Michael Douglas

NEW YORK -- To get a glimpse of Madonna, try eating at the Ginger Man, a restaurant about a block from the Material One's Upper West Side apartment.Robert De Niro, Sean Penn and Bill Murray hang out at their own restaurant, the Tribeca Grill, in Lower Manhattan.Kathleen Turner and Lauren Bacall get their hair styled at Elizabeth Arden on Fifth Avenue.But Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver prefer another salon, one operated by Frederic Fekkai, a few blocks away.If time is no problem, try waiting until Jackie O., Paul Newman, Cher, Bill Cosby, Robert Redford or Dolly Parton emerge from their New York domiciles.

SAN FRANCISCO -- More than 2,000 men in American prisons are awaiting execution for one crime or another. By contrast, a mere handful of women are on death row 49, at last count. What is one to make of this disparity? To put the question bluntly: Are women less evil than men, less criminal, less dangerous?A few weeks ago in Illinois, Guinevere Garcia was scheduled to be executed. As a teen-ager, Ms. Garcia had murdered her infant daughter. She was on death row for the murder of her second husband.

Politics aside, "The American President" is a delightful romantic comedy in which boy president meets girl, boy president loses girl and boy president gets girl.But it's so hard to put the politics aside because the movie doesn't want to put the politics aside. The politics are hardly incidental; in fact, in a certain way, they're the point.So let me just state the movie's bias up front and get it out of the way (and get it out of my system!). It is so liberal it will make your gums ache with its sanctimonious syrup of moral superiority, narcissism, sensitivity and sentimentality.

Pre-nup blues for Douglas and Zeta-Jones A row over a potential divorce settlement is rocking the pre-wedding plans of Hollywood couple Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. London's Sun newspaper is reporting that the couple are at odds over how big a slice of Douglas' $224.9 million fortune the Welsh actress would receive if the couple's planned September marriage ended in divorce. The Sun said Douglas, 54, had rejected Zeta-Jones' request for $4.4 million for every year they are married and a home for life if she splits from the actor.

Urban SacrificesAccording to Sen. Robert Dole and others in Congress, there is no longer a need for President Clinton's stimulus package now that the economy has turned the corner.I suggest that Senator Dole turn the corner of Fremont and Harlem Avenues in Baltimore City and look for any visible signs of an economic recovery. I'll save him a trip; there aren't any.The Reagan-Bush era ushered in a period of laissez faire attitudes toward cities at a time when urban areas most needed outside help.

It's an irony far too exquisite and far too subtle for the makers of "Basic Instinct" to have managed on their own, since they manage no other ironies: The homosexual community is outraged at the film for its negative portrayals of lesbian women as ice-pick wielding murderers.What is so odd about this is the movie's distance from anything remotely authentic about homosexual life or culture and the filmmakers' basic lack of interest in it. They can't begin to imagine such a thing and have no clue how to represent it. Their "assault" on homosexuals is clearly a smoke screen; it only disguises the true agenda of the film.

The guy with the big fork wore a Terps polo shirt as red as the sausage he was grilling. His buddy, a retiree in a blue Navy football jersey, stood nearby, hoisting a beer and laughing. The two were gearing up for a game that was supposed to reignite a 105-year football rivalry — by grilling together. "Sometimes you have to be nice to the less fortunate," said Bob Billig, the Maryland fan, when asked why he would tailgate with Navy supporter Steve Rigterink. In the parking lot east of M&T Bank Stadium, where thousands of fans slung Frisbees and footballs, cooked chicken and burgers and hovered near coolers before kickoff, the bright afternoon sun felt more sizzling than any sense of animosity between fan bases that have, at times over the decades, felt something less than affection for each other.

"A Perfect Murder," a sleek, chic re-telling of Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder," is an altogether respectable adaptation, taking one of the master's least compelling suspense movies and giving it a few extra twists and high gloss -- not to mention a couple of extra corpses.In fact, aside from its '90s-style ending -- which replaces psychological finesse with coarse brutality -- "A Perfect Murder" is, in many ways, better than its antecedent.In the 1954 film, Grace Kelly played a wife who has been cheating on her husband (Ray Milland)

The mood Tuesday inside Pickles Pub, across from Camden Yards, matched the gray rainy weather. As noontime regulars ate their lunch and quietly caressed glasses of beer amid the low-key chatter and music playing in the background, something clearly was wrong. Mick Kipp, their favorite bartender, co-worker, cook, spice maker, friend and genuine all-around character, was missing. Michael D. "Mick" Kipp, the stuntman-turned-bartender known for his zest for life and his colorful chili-pepper-decorated kilts, bandannas and earring, died Sunday from cardiac arrest at his Annapolis home.

- Johns Hopkins Hospital's Dr. Ben Carson tested the political waters Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where many said he would be a popular Republican contender for the White House. Carson's speech was met with several standing ovations - with the most enthusiastic applause following a veiled comment about his plans after retiring from Hopkins. And he ranked well in a straw poll, where he was on the ballot against nearly two dozen of the nation's most prominent conservative voices.