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Surely Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) knew this, which explains why he cannily sneaked his own, completely unrelated legislation into the AMBER Act just two days before the vote. Piggybacked onto the act was the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, a thinly veiled rewrite of legislation that was controversial in 2002 and failed to make it to a vote on the Senate floor. Now, club owners and partyers alike are being subjected to a loosely worded and heavy-handed law that authorities will be able to indiscriminately use to shut down music events at any time they please, assuming they find evidence of drug use. Thanks to Biden's surreptitious efforts, a few glow sticks and a customer or two on Ecstasy could be all it takes to throw a party promoter in jail for 20 years.

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Last summer, Horton spent two months in the West Bank working as a human shield. His tasks: placing his body between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, escorting medical supplies to hospitals, occupying Palestinian homes that were due to be bulldozed, and generally trying to use his presence as a white American to protect Palestinians from what he considers Israeli brutality.

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The Juicy Couture tracksuit materialized in Los Angeles at some point early last year; by the fall, it was de rigueur attire for every trendy starlet, socialite, stripper, waitress and fashionista wannabe in town. Those with deep pockets (or, in the case of Hef's girlfriend, proximity to deep pockets) don't own just one: Tori Spelling reportedly has one in every color. Nelly Furtado and Jennifer Lopez have worn them in music videos; Lopez loves hers so much that her J.Lo line knocked them off, as did Banana Republic and Old Navy.

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That may seem like an astonishing streak of bad luck for one movie; but given the circumstances of the casting and filming of "Gang Tapes," the outcome is sadly typical. Shot entirely on digital video, "Gang Tapes" is the story of a group of South Central Los Angeles gang members, one of whom videotapes their activities over the course of one summer. The camera bobs and weaves around the gang as they rape, rob and deal crack, leaving a wide swath of death and devastation in their wake. Directed by a Los Angeles Police Department reserve officer, the film featured a cast of mostly novice actors and local gang members who improvised action and dialogue using their own experience as a resource. What resulted is a disturbing depiction of inner-city gang life -- a fictional film that feels as real as a documentary.

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That night, Karyn decided that it was time for a change. So she did what any 29-year-old, marketing-savvy woman might do if she had $20,221.40 in debt and no easy way to pay it back: She built a Web site, and simply asked people to help her out by sending her a buck or two.

Four months later, Karyn Bosnak is the world's most successful Internet panhandler: At last count, she had paid off nearly $17,000 of her debt, thanks to donations of $1 to $1,000 from the thousands of strangers who have taken pity on her. Her Web site, SaveKaryn.com, has been visited by more than a million people; she's been featured on the "Today" show and in People magazine; she's been offered a book deal and a movie contract. Life is suddenly looking up for a woman who, just months ago, was "depressed and freaked out" by her financial straits.

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On the opposite side of the world, in Tibet, British-born Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo practices a less ostentatious form of spirituality. For 12 years, the 59-year-old lived in a cave high in the Himalayas, meditating and chanting and doing her own yoga in a 6-foot-square hole in a mountain. That $350 would have kept her in lentils for well over a year. Now, after coming down from her cave, Palmo could use the money for the nunnery she founded in hopes of reversing Buddhism's patriarchal traditions. It is a place that Palmo hopes will help her reinstate an entire lost lineage of female Tibetan spiritual leaders.

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The ad, which appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat, is one of hundreds of similar notices that have appeared in Florida newspapers since last October, when state legislators passed a new statute governing adoption. The humiliating personal snapshots of one-night stands and regrettable sexual escapades are now required by law when a woman who wants to give up a child for private adoption does not have paternal consent or doesn't know who the father is. The state requires that the ads be published in local papers in an attempt to notify fathers of impending adoptions, giving them a chance to claim their children.

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"We want more pretzels!" they cry out to their counselor.

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It's bad, this Vin thing. An otherwise reasonable friend of mine -- the erudite director of a nonprofit, not typically prone to bouts of teenage swoon -- recently told me that she had the hots for Diesel. "He's just a raw hunk of a man," she said, a mild expression of embarrassment flickering across her face. "You know: Pull my hair and make love to me!"

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And it works. At least as far as her stage show, "Rebel Without a Pause," is concerned. With its debut in October, Reno became one of the first comedians to attempt to tease humor out of the events surrounding Sept. 11. She says she conceived the show -- which is part memoir, part profane satire that dismantles just about every aspect of the political system -- as a way to exorcise her emotions. Tidbits from the unrelenting commentary include her description of the emergency food drops in Afghanistan -- "If the bombs don't get them, the sugar will" -- and an unforgiving take on George W. Bush's public speaking style -- "Like a drunk trying to look sober."

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Imagine Joice's surprise then, when on May 22, just one day before senior graduation, she received a letter from a lawyer representing the girl's family. The family felt that the teacher had graded unfairly, the letter said; they believed that their daughter hadn't been given enough of a chance, and unless Joice took "whatever action is necessary to correct this situation" they were going to file a lawsuit.

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The decision didn't come as a surprise. During oral arguments on the case in March, several Supreme Court justices expressed strong support for student drug testing. At one point, Justice Antonin Scalia taunted Graham Boyd, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case on behalf of defendant Lindsay Earls: "So long as you have a bunch of druggies who are orderly in class, the school can take no action. That's what you want us to rule?" At another juncture, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Boyd a hypothetical question about whether a district could have two schools, one a "druggie school" and one with drug testing. As for the first, Justice Kennedy said, "no parent would send a child to that school, except maybe your client." (Earls, a former honor student at Tecumseh High School in Oklahoma, had objected to drug testing as an intrusion on her right to privacy.)

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"I'm totally bloated today," she tells me, sounding more like an awkward teen than a porn movie maven. "Don't take any photographs!"

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The posterior has, intentionally or not, recently become the focal point of fashion and pop culture alike: The butt crack is the new cleavage, reclaimed to peek seductively from the pants of supermodels and commoners alike. Blame it on J.Lo and the rise of booty-centric hip-hop culture; or point your finger at the return of the low-rise jean, a familiar fashion rehash that has exposed millions of unwitting lower clefts.

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Chris Berry wanted to be the subject of one of those stories. A factory worker in his 20s with a wife and four kids, he was caught and convicted of possession of marijuana several times before he decided it was time to go to college and get on with his life. But he needed financial aid to afford an education; and this, unfortunately, was where his plans went awry. Thanks to a provision in the Higher Education Act -- a federal law governing the funding of public colleges and universities, as well as student financial aid -- Berry discovered that he was ineligible for federal aid because of his prior drug convictions.

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Industry insiders still hoped that Napster would rise again, with a legal product that had the record industry's stamp of approval; and a dwindling staff stuck around for almost a year, tinkering with the beta version of software that the public never saw and to which the record industry obstinately refused to license its music. By the beginning of 2002, funding was running out and the end seemed imminent.

Bertelsmann, which had already invested $85 million in the company, offered to pick up Napster's pieces for $15 to $20 million, but a bickering board of directors -- John Fanning, the uncle of youthful Napster founder Shawn Fanning; and his nemeses, investor John Hummer and former CEO Hank Barry -- couldn't agree on the sale. On Tuesday, Shawn Fanning and CEO Konrad Hilbers resigned; and the company announced "substantial additional lay-offs." (On Friday, after this story was first published, Bertelsmann announced that it was acquiring the remnants of Napster for $8 million, and that Hilbers and Shawn Fanning would remain on board.)

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Unless you are a senior in San Fernando Valley.

In eight San Fernando Valley high schools -- District C of the Los Angeles Unified High School District -- seniors are required to sign up for some kind of post-secondary education if they want to don a cap and gown and receive a diploma with the rest of their class. Those who are so shiftless, so without focus or ambition that they will take a year off, or perhaps, the rest of their lives off, to travel, or work, or read and eat snack foods, are allowed to graduate, but they must do so in private, and perhaps in shame, for there will be no seat on the stage for these laggards in San Fernando Valley high schools.

As for the whiners, the civil libertarians, the no-account kids who would complain: The district wishes to inform you that you haven't got a leg to stand on. Because the policy -- started at Grant High School in 1987, widened in March 2001 to reach eight district schools -- works.

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Probst's debut as a writer/director, "Finder's Fee," is currently touring the independent film festival circuit, and it's a genuinely enjoyable film. "Finder's Fee" debuted at the Seattle Film Festival last spring, where it won the top award; it played again at the Sonoma Valley Film Festival in mid-April, where Probst won another award for being a "breakthrough director."

The movie tells the story of a broke guy in his 20s who discovers a wallet containing a winning lottery ticket worth $3 million and has to decide what to do. It features name actors like James Earl Jones and Robert Forster and is deftly written for a first feature. And even though the film was written and cast before Probst began working on "Survivor," "Finder's Fee" bears a certain resemblance to the TV show: Both ponder what happens to morals and integrity when confronted with large quantities of cold, hard cash.

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Some of these methods -- such as the hairspray and the salt -- sound more mythic than magic, but whatever the kids are doing, it seems to work. The drug testing vans roll up to the Rushville campus every few weeks, and 25 students are randomly asked to produce a urine sample; yet hardly anybody is ever caught with drugs in their system. And it's not because they aren't doing drugs.

"I'd guess 75 percent of my class has tried marijuana," senior Adam Sadler says, sitting outside the cafeteria during a sunny lunchtime in April; his friends, perhaps trying to impress, estimate even higher. "A lot of kids do drugs at this school; though it kind of depends on who you are," one says. "The thing is to just make sure you pass the tests."

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