I can't speak for gay men (they are speaking for themselves), but since you're asking, please let me step in and say as a woman who knows you won't believe me: Barring freaks of nature on both extremes, size doesn't matter. And these photos prove it.

Not because of Mr. Law's merits or demerits, depending on where you stand on the cut/uncut shower/grower divides but because, and can I say it again, please? We really don't care.

But you're not listening, are you. All you're thinking is: How do I measure up to Jude Law?

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Bullets to the heart -- an apt metaphor for a man who had lawmakers' rifles trained on him at least three times during his life as a criminal. Loya's new memoir, "The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber" (due out in early September from HarperCollins), tells the story of how he went from being a religious and sensitive Protestant East Los Angeles schoolboy to a cynical con man and petty thief, to a bank robber with more than two dozen heists to his name, to a maximum-security convict, to a budding cellblock writer, and -- finally -- to a new man, released after a grand total of nine years in 1996 at the age of 35, and bent on living an honest life. Or, at least, the reader must hope he is redeemed: The book's last page is Loya's first day of freedom from jail.

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And if you're looking for more proof that the kids are not all right, pick up a copy of Meredith Maran's "Dirty: A Search for Answers Inside America's Teenage Drug Epidemic." Maran, a Bay Area journalist and mother of two, opens with some daunting statistics about our country's adolescents:

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"If someone comes along and says, 'Hey, you and your friends -- you're in an urban tribe,' the response is pretty much, 'Fuck you, I'm not in a tribe,'" he admits. "I appreciate that. I just want to begin a conversation about this. And I hope the book is the beginning of that conversation."

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The only hitch is that the story is real. "True Notebooks," Mark Salzman's memoir of the four years he spent teaching creative writing in Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall, is an unexpected delight, with not a treacly or self-consciously "inspiring" moment to be found. At the story's onset, it's 1997 and a minor character in Salzman's stuttering work-in-progress is a juvenile delinquent. Needing more concrete information about a demographic he knows very little about, he reluctantly takes up a friend's offer to attend a writing class and meet some locked-up teens face-to-face. He is full of trepidation: He doesn't much like teenagers, especially the criminal kind, and he is both mildly pro-death penalty and comfortable with the idea of trying children as adults. In his own words, he "wishes we could tilt L.A. County and shake it until everybody with a shaved head and tattoos falls into the ocean." Furthermore, burdened with his own memories of being teased and bullied as a teenager, he's terrified that he won't be able to win his students' respect.

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Why the uproar? Because Trudeau has dared to address the ever-sensitive issue of getting off -- specifically, how getting off can keep you healthy. The strip is based on a recent study in the New Scientist that finds that frequent masturbation can help prevent prostate cancer. Despite the subject matter's rather heartwarming implications, 19 out of 34 editors polled by the Milwaukee Journal said they would not publish it.

Trudeau talked with Salon by e-mail, about the masturbation furor, "Doonesbury's" history of controversy, and which of his characters would be most likely to take the study about prostate cancer to, er, heart.

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All proceeds according to plan, after a cyclone rush of preparation: shower, chicken, salad, fruit, candles, wine, all in less than an hour. When Prince be-Charmed arrives at my door, he is met with decanted wine, organic strawberries, and the homey, reassuring aroma of chicken cacciatore wafting through the dimly lit apartment.

Zoom in a little closer, though, and the seams start showing: The candlelight is there to cast shadows on the floor I didn't have time to mop. And the candles themselves, white and gardenia-scented, were provided by my roommate's fiancé, a fabulous dresser with a thing for Biore bio-strips and Prada. The chicken cacciatore, a dish I can barely pronounce, much less prepare, is simmering over the stove courtesy of another male friend, a South African investment banker with a palatial apartment and an excellent palate, who planned the meal. And the idea for the dinner itself came from my neighbor, a straight musician who waxes his mustache, loves costume parties and helped me buy my last sundress.

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Eric -- not his real name, and can you blame him? -- is now a grad student in psychology in San Diego, but tonight he's just a fan. He's telling me what he wore to the band's Oklahoma City show at the Lloyd Nobel Center in 1985: a black, floppy, knee-length jacket with wide lapels and buttons on the shoulders, acid-washed jeans ripped at the knee, folded in tight at the bottom and tucked into black pixie boots. Think Kajagoogoo, think Ducky in "Pretty in Pink," think ... Duran Duran. For the nymphets sliding by us in hot-pink pumps and off-the-shoulder shirts, it's '80s retro, but for people like Eric and yours truly, it's a dream come true, because I've also scored a press pass to the after-party at the Chateau Marmont.

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On this dark day, disguised as a woman to keep himself from being torn to bits by rabid Amazons and sex-starved survivors, he's joined a crowd of his sisters in front of the Washington Monument, which has become a de facto shrine to America's lost brothers, sons and husbands. As Yorick sits down to pay his respects to his own loved ones, the woman next to him confesses that she's not thinking about the men she knew and lost; she's thinking about Mick Jagger.

The two sit together in shock and reverently trade off names of the recently departed: Tom Waits, Neil Young, David Bowie, Bono, Bob Dylan, Radiohead -- the scene, which appears in Book 4 of the bestselling comic series "Y: The Last Man," is the best argument for the preeminence of men in rock 'n' roll since the Lilith Fair.

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"I don't need to be sleeping with any more men right now," she says.

And how many men would that be, right now?

"Just three," she answers, demurely sipping her sauvignon blanc. Despite the calm posture, her eyebrows rise and her eyes widen when she repeats the number, as if to say, "Yeah, can you believe my luck?"

Of course, three men in your bed has nothing to do with luck. In Juska's case it's the end result of an ad she placed a little over three years ago in the New York Review of Books:

Before I turn 67 -- next March -- I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.

Within a few months of placing the ad, the life of Jane Juska, a divorced, formerly overweight, formerly alcoholic, retired schoolteacher living alone in a small cottage in Berkeley, Calif., was turned upside down. Those 32 words produced the tryst of a lifetime, and then another, and then another, and then a mostly inspiring personal memoir.

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Thus runs the chorus of the schoolyard taunt cum new hit single "Cameltoe" by Fannypack, an up-and-coming all-girl hip-hop trio from Brooklyn. The girls have been rescued from obscurity by Matt Goas, 25, and Fancy, 30, two coolhunting New York DJs, and now robbed of their underground credibility forever by a loving profile in today's Times' Arts section. The august Times illuminated the title's etymology with characteristic tact and delicacy, defining it as "slang for a fashion faux pas caused by women wearing snug pants; the term suggests a visual analogy." It would have been delicate, that is, if the words weren't permanently emblazoned on the consciousness of anyone who ever suffered through eighth grade. As the writer, Kelefa Sanneh, writes in his appreciation of the song's retro exuberance, "You could be eavesdropping on a junior high school playground."

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Or are you just stumped by those black spots on your tangerine trees?

Answers to these, and other questions, are just an e-mail away at elderwisdomcircle.org, a pod of 55 senior citizens with about 4,000 years of collective experience who field roughly 200 questions a week from all over the world. The elders' advice -- sound, reasoned suggestions on just about any topic -- is quick, anonymous and free.

Elderwisdomcircle.org is the brainchild of 41-year-old California businessman Doug Meckelson, who started the site after volunteering with Meals on Wheels in 2001. "I started noticing that the seniors there really perked up whenever I asked them for their input," he says. So he decided to start an online advice column, one in which the seniors he'd come to know and respect could share all their hard-earned knowledge and experience with the world. He launched the site in late 2001, hoping that if he built it, wisdom seekers would come.

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It's not anti-Semitism, because I'm squarely of the tribe. To the best of my knowledge, it's not self-hatred; I mean, some of my best friends are Jewish. It's just the way things have rolled so far. The last guy I dated was Palestinian, the guy before that, Irish. Before that, Italian. Hungarian. Slav. Welsh. Norwegian. There was an Adam Rosenstein in college, but he broke up with me, in part because I was "too Jewish." (He later straightened his hair and changed his last name to Reed, so the problem may not have been all me.) And my male Jewish friends don't seem to kiss any mezuzahs either. They've all got excuses: "I dig straight hair," "They're neurotic," "They're too high-maintenance." And the old standby: "All the cute girls at the kibbutz junior year were from that Swedish peace group."

As for me, I've always blamed it on geography: I spent my 20s bouncing around between Idaho, Japan and Wisconsin, regions that don't really attract the Hillel set. I'll concede that it could also be a matter of taste. Hell, even the Palestinian was blond.

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We make a cozy party of five, nestled on the grass: me, Mary Roach, Bong, Rosita, and Clarita. Roach and I are here to talk about her new book, "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers." The other three are here because this is their home. Bong (1966-1987), Alicia (1899-1987) and Clarita (1904-1987) make for silent but gracious hosts.

It should be a morbid gathering, just as Roach's book should be a morbid read, with its tours of embalming rooms, crashed jetliners, medical dissecting labs, and Swedish mausoleums. But reading "Stiff" is a funny, intellectually stimulating experience -- one that makes you realize that there really is a chance for life after death. As a cadaver, you can advance medical knowledge (though be forewarned, your body may be used to practice face lifts rather than lung transplants), or you can become part of a human compost pile in Scandinavia. You can even serve time as a crash-test dummy in Detroit.

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Hey, war's not bad for all sectors of the economy. Business is up -- way up -- at Whitey's Army-Navy store in Ohio. Employee Jim Thwaite says customers are flocking in to buy flags, lapel pins and other patriotic items, and are also stocking up on gas masks and ready-to-eat meals. Paranoia -- it's good for business.

In England, fear doesn't just sell military rations and camouflage: It sells real estate. Cold War bunkers -- offering full-scale protection from a nuclear attack -- are up for sale in the English countryside at the bargain-basement price of 2,000 pounds apiece. It's unclear whether they're cable-ready.

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Fox News outdid itself during an antiwar rally on Thursday in New York, replacing the war updates on its Sixth Avenue ticker with insults for the protesters. Ever known for its subtle humor, Fox ran cheery little messages such as "Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street," and "War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!" It was actually quite sweet of the Fox folks, considering how much more fun those tickers are to read when they're not informing us of missing American soldiers or Iraqi civilian deaths -- you know, the news.

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As if the whole freedom fries fiasco wasn't enough, now Air Force One is calling its french toast "freedom toast." Ah, nothing like a little government-sanctioned pettiness. And if Germany is feeling left out, looks like a school in the U.S. dissed them this week too:

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Bob Isakson is one of the many American businessmen who will be profiting -- we would never say "profiteering" -- from the war on Iraq. He is the head of a company called DRC Inc., which has been awarded the enviable task of postwar cleanup. According to its Web site, DRC "provides a total solution to your disaster relief needs." While the company counts as some of its main services "Hazardous Waste Response," "Demolition Management" and the provision of the extra creepy sounding "International Work Camps," Isakson promises that the mission in Iraq will be "different." He won't just be tearing things down and carting them away -- he'll also be building schools as part of America's massive postwar aid program.

If Isakson is as much of an expert on disaster relief as his Web site claims, he may wish to turn his attention to American schools instead. Unfortunately, with huge education budget cuts across the board and massive debts in the nation's school systems ($200 billion and growing), one suspects those domestic contracts will not be forthcoming.

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North Carolina's Winston-Salem Journal ran a piece this weekend about the war's impact on comic relief. Stand-up comedians have been trying to walk the narrow path between jokes that are relevant and jokes that are too relevant, that is to say depressing and/or tasteless. Jeff Foxworthy described the conundrum as "weird," while the usually ferocious Margaret Cho, made one -- count 'em one -- Bush joke at her Wednesday show in Raleigh, and then moved on.

Far be it from us to suggest mockery of our fearless leader as an antidote to the grim days behind us, and probably ahead -- we're not tasteless. Instead, we turn to nonstop boozing, in particular the Gulf War Drinking Game, which in and of itself is insensitive and boorish beyond description, though not nearly as insensitive and boorish as participants will become just 15 minutes in, if they follow directions carefully.

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For the estimated 4 million Iraqis in exile, however, these questions are shadowed always by the other questions: How can we trust an America that devastated our country 12 years ago, and then left Saddam Hussein in power to continue torturing Iraqis? How can we believe its promises? And will our families survive another war?

Five months ago, Salon's Michelle Goldberg interviewed several Iraqi exiles, some of whom now have American citizenship, about their profoundly mixed feelings toward potential military action against their country. One Iraqi-American woman, 40-year-old computer engineer Baan Alsinawi, spoke about her lost faith in American promises. She was in Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm, a war she supported, but she felt let down by the first President Bush when he failed to topple Saddam Hussein.

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A Lebanese dry cleaner in Central California was right to be concerned that he might be the target of hate crimes once war broke out. In recent days customers have spat on his checks, made obscene gestures at him, and then on Wednesday there was a mysterious fire at his Modesto store. The kicker? It's not the man's nationality that's making people violent, it's the name of the store: French Cleaners.

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And now for a dispatch from the condiment wars: French's Mustard wants Americans to know that they are not beret-wearing, Bordeaux-swilling, shower-needing, unshaven pansy-ass Gallic weasels. French is just the name of the mustard, not its country of origin. "For many Americans French is pure Americana," insists the company's president. "It's all about baseball, hot dogs, family and fun." Across the ocean, a group of French chefs in Hamburg have boycotted American ketchup, as well as rice, whiskey and, of course, Coca-cola. Putain!

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