A+E

Match the psychologically revealing shape to its accurate interpretation!

1.) Helpful viewers' guide to this season of Lost.

2.) Brain scan of a man who's just read Third Rail, a new compilation of poetry about rock 'n' roll, in its entirety. (Pocket Books, $13. Foreword by Bono!)

3.) What Jim Gibbons sees when he contemplates his soul.

Answer: Hey, this is psychology; none is correct—Lost is far too baffling to be described by any mere blotch; the book really costs $12 not $13; Jim Gibbons has no soul.

Or is it foolhardy S.O.B.? You decide!

Talking with Las Vegas' own Ben Malisow, author of the forthcoming 1,001 Things to Do If You Dare (Adams Media, $10.95).

You're a former Weekly staff writer—how did that terrible, grueling experience prepare you to write about extremely, sometimes stupidly, occasionally criminally dangerous activities?

My experience at the Weekly was key to the book, in several major ways. I mean, a great many of the things in the list were activities I only performed because I was browbeaten, badgered, belittled or begged to do so by my former Weekly editors. Off the top of my head, these include: running with the bulls, having lunch with a celebrity, having breakfast with a porn star, confronting wackos of every stripe and flavor, visiting a juvenile detention center, walking the high iron ...

Okay, maybe I would have jumped at the chance to hang out with the porn star even if I hadn't been a reporter, but there is very little likelihood I'd have had the opportunity to do so.

Plus, being a staff writer at an alt-weekly (and, for a while, being the only staff writer) meant that I was exposed to many, many different—and often zany—topics, people, occupations, pastimes and forms of recreation. That helped a lot.

Of course, the experience of banging out 3,500 words per week, like clockwork, certainly served me well. Or served my publisher well. Whatever. And I can always brag that I never punted a deadline.

And, I have to admit, my military service and experience as a security contractor also contributed several things to the list. Not as many as my time at the Weekly, of course.

What are some things you've dared to do that you would not do again?

Most of them. No, really—some of those things are insane. I didn't enjoy many of them while they were transpiring, never wanted to do them in the first place and wouldn't do them again, even if I was promised cotton candy and oral sex. A lot of them just reflect the immaturity of a young person, unaware of his own mortality, incapable of realizing the consequences of his actions or really, really drunk.

A (far from comprehensive) list: eat something still moving; smuggle something through customs; swing on a giant swing; run from the cops; ride a mechanical bull; rappel out of a helicopter; swim through the subterranean cavern at the Toilet Bowl in Hanauma Bay; jump out a window; dive off a 30-foot cliff into a freshwater lake; bury the speedometer needle of a car; have sex in a bathtub; experience hypoxia; blow something up with explosives; sit through someone else's religious service; look down the barrel of a loaded gun.

Come to think of it, I may have just been very, very stupid. And still might be.

What does a person gain from doing some of these crazy things?

Errrr ... wow. Good question. I'd have to say, "Not much." No kidding. People should not attempt to do everything listed in the book. Hell, I haven't done everything listed in the book. With good reason—a lot of the things are fatal.

Better idea: Read the list and get the vicarious thrill from the things I've done without ever having to put yourself at risk. Much smarter, and one shitload safer. In hindsight, it's what I would have done.

That ‘Free Bird' sounds better on my car radio

By "Free Bird," of course, I mean the guitar solo, not the lame lyrics (I always turn down the volume until the singing stops). And you'd think the intimacy of the ear buds would accentuate the experience—that it would drive that wonderfully frenzied Allen Collins/Gary Rossington geetar duel even deeper into my madly echoing skull. But a funny thing happened on the way to brain-shredding nirvana: iPod made the song smaller. Turns out, my skull is too tiny and airless a space for the "Bird." That sucker needs room. Those guitars sound most righteous when they're swelling into a larger volume, wrapping around you, straining your car speakers. Yes, that's hopelessly low-tech for this era, but there you go.

Same holds true for Neil Diamond's "Crunchy Granola Suite," by the way. Total car-stereo tune.

Or, quit crying about Grindhouse, sissies

Have you never staggered around England's Glastonbury Rock festival off your sun-kissed tits on a semi-lethal but entirely legal cocktail of herbal highs while chewing Mad-Croc gum and swigging Howling Monkey "energizing elixir"? I have. Then I entered a porta-potty and shat my brain. More is more, baby.

So what's with all those po-faced critics who hated 300 because it's a gratuitously violent Iron Age porn-fest on gay tit-stilts? And now these same mithering numpties are sneering at the amputee-, gun-, zombie- and machete-crazy pulpgasm that is Grindhouse (in theaters April 6). What's wrong with you people? You want everything to be milksoppy piffle like the excruciatingly unwatchable Babble? (What the hell message were we meant to take from that mélange of miserablism, anyway? Don't let Mexicans baby-sit your kids? ) Hell, no. More is more. Give me gratuitous or give me brain death. Now excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom. – Steven Wells

Is this restaurant so exclusive that even its name is a secret? In last Sunday's Review-Journal, Caesars Palace runs a full-page color ad describing how "honored" they are to have a restaurant nominated for the Best New Restaurant 2006 Award from the James Beard Foundation, complete with the smiling face of the head chef—and the name of the restaurant is nowhere to be found in the ad. (Actually, it's simply Restaurant Guy Savoy.) The ultimate in conceptual advertising or major proofreading error? You decide.