A+E

Mel Brooks' trimmed-down version of The Producers opens Friday at Paris Las Vegas (read our review next week). Featuring David Hasselhoff in drag as a gay director playing a campy Fuehrer, it's the story of brash, broken-down Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Brad Oscar) and meek accountant Leo Bloom (Larry Raben) who collaborate to stage a surefire flop by Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind (Fred Applegate) called Springtime for Hitler, pocket the investment capital and flee to Rio. Are you a Producers prodigy? Take our 10-question quiz to find out:

1) What famous work winds up in the reject pile as Max and Leo read scripts to find "the worst play ever written"?

2) In which Broadway musical did David Hasselhoff previously star?

3) When Leo worries about what people will say if they hire Ulla, a hot Swedish receptionist who doesn't speak English, what does Max reply?

4) Which Producers character was inspired by a real person?

5) In the song "Keep It Gay," what famous, serious dramatists should be "kept at bay" on Broadway?

6) In "Springtime for Hitler," who should "stand and cheer"?

7) In the original movie, how did Max, Leo and Franz try to close the show when it became a surprise smash?

8) In the song, it's "Springtime for Hitler and Germany, winter for ..."?

9) How do the endings differ in the original film and the stage musical?

10) In the musical, why are Max, Leo and Franz pardoned and released from prison?

1) Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

2) Jekyll & Hyde.

3) "They'll say, ‘Ooooh, wa-wa-wowie-woo-woo-wowie-rrrrrffff!'"

4) Max Bialystock was based on a producer of Mel Brooks' acquaintance who actually slept with old ladies and took their checks to produce plays.

5) Strindberg and Ibsen.

6) "Every hotsie-totsie Nazi."

7) Burn down the theater.

8) "Poland and France."

9) In the original, they remain in prison, where the convicts stage "Prisoners of Love," planning to "open in Leavenworth on Saturday night!" In the musical, they are pardoned, stage it as a Broadway hit, and Max and Leo become successful producers.

10) For "bringing joy and laughter into the heart of every murderer and sex fiend in Sing Sing."

Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

David Lynch

Tarcher/Penguin, $19.95

David Lynch is one of Hollywood's unholy gurus. With films like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, Lynch framed the disturbing dream-life of America at the end of the millennium. Catching the Big Fish describes just how he accomplished this, and it's a curious mixture of practical trivia and tripped-out descriptions of how 33 years of transcendental meditation helped tuned his antennae.

Lynch's first experience at meditation made him feel as if he "were in an elevator and the cable had been cut. Boom! I fell into bliss—pure bliss." Since then, he has kept at it, as he says, trying to shrug off the "Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity."

The practice appears to have honed his writing, too. Except for a few too many light-bulb metaphors and the occasional wallow in hippy-dippy language, he proves exceptionally good at describing his consciousness and what turns it on—or not. "When I was making Eraserhead," he writes, "which took five years to complete, I thought I was dead."

Of course, he clearly feels death and destruction are states of being that need understanding and our unflinching regard. In this book, he gives them a written language as alive as his own dark films. "I don't necessarily love rotting bodies," he writes, "but there's a texture to a rotting body that is unbelievable. Have you ever seen a little rotted animal?"

Prince's Super Bowl half-time show

Green Apple Martini, A-Bar, Texas Station. Nothing takes the edge off a tough day like a well-executed martini. Rarely, though—whether it's the classic gin-vermouth mix or a flavored-vodka concoction—are they seriously blended for flavor. Lucky for us, the A-Bar's Staci Payne and Jorge Gudino believe taste is king. One of their finest creations is this tangy green apple martini. It uses equal amounts of SKYY vodka and Granny's Sour Apple Schnapps. They come in very large glasses and are a bargain at $7.50.

The Shield
(1 1/2 stars)

By Aspyr Media for PlayStation 2.

Rated M.

My best friend keeps urging me to watch this show, but it'll likely never happen now that I've played the video game version. But then, Detective Vic Mackey's TV exploits don't likely suffer from bland graphics, unimaginative stealth game-play and an abundance of glitches. Some of the "bad cop" interrogations can be fun, but after shoving criminals' heads in piranha tanks in The Punisher, shoving heads in toilets just seems kind of quaint.