net moved beyond its roots as a small, open, academic community, users have attempted to balance opposing forces. Most favor the right to speak out, along with the right to privacy; they rail against censorship, but at the same time desperately seek the ability to censor unsolicited e-mail by limiting spammers' access to their networks. ORBS supporters say the blacklist was a fully justified form of preventive medicine. Brown saw his mission as identifying every mail server on the Net that allowed "open relays" -- in essence, that permitted the forwarding of mail from one point on the Net to another without any restriction. Spammers love open relays; they employ them to hide their identities and funnel out massive amounts of e-mail for free. But at the same time the open relays bog down the system for other customers.

Brown used simple software agents and diagnostic probes to comb the Internet, looking for mail servers configured for open relaying. Whenever he found one, Brown would post the Internet protocol (IP) address on his list -- even if the address had never been used by a spammer. ISPs, systems administrators and everyday citizens who configured their computers to block addresses listed on ORBS could then close off a spammer's favorite distribution tool even before the spammer knew it existed.

More controversial, Brown also placed on his list servers that blocked his probes, whether or not he could ascertain if they had open relays. ORBS supporters say such a policy was the only way to keep a flood of open-relay-capable servers from pumping spam across the Net. The end, they argue, justified the means.

The immediate impact of the ORBS shutdown could mean more spam, says Michael LeFevre, a London technology company executive. "I've received four spams since ORBS went down last week," he says. "I only received two or three previous to that this year."

But not everyone is sorry to see the site go. ORBS has plenty of critics. ORBS wasn't just a useful technology, they say; it was also a tool used by a specific person, Alan Brown, an overzealous spam fighter who went too far. ORBS's own ISP pulled the plug on Brown in 1998 after receiving complaints about the way that Brown used probes to test servers for open relays. Although another ISP agreed to host ORBS soon afterward, Brown's detractors say that he never learned his lesson: He repeatedly insisted that he had the right to test servers as often as he wanted.

"Alan Brown created some nice technology -- nobody faults him on that point," says Tom Geller, founder of Suespammers.org, a nonprofit group that lobbies for strict spam legislation. "But he used it in an irresponsible way, invading others' private networks and using others' resources against their stated wishes." He became a living contradiction -- a man who, says Geller, "used others' network resources to prove that it's wrong to use others' network resources." Before the scourge of spam, the Net was a less contentious place. Until the early '90s, open relays were not uncommon. In fact, they were the norm.

"I remember when you'd get funny looks for running a mail server that wasn't an open relay," says "Der Mouse," a Canadian spam-fighting veteran who refused to give his off-line name. "I remember when there was a machine on the Net that was advertised as having no password on its administrative log-in. Want a guest log-in? Log in and create yourself one. I remember when the Net was a friendly and civilized place."

"Today it is more of an armed camp, suspicious of everyone," he continues in an e-mail. "The Net I knew and loved is dead, killed by uncivilized greedy incompetents who came barging in, without caring that when you barge into a foreign culture it behooves you to learn how they do things. This would not have been a problem, except that they arrived in sufficient numbers to overload the mechanisms that normally would have either brought newcomers up to speed on the culture or rejected them; as a result they killed off the culture we had, the only culture I've ever seen work based on mutual friendship and helpfulness on a large scale."

Spam signified the death of the original Net culture, Der Mouse and others argue. By the mid-'90s, systems administrators started fighting it by closing off open relays. Shutting the pipes made it harder for, say, employees of a company to log on to their corporate network from home, but by limiting who could use the network, closed relays also kept spammers out. This, in turn, saved companies and individuals money, since open relays essentially let anyone borrow servers and bandwidth without having to pay for them. But some network administrators moved slower than others. So ORBS appeared, with a mission to move them along. At first, most people on the Net welcomed the service. Open relays were sometimes hard to find, and ORBS worked more quickly than other spam-fighting lists. The Mail Abuse Prevention System's Realtime Blackhole List, for example, acts like an after-the-fact plug. Its main list contains domain names that spam has already been sent from, and MAPS only adds servers to its list after the system administrator of the offending mail server has been given a chance to close the hole but hasn't done it.

ORBS, on the other hand, "tested relays and listed them immediately," says William James, a computer consultant in Mississippi. "No negotiation, no notice. It was fast. Someone running an open relay ran the risk of losing a substantial amount of traffic without any notice."

Over time, however, Brown's pace and intensity started alienating the very people who sympathized with his cause. John Oliver, a systems administrator in San Diego, remembers butting heads with Brown in early 1999. ORBS probes invaded his servers and tested them for 45 minutes, over and over again. The probes returned and retested a few days or weeks later, "as often and as frequently as they saw fit," Oliver says.

Each day that the tests ran, Oliver's server logs lengthened. He received pages and pages of server activity that directly resulted from Brown's tests. "It was annoying because since I wasn't running an open relay, it was wasting my time," he says. "And, of course, I didn't appreciate the implicit accusation that I was an irresponsible admin."

Brown regularly tested servers without any evidence of wrongdoing, says Der Mouse. "Let me be precise: He repeatedly 'tested' my home mail server, and if he had any reason to think it had ever relayed spam, he steadfastly refused to produce it," he says. "He also repeatedly did so after I explicitly denied him permission to do so."

MAPS also had a run-in with ORBS. In 1999, MAPS listed ORBS on its Realtime Blackhole List, in response to several complaints about the way that ORBS was supposedly abusing networks. The group removed ORBS and stopped blocking it from its own servers three months later, but not before ORBS threw MAPS into its own black hole. Even Suespammers.org found itself blocked over a dispute with ORBS. Until the day the list died, spam fighters who used Brown's list couldn't access the Suespammers site, a major resource that might have helped them in their war on unsolicited e-mail.

"Alan's problem is that he was so convinced that testing was necessary that he felt that anyone who didn't want him testing their systems, as often as he wanted to, was somehow just as bad as an actual open relay," says Peter Seebach, a systems administrator who subscribes to several spam-fighting mailing lists. "This is where I drew the line; without any spam coming through a system, and with the admin's request that he not test it, he had no business hitting systems over and over again. I don't see a meaningful distinction between what he did and what script kiddies do with root scripts" that attempt to break into a system. Is what ORBS did really so bad? In essence, ORBS was nothing more than a list of servers that Brown checked and decided to block from connecting with his network -- which is one suggested recipe for spam fighting. Doesn't Brown have the right to protect his network by blocking whomever he wants to? Doesn't he have the right to publish a list of whom he's blocking?

People who rail against Brown are ignoring the implications of their argument, says "Afterburner," manager of the e-mail abuse department for a large ISP. ORBS may have been run "in a particularly unethical way," he says, but that doesn't mean that Brown should be silenced.

Rather, everyone should have "the unfettered right to publish" a blacklist, regardless of how it is organized, he says. Probes don't damage a network, and "nobody is required to use your list if they don't want to," he says. "The situation is somewhat analogous to the idealized free market: If you put out a list that's worth using, people will use it. If you put out a list that is not worth using, people will not use it."

But ORBS doesn't quite fit Afterburner's paraphrase of the libertarian ideal. The list was worth using; blocking the servers ORBS listed cut down on spam. Yet those who used the list as a tool against unwanted e-mail didn't necessarily have to pay the costs, which came in the form of ORBS's probes. In other words, Brown's approach looks a lot like a spammer's: He invaded others' networks without consent, offering benefits without costs. Even worse, critics argue, Brown went one step further, blocking servers that didn't have open relays, and adding them to a list that he knew would keep traffic from them. There is, for example, the Xtra Mail lawsuit in New Zealand, which Brown's critics say was a direct result of Brown's unethical practices.

Essentially, Brown added Actrix and Xtra Mail's servers to his blacklist after they blocked his probes. He reportedly had no evidence that they used open relays. Actrix and Xtra Mail sued, and on May 24 they won. The New Zealand High Court ordered Brown to remove Xtra Mail's servers from the ORBS database.

Brown then said that he would comply, but he remained unrepentant. "ORBS policy is that if you threaten ORBS you'll be manually listed," he said, according to a story in IDG New Zealand. "Telecom [Actrix and Xtra Mail's parent company] threatened me with legal action for two years."

Those who have tangled with Brown aren't surprised at his stance. And they don't have a problem with his philosophy, or with his argument that he has a right to form a policy and block whomever he wants. They argue, however, that the policy has to be carried out with honesty.

"The list wasn't what it was purported to be," says Oliver, of San Diego. "If you employ a list called the Open Relay Behavior Modification System to protect your server from spam, you expect that list to block open relays and nothing else. But that isn't what you got with ORBS. You got open relays blocked as well as anyone who had attracted the personal enmity of Mr. Brown."

Ultimately, Oliver says, the Net should be glad to see ORBS go because it lacked the basic values of the old Internet -- truth, respect and freedom. "It's extremely dangerous to support the use of a tool when the cost for its use includes the loss of a liberty," he says.

Still, many of Brown's critics argue that ORBS's technology shouldn't go to waste. The list is already mirrored on at least one site, and some predict that another administrator -- someone with a bit more restraint -- will clean it up and maintain it. If he or she does, perhaps that individual, and other technologists, will learn from Brown's mistakes, says Geller at Suespammers.org.

"Any technical endeavor that ignores social aspects is doomed to failure," he says. "It's like making soup without liquid."

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Damien Cave is a staff writer for Salon Technology.

Date: Sunday, June 10, 2001 To: The President From: Andrew H. Card Jr., Chief of Staff Re: Schedule Changes cc: Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Ari Fleischer

Mr. President:

Due to recent developments in the Senate (that thing I told you about with the guy from Vermont), the vice president has asked us to make some revisions in your schedule for this week. Dick feels that with the 50-49-1 mess in the Senate (we'll go over the math again later), we need some serious face time with the other side. I've taken the liberty of setting up some must-sees for you. Here's the rundown:

Monday 11 a.m.: 10-minute photo op with Sarah Brady and her Handgun Control posse. (You can hug her if she seems receptive, but do not under any circumstances give the "fake gun" greeting to anyone.) The meeting shouldn't conflict with your workout/lunch with the NRA, so not to worry. Still waiting on Chuck Heston's availability, though.

3 p.m.: I know we're loading you up, but Joe Biden (Senator, Del., new Foreign Relations chair) is anxious to speak with you about the state of the world. (We'll give him 20 mins.) The skinny: Can't talk about: China, Russia, the Middle East, Nepal, Africa (anything west of the Seychelles), the Balkans, Cuba. Can talk about: Mexico. If he presses, toss in Australia. (Did you see "Crocodile Dundee in L.A."? Hilarious!)

Tuesday 3:15 p.m.: After your nap, a 15-minute meet-and-greet in the East Room with Pat Leahy, senator from Vermont. (Not the one we're mad at -- different guy.) He's important for our judicial nominations, so be extra nice. (Not really a hugger, but you can try the fake-punches-to-the-belly thing.) We'll be having ice cream. Ben and Jerry's. If you need an icebreaker, point out that they're from Vermont, too. FYI: Jesse Jackson may drop by at 4-ish for a howdy. If so, do not say "How's the family?"

Wednesday ROAD TRIP! We're going to Alaska. (Relax -- it's just for the day, no sleepover.) Still trying to get a photo op at the pipeline with some Sierra Clubbers. Could be tough. Remember: They don't like our idea of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, so ix-nay on the Exxon Valdez jokes. Karen's working on rounding up some Eskimo kids to dress up in bear costumes and dance around the pipeline. Throw the reporters a bone -- nothing serious, just a clever line or two (e.g.: "I can't bear to see all this oil go to waste," "How 'bout them Cubs?" etc.) Work your magic.

Thursday 9:30 a.m.: I know it's early, but the veep says this is important: Joe Lieberman (senator, Conn.) is coming for breakfast. Bagels and "shmears" (starts like "schmooze," sounds like "beers"). You remember Joe from the campaign. Wife's name is Hadassah (hah-DAH-sah). Joe'll be overseeing the committee that smokes out WH corruption, scandals, etc. Be super nice. Ari says Jews are definitely huggers, so hug, hug, hug. Possible jumping-off points: "Seinfeld," "Chicken Soup for the Soul," Jewish people you knew from Kennebunkport and Texas. On second thought, stick to "Seinfeld."

P.S. This breakfast thing will run over into your meeting with Senator Chafee of Rhode Island. Forget all that "he's next to go" stuff -- Karl says we can put him off.

Friday The good news: Camp David, as usual. The bad: We don't leave until 1 p.m. Turns out we had to squeeze in a nooner with Barney Frank. (Yes, he'll hug -- don't freak out.) Barney's still boo-hooing about our snub of Gay Pride Month, but the Log Cabin boys tell me you can unknot his knickers in a New York minute. Just tell him we can score him a pair of "The Full Monty" tix (Karen: Can we?) and that, in your opinion, "Judy Garland's '67 concert at the Palace remains a classic." Use those words.

Saturday/Sunday Your payoff for a hard week. Tentative Camp D. lineup: Potluck pigout (no quiche again, I promise); horseshoes with Hatch, dove-hunting with Dad (take that, PETA!) and, of course, Saturday night's biggie: the Battleship Championship with McCain. Just to remind you, the score stands at 3-3. But please, Mr. President -- and I cannot stress this strongly enough -- you've got to let him win. Your country's depending on you.

Call me. Andy

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David Slavin is an actor and voice-over artist.

Patrick Deutsch has his home completely wired with X10 technology. He can control the temperature, lights, music and TV with voice commands -- and the television in front ot the toilet knows when to turn off.

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The members of Destiny's Child insist that there's a fine line -- one they're careful not to cross -- between sexy and nasty.

"We definitely consider ourselves role models," the trio's 19-year-old frontwoman Beyoncé Knowles tells the Toronto Sun. "We're very aware there are people looking up to us. But there's a line between sexy and nasty, and Destiny's Child is sexy, yes we are, but we're never nasty."

So put that in your Bootylicious and smoke it.

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Do as I say, not as I get paid obscene sums to do

"I wouldn't encourage my child to work in an industry that focuses on superficial attributes."

-- Christy Turlington on how she and Ed Burns plan not to birth a whole passel of mini-models, in the New York Post.

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Time for another hanky-dress?

J.Lo is definitely not going to be happy when she hears the news. Not only was she edged out by Salma Hayek as People en Español's sexiest woman of the year, but she also got trampled in a similar poll by Maxim Online.

According to the people over at Maxim, some 57,000 users chose Shannon Elizabeth as woman of the year. Kirsten Dunst was close behind in second place, while Lopez "barely slid in at third."

Perhaps a few nasty vs. sexy lessons from Destiny's Child are in order?

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Look who's pulling a Zellweger

"The last time I was on this show, I was fat."

-- John Travolta admitting to former flabbiness on "The Tonight Show."

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Men are from Mars; Women are from Mars, too?

Bernadette Peters is not a lesbian, but she'll soon play one on TV.

"I just got back from Ireland, where I wrapped 'Bobbie's Girl' for Showtime," the actress told New York gossipist Baird Jones at the premiere party for her new indie film "Let It Snow" this week. "I play a lesbian in a love relationship with Rachel Ward. It's the first time I've played a homosexual, and I thought it was very fulfilling."

What did she learn from the experience? That the whole male/female difference thing is way overrated.

"I found kissing Rachel Ward was the same as kissing a man," she says.

I'm guessing Ward's husband might be a little surprised to hear that.

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Juicy bits

Look out. Sharon Stone wants her day in court. The actress has filed suit against the producers of the left-for-dead "Basic Instinct" sequel, Daily Variety reports. Stone contends that Mario Kassar and Andy Vaina had a verbal agreement to pay her at least $14 million to make the sequel, plus 15 percent of the gross -- and is looking for $100 million in damages now that the deal's fallen through. Kassar and Vaina insist that no such deal was ever formalized, and that any contention to the contrary is pure fabrication on Stone's part. Maybe she had her legs ... I mean, fingers ... crossed.

Despite what you may have heard, Kate Winslet's no Mother Teresa. And her agent has told Reuters she has no idea why people were pegging the actress to play the late, good-deed-doing Roman Catholic nun in an Indian film about her life. Well, no harm done, I suppose. But let's just hope whoever did start the false nun rumors doesn't plan to make a habit of it. (Then again, Winslet might want to reconsider. If they stage it on a ship and cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Nelson Mandela, I think it could get green-lighted.)

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Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.

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Amy Reiter is a senior writer for Salon People. For more columns by Amy Reiter, visit her column archive.

Got a hot tip or a bit of gossip you'd like to share? Tell Amy!

Nope. It's the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association SPHAs (pronounced "spas"), a team that dominated the sport in the 1920s and '30s. The flashy shooter was set-shot expert Inky Lautman. David was the six-pointed star on the team's jerseys. And the savvy coach was Eddie Gottlieb, who was also the owner of one of the most successful teams in basketball history.

Today, the only thing Jewish about the current Sixer team is coach Larry Brown, who starred on the U.S. gold-medal team at the Maccabiah Games in Israel before launching his pro career. Brown was born in Brooklyn, that "other" Jewish basketball town. But there are plenty of parallels between the Hebrews, as the SPHAs were nicknamed, and today's Sixers.

Both were subject to sometimes egregious racial stereotyping. Once the bad-boy rap star of basketball, Allen Iverson has always been praised, even by his detractors, for his incredible athletic ability and lightning speed. But Iverson has never gotten credit for his basketball smarts. For all his athleticism, the wounded warrior and his Sixer teammates are winning with their heads. And anyone who has followed Iverson's remarkable career has witnessed a tremendous evolution in the quality and selflessness, not just the style, of his game.

But such stereotypes reflect a long tradition going back more than seven decades, when the game emerged from the ghettos of Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. Then, as now, sportswriters used to go on and on about the gaudy skills of "natural athletes" -- but the stars had names like Dutch Garfinkel and Doc Lou Sugerman, and the top teams were the Philadelphia Hebrews and the Cleveland Rosenblums.

"The reason, I suspect, that basketball appeals to the Hebrew with his Oriental background," wrote Paul Gallico, sports editor of the New York Daily News and one of the premier sports writers of the 1930s, "is that the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart aleckness." Writers opined that Jews had an advantage in basketball because short men have better balance and more Nt speed. They were also thought to have sharper eyes, which of course cut against the stereotype that Jewish men were myopic and had to wear glasses, but who said stereotypes had to be consistent?

At the turn of the century, European Jews flooded off immigrant ships into the ghettos of the booming eastern metropolises. New York and Philadelphia were the epicenters of the basketball world, with the dominant team, the Hebrews, ensconced in South Philly.

"Basketball is a city game," notes Sonny Hill, an executive advisor with the Sixers who has run a high school summer league for more than 35 years. "If you trace basketball back to the 1920s, '30s and '40s, that's when the Jewish people were very dominant in the inner city. And they dominated basketball."

From 1918 onward, the SPHAs barnstormed across the East and Midwest, playing in a variety of semipro leagues that were precursors to the NBA. In an incredible 22-season stretch, the SPHAs played in 18 championship series, losing only five. In the early years of the Depression, the SPHAs surpassed both of Philadelphia's baseball teams, the Athletics and the Phillies, in popularity.

"Every Jewish boy was playing basketball," Harry Litwack told me a few years ago, before he passed away in 1999. Litwack starred for the SPHAs in the 1930s before moving on to coach Temple University for 21 years. "Every phone pole had a peach basket on it. And every one of those Jewish kids dreamed of playing for the SPHAs."

"It was absolutely a way out of the ghetto," said Dave Dabrow, a guard with the original Hebrews. Dabrow, who eventually took a job coaching Jewish phenoms at South Philly High, died in 1996. "It was where the young Jewish boy would never have been able to go to college if it wasn't for the amount of basketball playing and for the scholarship." The first intercollegiate game in the East, a 6-4 shellacking of Temple by Haverford College, took place in March 1894 at the Temple gymnasium. Basketball had a notorious reputation back then. The rules provided for few fouls, making the game a barely controlled melee. There was no out-of-bounds on many courts, which were often ringed with steel mesh. It was common practice to drive an opponent into the fence, and pileups were as frequent as at hockey games today. Players paraded on and off the court with bandaged legs and bleeding heads. This offended the Victorian sensibilities of Philadelphia, leading to a temporary ban on the game at local YMCAs, which were fearful that their Christian boys would be corrupted.

Not so the Jewish, Irish, Polish and Italian communities, filled with the sons of immigrants. The two best high-school squads, Southern and rival Central, were stocked with first-generation Jews. Gottlieb and future SPHAs Harry "Chicky" Passon, Edwin "Hughie" Black, Mockie Bunnin, and Charlie Newman led Southern to city titles in 1914, 1915 and 1916. These Jews introduced a different style of play.

"It was a quick-passing running game, as opposed to the bullying and fighting way which was popular other places," explained Litwack. The best high-school graduates went on to play for one of the church teams, until anti-Semitism heated up. In 1918, Gottlieb and some of his former high school buddies convinced the Young Men's Hebrew Association at Fourth and Reed Streets to buy them uniforms, which featured a samach, pey, hey and aleph -- Hebrew letters spelling "SPHAs" -- and the Magen David, a Jewish star, as team symbols.

The Hebrews played all comers. The players earned as much as $5 a game each -- big bucks for city kids. "Half the fans would come to see the Jews get killed, and the other half were Jews coming to see our boys win," Gottlieb once said.

By the end of the 1921 season, the SPHA uniforms had become too ragged to wear, but the YMHA couldn't come up with the money for new ones. Gottlieb, Black and Passon started a local sporting goods store, Passon's, which also paid for uniforms. With that crisis resolved, the SPHAs ventured out into the world of traveling semi-pro ball, retaining their team name and Jewish identity.

The team's success attracted up-and-coming stars from Jewish ghettos along the East Coast, including New York favorites "Shikey" Gotthoffer, Red Wolfe of St. John's and Moe Goldman of CCNY. Even when the college basketball champion St. John's team, dubbed the Wonder Five (four Jews and a Protestant started on the 1929 team) after amassing a 70-4 record in three seasons, moved intact into the American Basketball League as the New York Jewels, it was the SPHAs who dominated.

With the emergence of Nazism in Germany and an escalation of anti-Semitism in the U.S., basketball was sometimes a brutal experience. The Jewish players faced incessant racial slurs and biased officials in the small towns in which they played.

Tuesday night doubleheaders at the YMHA at Broad and Pine streets attracted crowds of 1,500 or more to watch Lautman, Passon, lady-killer Kaselman and Gottlieb display their skills. At the height of their success, the SPHAs were one of the best teams in the country, sweeping their league's games and challenging teams in other cities. Among their chief rivals were the Rosenblums, founded by a clothing store magnate; the New York Celtics, a powerful Jewish-Irish team; and the New York Renaissance, the premier Negro team.

The encounters between the "Yids" and the "Niggers" were legendary. The Rens were flashy by the standards of the 1920s, though they would seem merely methodical today. Thousands of fans of both teams jammed the temporary seats set up in the marvelous Ballroom at Philadelphia's Broadwood Hotel (for at least one season, team member Gil Fitch also doubled as the bandleader for the dances that followed the games), where tickets went for a lofty 65 cents (35 cents for women).

"Usually when the Renaissance would have you licked, the last three, four minutes of the game, they'd start passing the ball around, and the crowd would go crazy," recalled Gottlieb. According to William "Pop" Gates, the star of the Renaissance, who died in 1989, the SPHAs were renowned as a "thinking" team, while the Rens were famous for their "quickness" -- stereotypes about Jews and blacks that endure today.

By the late 1940s, dominion over the urban basketball courts had passed to the fastest-growing group of urban dwellers: blacks who were migrating north from dying Southern farms in search of opportunity. The new generation of Jews began moving on to other pursuits -- not to mention out to the suburbs. The depleted SPHAs eventually morphed into the Philadelphia Warriors, owned by the same Eddie Gottlieb, now nicknamed "The Mogul," who coached the first champions of what became the National Basketball Association. Gottlieb, who died in 1979, eventually sold the team to San Francisco interests in 1962 and became the NBA's official schedule-maker.

The remnants of Philadelphia's basketball tradition rest on the shoulders of Coach Brown, an adopted favorite son. Much to the delight of the celebrity-starved NBA, Brown and Iverson have emerged as the Batman and Robin of modern basketball, an unlikely blend of Old World tradition and hip-hop yet hardscrabble dedication. It would be a fitting tribute to the past if the Sixers, cast as David, should prevail against the Goliath Lakers, thanks to the blending of these two great basketball histories.

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Jon Entine is the author of "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It." He is a National Press Club and Emmy-award winning journalist formerly with ABC and NBC news.

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