T. Trent Gegax

IT WAS COMING UP ON CHRISTMAS OF 1994, and Demaris Brinton, 35, was three years from partnership in a top San Francisco law firm. But the fast track was starting to feel like a treadmill.

On the drawing board, it was called the monolithic integrated circuit: an entire miniaturized electrical circuit on a single, fingernail-size wafer of crystalline silicon (silicon, the second most abundant element, is found in many stones and sand).

WHILE JERRY SEINFELD glibly humored ""Larry King Live'' last week, one CNN viewer sat at home, steaming. ""I'm calling to order him to apologize!'' hollered Al Yeganeh, the famed ""Soup Nazi'' who inspired an insta-classic ""Seinfeld'' about the surly proprietor of a takeout brothery.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE Cowboys gone? In a word, rodeos. Along with cowgirls and clowns, they're still roping and riding those bucking broncs. These buckaroos even have their own lingo: Blow a pedal: Lose a stirrup in saddle-bronc ridingHonker: A ferocious, nearly unrideable animalSunfishing: A bronco's maneuver in which it leaps and twists at the same time, exposing its bellyShavin' scar: Any facial injury sustained during competitionDown in the well: When the rider is caught on the inside of a...

SOME FOLKS CALL THEM white trash. But a Texas faction of the Ku Klux Klan would prefer to be white trash collectors. One chapter in Ft. Worth has applied to the state's Adopt-a-Highway anti-litter program.

THE CAPITAL IS A CRUMBLING, MISMANAGED MONEY PIT. Anyone could run the place better, right? Well, step up to SimWashington, the latest spinoff of Maxis Inc.'s SimCity 2000 computer-simulation series.

CHICAGO'S BARS HAVE GONE to the dogs. For years, a pooch on a leash has been popular date-bait on the sidewalks of trendy Chicago neighborhoods like Lincoln Park.

THE HONG KONG HANDOVER has produced myriad changes. Not even the local lexicon was spared: F.I.L.T.H.: Euphemism for Failed in London, Try Hong KongTaihong yen (astronaut): Chinese businessman who commutes between his Hong Kong job and his family tucked away in North AmericaYim hung (red dye): Public Hong Kong companies whose stock issues are gobbled up by mainland China concernsBritish "NO' passport: The British National (Overseas) passport, which allows Chinese nationals to travel freely...

OPERATION GATEKEEPER, the two-year-old crackdown at the California-Baja California border, could be a victim of its own success. Border patrols have been fired upon five times during the past month, and officials suspect frustrated drug lords and would-be immigrants. (Last week authorities questioned a former Mexican police officer, arrested on a weapons charge.) Matters may be even worse than reported.

WHEN IT COMES TO REAL ESTATE, the saying goes, everything is ""location, location, location.'' But La-Van Hawkins's notion of an ideal location is a little unusual.

POLICE SAY TOMMY KOSKOVICH AND Jay Vreeland called five pizzerias in rural Sussex County, N.J., before finding one that would deliver two cheese pies. The first four places either didn't deliver or suspected that the order--for an especially desolate address--was a prank.

BY JERRY ADLER WITH GREGORY BEALS, DANIEL PEDERSEN, DONNA FOOTE, LESLIE KAUFMAN, MATT BAI, BARBARA KESSLER, SEAN WOOD AND BUREAU REPORTSHE HAD, ACCORDING TO EVERYONE who knew him, a beautiful voice, and there were traces of it even in the tapes he made at the end of his life--calm and resonant, a soothing counterpoint to his intense and unblinking gaze.

WITH BARELY FIVE MINUTES left in the game and her team trailing by 14 points, Columbus Quest guard Shannon (Pee Wee) Johnson rebounds, shoots in midair, scores and is knocked to the hardwood by an Atlanta Glory defender.

Inside a beat-up white trailer home in the Nevada desert, Glenn Campbell sits leashed to his desk by a telephone headset. Faxes grind and modems screech while Campbell (no, not that Glen Campbell) runs the one-man government-watchdog station he calls the Area 51 Research Center.

IN "SWINGERS," THE NEWISH INDIE movie about young L.A. lounge lizards on the make, there's a pivotal scene about gender relations that takes place--where else?--in a bar. "You're like this big bear with claws and fangs," a swinging bachelor named Trent tells his nonswinging buddy, Mike. "And she's like this bunny cowering in the corner.

ALEX KLENERT MAY ONLY BE 22, but he's already acquired a taste for the finer things in life. He loves big-band music, a bracing round on the links, all-night card games with the guys.

IS THE MUSIC VIDEO mightier than the pen? Deepak Chopra, megaselling author and sensei to celebrities, aims to find out. Last week the mind-body guru inked a two-record deal -- MTV-style videos and all -- with the fledgling Upaya (Sanskrit for ""positive consciousness'') division of hip-hop label Tommy Boy Records.

Thanks to the Internet, wired citizens won't be able to plead ignorance on the issues this year. A few good sites for political junkies and just plain voters: PoliticsUSA (http://PoliticsUSA.com).

LIKE IT OR NOT, NOBODY HAS YOUR face--which makes it great as a high-security ID. University of Miami engineering students are testing a face-recognition system in their computer lab.

If THE BEST YOU CAN do on Valentine's Day is copy Boyz II Men lyrics into a Hallmark card, then The Cyrano Server (http:// www. nando.net/ toys/ cyrano.html) may be of some help. The site's Mad Lib-style love form letter will give your poetic muse a shove, and the convenient e-mail notification feature will save you a trip to the store.

THE COMPUTER Museum's "Official Computer Bowl Trivia Book" should put know-it-alls in their place. Try your hand at these: 1) In what year did The New York Times switch from hot type to computerized typesetting?2) Which operating system is mentioned in the movie "Jurassic Park"?3) Apple Computer once asked owners of the Apple II to do something unusual to ensure that the integrated circuits inside the computer were securely in their socket.

LAST WEEK Webmasters everywhere protested the president's signing of the Telecommunications Reform Bill-and Protesting its dreaded censorship "decency" provision-by changing the backgrounds of their home pages to solid black. In another form of protest, site managers posted blue ribbons the newly minted symbol of solidarity against Net censorship-on their pages.