Dick Armey's slander suit.

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 it mildly successful. The next thing you know ... Bill Clinton dies from a splinter infection caught while straddling a fence.

* The Gerald Ford Museum has just reopened in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There are no stairs. Bill Clinton, the man who owes more to soft money than Joseph Gallo owes to crushed grapes, is petitioning the Federal Election Commission to abolish the "soft-money" loophole. The rise of soft money was the direct result of a PREVIOUS reform that limited the amount any one contributor could give to a candidate.

So instead of giving it to the candidate, contributors now give to the candidate's party, which gives it to the candidate. Obviously not the same thing at all. This involves many more banking transactions. You outlaw soft money and you know what takes over? Spongy, velvety money.

That's when contributors give money to the candidate's party's treasurer's country club's janitor. We're moving the cookie jar from the kitchen table to the counter to behind a cabinet above the refrigerator, and these are the guys who own the ladder and crowbar concessions. Clinton knows it best of all, being the retired Western Hemisphere distributor for ladders and crowbars and all.

* I'm worried about the Republicans. Their fiddling with the emergency flood-relief bill showed they have a memory shorter than picnic season in Upper Michigan. Real soon, a bunch of designated Dobermans will meet to negotiate the budget compromise in a summit that will make Mideast peace talks look like sixth-grade intramural-basketball possession calls. If the unthinkable comes to pass, an event with a likelihood equal to a tornado diagonally tagging a trailer park in the Midwest within the next ten years, several things could happen:

One. A bipartisan committee ignoring petty partisan squabbles and lobbyist pressure makes shared sacrifice based on ability to pay the national policy. And oil wells spring from the rotting cores of hibernating gladiola bulbs.

Two. Both sides claim the reason the talks have stalled is that the opposition is selling out the voters to Satan. Dick Armey threatens a slander suit.

Three. Newt's mob reluctantly raises the minimum corporate tax rate. In return, Clinton allows the homeless to be bused to the National Zoo and fed to the lions.

Four. They all adjourn to watch the World Wrestling Federation on TBS.