Notebook

By Daniel Eisenberg, Jon Goldstein, Tam Gray, Lina Lofaro, Jodie Morse, Michele Orecklin and Alain Sanders

WINNERS & LOSERS

[WINNERS]

PHIL KNIGHT Nike CEO will end child labor and improve factories abroad. Go, Phil--now hike that minimum wage!

LARRY BIRD Coaching honors, play-off wins--does the dream season go on or end with Jordan's wake-up call?

LARRY KING CNN schmooze artist re-ups for a reported $7 mil. Maybe now he can afford a belt

[& LOSERS]

SUHARTO Indonesia's longtime ruler outlasts his popularity. Should've taken a tip from Seinfeld

THE CIA An agency with a $27 billion budget misses a nuclear test that was announced in the paper

STEVE BRILL New mag has to change name from Content to Brill's Content; Hope Brylcreem doesn't carp

INDIA GOES BALLISTIC. WOULD A GROUP HUG HELP?

Last week, after India conducted its nuclear tests, President Clinton, in an unusual approach to policy, explained India's feelings. "They believe that they have been underappreciated in the world as a great power," he said. "And they think one reason may be that they're not an out-front, out-of-the-closet, open nuclear power. Well, I think they've been underappreciated myself." Because the President may be facing this crisis without adequate advice from a celebrity psychologist, we asked Dr. Joyce Brothers to talk to us about a hypothetical work situation in which a colleague feels underappreciated and threatens violence:

Q: Should a violent threat be taken seriously?

No one really knows whether such a person is actually dangerous. You're best off erring on the side of caution. The company should see that this man has therapy.

Q: Would this person be likely to back down after asserting himself?

Expressing anger increases our level of anger. It doesn't decrease it.

Q: Should this person be punished?

Not necessarily punished, but counseled. If this person doesn't want to share with a counselor, then there's a real reason to carefully terminate the person. You don't want to wait until four men in your department are killed to take it seriously.

THE MEN WHO WOULD BE FRANK

Over the years, more than a few promoters have thought, "Hey, here's a good-lookin' kid who can carry a tune; maybe he can be the next Frank Sinatra." More than a few were wrong. Singers could be very talented and still not be Sinatra. Here's how a few measured on Frank's Ring-A-Ding Rating.

PERFORMER COMMENTS RING-A-DING-DINGS (OUT OF 5)

DEAN MARTIN Could sing, could act, but couldn't give a damn. Never picked material with the care Frank did, and never had his ambition.

TONY BENNETT Had, like Frank, a lovely liquid baritone, but not his luck withr arrangers o his appeal to women. Where's his Ava?

SAMMY DAVIS JR. Sounds on some recordings more Frank [3 1/2] than Frank Possibly his lack of an Italian background handicapped him.

VIC DAMONE Certainly had the looks and the voice. You wonder what his career would have been like had rock 'n' roll remained kids' music.

AL MARTINO Frank Lite. Known less for his singing than for playing Johnny Fontaine, the Sinatra-inspired character in The Godfather.

JIMMY ROSELLI Like Frank, a paesan from the old neighborhood. Unlike Frank, he never really reached beyond his fervent ethnic following.

BOBBY DARIN Also a boy crooner who could act. But he died young, before he could show if he had Frank's resilience.

HARRY CONNICK JR. Good looks, good voice, good taste, bad luck to have been born 40 years late.

JOE PISCOPO He could imitate Frank. Frank probably never imitated him. But they were both from New Jersey.

FRANK SINATRA JR. Had the genes but not the genius.

THEN & NOW

Q: How do you evaluate the state of U.S.-Soviet relations in view of the progress toward SALT II and a possible summit?

A: Speaking quite candidly, I will tell you that very often we are hard put even to understand Washington's persistent desire to seek advantages for itself in the disadvantages of others. --Leonid Brezhnev in an exclusive TIME interview, Jan. 22, 1979

ELIZABETH FROM IRELAND: You have wonderful hair... Irish have wonderful hair... Do you have any relatives in Ireland?

BORIS YELTSIN: My hair does not deserve so much attention. I am taking care of my hair. It is just that the women in my family look after me so well. --Online chat, May 12, 1998

KUDOS

NO BULL It's a Rauschenberg, the first Equine Posterior Award from People for the American Way. And the winner is: Rep. Ernest Istook, for pushing an amendment for prayers in public places.

NUMBERS

$5 million: Estimated annual cost for a 10-year program that would identify large asteroids most threatening to earth

$75 million: Budget for Deep Impact, a film about the devastation caused when a comet hits earth

1,186: Number of wiretap requests authorized last year, for a total of 2.5 million intercepted conversations

0: Number of wiretap requests denied by courts last year

3: Number denied since 1987 1: Rank awarded the new Volkswagen Beetle earlier this month in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's list of safest small cars

2: Number of months after its return from a 19-year absence before the Beetle was recalled for wiring problems

22: Number of gold records Frank Sinatra earned in his career

22: Number of gold records the band Kiss has earned in its career, so far

Sources: NASA; Baseline; Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts; AP; Recording Industry Association of America

60-SECOND SYMPOSIUM

While waiting to be scared out of our theater seats when the new-model Godzilla arrives, we asked some horrormeisters to name their favorite movie monster.

Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger: "A triple toss-up: the creature in Fantasia's Night on Bald Mountain sequence, the monster from Forbidden Planet and the adaptive alien in the remake of The Thing."

H.R. Giger, creator of the Aliens and Species creatures: "The most frightening and disturbing creature is the little baby monstrosity in Eraserhead. It's a skinless little sheep's head (like a baby dolly), wrapped like a mummy."

John Romero, creator of Doom and Quake computer games: "The creature in Aliens. There's just so much mystery: Does it rule its home planet, or is it a cockroach in the evolutionary chain of an ancient, superdeveloped world? The sheer terror this monster can cause is overwhelmingly savage."

Sesame Street's Cookie Monster: "My favorite is The Invisible Man, because in great scene Invisible Man eats large bowl of cookies. All you see are cookies. No distractions. Me like that."