Reading The Agony Booth, I was reminded of a period in my life I'd forgotten.

In my sophomore and senior years of high school, I was on Newspaper. Sophomore year was a lot of fun, as the coordinator was a very laid-back (to say the least) teacher who more or less let us run the newpaper according to our own tastes.

Being the cynical, overly-matured, sacrastic teenage turds that we were, it turned into a total social bitchfest/rag for our favorite bands. It was a blast. Until the school came down on us. Maybe it was the endless discussions regarding sex, thinly veiled as opinion pieces. Maybe it was the "He Said She Said" column, which almost always degraded into name-calling or come-ons. Whatever the reason, the director was replaced during my return senior year, by a stern and unsmiling teacher who valued "research" and "fact" above all else. The opinion page was reduced to discussion regarding totally inoffensive "issues," like the poor state of education or violence on television. It was pretty sad.

But during its heyday, there was ever so much fun to be had. I wrote a regular piece for a time. "Lazaro's Bizarros" was a movie review column that took "offbeat" movies along a theme and skewered them gleefully, with a rating of between 1 and 4 stars defined using arbitrary terms. I once had "Movies Shot in and Around Downey," my high school's district, and where I grew up. The time I reviewed "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Clockwork Orange," my ratings were defined as Celebrity Dates--4 Stars, Choose your Favorite Living or Dead Celebrity...1 Star, Dinner with OJ (Don't make him mad).

We thought no one was reading...but apparently, someone was. And they were offended. So that, as they say, was the end of that.