Everything You Wanted to Know About Bucks but Were Afraid to Ask

damnit in the tub.

Lovely, isn't it? And it only gets better, building in a rapturous crescendo to the final stanza, which goes like this:

"Well, then lift up your arms,"

I whispered in his ear,

"and let's swab out those pits."

The Asner quartet is not the first set of celebrity-related poems that Barrelhouse has published. In its second issue -- the latest one is the third -- Barrelhouse published several poems about Patrick Swayze: Tousled forelock stirs / Sultry breeze, bare /chest glistens . . .

Of course, Barrelhouse also publishes poems about love and death and other old-fashioned stuff. But maybe that's a mistake. Maybe the editors should take this thing all the way and become a magazine devoted entirely to poems about celebrities. Isn't that what America needs?

Minority Whip

Aperture, the venerable photography magazine, has published a 12-page gallery of Washington lobbyists. Shot by Neil Selkirk, they are straightforward black-and-white portraits and, if truth be told, they're pretty dull -- pictures of people in business attire staring into the camera. But one photo is a tad different.

It's a portrait of Judy Guerin, lobbyist for the Woodhull Freedom Foundation and Federation, a group "dedicated to affirming sexual freedom." A handsome, middle-aged woman, Guerin is wearing a conservative wrap dress, fishnet stockings and knee-high leather boots as she poses in front of an impressive collection of whips and chains and strange leather goods that look as if they'd be very effective for disciplining naughty congressmen.

Are you listening, Bob Ney?