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Volume CCXXXV, Number 80   June 9, 2005 

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According to infallible Times blowhard and Iraq war booster Tom Friedman, the history of the world can be divided in three phases: Globalization 1.0, in which you write a book about the increasingly global economy, Globalization 2.0, when you write a second book making the same point, and Globalization 3.0, when you squeeze out yet another volume on the same topic.

Even in fast-moving world of the 21st Century, you can still make good money reselling the same old rope, as Friedman intends to demonstrate.  To prove his point, he eschews Washington windbags in favor of the only group that knows even less: CEO's of big companies.  His world may have been rocked by Indian phone reps supporting Japanese TV's made in China, but for the rest of us, life goes one pretty much as before. Indeed, despite the supposed breathtaking pace of global change, Friedman is still peddling his bromides in English on dead trees.

But there's a method in his madness: Friedman stresses the importance of education in empowering Americans to face the global onslaught. With a daughter at Yale (now about 40 large a year), you can understand why old Tom will recycle anything to pay those tuition bills.

You're a bunch of well-preserved affluent middle-aged South Florida slags who enjoy long boozy lunches between Botox and bikini waxes.  Why not recycle your jabber as a book?  Other than no one could stand to read it, probably nothing.

We start with the hilarious title, although come to think of it, the two words mean pretty much the same thing. It's like Melville entitling his novel Harpoon & Catch.

 We'll take a wild guess as to what awaits the reader: the importance of long boozy lunches with my girlfriends, my mother who never understood me, my wonderful boyfriend/ husband, my horrible ex-husband/boyfriend, my fabulous Miami lifestyle and my perfect children.  Not included: my empty narcissism and my inflated self- importance.

Amazon suggests buying this book along with My Depression by Elizabeth Swados but the spectacle of a bunch of smug over-40 slappers who style themselves "Bombshells" is depressing enough for us.

Anyone remember The Mod Squad?  We didn't think so.  Thirty years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a Jewish anorexic from Long Island named Peggy Lipton had her fifteen minutes on that squad which she used to roger every celebrity she could lay, um, a finger on.

Don't you want to know what it was like to shtup men, now old or dead, during the Nixon Administration? Neither do we.

After her career, such as it was, as starlet cum skank hit the buffers, also known as age 40, she chose not to become a Miami Bombshell, instead combatting her resulting depression first with drugs and then with some crackpot guru.

Now in her nineties [Factcheckers please confirm – Copy Ed.], she "wrote" her memoirs to cash in on long-past notoriety and to show Paris Hilton that her mother's generation also knew a thing or two about carrying on like rutting swine.