While we admit to spending much of our time on our knees (court records in several states will verify this), we now find ourselves "down there" for a different reason. Yes, we must offer a mea culpa for the month-plus lateness of this issue of Bright Lights. After years of enslavement in the salt mines of html, java, et al., fabulous talent and famed curmudgeon George Brown had had enough, and said so. So we, that is, I have taken over coding chores and design, based on George's Principles, which might have inspired Joan Crawford's comment on the first (print) issue of Bright Lights from eons past: "Clean, precise, and beautiful!" Heartfelt thanks to George for supreme efforts under fire for the last umpteen years, and for designing 8 of the 24 articles this time and helping your editor stumble through the rest.

Standing now, I'm surveying the contents of the new issue, and am happy to say I believe it's one of our best. BL vet Andrew Grossman ties together special fx, Dawn of the Dead, Walter Benjamin, and a dizzying array of other threads in an ambitious essay on cinema realism. BL stalwart and associate editor Alan Vanneman weighs in with a juicy five articles: a visit to the major silent comics; a farewell to Fred & Ginger in the last of their RKO movies; reviews of Broadway Theatre on DVD (the 1966 Death of a Salesman and four more obscure efforts); and a brief assault on Spider-Man.

Another frequent contributor, Scott Thill (whose Morphizm is an excellent online zine) interviewed Margaret Cho and entered DVD hell with reviews of Larry Clark's Teenage Caveman and 20 Million Years to Earth BL alumni Richard Armstrong and Julian Upton offer, respectively, a tribute to Ida Lupino via The Hitch-hiker and a review of the rarely sighted "good British film": 24-Hour Party People.

Perennial BL-er Bob Castle uses Raising Arizona as a springboard for a discussion of Kubrick, A.I., parenting, and other phenomena. Our pal Matt Kennedy reviews five DVDs from all over the cinematic map. In the book review realm, Julia Leyda takes on Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness, while Dorna Khazeni analyzes Abbas Kiarostami's poetry book and a couple of others on Britain's "saucy cinema" and Hollywood vs. France.

Our siren song was answered by a fabulous new writer this issue. T. L. Putterman resurrects, or perhaps exorcises, Titanic. Meanwhile, between coding chores, yours truly managed to take in a few films and write them up. They include the gaudy doc The Cockettes, Warhol's inimitable, exhausting Chelsea Girls, hourlong French TV docs on Bresson and Chantal Akerman, and a look at the "docs" and the "dicks" of San Francisco's 2002 Queer filmfest.