"Knockaround Guys," the pair's first picture as directors, is set in another underworld subculture: It's the story of four young men -- played by Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Andrew Davoli and Seth Green -- who have enjoyed privileged lives as the offspring of Brooklyn mobsters, but who have come to realize that they can't get any respect in either their fathers' world or the real one.

Pepper's character has been nothing but a flunky since he failed a significant business-related mission at the age of 13. He begs his father (Dennis Hopper, who chomps idly through his small role in the movie as if it were a pastrami sandwich) for a significant gig in the family business. Eventually, because Hopper has fallen on hard times, he agrees to let Green, an amateur pilot, fly across the country to pick up a half-million-dollar loan and transport it back to New York; Pepper will supervise the deal.

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When Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda set out to make a western about hippies trekking across America on their motorcycles, they had no idea that their creation would become the signature film of the '60s. The DVD release of "Easy Rider" points out just how influential the movie was at the time, and the extras explore the outlaw magic that made it work.

Dennis Hopper plays Billy and Peter Fonda takes on the role of Wyatt, aka Captain America, for the allegorical voyage. Billy's hot to get to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras, but Wyatt runs at a slower, more contemplative pace; he's often seen finishing a joint and staring into the campfire. Several of the conversations, if not the entire movie, are about freedom. As a director, Hopper places the nonconformist main characters in an America populated by accepting cowboys and hippies. In the South, however, the bikers find xenophobic racists who chase down longhairs with shotguns. The film itself is somber in theme, but watching it today is still energizing: The filmmaking is raw and exciting -- the movie is often credited with driving the renaissance of American film in the '70s -- and the cast makes up a who's who of the '60s and '70s.

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Although both boy bands showed up at a Daisy Fuentes-hosted Super Bowl party sponsored by Maxim magazine Friday night, I'm told they resisted the debauchery enjoyed by Rob Schneider, Jerry O'Connell and Carson Daly. (Yes, Daly's fiancée, Tara Reid, was there, but that didnt stop the MTV "Total Request Live" host from enjoying the company of several Maxim models.)

While O'Connell and Schneider "downed drinks and danced with the girls of Maxim, the kids of 'N Sync and 98 degrees stuck to playing games at the Sony PlayStation kiosk," a witness reports, sniffing that, clearly, the band members "aren't ready to party with the big boys."

Or, for that matter, the extremely buxom babes.

The Backstreet Boys, meanwhile, did not attend the party at all, perhaps because of a little Super Bowl boy-band rivalry.

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As I talk with Barger at a movie producer's office in West Hollywood, two bodyguards -- Pete from the Dago chapter (San Diego) and Bobby from Cave Creek (Arizona, where Barger now lives) -- sit on a couch across from us and look on from behind their shades. Also present is Fritz Clapp, Barger's lawyer and associate, a non-Angel out of prep school and Dartmouth, by way of the Marines. After a while, when it is evidently clear that I am not an actor in some greater play involving Barger's very life, they leave.

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Aeon is one of many chain English-conversation ("eikaiwa") schools that cater to working adults in Japan, where English-language instruction is a thriving industry. Eikaiwa schools here operate much like chain gyms do in the United States: Individuals pay set membership fees for the privilege of purchasing anything from bargain group-class packages to "voice time," unlimited hours of spontaneous English interaction with actual foreigners.

Diaz is not Aeon's first famous foreign mascot. In 1999, following the colossal success of "Titanic," an enhanced Celine Dion also appeared in ads for the conversation school. That year, the French Canadian singer grinned down at shoppers from a frighteningly large billboard above my city's hippest, busiest street, her Roman nose seeming to sniff in approval at the pervasive air of consumerism in the neighborhood. And why wouldn't it? Although Aeon is contractually bound to keep the cruder details of its endorsement deals under wraps, Dion's face can't come cheap.

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But Dunne -- bestselling novelist and "special correspondent" for Vanity Fair -- was by his own admission a "natural born star fucker ... before I'd even heard the term." His new book, "The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper," brings the pastime to a new level: The memoir is a cluster fuck of celebrity, crisscrossing (as he has) the worlds of Hollywood and New York, entertainment and society as effortlessly as a butterfly. Though the book offers plenty of evidence of his access to the lives of the rich and famous and features more recognizable names than Liz Smith's Rolodex, I can offer my own humble testimonial to his ubiquity in several social worlds, while attempting to drop a few names myself.

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