Hollywood, to hear some writers tell it, is the place where they take an author's steak tartare and make cheeseburger out of it. Upon seeing the film, they say, the author promptly cuts his throat, bleeding to death in a pool of money.

The convention is the voice, the bone and the sinews of a political party-and sometimes it even nominates an Abraham Lincoln.

No other city in the U.S. can divest the visitor of so much money with so little enthusiasm. In Dallas, they take away with gusto; in New Orleans, with a bow; in San Francisco, with a wink and a grin. In New York, you're lucky if you get a grunt.

Finally it has penetrated my thick skull. This life-this moment-is no dress rehearsal. This is it.

Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation.

To start with, there's the alien accent. "Tree" is the number between two and four. "Jeintz" is the name of the New York professional football team. A "fit" is a bottle measuring seven ounces less than a quart. This exotic tongue has no relationship to any of the approved languages at the United Nations, and is only slightly less difficult to master than Urdu.

Never give up. For fifty years they said the horse was through. Now look at him - a status symbol.