Oj

O.J. Brigance remembers the 2001 Super Bowl like it was yesterday, when he charged down the field for the Ravens and collided with a kick returner for the first tackle of the game. Now, everyday activities like eating are as challenging as his old workouts. Picking up a fork these days feels like lifting more than a hundred pounds of weights. Brigance, 38, was diagnosed in May 2007 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, a progressive and fatal disease that shuts down nerve cells responsible for movement.

I can't drink cold orange juice first thing in the morning, but I am curious as to when and where this practice began. Drinking orange juice at breakfast is a peculiarly American custom, one whose story recalls those quintessentially American values: marketing and technological innovation. In his just-published book, Citrus: A History, retired chemistry professor Pierre Laszlo recounts the providential hookup of the California Fruit Growers Exchange (an organization that was later to become Sunkist)

Those who stayed late at HBO's post-Emmys party had the fun of seeing Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa hop onstage with ubiquitous Emmy winner Jeremy Piven and The Flight of the Conchords actor Bret McKenzie. The mayor played a drum set! Although HBO's party had been officially over for 45 minutes, West Hollywood fire marshals allowed the crowd to stay and go crazy for this impromptu performance. Then, very gently, they did their party-pooper stuff and persuaded everybody to go home.

The first time, with the white Bronco and the glove and the bloodied Brentwood mansion walkway, America reeled. The man accused of murder wasn't our O.J. Simpson, the former football hero, occasional Hollywood actor and irresistibly charming rental car pitchman. But this time, as news spread that Simpson had been arrested last weekend and charged in a Las Vegas armed robbery, people weren't only ready for it - they absolutely reveled in it. Though a Los Angeles jury found Simpson not guilty in 1995, the justice system that is the blogosphere in 2007 issued its verdict, swiftly, surely and - more than anything - mercilessly.

Torn by an obligation to make books available to the public and a disgust with profiteering off two vicious murders, bookstores across the country are split on whether to carry the new O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. At the Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, the matter was put to a staff vote. By a margin of 7-6, the staff opted to carry the book. But owner Darielle Linehan decided she didn't want to make any money off the sale of the book, which was published yesterday.

Judith Regan finally found an envelope that even she couldn't push. O.J. Simpson might well have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but the tasteless exploitation of that slaughter reeks of Regan, the editor known as the "culture vulture" for the tabloid publishing style she helped to define. I know. I once got caught in her claws. After I spent months researching a book for Simon & Schuster about a psychiatric malpractice case, Regan returned the manuscript to be rewritten with less emphasis on psychiatry and more on sex. When I protested, she invited me to lunch in New York to explain publishing to the rube from Boston.

LOS ANGELES -- Taking hypothetical to new heights, O.J. Simpson will appear in a two-part TV special this month to reveal "how he would have" killed his ex-wife and her friend 12 years ago "if he were the one responsible," the Fox network said yesterday. In the broadcasts, Simpson, 59, will be grilled in a "no-holds-barred interview" by Judith Regan, the publisher of his new book, If I Did It, which hits shelves Nov. 30. The special, titled O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened, is set to air Nov. 27 and Nov. 29 from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Fox, the network said.

Murder, they wrote. And keep on writing. And the viewing public stays tuned. The original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has been the No.1 show in Nielsen ratings 12 weeks out of the season, followed closely by the increasingly popular Without a Trace and regularly accompanied in the top 20 by the Miami and New York CSI spinoffs, NCIS, Cold Case, Criminal Minds and the Criminal Intent and SVU versions of Law & Order. For the week of ratings ending Feb. 5, skewered by the Super Bowl, whose offerings snagged the top three spots, CSI managed to come in at No. 6, followed by Without a Trace at No. 8, CSI: Miami at No. 9, CSI: NY at No. 11, Criminal Minds at No. 16, Numb3rs in a tie at No. 17, NCIS in a tie at No. 19, followed by a tie of Bones and Close to Home.

After all the live coverage of the trial and endless media post-mortems after the verdict, it seems reasonable to ask whether there are any lessons left to be learned from the trial of O.J. Simpson 10 years later. The answer compellingly delivered by PBS tonight in a Frontline documentary titled The O.J. Verdict is a resounding yes. The lessons are not so much about the trial itself as they are about us - we, the people of the United States - and how our legal system works (or doesn't)

LEGAL HISTORY THE TRIAL: A HISTORY, FROM SOCRATES TO O.J. SIMPSON By Sadakat Kadri. Random House. 480 pages. In 1510, priests in Autun, France, learning that rats were destroying the barley crop, ordered all rats to appear in court. But despite numerous legal proclamations, no rats showed up. Nevertheless, the bishop appointed a brilliant young lawyer, Bartholomew Chassenee, to represent the rats, and Chassenee successfully argued that since the rats were so numerous, it was impossible that they had all received legal notice.