Responding to criticism that she is too thin, Courteney Cox Arquette recently told Movieline: I understand when people say, Well your face gets gaunt, but to get your bottom half the right size, your face might have to be a little gaunt. Yet another target for natural selection.

CARSON DALY STUD? OR CARSON DALY DUD?

Ooooh. Ohhhhh. Hes soooo hot, cooed the girls in between commercial breaks as mega-celebrity Carson Daly signed pieces of paper shoved in his faces, t-shirts, dollar bills, even the occasional hand or arm. I had the fantastic opportunity to visit MTV Studios last Friday with another Crimson Arts editor and sit in on their highest rated show, Total Request Live, (TRL) hosted, of course, by the one, the only, Carson Daly. Theres no denying itno matter how much you loathe the showTotal Request Live is the arena to launch music (the American Bandstand of the 90s). If you crack the countdown, chances are youll show up on the Billboard Hot 100 the next Thursday. Want proof? Remember, TRL was the show that first flaunted Britney Spears assets (all two of them) with the schoolgirl-themed Baby One More Time last December. But TRL once known for having Backstreet Boys at #1, NSync at #2, 98 Degrees at #3 every single dayisnt just bubblegum pop anymore. On Fridays show, Backstreet held #1, but Korn was close behind at #2, and several R&B groups including Destinys Child were close on their heels. The young girls who dominate TRLs audience might even be getting tired of their boybandsthe countdown is showing encouraging signs of diversity.

We got the royal treatment at MTV. Besides getting to be in the audience of a show for which kids compete vehemently for spots, we also had a chance to sit down with Daly and an executive producer of the show to find out why TRL has become such a runaway pop culture juggernaut. Want to hear Carsons opinion of Harvard? Or find out what really makes these teenage girls tick? Well lay out our whole Incredibly True Adventures of A Boy and a Girl in Love...with MTV in a coming issue.

TREND-O-RAMA: POP MACHINES

What luck! I spotted the next big music phenomenon when two girls and two boys took to the stage as the opening act at a recent pop extravaganza. Critics will argue that theyve got itthat vaguely-defined, over-emphasized star quality which makes success inevitable. But Im pretty sure that theyll launch hit after hit because theyve got the five ingredients to be a pop culture phenomenon:

1. They can dance.

2. Theyre blandly attractive. Blond girl with pretty hair. Blond boy with pretty skin. Brunette boy with big muscles. Brunette girl with big lips. The girls fawn, the boys drool. Ooooh, ohhh, theyre soooooo hot.

3. They cant sing. Theyre professional lip-synchers! No live band, no improvisation. Just pure, 100 percent unconcentrated lip-synching straight out of the carton. No potential for mess-ups, no whines from the crowd that the live versions sound different, no need for talent!

4. They arent original. They dont write their own music (Hanson this is not). In fact, they dont even have producers who write songs for them. Get thisthey only sing ABBA tracks! Hooray! Take Dancing Queen or Mama Mia or Super Trouper: Add in some techno beats, throw in a few trills, make a music videoand bam!youre a superstar with an endless catalogue of hits.

5. Theyre 15 years old! Yup, theyre the new Abba Generation (the title of their first album). The teens will eat it up, parents will indulge in the nostalgia, and TRL will have a new countdown mainstay.

The groups called A*Teens (and you thought I was kidding!) and is currently rockingor rather poppingthrough Europe on their oh-so-demanding lip-synching tour. When they make their U.S. debut later this year, expect mass hysteria (t-shirts, lunchboxes, posters, book tie-ins, etc.oh and a deal with Pepsi once the Ricky Martin contract dies a miserable death in the next few months). After all, theyre young, dreamy and entirely unoriginalwhat more could you want?

THE INSIDER

Harvard theater has always been a conundrum. Some plays cause a stir, others disappear without the slightest whisper. To many, the theater community might as well be its own little schooleach semester, these aspriring actors, directors, playwrights and crew members work their asses off to put up 20-25 shows around campus. Crimson Arts been covering student theater for a number of years now (not without its share of controversy, of course), but rarely do we ever get an insiders view on a production. This past semester, we gave you weekly glimpses at the progress of Jesus Christ Superstar, hoping to find out what it takes to bring a production from the page to the stage.

I wanted to go one step furtherand so, I kept my eyes and ears open for anything particularly interesting that might be happening next semester. Randomly, through a friend of a friend of a friend, I got my hands on a play called In Between OClock by Michael Ragozzino 01. I read it in one blast (now if only I could do that with my other reading) Its a wicked little existential story with a fantastic lead role (Mike wrote the play as an independent study with mentor Adrienne Kennedy, award-winning playwright and Harvard professor)and Im entirely curious as to how something so thoughtful on page will effectively reach an audience. Oooooh. Ohhhhhh. The buzz is hot, I thought. I approached Mike and played it cool and casually asked if he needed any help producing the play... And so the saga continuesIm finally on the inside. Lets see what happens... .

SOMANS SHORTS

When I applied to be on The Real World this past summer, I had a single goal in mind. The house, the vacation, the roommates, the new city were all unimportant. I was in it for the clothes. What clothes, you ask? Well, heres my plan (feel free to steal it if you ever get on an MTV show): the moment youre cast, you get on the phone with every major fashion designer in the world. You call Armani, you call Versace, you call DKNY, Polo, Gucci, etc., etc. And you sell yourself, Listen, Im going to be on The Real World. Broadcast as a personality to hundreds of millions of captive viewersviewers who tend to have disposable income and impressionable personalitiesand I want to wear your clothes. Ill be a walking advertisement for you! Ill be a.... Youll look damn good on MTV when you have a different designer outfit on every day. And more importantly, six months laterafter your tortuous sojournyou pack your boxes to send home with six months worth of designer outfits....Jennifer Lopez recently proclaimed that she could sell coffee using my rear-end as a ledge. And shes trying to get respect as an actress?....We sent two writers to cover WWF Smackdown at ringside this past Tuesday. The catch? One was a red-blooded American male, a guy who watches Smackdown each week and knows the wrestlers by name. The other? A girl reporter straight out of boarding school who worried about the possibility of getting soiled by wrestler sweat. Well have full coverage for you in an upcoming issue....And for those of you not titillated by pop culture phenomena, well have you enraptured too: look for a special interview with Jane Campion, director of The Piano and Holy Smoke, in January....Have you ever tried explaining instant replay to somebody who has never heard of it before? My cousin and I tried it the other day when our Indian aunt exclaimed during a football game, What? Whats going on? Didnt that just happen? We tried to explain it, but I realized how impossible it is. She ended the conversation once it started getting hostile: No, no. The same thing doesnt happen twice in India.