Dave Shulman

Illustration by Mike LeeEARLIER THIS DECADE, WHILE PERFORMING standup comedy in all the usual low-end outlets, I developed a routine tracing the evolution of Charlton Heston's film persona, slightly. The routine's key determinant was the patient, Hestonian recitation of the phrase "Oh. My. God" while creating a minimalist kinetic montage......

Art by Mike LeeSOMEONE WAS BORN IN ENGLAND AND 30 years later attended a party in Los Angeles. How do you like it here?, I asked this someone at this party, for I lived across the hall from the partygiver and had been invited to provide ethno-occupational balance. And there......

Art by Mike LeeYOU HAVE NICE SKIN. I'M NOT JUST SAYING that. It's . . . nice. Almost too nice. I mean, it's in good shape and all, but it's also a bit . . . bland. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, sure, you've mottled......

Art by Mike LeeIF YOU'RE READING THIS, YOU PROBABLY own at least one computer, and you probably own at least one box that it came in. Maybe you saved the accompanying supple, elegant, form-fitted polystyrene that kept it fresh and nice as it awaited your purchase. Maybe now you keep......

Art by Mike LeeAFTER DISAPPOINTING SALES OF HIS 1994 CD, The Rosary (distributed exclusively by Divucsa Records, Spain), the pope's second CD, Abbà Pater, just came out on Sony Classical, and things are looking up. With Sony's hardcore megabuck publicity campaign -- a copy was even sent to the Weekly......

Art by Mike LeeIN 1983, RONALD REAGAN (SANTA FE TRAIL, Murder in the Air) did prime-time panel for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI. The idea was to provide between $200 billion and $1 trillion in federal corporate welfare for friends of Edward Teller, the Godfather of Livermore Labs, manufacturers......

Art by D.S.AT SOME POINT IN RECENT HISTORY -- 1993? -- the act of aimlessly poking around the Internet via hypertext transfer protocol ("http" -- anagram: the excretory transport flop) came to be marketed as "surfing" or even, to more hopeful marketeers, "cybersurfing." Given that most of the surf dripped......

IN 1966, MIT'S JOSEPH Weizenbaum wrote a passive-aggressive FORTRAN program called Eliza. Eliza simulated particularly annoying (Carl Rogers­style) psychoanalytic interviews that emphasized anti-argumentation and snide rephrasings of the patient's statements as questions: And how do you feel about your suicidal ideations? -- that kind of thing. On the other hand,......

ONCE THERE WAS A FINE APARTMENT over by the Laugh Factory, where I lived for a year and a half until a butcher moved in downstairs, bringing with him bizarre, gristly throbbings that shook the floor day and night. The sounds reminded me of those I'd heard as a child......

HEARD ANY GOOD DICK JOKES RECENTLY? You're living in one. The mainstream media's sudden abandonment of hardcore pornography after the yearlong Defcon5 Blowjob Alert has left millions of citizens stranded in a simmering vat of voyeuristic sexual tension, unable to keep score on American Gladiators. Congress stripped and teased and......