Dick Armey's slander suit.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Political humor - Off The Map - Column

I would just like to offer a measured piece of advice to all those critics who lambasted The Lost World because it was all special effects and no plot. Get a freakin' life. What, weren't there enough pithy moments for you with Wallace Shawn talking about the death of culture? It's a dinosaur movie! You pay your eight bucks, and giant dinosaurs run around making roaring noises right up there in front of you. It did have some things in common with Citizen Kane. Ceilings, for example. Actors. Words. A young girl knocking a Velociraptor out a window with a high-bar routine. What else do you want? You think if Orson Welles had the technology to dangle a trailer over a cliff with a glass wall, he wouldn't do it?

Oh, excuse me. The plot had a few holes. Of course it did! Holes big enough for a herd of Brontosauruses to fall in. At the end of the movie, a Tyrannosaurus Rex sneaks up on a guy, for crum's sake. And so what if Jeff Goldblum forgot which nerd he was playing and reverted back to the nerd he was in Independence Day. Who cares? You probably go to Sea World, sit in the front row at the Shamu show, then complain when you get wet.

* Trent Lott wants capital punishment for anyone who makes fun of his hair. ABC just announced an agreement with American Airlines. The network will give frequent-flyer miles to people who watch ABC shows. Oh yeah, that's just what we need: Couch potatoes with a purpose. "Honey, why don't you go outside and play?" "Can't, Mom, only two more NYPD Blues and I bump up to Business on my non-stop to Paris." You know this is the start of something big and hideous. Already you can get frequent-flyer miles by eating at certain restaurants or ordering flowers, but now we've managed to turn our greed into a passive sport. It's the ultimate dream marriage for Americans: watching TV while accumulating at the same time.

* There's nothing the Republicans hate more than negotiating with Clinton. It's like trying to throttle a shadow. Just when you think the world has become an irony-free zone, just when you believe there never will be an equal for the day when Jim Fixx, the man who jump-started the running craze, died while jogging, along comes Bohumil Sole. Mr. Sole, sixty-three, was a Czech inventor who was part of the team that came up with the plastic explosive Semtex. Well, he blew himself up in a bathhouse during what the Czech police are calling a suicide attempt. A pretty good attempt, by all accounts. You might even call...