Not Funnies
By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: July 11, 2004

You can't pinpoint it exactly, but there was a moment when people more or less stopped reading poetry and turned instead to novels, which just a few generations earlier had been considered entertainment suitable only for idle ladies of uncertain morals.

Someday the novel, too, will go into decline -- if it hasn't already -- and will become, like poetry, a genre treasured and created by just a relative few. This won't happen in our lifetime, but it's not too soon to wonder what the next new thing, the new literary form, might be.

It might be comic books. Seriously. Comic books are what novels used to be -- an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal -- and if the highbrows are right, they're a form perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture and collective attention deficit. Comics are also enjoying a renaissance and a newfound respectability right now.

Bald People Eat Free at Calif. Eatery

LODI, Calif. (AP) - Bald is beautiful in Lodi - at least to Gary Arnold, a restaurant owner who charges customers according the amount of hair on their head.

A full head of hair will get you nowhere with Arnold, who sports a naked noggin himself.

But customers who come to Gary's Uptown Restaurant and Bar on Wednesdays with less than 50 percent of their hair get up to 50 percent off their food.

The real thing - a totally hairless head - will fetch a clean 100 percent off.