Notebook

By Daniel Eisenberg, Anita Hamilton, Michael Krantz, Jodie Morse, Michele Orecklin, Alain L. Sanders, Joel Stein, David Van Biema, Susan Veitch

WINNERS & LOSERS

[WINNERS]

SPIKE LEE Jordan's rival for the basketball spotlight may be off court: He Got Game opens to acclaim

TREY PARKER & MATT STONE Comedy Central drops $15 million on South Park creators. The wages of poop are terrific

AMAZON.COM Online bookstore's stock splits. Wait until they figure out how to serve you espresso

[& LOSERS]

PAT RILEY Brawling? A Riley team? It's hard to believe this guy also coached Showtime with Magic and Kareem

NASA Piles of dead rats in space are an embarrassment. Or the basis of a new Parker and Stone comedy

WEBB HUBBELL Starr indicts jowly Clinton pal and his wife. Will this be the time when the last dog dies?

RELIGION

THE FRESH TESTAMENT For those unfamiliar with new pop music, here is an excerpt from Blood Spilla, a Christian hip-hop song by William Branch.

It's the "Thrilla in Manila," Jesus Christ vs. every man's killa. Sin and Death's got the whole world gettin' illa So I praise God for the blood spilla

You say, "Jesus, I don't get it. I swear I see nothin' but the prosperity of the wicked." Let's kick it so you can see the end that's predicted, When...sinful men get evicted... But God the Son is gonna rise like a biscuit, Come back and fix it.

INQUIRY

MCNONSENSE When we saw that McDonald's was using its McRib sandwich to cross-promote Disney's Animal Kingdom, we thought, Isn't it odd to connect frolicking animals and a rib sandwich? R.J. Milano, an assistant marketing V.P. at McDonald's, explained, "Animal Kingdom is very much a wild experience, and the McRib is a wild taste that allows customers to experience the fun and magic of the Animal Kingdom without going to Orlando." Oh.

LOVE DRINK NIPPLE FAKE

If your livelihood depended on a talking gorilla, you'd stretch the data too. So when an America Online chat with Koko, billed as a gorilla who can communicate with humans through sign language, quickly devolved into a Dada exercise, Dr. Francine Patterson, Koko's sign-language teacher, used some pretty impressive logic to expand her simian friend's limited communication skills. Here's a partial transcript:

Q: Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?

Koko: Pink.

Patterson: We had earlier discussion about colors today.

Q: Do you like to chat with people?

Koko: Fine nipple.

Patterson: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."

Q: Does she have hair? Or is it like fur?

Koko: Fine.

Patterson: She has fine hair.

Q: Koko, do you feel love from the humans who have raised you?

Koko: Lips, apple give me.

Patterson: People give her her favorite foods.

Koko: Koko loves that nipple drink, go.

Patterson: She's kissing her alligator.

Koko: Fake.

Q: What does fake mean to her?

Koko: Gorilla.

FRANKENSTEINS "R" US

It's already been done on monkeys. Now brain surgeon Dr. Robert White says total body transplants could soon be done on humans. The operation, White told ABC News, involves attaching the functioning body of a brain-dead head to the functioning head of a dying body. To sort through both the benefits and problems of this pioneering procedure, we offer a simple, celebrity-friendly test drive.

NUMBERS

52 Number of rats, out of the 96 launched, that have died so far aboard the space shuttle Columbia

265 MILLION Approximate number of rats living in the U.S.

$100,000 Annual compensation for rookie lawyers at top Manhattan law firms

$26,156 Average annual salary for an American worker in 1997

94 Percentage of teenagers who say they believe in God

53 Percentage of teenage girls who say sex before marriage is always wrong

53 Percentage of Americans who say one of the largest causes of violence is parents' failure to teach their children good values

11:12 Average number of commercial minutes in one hour of prime-time network programming, up 14% over 1991

23:46 Average number of commercial and promotional minutes in one hour of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

Sources: AP; National Pest Control Association; Wall Street Journal; Bureau of Labor Statistics; New York Times