Attention Kmart Shoppers 8.1

Longtime readers of this magazine will certainly remember an adventurous fellow named Eugene Hasenfus, who caused a tizzy back in 1986 when his plane was shot down over Nicaragua on a gun-running mission to the Contras. Unlike his comrade-in-arms-smuggling Oliver North, Hasenfus has tried to stay out of the limelight since that whole Iran-Contra thing blew over.

But now Hasenfus is making headlines again. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Hasenfus was arrested in July after a Kmart shopper discovered him masturbating in his car in a crowded parking lot in Brookfield, Wisconsin. "The defendant indicated that he knows his conduct was not appropriate, and he is sorry for it," the complaint against him noted. "The defendant denies ever doing this type of conduct in other parking lots."

However, it wasn't Hasenfus' first encounter with the law: In addition to spending 73 days in a Nicaraguan jail back in 1986, he was recently put on probation for two years by Wisconsin authorities after being convicted of drunken driving and misdemeanor battery.

Big House 8.7

Taking the whole reality-TV-game-show concept one step further beyond absurdity,

TERRY LABAN

producers at Britain's Channel 5 have designed a show in which contestants will compete to try to escape from a "jail" northeast of London under the watchful eyes of countless cameras and 31 guards. The first one out will win 100,000 pounds (roughly $143,000), but contestants caught trying to escape more than three times will find themselves locked in solitary confinement. "We have made the jail as realistic as possible, from the daily routine to the food menu," executive producer Sebastian Scott told Reuters.

The show offers a striking contrast to the American version of Big Brother, in which it is the television audience, not the contestants, who feel like they've been locked in prison.

Your Ad Here 9.3

In her new book, with the unfortunate title EVEolution: The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women, longtime trendwatcher Faith Popcorn suggests that advertisers need to develop sneakier ways of reaching female audiences less easily distracted by "overly aggressive" ads than men are. Even Business Week, noting the book's appearance as No. 13 on its business hardcover bestseller list in September, was vaguely appalled by some of her suggestions. Popcorn, the magazine notes, "wants to put ads everywhere--on the underutilized sides of trucks, on U.S. postage stamps, even in parking spaces, [which Popcorn calls] 'the largest and last uncharted territory.' "