Just got back from the land of milk and honey, L.A. of course ... where everyone is watching The Secret. This is a DVD that basically says you can get anything you want out of life (wealth, happiness, health, cure cancer etc etc) merely by thinking about it. In other words, it's SO L.A. There seem to be three main points of view about this. 1) The Natural View. It's cheesy, icky, tacky; there is no reason to be so quantitative/schemy about things that should come naturally. 2) The Practical View. You want to play tennis, you get tennis lessons. You want to be a lawyer, you study for and pass the bar. You want to get what you want out of life--money, happiness, love, whatever---why should that be any different? Focus on it, get it. 3) The Placebo View. If it works, or might work, why not? Many people have been helped by self-help, foremost among them the people who sell the DVD's, which go in some cases for $99 a pop.

Secret places are all the rage. It started, in my life anyway, with Milk and Honey, where you can actually get a well-conceived, ably executed cocktail. And the straws. I would drink anything out of those straws ... milk, apple juice, whatever. Then there are the not-so-secret, kind of secret, sort of not secret places, a bunch of which were written up in the Times this weekend. It's a great fun piece. But if the age of the velvet rope is dead, as recently alleged in the Voice, what will the next economic model be? Clubs have to stay in business somehow. It's one thing to shout save the music, quite another to come up with a way for the big club owners to pay their rent. If you can come up with an alternative to selling Grey Goose for $400, you might have a future in this town.

Shamu is back at the top of the Times' most-emailed list. It must be the most emailed Times story of all time. The subject: treating your husband like any other large mammal, to surprising effect. On a similar subject, why would we want to read a book that analyzes women as if they're nothing more than cyborgs (Neil Strauss' The Game). I think it's that the art of the con has returned.. Once there were grifters who mastered the art of manipulating the habits of human nature--lovingly recalled in David Maurer's The Big Con. In a sped-up society, where it is no longer possible for the Sanctimonious Kid or Limehouse Chappie to score by outracing the telegraph or the train, the con is a subtler game, performed by Joe Normals at a bar or in the home.

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If you live in L.A. you will want to be at Dutton's Books-Brentwood Jan. 18 at 7 p.m. (that's this Thursday) for a special, West Coast reading from The Man Time Forgot ... followed by drinks at the Wilshire, yum! They loved it in Cleveland, kids!

If you live in New York, come heckle me at the Yale Club Jan. 23 at 6:30 p.m. But only after cleaning out the open bar, which starts at 6. No jeans or flip-flops, you know how we do. Drop me a line to get on the guest list!