C.K.L.'S HOTSHEET ^*

1 THE TERRY NICHOLS VERDICT He's guilty, but does he deserve to die? Talk amongst yourselves.

2 WHO WAS ALFRED P. MURRAH? Of course you remember Lester LaRue's photograph of the firefighter carrying Baylee Almon's body. But also remember the names of the dead. Read these names out loud. Never forget.

3 NEW HARLAN ELLISON Check out Edgeworks 4 for a collection of what one reader describes as "wonderfully crafted morality tales driven by white-hot anger."

4 "IT'S A RADIO FOR TALKING TO GOD!" AT&T will pay the Wellesley Congregational Church $300,000 over the next decade to house wireless transmission equipment in the church's nine-story-high steeple. Almost fifty other churches in Massachussetts have struck similar deals with wireless service providers. Some clergymen disapprove. Others are repenting all the way to the bank.

5 CHANUKAH No, dear, Chanukah is not "the Jewish Christmas".

6 LATKES Mmm... Latkes...

7 INTERSECTIONS Meeting new and interesting people is cool. (Thanks Karin!)

8 LUNCH MONEY A card game about -- but not necessarily for -- trash-talkin', knife-packin', street-fightin', lapsed-Catholic grammar school tykes. (Thanks DeeAnn!)

9 POURNELLE ON MICROSOFT "It's a good thing the USS Hopper wasn't going to the Seattle area, or I might have tried to talk the skipper into bombarding Microsoft. I wouldn't want them to take out the whole place, just the building where the installation-software programmers work."

10 NO DINNER IN TORRANCE I've decided against making the schlep down to SoCal for this soirée. Why? You don't want to hear my excuses. Just accept it as you would a force of nature, or an act of God, or a logical flaw in a John Woo movie.

11 TOMORROW NEVER DIES Better to be thought a foolish action movie than add inane dialogue and remove all doubt. (But not a total wash, thanks to Michelle Yeoh.)

12 TITANIC Is it just me, or was Billy Zane wearing way too much eyeliner?

13 AS GOOD AS IT GETS Melvin Udall is my antihero.

14 THE POSTMAN The current state of movies based on science fiction books is pretty bad, and getting worse, as Kevin Costner so eloquently demonstrates. Help us, Orson Scott Card -- you're our only hope!