White Asparagus. D. R. Belz

healthcare debate raging across America has inspired new levels of caution among doctors and medical researchers, who are worried that a) people might not have enough on their minds, and b) if true health care reform arrives, the medical profession may not have much to do anymore. So as the serious business of research into the ills of smoking and its effects continues, we’ll no doubt continue to see dramatic improvements in the abilities of medical science to identify these silent environmental killers in our midst:

      Fourth-hand Smoke: This is the contamination you receive if you are still storing the cremated ashes from your Great Aunt Wilma who died of lung cancer from smoking thirteen years ago. She was a grand old dame, but she sure could put away those coffin nails. And she was none too diligent about her personal hygiene, either. So yes, doctors say: Keep that urn locked up in the closet and not right out on the mantelpiece where the toxic substances might leech out into the air and onto your children’s cereal.

      Fifth-hand Smoke: These are the chemicals your child ingests if you simply imagine a cigarette burning in an ashtray in a smoking car on a train outside of Philadelphia in 1978. You remember, back before you even had kids. You can see it now, can’t you? Hmmm, take a good long whiff! That’s fine quality tobacco, right? You sure do miss that, don’t you? You did a lot of things before you had kids. Get over it. Recovered memory can be hazardous to your health!

      Sixth-hand Smoke: These are the toxins your kids get a heavy dose of if someone just tells you they saw someone else smoking somewhere. It doesn’t even have to be someone who’s describing it very well. And the person smoking it might be in a hurry, standing outside a high-rise apartment building or something. Keep your kids away—and safe—when the person telling you about the person smoking really gets down to the nitty-gritty.

      Seventh-hand Smoke: This is the critically dangerous level of smoke-related contaminants your family receives if you have a dream about someone smoking near your house. It’s smoke residue from your subconscious mind, so remember to open the windows and turn on the fan when you wake up, for Pete’s sake! Break out the Lysol and wet naps.

      Eighth-hand Smoke: This is the dose of radiation your infant will receive if you were to hum “On Top of Old Smokey” in the shower. Even if you have the vent-fan on, the chemical pollution from this song is highly toxic to little ones. Beware!

      Ninth-hand Smoke: This is the level of chemical jostling your loved ones receive if you handle or (God forbid) actually play a CD of Smokey Robinson’s greatest hits. Okay, it is a great collection, but what’s more important? Your family’s health or a funky stroll down memory lane with one of Motown’s greats? And don’t try to sneak by using headphones either! The smoke in your soul will still seep into your kids’ brains. Playing the album on an iPod only concentrates the contamination.

      Tenth-hand Smoke: This is the disturbing level of exposure you bring into your home every time you watch Casablanca. Particularly insidious, this contamination reaches its highest concentration when Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains walk off into the fog at the end. And that fog? That’s toxic, too, so keep the kiddies way clear of the Blu-Ray!

      One last time now: smoking kills. What more evidence do parents like you need? Why put your kids in jeopardy needlessly? Be on the alert for these additional levels of toxic chemical pollution from cigarettes. Your child’s imaginary friend’s life might depend on it.

      Tutor to the Stars

      That morning my wife left me for a Hollywood star. She’d been doing this for some time. She said she’d be back later that afternoon. And I was wondering why I put her up to it.

      The Hollywood star was involved in homicide.

      “Be careful,” I said when the affair started.

      “He’s only 13,” she said. Besides, she reminded me, he didn’t really commit a homicide. He was an actor in the TV show Homicide, which debuted that Sunday after the Super Bowl. The Barry Levinson Homicide. I said I’d be watching for the kid my wife tutored, to see if he blew any lines or anything.

      My wife said he was very polished, that he was a good student and liked his regular school back in New York. She said his mother came to the set with him in Fells Point and was very protective.

      “That’s good,” I said.

      As a writer, one of my habits is to read the daily newspaper cover to cover, searching for interesting or bizarre stories, tidbits to spin off into plots and articles. The other people who do this are the ones who play the ponies.

      It all started when I spotted an ad for a tutor. My wife was a foreign language tutor at the time, so I clipped the ad and taped it to the refrigerator door. She called the New York telephone number and talked to a company that set up tutoring services for children when they toured the country shooting movies and TV series, performing on stage and training for athletic competition.

      My wife commuted to the Homicide set in Fells Point in the morning, and when the kid actor wasn’t on the set, he was “in school” with tutors the New York company had hired. The actors’ union regulations stipulated a certain amount of time each day the kid stars had to be embraced in the bosom of academe.

      That evening, my wife said that as soon as her feet hit the ground from the car, she was escorted everywhere she went by someone with a headset. When she was tutoring the young star, this assistant to the assistant to the assistant director hovered anxiously nearby.

      I tried to sound as if I were a party to this new-found glamour, a co-conspirator.

      “I’ll bet you eat very well,” I told her before the first day. “That’s the thing about movie sets. They always get great caterers.”

      I knew this because I used to write television commercials and got to sit around and yuk it up on the sets as the commercials were filmed. Food, it seemed, was something just short of a fetish for the production crews. This is probably because shooting commercial film consists of seconds of extremely tense work juxtaposed against hours of mind-numbing tedium. Eating takes the edge off.

      That evening, my wife acknowledged that there had been much grazing in Fells Point. “It was amazing. I could basically get whatever I wanted to eat.”

      “Did you see anybody famous? Did you get to meet Barry Levinson?”

      “No, but a nice, young man did come up and welcome me to the set. It turned out he is the series director.”

      “Did you get a chance to talk to Ned Beatty?”

      “Who’s Ned Beatty?” My wife spent the better part of her childhood in foreign countries, so sometimes she doesn’t recognize icons of popular American culture like Ned Beatty (“Hear My Song,” “Deliverance”). She can, however, regale you with interesting details about Diana of Great Britain and Caroline of Monaco. She can tell you their brand of underarm deodorant.

      Later, watching TV, we saw a program with Ned Beatty in it.

      “That’s Ned Beatty,” I said.

      “Oh, yes. He speaks to me all the time. He’s very nice.”

      “Yeah, well, he’s famous,” I said.

      “Daniel Baldwin speaks to me, too,” she said.

      Then it was my turn to be ignorant of the famous.

      “I don’t know him,” I said.

      “He’s Alec and William’s brother. He’s very friendly.”

      “What’s this Daniel Baldwin got that I ain’t got?”

      “A hit TV series,” she said.

      From then on, I started to curb the urge to clip from the newspaper—unless it’s for the ponies.

      The Caveman Diet

      Recent studies by medical researchers say that the best way to prolong our lives is to restrict