Pull back; everything's still paused. You weren't really looking directly at the three people. You were staring at a small TV monitor, peering over the shoulder of a woman dressed in all black. In front of her the same three people are still on their knees, but there's a well-built man with a camera on his shoulder standing so close they'll hit their heads on the camera lens if they move. Look to the right: Near the window are two men wearing shorts; one has headphones connected to a bag of small antennae. Back up, turn around, go past the guy with the notebook near the door. Follow the cables that lead from a digital video camera mounted high up in the room to a small monitor in the hallway at the top of the stairs. More people are gathered here. Behind them you see other bedrooms full of the furniture from the bedroom you just left.

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That's the phrase NBC uses to promote its drama "Law & Order." On the short commercials plugging this week's show, the announcer sensationally enunciates the line, as if to suggest that because the fictional show takes its inspiration from real life, the program will be even more dramatic.

That might have been convincing before Sept. 11, when terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center towers live on television. There, of course, we saw headlines come to life in the most unimaginable ways during typically perky morning news shows. The footage wasn't "just like a movie" or really like anything we'd ever seen on TV before, except perhaps for footage of events like the Challenger explosion. This was real-life drama with incredible real-life consequences playing out on our screens a few seconds at a time. The headlines were writing themselves with a cathode ray tube.

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It all seems so familiar now -- even more so with all the other reality shows on TV -- but it's important to remember that "The Real World" actually invented an entire genre of television. By putting real people in an artificial context (a beautiful, free apartment stocked with cute, well-groomed roommates), producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray figured out a way to combine documentary and drama into a sort of soap opera that we'd never seen before.

"The Real World" was so far ahead of its trend that the rest of television took nine years to catch up. And "Making the Band," the first of the new network reality shows, was also made by Bunim and Murray. But watch any reality show now -- even crap like last year's "Big Brother" or the imports from overseas -- and "The Real World's" influence will be so obvious you'll probably miss it.

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The networks reacted -- and fast. Shows without black actors added them. "The West Wing," for example, on NBC, quickly cast Dulé Hill as the president's personal aide. Other shows responded too. Indeed, the moves led to an overrepresentation of African-Americans in prime-time network television for that year.

"The nation's largest minority group is over-represented in prime-time television programming," said the African-American Television Report, a June 2000 Screen Actors Guild-commissioned study of the 1999-2000 fall television season. "African-Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but nearly 16 percent of the characters seen on the networks during prime time."

Problem solved?

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But the show does have one killer hand that it hasn't fully played yet: Cusack herself. Although she may be best known for relatively small parts in movies starring her brother, John Cusack, Joan always manages to pull a strong performance out of whatever situation she's in -- whether it's serving as an assistant to a hit man in "Grosse Point Blank" or trying to kill off Uncle Fester as a psychotic gold digger in "Addams Family Values." The same is true of her performance in "What About Joan."

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Late one Saturday night in the spring of 1999 I was editing the latest issue of my college paper. As usual, the radio was set on Orlando's WSHE 100.3 FM. I was fanatical in my devotion to the station, primarily because I'd never before found one that so perfectly matched my taste. Plus, it had cool DJs and often sponsored great concerts and events. Sure, they overplayed songs and had too many ads, but what station doesn't?

Around 11:30 that night, REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" came on. I didn't catch the hint. Next up was a song I'd never heard before on that station. Then another. Then the death knell: a station ID, identifying it as "the new Cool 100."

I fiddled with the dial. Maybe the signal was gone and we were picking up another station. Or maybe they were promoting a new station temporarily on SHE's band. Something. But hours later, there was no change. I called the station. The person who answered the phone confirmed my fear: They'd switched formats. Gone were the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan; in were groups I couldn't even name if I tried. No notice. Nothing. Everything I'd grown to love, DJs and all, was gone. SHE was dead.

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MTV's new reality show, "Fear," plays off that sense of the unknown for both the people on the show and its viewers. "Fear" is what "The Blair Witch Project" would have been if it hadn't been so diluted by hype. Or "The Real World" without the exhausting relationship squabbles. Or "Survivor" set in hell.

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The difference is the new star celebrated at every possible moment, the new center of attention. The star isn't Miss Hawaii, who won the contest, or any one of the 50 competitors or even the hosts. The new star is ABC.

Take, for example, this 30-second transcript from Donny and Marie's introduction:

Marie: "Last season, ABC debuted a unique new reality series, 'Making the Band,' where America witnessed the birth of a musical group. Five of the best young singers from all over the country were brought to Orlando and, each week, we watched them develop their talents and learn to work together, and, in short, become a new band."

Donny: "Tonight, they are making their network live prime-time debut, performing 'Liquid Dreams' from their upcoming album, please welcome, Ashley, Dan, Eric, Trevor and Jacob, better known as O-Town."

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Instead of just griping about how fake these shows are, we should make the best of the situation. Those among the current array each have their ups and downs, and could all learn a thing or two from one another. And there's still plenty of time to make last-minute edits and to revise future series concepts, which will make things better for all of us, fans and detractors alike.

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So where do you go when your venture capital runs out and the refrigerator that once dispensed free soda is repossessed?

The creator of startupfailures.com hopes you'll head to his Web site. Identified as "A Place for Bouncing Back," the site identifies itself as "[T]he first community focused on supporting individuals that have recently gone through the experience of a start-up failure." Pointing to some dreary statistics ("Of the companies that receive funding, 60 percent go bankrupt."), it says, "The vast majority of start-ups will fail." And all those people need a home.

At another start-up, of course.

After being involved in three start-ups that failed (two of which he founded), Nick Hall, the president of the Silicon Valley Association of Software Entrepreneurs, conceived the idea for a Web site for those bulldozed by dot-com mania.

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In response was born the fan consortium Operation Haverchuck, named after one of the show's bespectacled geeks. The group's sole purpose is to get another network to pick up the show. "NBC has made it very clear that 'Freaks and Geeks' is unwanted," says Haverchuck co-founder Garrett Krnich. Organizer Cindy Kopecky adds that the group is raising money to place an ad in Daily Variety that they hope will "show the [other] networks that despite what NBC and the Nielsen ratings say, there is support and an audience for 'F&G.'"

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Conveniently enough, the first video MTV ever played, on Aug. 1, 1981, was also its millionth: the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." MTV aired it, naturally, with a whole lot of fanfare. Host and MTV VJ kingpin Carson Daly compared the event to the moon landing and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Really.

The all-video programming was rare for a Saturday afternoon and evening, which would usually be filled with "Road Rules" marathons or "The Tom Green Show" repeats. Which brings up an interesting question, considering how few videos have aired in the past few years -- heck, decade: Just how did MTV get to the million mark in only 18-and-a-half years?

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Consider the evidence: CBS's new "Late Late
Show" with Craig Kilborn
mines the tension between the host's
vaguely lascivious guy-jokes and
his self-consciousness about his hair. Jude
Law's tan, beautiful Dickie
in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" frolics abroad
with his girlfriend and
newfound male admirer on daddy's dime.
Coke's newest campaign features
a spot about well-toned college boys diving
off a colossal waterfall.
Ben Affleck appears on this month's People,
identified as "part frat
boy," an image that helped him and friend
Matt Damon become
the certified It Pair when "Good Will Hunting" was
released. In Iowa, on caucus
day, George W. Bush ripped off his jacket,
stuffed his tie into his
shirt and -- confident of his impending
victory -- joined a pick-up
basketball game, high-fiving the kids when
he made a basket. What do
men like Bush and Kilborn have in common?
The same
thing that these images -- from pop culture
and politics, Middle
America and magazines -- have to do with
one other. They're indicators
of our latest national obsession: the frat
boy.

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No, I'm not a crazed stalker with pictures of her taped to the insides of my cabinets who is freaked out because she changed her hair or something. Heck, judging by the fact that I can hardly remember half of the movies she's been in, I'm not even a legitimate die-hard fan.

But I do like Janeane, as an actress and as a person -- well, as a persona, anyway -- and that's why I'm worried about her recently announced deal with HBO to star in her own sitcom. Although I'm excited at the prospect of ingesting regular televised doses of Garofalo -- her new show will likely push me to finally subscribe to HBO -- it's difficult to imagine her carrying her own series. She's unquestionably capable. (Hell, if Norm Macdonald can have a prime-time network presence, Garofalo certainly can.) It's just that she's always been more Elaine than Jerry, cracking us up from the sidelines and leaving us begging for more.

It's her seemingly infinite number of roles as the sardonic second fiddle that gives me that impression: She's played everyone's tough yet sympathetic best friend. Garofalo is the perennial outsider. Her humor is based on her being just left of the center of attention. This is a woman who named her production company I Hate Myself Productions. We can identify with her.

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In a society that's addicted to identifying addictions, some -- "Internet addiction," for instance -- are obvious targets for valid criticism. But identifying drug addiction as a choice? It seems ridiculous,
even blasphemous; isn't it scientific fact that drug addiction is an
involuntary medical disease? According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, it is: "Chronic, hardcore drug use is a disease, and anyone suffering from a disease needs treatment."

Not according to Schaler. A psychologist and professor of justice, law and society at American University, he argues that drug addiction is not a disease. Instead, he says it's a scapegoated behavior that has been incorrectly identified as a physical or mental illness, a victim of bad science and misguided policy. Schaler writes that -- like homosexuality, masturbation and other behaviors once thought to be physical or mental illnesses -- the idea that drug addiction is an uncontrollable affliction can and should be "swiftly discredited."

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Peapod certainly won the first-to-market prize -- but the competition is hot on its heels. HomeGrocer closed a $100 million round of financing in November and filed for an IPO in December. Webvan, which has committed to spend $1 billion on warehouses, went public last year and has a market capitalization of about $6 billion -- while Peapod's valuation hovers around $165 million.

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While she can be heard in "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace," she's perhaps best known as the voice of all the female characters on Comedy Central's animated series "South Park." Under the name Shannen Cassidy, Bergman gave life to Stan's love interest Wendy Testaburger, the incompetent Mayor McDaniels, the screeching bus driver Ms. Crabtree and others. Comedy Central sent out a special issue of its "Delete Me First" e-mail list mourning her death. While "'South Park' creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are shocked and deeply saddened," the message said, "South Park will continue production as scheduled."

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Kimberly Lamagno of Running Springs, Calif., was awarded the money for simply using a month-old, CBS-backed Web portal, which is aptly named iWon.com. The 60-second spot on Sunday (part of a $40 million ad campaign) boasted that iWon.com gives you "a chance to win cash just for doing what you do anyway." Every day, one user of the search site is randomly selected to win $10,000; every month, another user wins $1 million. And on April 15, the portal will be giving away $10 million to a single winner.

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At least, that's what an online plagiarism-testing service report says. After analyzing my senior thesis, it said flatly that my
30-page paper was "plagiarized," and said that it had found a source on the
Internet that matched my document. At first, I panicked. I hadn't copied anyone
else's work, so what was going on? Was it unconscious, a phrase I'd once read and
kept hidden in my memory? Had I been careless in paraphrasing or quoting? I
didn't know; all I did know what that the report said I was guilty of ripping off
my senior thesis from some source on the Web.

Baffled, I went back to the report, and there, I found less-than-intuitive links
to a more detailed analysis. Clicking through, I found the section that listed
the URL of the source I was accused of plagiarizing from. I clicked to find ...

To find that Plagiarism.org had just discovered a copy of my own thesis online.
Instead of realizing that it was my work and ignoring it, the service had accused
me of plagiarism. It seemed an odd thing to overlook, and an odd way of doing
business to announce the crime, and let the recipient of the report figure out
whether it was justified or not. I took the time to investigate the report's
charges; what if a professor hadn't?

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I wasn't surprised that the newspaper rebuffed me for one of its coveted
summer internships. As the only daily in the area, the Orlando Sentinel --
the print arm of the Tribune's Central Florida media
conglomerate -- obviously has its pick of summer intern labor from local
colleges. The text of the form letter was stock and unoriginal: We received
a half-million applications, you're a wonderful human being, Sophie's choice
was minor compared to ours and so on. But when I read the second to last
sentence (which, admittedly, was also the fourth sentence), I almost choked on
my saliva: "The successful candidates had at least two previous summer
internships."

What?

I read the sentence at least three times. Yep, there it was: The summer
interns they'd chosen had already been interns (presumably) elsewhere, at least twice. Apparently, the Orlando Sentinel needs assurance that you already know how to photocopy once you arrive on its doorstep. And the editors clearly didn't
get the impression from my résumé, extensive clips and glowing letters of recommendation that I could tell a copy button from a stoplight. To
assure them I had those skills, I needed copying experience at
another paper.

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