I ONCE HAD TO INTRODUCE A YOUNG LAWYER WHO PROUDLY NOTED ON HIS RESUME THAT HE HAD BEEN PART OF THE CAST OF "SAVED BY THE BELL -- THE COLLEGE YEARS": Here is a pretty good list of the ten worst TV spinoffs of all time.

ANY FOOL CAN MAKE A RULE, AND ANY FOOL WILL MIND IT: Another open memo to our US Airways customers at Reagan National Airport:

We at US Airways need you to understand that we are nothing if not responsive to the suggestions of our customers, at least when we are not encouraging the airport police to arrest you. On Friday, many of you, both before and after your near-arrests, openly questioned our pro-anarchy policies. So it is to our great disappointment, thorough displeasure, and severe dyspepsia that we continued to hear similar comments as late as Sunday. Let us clear the record: By Sunday morning, in response to your complaints, we did adopt a set of inviolable rules, which we set forth below:

1. All passengers must arrive at the airport two hours before departure. If you are not at the airport two hours before departure, you simply will not make your flight. We told you, again and again, get here two hours before departure. We even offered to brand it, backward, on your foreheads, so that it would be legible when you looked in the mirror first thing in the morning: TWO HOURS BEFORE DEPARTURE. Remember those words.
   
2. All eligible passengers are encouraged to use the self-service kiosks. A few of you are not eligible, including anybody with bags to check and anybody who has made changes to his or her ticket, e.g., all 100,000 people who we rebooked this weekend. For those passengers who would prefer to use the kiosks rather than standing in line for a live agent, we encourage you to not have been rebooked.
   
3. Kiosk eligibility rules will not be posted or explained in advance. If you stand in line for a half-hour for a kiosk, are unable to find your reservation in a kiosk for no stated reason (leaving you unsure whether you are even booked on a flight), and then later are able to use our One-Line Processing™ to speak to an agent, the agent may, in his or her discretion, explain kiosk eligibility to you so that you understand exactly how you erred.
   
4. To prevent inconvenience and, more importantly, the appearance of inconvenience resulting from technicians visibly working on the kiosks, no kiosk repairs will be performed during periods of high airport use. We assure you, we will repair the half of the kiosks that currently are not functioning as soon as there is no demand for kiosks.
   
5. We heard complaints about all of the different lines on Friday – ticketing counter lines, in-terminal customer service lines, baggage-check lines, gate-check lines – many opening and closing at different times, so that your ability to be processed depended upon which line you happened to choose and where you happened to be when that line was functional. We have solved this inequity by adopting our new One-Line Processing™ system. Now, whatever it is that you want – check-in, baggage-check, rebooking – can, and must, be done in a single line. There are NO EXCEPTIONS to the One-Line Processing™ system. If you can still make your flight but you are behind an entire seventy-person tour group of Mandarin-speaking dirt-specialists who have already missed their flights and need to rebook to every three-gate airport in America within a day’s drive of an interstate highway, connecting through Charlotte, where the next available flight is two days from now, YOU WILL WAIT YOUR TURN. They got here twenty seconds before you did.
   
6. Current wait time in our One-Line Processing™ system is five-to-seven hours. We are aware that this will make those of you who showed up, as advised, TWO HOURS BEFORE DEPARTURE (or for that matter, two times as long as that (like Spaceman), or for that matter, five-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half hours before departure) unable to board your flights. We assure you that we had not intended wait time to exceed four hours (though, in all candor, we did expect it to be about that), but a shocking number of you did not arrive earlier than twice the recommended time before your flights, which necessitated rebookings, which slowed the line down, which compounded the failures to make scheduled departures, which necessitated an even greater number of rebookings, until it became clear that our One-Line Processing™ system was really a cocoon in which your caterpillars of potential departure could molt into butterflies of certain rebooking. That was a beautiful thing.
   
7. Some of you have realized that, while we have only nine agents working outside the security checkpoint, within the secured area there are scores of US Airways agents who can assist you – many, many more than there were Friday night, when most of you were inside the security checkpoint, incidentally. Fortunately for the integrity of our One-Line Processing™ system, the TSA will not permit passage through the security checkpoint without a boarding pass. In other words, to get a boarding pass in under five-to-seven hours, you must get into the secured area, but you cannot get into the secured area unless you have a boarding pass. We call this a “Catch-US-Airways.”
   
8. Our flights will leave on time, or reasonably close to it. They will do so even if they are half-full, notwithstanding the hundreds or thousands of caterpillars and butterflies outside the security checkpoint longing to board them. This likely will enable us to achieve a rare, seemingly paradoxical, state where, in perpetuity, present capacity far exceeds present demand but future demand far exceeds future capacity.
   
9. Where unavoidable, seats will be filled by standby passengers, though we do not understand how there can possibly be standby passengers given all that we have done to prevent people from entering the terminal. In any event, this rule will ensure that the best way to get on a flight is to find yourself unable to book it in advance. This is another “Catch-US Airways.”
   
10. Incidentally, there appeared to be some question as to how we could possibly have stranded 100,000 passengers over the weekend, as reported in the Associated Press, when we generally do not process that many passengers in a weekend. The answer is that our One-Line Processing™ system has enabled us to transcend weather-resultant delays and begin stranding subsequent passengers (or repeat-stranding prior ones) with delay-resultant delays. We have applied for a process patent on delay-resultant delays, so if you are a competing airline considering imposing delay-resultant delays, please contact US Airways Licensing.
    
11. US Airways Licensing can be reached at the 1-800 number formerly used for US Airways Customer Service. The new 1-800 number for US Airways Customer Service will be available only on the new Inconvenience Tickets.
    
12. We have formally discontinued our practice of issuing Inconvenience Tickets.
    
13. We have not discontinued our practice of requiring an Inconvenience Ticket to accept a complaint.
    
14. If you wish to appeal this practice, please call our new 1-800 US Airways Customer Service Line.
    
15. While we expect you to follow these rules, we expect that our agents will too. We have a strict Uniform Code of US Airways Agent Justice to enforce such compliance. We are aware of one rogue agent at DCA (who some of you deemed “Helpful Lady,” “The Nice and Sane One,” or “The Angel of Mercy,” and who insisted upon a hug from every noncompliant customer she assisted) who continually canvassed the line, plucked from it a handful of people who still could make their flights, and prevented, in some instances, the occurrence of the caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation that we love so much. We assure you that we will not fire The Angel of Mercy. Pursuant to the UCUSAAJ, as soon as we can arrange a fair and expedient show trial, we will execute her.
    
16. There are still a few kinks in our One-Line Processing™ system, and dozens of you (perhaps those assisted by The Angel of Mercy) may end up with unexpired boarding passes. In such circumstances, we will penalize you – including passenger Spaceman – with selection for additional security screening, which we intend as a symbolic gesture toward delay-parity between you and the butterflies remaining in the rebooking line. We understand, however, that the TSA security screeners are the most efficient, most professional, and second-friendliest (behind The Angel of Mercy) air-travel-affiliated persons that you will encounter during your travel experience. Regretfully, TSA screeners are not employed by US Airways, so we have been unable to correct this error.
    
17. In the extremely unlikely event of successful boarding, you MUST comply with the instructions on your boarding pass. Passenger Spaceman points out that his seat, 15e, was already occupied by a gentleman (in running shorts; we will shortly be promulgating a dress code to put an end to that) with an equally-valid boarding card. We recommended that the two passengers take turns sitting on each other’s laps, but a second rogue employee, flight attendant Just Trying To Make It Through Today, disregarded our suggestion and ensured that passenger Spaceman was given another seat (though we successfully prevailed upon her to make him wait until after we processed all of the standby passengers).
    
18. You have heard that too many cooks spoil the broth? Despite days of foreknowledge of catastrophic system failure, we will have only one supervisor on duty today. You may see him conversing with the nine agents we have outside the security checkpoint or with the dozens inside the secured area. He is forbidden by our understanding of collective-bargaining agreements, the details of which we admit are somewhat foggy, since we haven’t read them, from assisting passengers in any way. In fact, it is a matter of pride for US Airways that we have maintained an unblemished record throughout this long weekend of not offering a single representative to provide any information at all to stranded passengers other than curt get-in-line/get-out-of-line instructions, which we guarantee are not counterproductive at least an undetermined percentage of the time.
    
19. DO NOT ask about the luggage you checked with us on Friday. We swear, if you ask us one more time about the luggage, WE WILL EAT YOUR FAMILY.
    

It is because of these rules that we can join you in congratulating us on achieving an entirely satisfactory and fulfilling conclusion to your travel experience (which, in passenger Spaceman’s case, required only $330 in hotel charges, $250 in emergency clothing expenses (coat, jeans, shirt, two pairs underwear, two pairs socks), $25 in taxi and Metro charges, $50-75 in meals and water, $40 in additional airport parking charges, nine-and-a-half hours standing in lines at DCA (not counting non-line airport time), repudiation of our instructions to get out of the line on Friday night (which would have prevented rebooking) but to stay in it on Sunday afternoon (which would have prevented boarding), and the theoretical assistance of our dedicated US Airways staff). We are proud to have shared with you this glorious weekend, we thank you for flying US Airways, and we promise to provide you the same level of service the next time you fly with us!

Warmest Regards,
Omarosa Tobacco Industry McCarrot Top
Vice-President, Customer Service/Licensing
US Airways

TUPAC, FIND ME A CLUE: Rats and rat terriers represented on this week's episode of TARstars, but unfortunately, extending my recording time by thirty minutes still wasn't enough to capture the last fifteen minutes, so I have no idea who was eliminated.

One Race maxim was re-proven this week: when in doubt, choose the task that makes for better television, and commerce-with-the-locals always makes for better tv.

HE'S GOING TO LICK HER. HE'S GOING TO LICK HER! Not a whole lot of doubt in this household (or, apparently, the judges') as to how Project Broadway is supposed to turn out. I was concerned that they weren't going to give us the sanity check of seeing each of the possible couples together. Fortunately, that didn't happen, and my conviction as to the right result was, if anything, reinforced after seeing the duets.

Thinking about the final four, there are two finalists who have progressed over the course of the competition, and two who are basically at the same point now as when they started. And as we all know, these shows are all about the journey. (And about the backstory videos, apparently -- did anyone not tear up during one particular person's saga?)

Assuming that this turns out the way it's supposed to: who's coming with the Cosmopolitans to see Grease this summer?

I WONDER WHAT MILLI VANILLI THINK? I happened to learn recently that the distinctive lead vocal on the song "December, 1963 (Oh What a Night)" was not Frankie Valli (he does come in on the second verse). Instead it was drummer Gerri Polci. The song is credited to the band The Four Seasons, so this is preumably a no harm, no foul situation.

The only similar situation I know of is that the first verse of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" is sung by Jim Gilstrap. Are there other examples of songs that are sung by unexpected parties?

CULT OF WESSONALITY: It has become difficult in Las Vegas to come across a restaurant in a casino which doesn't have a celebrity chef's name attached, be it Wolfgang Puck's five locations, San Francisco's Michael Mina's (who?) four, French god-chef Joël Robuchon's pair at the MGM Grand, Thomas Keller (where Matt and I had a fine dinner back in August), Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Emeril Lagasse, Nobu Matshisa or Todd English's beloved Olives at the Bellagio. And that's just off the top of my head.

And, typically, they deliver. My latest addition to the list is Tom Colicchio's craftsteak, and the Top Chef judge's kitchen runs smoothly. Started off with a half-dozen oysters, included three from beloved Wellfleet, and then an expertly-grilled ribeye, medium-rare (as always) with a side of soft polenta with blue cheese crumbles.** And they nailed the crème brûlée; the custard was still cool while the top torched right. Simple, effective presentations relying on solid ingredients, just as you'd hope.

Which is all a roundabout way to ask: which celebrity chefs do you trust most? Whose name, attached to a restaurant other than his main location, would you rely upon to deliver no matter how long it's been since he's actually been there?

** Two side notes: (1) why would anyone ever order a cut of steak other than ribeye? The ribbons of fat are the whole point of eating steak; I don't get the people who order strip steak, with the same taste in every bite; and (2) fyi, the only better ribeye out there is the one at Philadelphia's Barclay Prime, with the high-heat charred crust and top-quality Gachot & Gachot meat.

"DEAR ISAAC": Heh. Airlines are now assigning employees to the task of writing customers with apology letters to explain what went wrong with their flights.