Everybody we know just friggin' loooooves High Fidelity, which just makes us more and more certain that we will not. Nick Hornby says the adaptation is so faithful that at times it feels like John Cusack's character is actually reading the book out loud. Erm, cinema-wise, this is not something to brag about . . . Here's an idea that we wish all actors, screenwriters and directors would take to heart: next time you really, really like a book, recommend it to your friends, OK. Just don't make a goddamn movie out of it!

Another of our top five reasons for avoiding High Fidelity is because we know that Cusack gives his entire posse work -- Tim Robbins and sister Joan and Lili Taylor and those D.V. Pink screenwriter guys -- so we're pretty darn sure that Jeremy f'n Piven must be in it as well. Now, if Cusack hired Savage Steve Holland to direct and thrown the great Curtis "Booger" Armstrong a bone, maybe we'd be more sympathetic. Anyway, brass tacks is that this is a movie produced by Mike Newell and directed by Stephen Frears, which is like guaranteeing a movie that's twice as boring! Hell, Michael "Zzzzzzzzzz" Apted's afraid to see this movie 'cause he's thinks it might be too slow.

A fascinating piece in the New Yorker suggested recently that all kinds of women's health problems can be attributed to the fact that modern society -- birth control, work, small families -- causes them to have 300 or 400 menstrual cycles when the biological norm should be around 150. The article suggests doing away with placebos for birth control users, but we have a better suggestion: any twentysomething girls who would like to reduce their risk of cancer, we are now officially available to knock you up. Especially that redhead in the new Gap/West Side Story commercials and UK VJ Cat Deeley . . . Which reminds us: y'know that cartoon, Catdog? Well, how the hell does it go to the bathroom? Huh? Huh??

This Diana Ross and the Supremes "reunion" is not unlike Lou Reed getting the Velvets back together with Doug Yule's brother and Willie Alexander . . . Scary fact: Elliott Smith gets even more ass than Moby . . . A musing: Every day people die thinking, "I could have sworn I was going to outlive Bob Hope . . ."

Kenny "Big Hassle" Weinstein notes that the last words uttered by those eleven ski instructors recently killed in an Austrian avalanche were, "Thank god there are no Jews trapped under all this snow with us!" . . . Nope, still don't care for the Oasis record . . . We haven't actually heard the Le Tigre record, though we would very much like to write next week's column on Kathleen Hanna's flat belly in our own personal ink . . . Are the new South Park episodes totally tits or what? They're hella-tits . . .

Speaking of Mike Newell, we've managed to miss all nine hours of Falcone, but we saw Donnie Brasco and it already felt like nine hours . . . Finally this week, we want to note that here in sunny Canada, they have their own sitcoms, and we gotta tell you, it ain't a pretty sight, what with the charmless, funny-looking lead actors and horrible concepts that never should have made it past the pitch stage. Titus, Daddio, God the Devil and Bob -- you should be grateful you don't have to see this crap in the good old US of A.

E-mail to sqwubbsy@aol.com

MICHAEL KRUGMAN and JASON COHEN
(April 14, 2000)