Chihiro, the heroine of "Spirited Away," is in the wrong shape. Grumpy and sour, 10-year-old Chihiro whines at her parents about their move to a new town; timid and apprehensive, she clings so that her mother, irritated, shakes her off. Trapped in the spirit world in which the film takes place, Chihiro is belittled by the staff of the bathhouse where she gets a job. "What a dope!" one character says. "You're the most pathetic little girl I've ever seen," another says, laughing, "a stinking, useless weakling."

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The Yankees are set to begin their North American League Divisional Sub-Sectional Playoff series against the Rangers tonight at Torre Field (11:59 p.m., The Network), and for the first time in a long while, the surging Yankees are favored over their fierce rivals from Texas. The Yanks defeated the Rangers in 13 of 19 games this season, and with the addition of Randy Johnson Award winner Reza Sirizi, the Yankees look unbeatable in a short 11-game series.

The Yankees swear to a man that they don't pay attention to the Curse. But as every baseball fan knows, it's been a long, long time since the Yankees won a World Series. The last time the Yanks won it all, the Bronx was part of New York City; Bill Clinton wasn't on the $2,000,000 bill but he was in the White House; and the White House wasn't even on the moon!

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But getting a handle on the third season of "The Wire" doesn't necessarily require watching 25 hours of back story. Though I heartily recommend the Season 1 DVD set (out Oct. 12), I'm happy to present a guide to HBO's acclaimed, and extremely intricate, series.

I'll answer a few select questions about the show's aims and methods, to give new viewers an idea of what kind of show to expect. I'll briefly synopsize Seasons 1 and 2, and let you know where the series stands at the top of Season 3. And I'll present "The Wire's" rogues' gallery: bios of the major players in David Simon's Baltimore. You can read that straight through for a deeper understanding of the Season 1 and 2 synopses, or simply use it as a reference work, dipping into it when an unfamiliar face appears onscreen.

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"Dear Judge Murtaugh," the letter began, and after that initial misspelling, went downhill from there. Bruce asked that he be named the attorney of record for the trial. He asserted that London had withheld important evidence from the court. And then, as Ronald Collins and David Skover note in their exhaustive chronicle, "The Trials of Lenny Bruce," he "proceeded to take the justice on a magical mystery tour through the Webster's Third New International Dictionary."

Bruce was at the end of his rope. The cops and the courts seemed to be on a vendetta against him. No nightclub would book him. He would soon be convicted of obscenity by the New York justices, a conviction that would stand until last December, when Bruce was pardoned by New York Gov. George Pataki. By then, of course, Bruce was long dead, driven by prosecutors, paranoia and his own heroin addiction to an overdose in August 1966.

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In one 60-second ad, veterans of the two-year-long, completely televised war -- in which every weekday afternoon American troops fought Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world -- speak out about G.I. Joe. "I served with G.I. Joe," says one veteran, Thomas Ross. "G.I. Joe is no real American hero."

In interviews yesterday arranged by G.I. Joe Veterans for Truth, a nonprofit arm of a little-known think tank called Serpentine Enterprises, the veterans -- low-level G.I. Joe foot soldiers, all code-named "grunts" -- were unanimous in describing Joe as an incompetent leader unfit for command and not worthy of honor. Ross, a blue laser gunner 1st class, described the ordeal he was put through during the celebrated incident in which the entire male leadership of the Joe team was hypnotized by the Baroness and her Conch of the Sirens.

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And that's what I thought this past December when, for the third time, I reinstated my membership to Netflix.com.

Netflix, of course, is the phenomenally successful online DVD-rental company that has rewritten the rules of movie rentals -- and written video stores halfway out of existence. The company's advertising hook is that customers never pay late-return charges. Customers pay a flat fee ($19.95, rising to $21.99 June 15) and are mailed DVDs from Netflix's library. Customers are allowed to keep three DVDs checked out at any given time; when you're done with a DVD, you simply mail it back, postage paid, to Netflix. When the company receives it, it'll mail you the next DVD off your rental queue. Instead of traipsing to your local video store, you can watch a steady stream of films, never running out, because even as you finish watching "The Matrix Reloaded," "The Matrix Revolutions" is arriving in your mailbox.

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"Needle in a Haystack" addresses a scorched-earth relationship with a well-turned metaphor: "Needle in a haystack, burn the damn thing down," Irwin sings over a gentle fiddle. "You'll find your precious needle laying right there on the ground." And a rousing rendition of Johnny Paycheck's hootenanny classic "The Only Hell My Momma Ever Raised" provides the album's lightest, funniest note.

Where "Cut Yourself a Switch" is a true solo move, Sue Garner's third album, "Shadyside," is a collaborative effort in all but name. The longtime bassist and singer for Run On and the Shams assembled a crack team of fellow artists from guitarists Marc Ribot and James McNew (Yo La Tengo) to producer Jim O'Rourke.

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Brooklyn-based rapper Talib Kweli is best known for his plentiful collaborations: with Mos Def on 1998's "Black Star" album, and with Hi-Tek on two records, the most recent of which, "Reflection Eternal," was the fiercely debated runner-up to Sigur Ros for 2001's Shortlist Prize for Music. But Kweli steps out in front for "Quality," a record whose concerns and attitudes belong -- despite high-profile cameos from Mos Def, Bilal, the Roots and Pharoah Monche -- to Kweli alone.

Kweli comes from the consciousness-raising school of hip-hop. He name-drops Norman Mailer, Langston Hughes, and Sun Tzu; he raps about the dangers (and appeal) of firearms in "Gun Music"; and in the bold "The Proud," he writes protest music of a high caliber. What's a father to do, Kweli wonders, when his son is "five years old and he still thinkin' cops is cool"? The song continues:

"How do I break the news that when he gets some size
He'll be perceived as a threat or see the fear in their eyes
It's in their job description to terminate the threat
So 41 shots to the body is what he can expect."

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Plenty of musicians, finding themselves dropped from their record labels, retreat to the basement and record an album on their own. But it takes a certain kind of crackpot genius to create a lo-fi, genre-hopping double album and modestly call it "The Headphone Masterpiece." And it takes a certain kind of lightning in a bottle to get that crackpot genius into a Strokes video and on the front page of the New York Times Arts and Leisure section before the record even comes out.

But that's what happened to Los Angeles-based Cody ChesnuTT ("with two capital T's please," says his press release) after his band, the Crosswalk, was dumped by Hollywood Records several years ago. And ChesnuTT's album is a DIY smorgasbord of rock 'n' roll style, the first album to combine the sounds of Prince, the Beatles and schizophrenic crooner Wesley Willis.

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In 2001, Iceland's Sigur Ros made a splashy debut -- a cover profile in the New York Times Magazine, a minor bidding war among major labels, and the first annual Shortlist Prize for Music, all spurred by their first album to be made available in the U.S., "Agaetis Byrjun." The attention was all the more surprising when you consider that the band's songs are mostly eight-minute dirge-tempo epics, complete with strings, bowed electric guitar, and a lead singer who wails in his own made-up language, "Hopelandish".

Now Sigur Ros are back with their follow-up record, which is officially untitled but universally referred to as "( )" after the die-cut symbols on the CD's cover. "( )" follows the "Agaetis Byrjun" model of building beautiful crashing waves of sound underneath Jonsi Thor Birgisson's arresting falsetto. Sigur Ros' strange, ethereal music would be equally at home in a new-age spa and in your craggiest, iciest nightmares; it's like the bastard offspring of Enya and Radiohead.

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On his 2000 debut EP, "It's Very Stimulating," MC Paul Barman spun a tale of romance that began in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The assignation got hot and heavy quickly, until, in one of the greatest boasts ever committed to record, Barman "backlashed her booty like she was Susan Faludi." Now Barman's back with his sophomoric sophomore record, "Paulellujah!" and this time he's aiming his sights a little higher than Faludi. "Cynthia Ozick," he claims on the new record, "takes off her clothes quick."

Referencing the New Yorker essayist Ozick is just the beginning of the brainy shenanigans Barman pulls on the enjoyable, frequently laugh-out-loud-funny "Paulellujah!" On "Anarchist Bookstore," he skewers lefty posturing; on "N.O.W." he hooks up at a pro-choice rally only to announce, "I follow politics to ball all the chicks." And he performs the first-ever multipalindromic shout-out on "Bleeding Brain Grow."

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As the creative force behind Boise, Idaho's Built to Spill, guitarist and singer Doug Martsch led the band from the lo-fi simplicity of its earliest recordings to the densely packed, churning dual guitars of its most recent album, "Ancient Melodies of the Future." Martsch himself may be the first post-rock guitar god: Legions of Built to Spill fans flock to the band's shows to watch the bearded, introspective frontman make guitar wankery cool again. But on his first solo release, "Now You Know," Martsch has gone back to basics, exhibiting his self-taught slide guitar style on a spare, beautiful record.

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Modern-day encyclopedia of song Stephin Merritt, the mastermind behind the Magnetic Fields, likes to spread his songwriting talents freely. Besides the Fields, best known for their 1999 masterpiece "69 Love Songs," Merritt has appeared as part of the mock-Goth ensemble the Gothic Archies, as one of the Three Terrors, and as a solo artist (with the soundtrack to last year's film "Eban and Charley"). Merritt's most fully realized side project, though, is his collaboration with former Figures on a Beach keyboardist Christopher Ewen as the Future Bible Heroes.

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Neko Case is a hard singer to pin down. She's played drums for Pacific Northwest punk outfits Cub and Maow; lent her powerful alto to the Canadian wall-of-sound supergroup the New Pornographers; and wailed along with Carolyn Mark as the old-time country duo the Corn Sisters. Her solo work has steadily moved from traditional country to a more delicate sound, culminating in her third and loveliest record, "Blacklisted."

There's still a hint of twang in songs like "Tightly" and the walking-banjo licks of "Things That Scare Me." But the album as a whole is reminiscent of mid-'90s alt-rock songwriters like Tanya Donnelly and Kristin Hersh, artists who hang vivid lyrical images over spectral guitar lines. The album's centerpiece, "Deep Red Bells," is addressed to a vanished child, and Case's rich voice hauntingly asks: "Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag? Past empty lots and early graves of those like you who've lost their way?"

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This past summer, Boston rapper Mr. Lif released an EP that attracted a little more attention than the typical indie hip-hop record. "Emergency Rations" was a fierce political diatribe, the first prominent protest record of the post-9/11 world. Consciously harking back to the Public Enemy of the early '90s, Mr. Lif offered criticism -- some reasonable, some crackpot -- of U.S. foreign policy and the current administration.

On his full-length debut, "I Phantom," the fast-talking MC steps back a bit from the outright polemics of the EP and instead focuses on blue-collar black America. The work-sucks gripe of "Live From the Plantation" deepens into the stirring "New Man's Theme," in which Lif announces: "I'm black, strong, intelligent, man, you ain't steering me wrong."

In "Status," the narrator walks the city, "black duct tape over the hole in [his] shoe," exceedingly conscious of his status as a have-not. Meanwhile, the earnest "Success" explores the other side of the coin: here, Lif raps about a man so caught up in providing for his family that his "eight-hour days became nine, nine slid up to ten, a subtle slip up to eleven..." Soon he's working so hard that the only support he can provide that family is in the checks he brings home.

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After making her name as the lead singer of 'Til Tuesday, Aimee Mann endured a decade of much-documented record-label imbroglios before finding new success as the inspiration and songwriter for P.T. Anderson's sprawling 1999 film "Magnolia." In the words of Mann's "Save Me," "Magnolia" was an ode to "the freaks who believe they could never love anyone," and Mann's smart, sardonic ballads were the heartbeat of the movie.

"Lost in Space" is the second album released on Mann's own label, Superego Records, and like its predecessor, "Bachelor No. 2," it shows Mann progressing into new territory as a songwriter. Her music remains much the same as it has for years: Nearly every song on "Lost in Space" is a midtempo ballad with a sweet hook and impeccable instrumentation. But the lyrics, rich with detail, define Mann as a sort of monologist for the lost and broken.

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What do Eminem and Mos Def have in common, besides highly anticipated acting debuts? Both the Detroit-based shock-rapper (appearing in Curtis Hanson's upcoming film "8 Mile") and the progressive Brooklyn-born M.C. (onstage in Broadway's "Topdog/Underdog") were introduced to wider audiences early in their careers through appearances on Rawkus Records' "Soundbombing" series.

The third release in the New York indie's series of literate underground hip-hop samplers follows where its successful predecessors left off. The surprisingly cohesive "Soundbombing III" brings established M.C.s together with lesser-known artists in inventive hip-hop collaborations. And don't be surprised if some of the talented rappers introduced on this record end up making it big, too.

Skillz makes the most of a funky Hi-Tek beat and a Missy Elliott cameo in "Crew Deep." Kool G Rap remixes his own melodic "My Life" with the help of hardcore M.C.s Capone-N-Noreaga. The rest of the record is a who's who of great hip-hop, with appearances by Method Man, Q-Tip, the Beatnuts, the Roots and Talib Kweli.

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Turntablist DJ Shadow (Californian Josh Davis) dropped his revolutionary debut, "Endtroducing ...," in 1996, altering the sonic landscape of pop music with an instant masterpiece of audio collage. "Endtroducing ..." layered sample upon sample to create an album symphonic in its grandeur and intimate in its delicacy. Hardcore turntablists loved it for its technical mastery and for Davis' encyclopedic knowledge of old records, but casual fans latched onto Shadow for the surprising emotional sweep and good humor of his music.

Six years later, Shadow finally releases his solo follow-up, "The Private Press." Rather than a bold commercial move it's a step in a braver direction -- inward and backward. The title refers to Shadow's primary source material for the album, the vanity recordings popular in the 1950s and '60s -- one-off albums cut by ordinary Americans, singing or playing guitar or just talking. The songs on "The Private Press" are bookended by excerpts from one such album, a 1951 audio letter from a husband and wife on vacation in California. The intimate details of the couple's life, related calmly, reinforce the sense of Shadow's work as found art, the past turned inside-out.

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