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    Volume CCXXXIV, Number 42        February, 2004              Page 2

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If you think it's tough to be a celebrity, imagine how tough it must be as a not-quite-celebrity, like poor hard-working Rikki Kleiman. She's gained a dribble of fame and no fortune as a host on Court TV (ever seen her?), but the high point of her legal career was probably dragging Jan Schlichtman into the sack, as immortalized in A Civil Action. (Probably Jerry Facher turned her down).

Adopting George Bush's motto – If you ain't got it, flaunt it anyway – she has turned her not-very-interesting or savory past into a gloating memoir humbly entitled "Having It All."

By this she means that she's got a husband she can take out in public, the somewhat-worse-for-wear Bill Bratton, a job that involves a camera, and best of all, the chance to flog a book about her favorite, if not only, subject: herself.

Fellas, here's how this one starts off: "This book was born out of anger."

You can fill in the rest, dear non-reader: 26 women bitching about their lousy marriages, and 26 clueless guys who aren't going to be getting any tonight. Taking a page, or perhaps 304 pages, from Private Eye's redoubtable feminist heroine, Polly Filler (whose Afghani au pairs keep quitting and returning to Kabul for peace and quiet), 26 women who at one point were willing to come across to get married have decide that with ring and rock they are ready to retire.

These women have apparently reached the conclusion that marriage is not an endless idyll of adoration and self-fulfillment. They were shocked to discover that a lot of it is hard work and compromise. Of course, men don't understand any of that because all they do is hang around the office all day telling dirty jokes and playing with themselves. That's why they come home at night so happy and perky, demanding sex and dinner and wide-screen TV while their hard-working spouses seethe with resentment.

The Spy Review is given to understand that these miserable damp husbands are planning to cash in with their own sequel. Look for it in a future round-up of the unreadable, unless we hear that the title is 26 Guys Get Laid in Vegas.

Perhaps, we admit, this book is not in fact aimed at married men. After all, to paraphrase the bachelor's happily rhetorical question: why pay $11.16 for a half-gallon of rant when you can as much as you want at home for free?

This issue of the Spy Review has been working over unreadable female authors pretty good but we don't want you the non-reader to conclude that the production of unreadable books is a gender-linked characteristic.

Exhibit A: Dr. Phil. If you were a dead ringer for Hank Kingsley, you might not want to plaster your mug on the cover of your books, but apparently he is some sort of grade-C media celebrity, somewhere below Paris Hilton and slightly above, oh, we don't know, Rikki Kleiman.

TV psychologists have for years raked in royalties by publishing books that conclude that various of life's maladies, from cancer to obesity, are the result of negative thinking on the part of the unfortunate sufferer. We're willing to concede that the argument is somewhat stronger in the case of fat people, who do make some sort of decision to empty the contents of the two-pound Fritos bag into their craws.

But, gee, Dr. Phil, we'd bet that most people already understand that you can lose weight to deciding to eat less. In his defense, the decision to blow $15.60 on Dr. Phil's drivel in lieu of five Whoppers with extra cheese is likely to result on weight loss, at least the day you buy it. We might even take his book seriously if he accepts Letterman's invitation to join his "Super Bowl of Love." Until then, we'd choose the Whoppers. Washed down, as is the practice among blobs, with Diet Coke.