Volume 296 no. 5 / December 2005
Abizaid, John, as insurgency diagnostician, 68
Adams, Ansel, Windex and, 137
Affleck, Ben, poker habits of, 121
Alaïa, Azzedine, fashion designer, as "King of Cling," 116
Allen, Woody, projected immortality of, 105
Amis, Martin, Lolita test of, 131
Batali, Dean, TV writer, Winnie the Pooh collection of, 168; on need for "Christian Vagina Monologues," 168
Bellow, Saul, high school chums of, 78-80, 82; as father figure, 78-88; penmanship of, 82; faint praise of, 86
Bogart, Humphrey, as bully, 178
Bush, George W., fiscal profligacy of, 37-38; Iraqi army and, 60, 70, 74; on Kazakhstan, 100
Byron, Lord, Nabokovian entanglements of, 134
Castro, Fidel, literary unmasking of, 123
Catapano, Karen, as Long Island goat farmer, 174
Charles, Ray, airbrushed life of, 166
Chekhov, Anton, on internalized slavery, 138
Chirac, Jacques, book-length indictment of, 138
Clark, Dick, grudgingly accepted mortality of, 15; eternal tautness of, 15
Clinton, Hillary, on Grand Theft Auto, 129
Coffin, William Sloane, minister, as hostage emissary, 94-95, 97; CIA background of, 94; as grandstander, 97
Coogan, Jackie, as elderly child star, 178
Cordesman, Anthony, on Iraqi army myopia, 63-64, 66
DeLong, Brad, economist, fiscal-catastrophe projections of, 38
Derrickson, Scott, as Biola grad, 164; as Hellraiser V auteur, 166
Dumont, René, development agronomist, as Castro critic, 123
Duras, Marguerite, lost illusions of, 123
Ensler, Eve, absent Christian analogue of, 168
Express, Marie, prostitute, mysterious death of, 54
Fey, Charles August, as father of the slot machine, 121
Foster, Norman, architect, Kazakh "Palace of Peace" envisioned by, 98
Franks, Tommy, wandering attention of, 66
Freud, Sigmund, quackishness of, 133
Friedman, Bill, gaming analyst, on casino feng shui, 129
Fuentes, Carlos, lost illusions of, 123
Garland, Judy, premature middle age of, 178; Jolsonian dynamism of, 178; as Sinatra de-pantser, 179; troublesome son-in-law of, 179
God, accidental birth of, 105-112; Hollywood following of, 161-168
Grant, Martin, fashion designer, Aussie roots of, 116; grandmother of, 116
Gresham, Douglas, C. S. Lewis stepson, as script supervisor, 162
Guthrie, Stewart, anthropologist, on emperor-free clothes, 111
Hashim, Ahmed, military analyst, on black hole of Iraqi security, 63
Hedaya, Yael, Israeli novelist, grippingly uneventful book of, 133
Hitler, Adolf, destruction of Warsaw and, 46; questionable soul of, 105
Hughes, Howard, smog-free Vegas envisioned by, 157
Jaafari, Ibrahim, Iraqi PM, as marked man, 46
Jensen, Marten, "Doctor of Gambling," on inescapable disadvantages of slot-playing, 124
John Paul II, Darwinian concessions of, 112
Johnson, Samuel, olfactory distaste of, 176
Kadyrov, Akhmad, Chechen rebel leader, as Putin honoree, 52
Karig, Walter, Navy commander, as Nancy Drew author, 32
Karol, K. S., as Nazi survivor, 123; as gulag survivor, 123; idealism of, 123; Cuban disappointments of, 123
Kasparov, Garry Kimovich, as Putin foe, 48-52; liberal bona fides of, 48; ketchup-covered eggs and, 50; as dirty-tricks target, 50
Kerry, John, creationist supporters of, 111
Khomeini, Ruhollah, as Christmas-card recipient, 96, 97
Kirk, James T., future birthplace of, 34; bodily takeover of, 109
Kushner, Tony, absent Christian analogue of, 168
Langer, Susanne K., philosopher, on challenges of Chaos, 106
Lawrence, T. E., as counterinsurgency theorist, 71; soup-eating strategy of, 72
Legato, Frank, gambling analyst, on irreducible impersonality of slot machines, 123
Lincoln, Abraham, clairvoyant dream of, 16
Luft, Sidney, as boxer, 178; as Canadian air-force veteran, 178; as punch line, 179; as "least worst man in Judy Garland's life," 179
Manilow, Barry, as casino greeter, 158
Mansfield, Jayne, plural nature of, 34
Mao Zedong, as earthquake epicenter, 46; as "opportunistic gangster," 118; as anti-hygiene, 118; as pro-torture, 118
Mashkevich, Alexander, oligarch, generosity of, 98, 103-104
Massoud, Ahmad Shah, as romantic-memoir subject, 138
Maticevski, Toni, fashion designer, mom-and-pop operation of, 116
Mattis, Jim, U.S. general, Harrison Ford incarnation of, 64; mayoral expeditionary force proposed by, 64
al-Meshad, Yahya, Iraqi nuclear scientist, covert assassination of, 54
Metrinko, Michael, Iran hostage, refused Christmas dinner of, 97
Miller, Scott, deejay, as sympathy hostage, 92
Minnelli, Liza, farcical decline of, 179
Montana, Tony, video-poker preferences of, 129
Mother Teresa, baked likeness of, 111
Myles, Curtis, monorail wrangler, instant performance reviews of, 160
Nabokov, Vladimir, as Khomeini antagonist, 131; punning of, 134-135; Joycean achievement of, 131-135
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, thwarted missile program of, 56
Nazarbayev, Nursultan, Kazakh president, as exterior decorator, 98; hallowed palm print of, 100; messianic delusions of, 100; shepherd ancestors of, 100; leisure suit of, 102; as man with golden gun, 102; "instinctive plasticity" of, 102; as circusmaster, 104
Newton, Isaac, pitilessness of, 108
Nicolosi, Barbara, former nun, as screenwriting mentor, 161-168
Nobel, Alfred, as second-rate playwright, 15
Olsen, Ashley, grilled-cheese cameo of, 111
Ophelia, superfluity of, 131
Pamuk, Orhan, Turkish novelist, criminalized speech of, 15
Paul, apostle, as heaven skeptic, 112
Pedersen, Kim, monorail mandarin, on People Mover apostasy, 158; on light-rail insanity, 159
Perl, Jed, art critic, on comparative astringencies, 118; Wilsonian virtuosity of, 118
Persinger, Greg, Iran hostage, encyclopedia intake of, 94
Petraeus, Dave, U.S. general, on Iraqi security forces, 63, 71-74; as Lawrence reader, 71; Ph.D. of, 72
Philbin, Regis, as New Year's savior, 15
Pinker, Steven, on limits of self-delusion, 107
Plato, arts policy of, 123
Porter, Michael, economic-development guru, as Kazakh image consultant, 102
Putin, Vladimir, as censor in chief, 51; as hyena-minder, 51
Queen, Richard, Iran hostage, as impromptu librarian, 92
Roach, Stephen, economist, fiscal-catastrophe projections of, 38
Rodriguez, Narciso, as unsung fashion hero, 116
Rumsfeld, Donald, as insurgency skeptic, 68; operational boredom of, 70
Said, Nuri, former Iraqi PM, neologistic lynching of, 46
Schiaparelli, Elsa, as jargon fodder, 116
Schröder, Gerhard, soft touch of, 100
Seacrest, Ryan, tousled hair of, 15; as Dick Clark-in-waiting, 15
Shinawatra, Thaksin, Thai prime minister, empathy of, 15; slightly tawdry mourning techniques of, 15
Shinn, Barbara, Merlot pioneer, subterranean mushrooms and, 171
Sinatra, Frank, as Garland paramour, 179
Singer, Alvy, roller-coaster childhood of, 160
Sklansky, David, gambling theorist, on near unbeatability of the house, 129
Sontag, Susan, lost illusions of, 123
Spielberg, Steven, private jet of, 137
Stegner, Wallace, as Bellow skeptic, 80
Swift, Jonathan, bathroom humor of, 136; dairymaids and, 136; social insecurity of, 138
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, as Lolita source material, 134
Trump, Donald, as slot-machine barker, 122; as state of mind, 128
Verdad, Louis, fashion designer, sexy tweeds of, 115
Volcker, Paul, former Fed head, fiscal-catastrophe projections of, 38
Warren, Earl, scanty footnotes of, 59
Wijnants, Christian, fashion designer, as "knitting genius," 115
Wolfsthal, Jon, weapons analyst, on fussiness of centrifuges, 54-56
Yeltsin, Boris, shrinking liberalism of, 50-51; shrinking popularity of, 50; sub rosa heart problems of, 50
Zhakiyanov, Galymzhan, Kazakh dissident, equine lactation and, 103