In The Know

Seen by my co-editor on a movie marquee while driving north on I-93...

Now Playing: WOMAN ON TOP

WHAT LIES BENEATH

Overheard in Eliot House Dining Hall...

GIRL #1: He's soooo hot. Oooh. Ohhh.

GIRL #2: Not so much. Well, he's cute, but only in that German, Third Reich sort of way.

Overheard in a Lowell Entryway Meeting...

TUTOR: I'm a tutor here in the entryway. Does anybody know what it is that I do here?

BOY: Uhh... you toot?

TREND-O-RAMA: RUDE WAITERS

Gone are the days when you go out to eat and look for a restaurant that fauns and caters to your every whim-folded napkins, compliments, hot waiters and waitresses who make charming small-talk, extra sauce, etc. Now it's all about being a dining masochist. Who wants five-star service when you can get prodded, insulted and booted out? DJ Slapdash tells me that one of the Chinese restaurants to go to in London's Chinatown is Wong Kei, perhaps the rudest restaurant you'll ever see. Here's what to expect when you walk through the glass door.

Couple enters the restaurant. Scowling waiter walks briskly up to them and shoves menus in their hands. Mumbles underneath his breath.

WAITER: Sit down! (points to the bar where two empty seats are scrunched next to each

other)

BOY: But we-

WAITER: Order now! What do you want!

GIRL: But we haven't had a chance to look at the menu -

BOY: We want to sit at a table together.

WAITER: Leave!

If you come to Wong Kei in a party of more than one, expect a hassle. If there's no room for you and they don't want you cluttering up their waiting area, they'll force you to sit on two different floors in the restaurant. Boston seems to be catching on to the trend. Pizzeria Regina in the North End and the Lowell House Dining Hall continue to see their popularity skyrocket even though they batter and bruise their customers into submission. What's with all the culinary S&M? Even I can't muster up a hypothesis to explain this trend-o-rama. All I know is you best behave yourself-and just try leaving anything less than a 20 percent tip.

OOPS...I DIVA-ED AGAIN (a.k.a. WHO LET THE DIVAS OUT? WOOF WOOF)

Like figure skating at the winter games, women's gymnastics makes every other sport at the Summer Olympics look positively banal. Nowhere else can you find such intense drama, so much crying and hysteria and so many tiny, oppressed waifs. But who could have possibly envisioned the tragicomic-mystery that unfolded this week in Sydney! Let's relive the high, low and just plain weird moments:

1. Not only did our American girls fail to medal in anything, but they also showed how much all the past success and media attention has spoiled them. They whined non-stop about Bela Karolyi and how much better off they were without his dictatorial tactics-which didn't seem too convincing an argument when every single one of their seven asses hit the blue mats at some point over the course of the competition. Without Bela and his Romanian discipline, the American cause is hopeless. My blockmate disagrees: "They're normal, healthy chicks, unlike the Russian and Romanian peasant girls. Those gymnasts don't go to school and they just practice all day to escape their misery. I'd choose freedom over a gold medal any day." Whatever. I certainly wouldn't. Gymnastics is all about contortion, stunted growth, hopeless oppression and tears shed for the sake of the cameras. As soon as we wipe those "normal, healthy" smiles off our girls' faces with an iron fist and a no ice-cream policy, I have no doubt they'll quickly return to the coveted podium spots.

2. My heart goes out to "former" all-around champion Andreea Raducan. The Romanian pixie flounced and bounced her way into our hearts by soaring through all four events at the individual competition with the energy of Peter Pan and the grace of Comaneci. And she smiled the whole way through! When's the last time you saw a gymnast smile? (And not that fake, toothy thing they do for the judges after they finish a routine-you know the smile that accompanies the pose that looks vaguely like the pee-pee dance?) Of course, the IOC being the vigilant, honest folk that they are, immediately drug test little Andreea after she wins. And it's discovered with much fanfare that she took-gasp!-cold pills. Gone is her medal, her pride and most certainly her smile. Couldn't the IOC focus their attention somewhere else? Leave the 3'2" girl alone. First you take her height, than you take her medals. All because of a runny nose.

3. The vault was set too low during the women's all-around. When's the last time you heard of an equipment failure during the Olympics? It has to be an NBC conspiracy. The ratings have been an abomination.

4. Say it with me, ladies and gentlemen, Svetlana Khorkina. Thank God for Russian divas! America could never produce a Dostoyevskian heroine like Khorkina - with her razor sharp hair line, her aquiline features, her glares, her screams, her wails, her brilliant hits and her spectacular crashes. At the team competition, she moped and giggled, smiled and cried, and chewed the scenery so viciously that she almost single-handedly destroyed her team and then brought them roaring back. And if all the drama wasn't enough, the image of her angrily tearing off her silver medal at the end of the night was enough to make all the clicking photographers in the media pit giddy with the thought of impending royalties. And this, of course, was just the team competition!

At the all-around, she seemed poised to dropkick the rest of the featherweights into oblivion but even she couldn't have prepared herself for the drama on vault-with it set two inches too low, Khorkina crashed onto her knees. The tears began to flow and the face sunk even more when she fell off the uneven bars during her signature move; the diva had melted into desperation. Every ounce of her haughty energy, her I-kiss-you-than-I-kill-you demeanor, had evaporated with two falls in a row.

But then she finds out it's not her fault. That the diva, in fact, did not err.

If you think you saw Svetlana mad during the team competition, nothing could have prepared anyone for the fury that came when she discovered that the vault had been mismanaged. Spouting and screaming, twitching and reddening, she took everyone to task for a conspiracy that she believed was intended solely to derail her gold medal hopes. When reporters tried to get her to sum up her feelings, she had two words for them: "Piss off."

But divas must get their due and Khorkina stomped all over the competition during the uneven bars event final. Afterwards, she puffed, "I give this medal to the people of Russia. I will never forgive what they have done to me here, but this is for the people who need this, of people who need to be uplifted." I'm thinking, "Dude, Svetlana. Come on now. An uneven bars gold medal is nice and pretty, but I don't think it's going to erase a decade of oppression."

But do you want to be the one to tell her that?

Want a "What Would Harry Potter Do?" T-Shirt? E-mail schainan@fas

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