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Nothing Personal
Bill Bradley: Achingly funny and profound
Dish-lovin' gal stumped by stilted Stepford candidate. Plus: More proof there is no God: Survey shows the Donald nearly in a dead heat with Mini-Bush.
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My Lunch With
Paul Auster
The author of the recent novel "Timbuktu" and the screenplays for "Smoke" and "Blue in the Face" discusses cynicism, sentimentality, Brooklyn and the strange things he creates.
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[07/23/99]

Nothing Personal
Jar Jar Binks to battle clap in D.C.
Rep. Coburn enlists "Phantom Menace" mob in STD wars; the queen's bowser was a boozer; 1,000-year-old king may be pushin' up pavement. Plus: New! Viagra for geraniums!
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Rogues' Gallery
The Kevlar dictator
Bullets can't touch him. He's impervious to poison. And bombs -- Ha! He laughs at your bombs!
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[07/22/99]

Nothing Personal
End of civilization imminent
Proof that there is no God: Springer may run for Senate; Mary Bono denies bonkin' The Newt. Plus: Mira Sorvino's summer of the flesh-tone panties.
By Amy Reiter
[07/21/99]

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"It's My Party" has become, over the years, a catchy little number about "lightweight" teenage concerns, a temper tantrum you can twist to. But if you really listen, you hear the way Gore conveys how those little, insignificant problems can mean the world. There's something slightly distanced about the way she tells the story: "Oh what a birthday surprise! Judy's wearing his ring," she sings, each word a chilly little Popsicle of sarcasm. She relays the chain of events as they happen, almost with a sportscaster's relish ("Judy and Johnny just walked through the door, like a queen with her king"). No doubt about it: There's a part of her that enjoys the unfolding drama of the situation.

And even so, the immediacy of the chorus hits you like a slap. A world she thought was hers -- for the moment, it's wrapped around a boy -- is drifting away from her on her own dance floor, and her desperation has boiled over into a kind of fever. Gore's declaration -- that she'll cry if she wants to -- is the ultimate battle cry of teenage brattismo, willful and just a little nonsensical. But it also harbors a trace of some very adult sexual jealousy. The moment of reckoning -- the moment you realize you no longer have any hold over the one you love best -- is crystallized in a fragmented phrase that's repeated like a mantra, ending with an accusation that's also, of course, perfectly accurate: You would cry too, if it happened to you.

And that's the appeal of Lesley Gore: She may not have been the most nuanced of the girl-group singers (with whom she's always been categorized even though she's a group of one), but somehow, you knew you could count on her to tell it like it is. When she made "It's My Party," she was just a teenager from Tenafly, N.J., whose demo had caught the attention of Mercury Records president Irving Green. The song was recorded, along with three others, in a studio session in late March 1963, with Mercury A&R chief Quincy Jones at the helm.

Like most monster hits, the story of "It's My Party" is dotted with lucky breaks: For one thing, Gore and Jones had waded through 200 demo numbers before choosing it. Even more miraculously, on the evening of the day Gore had recorded the song, Jones learned that Phil Spector was cutting his own version with the Crystals. Jones rushed the song out to radio stations across the country, and sure enough, Gore heard herself on the radio just a few days later.

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