Real Life

Reality is for people who can't handle the O. J. Simpson trial.Keep your nose to the grindstone at your dreary 9-to-5 job or let your eyes stray to the televised trial and all its glorious tribulations? Cook, clean and otherwise keep your household running or surrender to the intoxicating, time-eating spectacle of the former football player being tried for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman?No contest for the O. J.-obsessed. There are millions out there who have sent ratings skyward for the cable channels Court TV, CNN and E!

Nothing or no one can prepare you for the moment your life will change forever. For me, that moment occurred May 10, 2004 ... about a week after I turned 31 ... a month before I was to be married. I had gone to the emergency room three days before. My gastrointestinal doctor had met me there. I had been having stomach pains, diarrhea and constipation and was throwing up. I'd lost weight and was anemic. I'd been having these symptoms off and on for about six months. My doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Dan in Real Life? Let's hope not. This movie stars a funny guy. It was made by a director whose first film was the wickedly anarchic Pieces of April. The supporting cast includes such reliable names as Dianne Wiest, Emily Blunt and John Mahoney. Dan In Real Life (Touchstone Pictures) Starring Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche. Directed by Peter Hedges. Rated PG-13. Time 98 minutes.

Baseball can have a peculiar hold on men of a certain age. My age. Men who grew up in the 1950s inhaling clouds of infield dirt, the pixie dust of our going-going-gone youth. College also can have a peculiar hold on men of a certain age. My age. Men who pine a bit for the callow-fellow days when they didn't have to deal with mortgage payments or prostate exams. Those two threads of my life intertwine one weekend every summer. It's not exactly Brigadoon, but the convergence speaks to the enduring, sometimes inexplicable, magic of friendship.

I have some advice about real life, and it is this: Escape from it, as often as you can. Who am I to be giving advice? Nobody, really, just a guy who's been in the same career all his life - a career he's grown increasingly disillusioned with; a life that, even without heeding advice, has lasted 54 years so far. I've never been much for advice - giving or taking. But I've noticed that the older we get, the more unsolicited advice we are prone to dispense. In our 50s, 10 percent of what comes out of our mouths is advice; in our 60s, 20 percent; and it doubles every decade.

Because I'm getting married this September, I recently went shopping for a special white dress. Well, mostly white. The one I found was flecked with purple leopard spots, and here and there a zebra stripe struck through the pattern like a lightning bolt. Not every bride needs such a dress, but I did - not for the wedding, but for my bachelorette party, which has always seemed to me to be a pivotal part of the pre-wedding hoopla. Perhaps it's a little more pivotal part than it should be, but then, I sometimes have a tendency to go over the top where celebration is concerned.

Harry Hyper is rocking back and forth in his chair and throwing paper airplanes.Tilly Tattletale is making a note of that, and of everyone else's transgressions in the mock classroom scene acted out by a group of Carroll County assistant principals."

In real life, she is bound to her home by ill health. But in the digital world of Second Life, the woman known as Circe Broom has parlayed her gifts as a land speculator into a career as an acclaimed music impresario. A lavishly built avatar with an auburn mane and a heart of gold, Broom presides over several Second Life stages, where jazz, country and classical musicians from around the world perform live through streaming software. Other avatars, draped in glittering jewels and cyber finery, flock to Broom's productions at the Luxor stage, Hummingbird Cafe and Club Egret.

"The Healing," by Gayl Jones. Beacon. 283 pages. $23.Gayl Jones' first novel in 20 years, "The Healing," was, by some accounts, to have been a major literary event. However, two dark clouds hang over it. One is personal, violent and tragic. The other is the literary quality of the book itself.The story begins in the most recent stage of Harlan Truth Eagleton's life as a traveling faith healer. Jones traces that life from the end to beginning, starting with her on the road to a "healing." The reader revisits Harlan's life and the relationships that seemingly accounted for her departure from some of the temptations and distractions of the physical and material world, for more spiritual pursuits.

To wrap up our pre-marital counseling, Sam and I were guided in setting goals for our future. Individually we each set three personal, couple and family goals, then shared them with each other and compared notes. Luckily, our goals were pretty much the same! Our counselor recommended that we keep these goals and every five years go back to reference them and evaluate if we met each or how things changed and adjusted since they were written. From there, she said we could write new goals for the next five years to come, and so on. This idea has lead me on an endless thought over the past few days about what the future holds and how getting married is such a major milestone in life.