Wow. Been working my ass off all week, but just took a little break to watch the second half of The Amazing Race. I've always enjoyed that show, but with reservations. This season I just can't get enough. Especially as it gets down to the final teams. Just five left--no easy teams left.

And our gayboy heroes Chip & Reichen almost lost it! God, it was painful to watch. I thought for sure they were gone, but the other teams took the easy (but painful) final Detour on the elephants, and Reichan peddled madly with a bunch of chickens on a bike. First time I ever heard him raise his voice at Chip. (The frustrating part about this show is often there's way too much luck involved. The gayboys got a slow taxi driver, and that screwed them for the whole leg of the race. And the annoying virgins almost lost out over an overheated engine.)

Their final moment was really moving. They knew they had been in last place, had an outside chance of overtaking the models, so they arrived thinking the worst. When Phil told them they ended the leg in fifth place, one higher than elimination, Chip reached his hand up for a high five, but they looked at each other for just a moment and collapsed in each others' arms, squeezed the crap out of each other and just didn't let go.

It's what all the teams do when they come in under the wire, but those boys have been so reserved about any physical contact. You can see them wanting to embrace sometimes, just be their normal selves, but they're always holding back. Some of the teams kiss when they get to the finishline still alive each week, some hug, but these two normally just slap hands. One time before I think they hugged too, but nothing like this. You could hear them breathing on each other--they had been running madly, so they were out of breath--and it was just a sweet, warm embrace. So sad to see them holding back so much. And frankly, I'm not sure why. The other teams seem to like them now, and they're a country mile from acting to affectionate. Maybe they just don't want to play into any stereotypes, so they're being overly cautious. It will be nice when married couples can just completely be themselves.

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Speaking of husbands, I've been single again for over six weeks. Where are all you people lining up fresh prospects. I'm over 40; time is running out.

Details are out from the Kate Hepburn book. That's the AP headline (above).

Lead:

Katharine Hepburn recalls in a new biography-memoir that a drunk Spencer Tracy once hit her and says although she fell for Tracy as if "hit over the head with a cast-iron skillet," she never wanted to marry him.

Later:

Hepburn, who died June 29 at 96 at her home in Old Saybrook, Conn., describes a "fiendish night" at the Beverly Hills Hotel as she tried to put Tracy to bed. "He smacked the back of his hand across her face," Berg writes. "She said he was so drunk she believed he neither knew that he'd done it nor that he'd remember. Dignity prevented her from telling him the next day -- not hers so much as protecting his. She made her separate peace, privately forgiving him but never forgetting.

Oh, here's some bad writing:

"`Did you ever think of walking out,' I asked, our eyes now meeting.

And check this out:

She expressed admiration at various points in conversations with Berg for John Travolta, Sally Field, Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith, but she had "zero tolerance" for Woody Allen films.

"After seeing Julia Roberts in `Mystic Pizza,' she predicted her becoming `the next big movie star,' the first she had `seen in years,"' Berg reports. "Meryl Streep was her least favorite actress on-screen.

Good God! No wonder she demanded silence till she left. Look what abysmal taste she had! I would have been been embarrased too.

The big news: Three-star General John Dallager, who ran the Academy the past three years, is being demoted upon retirement. He'll lose a star, a bit of his pension, and completely lose face among his peer group. (D Post story, RMN story.)

Why it's important: Promotions and demotions are everything in the officer corps. That's about all anybody pays attention to. It's such a precarious career, because there's only one company to work for, and if you do one (big) thing wrong, your career is over.

(Of course there are actually four companies to choose from, but once you're commissioned into the army, navy, air force or marines, you've locked yourself out of the other three. (Though oddly, not just by going to the academy. Dd you know that when you graduate, you're eligible for any service? And maybe half a dozen from each academy change their mind each year, and go, say, from West Point into the navy. Not so great for your career, though. The whole point of going to an academy is to get tight with your whole peer group, especially the ones two to three years above you. They'll be two to three years ahead of you your entire career, because each promotion is governed chiefly by your time in rank. So when you're up for colonel 20 years from now, and general 25 years in the future, it's going to be those same (mostly guys) who were your upperclassmen at the academy who are still going to be deciding on your promotion. And the slots get very, very few by the time you get to general.))

That's how the officer corps works, and that's how the system keeps its members in line: they screw one guy over to scare the shit out of everyone below him.

The AF sort of did that in April, when it sacked the two generals and two colonels (i.e., yanked them all out of their positions, or as they like to say, "relieved them of command.") Actually, nix that "sort of." They did it pretty damn strongly then, but not quite as strongly as they could have. In their world, the first round was actually plenty. I have no doubt the whole corps got the message then. But this move REALLY drives the signal home. For Dallager it's just a disgraceful way to end a career. It's a very small-town club, those generals, and he'll never live it down. (And probably never be asked to comment on the network news garbagecasts.)