I am really starting to get concerned about LINDY WEST. Where once stood a young lady full of humility and good humor—the best kind of young lady, in my opinion, always laughing while bowing—now there is a shrieking banshee whose column, my assistant reports, can only be properly understood using something called a Caps Lock Decoder Ring (not that I like to wear anything on my fingers anyway, other than my wedding band, my Phi Beta Kappa ring, and that little bit of string I tie on my pinkie once a year when Jose is taking his sick day and I need to remember to feed the Dobermans myself). This week, as is becoming her shiver-inducing norm, Miss West duct-tapes down the "shift" key and then slams her raging fists into her typewriter enough times that a 500-word column appears. A close reading by my assistant uncovered the terms "Whoopi Goldberg" and "pee," which I presume to be the intended subjects of this demented tirade. What this has to do with film I do not know, and it is at times such as this that I find myself wishing Miss West had been more forthcoming on the intake evaluation that I had her fill out on her first day.

In the "Mother and Father" box she wrote "N/A," as if she were just like every other crack baby abandoned in the "Now Hiring" bin out front of The Stranger offices and raised on a ration of spoiled meat and illegal substances in one of the straw-padded cages that line the conference room until, at the age of 18, being presented by Mr. Keck with a pencil, a pair of shoes, and a regular byline. But from Miss West's bearing, I knew right away that she came from elsewhere, from good breeding and wise investments in a non-public-school education. Which is why it pains me now to be unable to reach out to Miss West's parents and tell them to come rescue her at once. Mr. and Mrs. West, if by chance you read this column—and having produced a child who (once upon a time) gave off the unmistakable odor of proper instruction, I suspect you may well do so—please contact me immediately. We must devise an intervention and rehabilitation plan before it is altogether too late.

Beyond rehabilitation, and almost beyond words, is PAUL CONSTANT, who this week tries to get people interested in his "literary criticism" by having nude women hold books in front of their bosoms while posing for a picture that he has—quite pornographically—reproduced in his shamefully inadequate books section. Now, I will admit the image got my attention. But I will not admit to reading one word of what Mr. Constant wrote below this image, because in fact I did not, and will not, and if I wanted to, could not, because Mr. Constant is as unreadable as he is unsexable (by which I mean I still have not determined whether "he," underneath all that curvaceous flab, is actually a man or a woman). The poor dolt cannot even make salaciousness alluring.