Ego

SATURDAY, 8 a.m. My head throbbed. "What did you do last night? What did you do last night? What did you do last night?," chanted the hamsters running on the wheel in my brain. You guessed it. A hangover. But this wasn't your average too-many-Chardonnays-at-the-Joneses hangover. This was an ego hangover. Ego hangover? You know, that yucky feeling that comes after you get blind drunk on the sound of your own voice. Well, maybe you don't know. So let me tell you how I came to be in this pickle.

In statements following his dismissal from the Statue of Liberty restoration commission, Lee Iacocca showed himself to be possessed of an ego without bounds. He obviously believes that schoolchildren who send their nickels to restore Miss Liberty did so because of his involvement. The love expressed for the statue by millions of Americans who contributed to this grand effort should not be sullied by the involvement of carnival barkers and pitch men. Lee Iacocca is expendable - the love is not. Stanley M. Najdzin Bensalem.

Mary Tyler Moore and Lynn Redgrave in "Sweet Sue," a new play by A. R. Gurney Jr. Directed by John Tillinger, set by Santo Loquasto, costumes by Jess Goldstein, lighting by Ken Billington. Presented by Arthur Whitelaw, Dick Button and Byron Goldman at the Music Box Theater, 239 W. 45th St., New York. Forty years ago, the subject matter of "Sweet Sue" would have been scandalous. Today, who cares? The shock value of an older woman lusting after a post-pubescent youth - in the case at hand, her son's college roommate - was blunted for all time by "The Graduate" and buried subsequently in the tomb of The Old Morality.

Greg Norman's ego got the best of him, and it might have cost him the Masters championship. The Australian, known as the "Great White Shark," got hungry at a crucial point yesterday and opened the way for Jack Nicklaus. Norman was the leader when the day began, stumbled midway through, but came on strong in the pressure-packed finish with four straight birdies to grab a share of the lead. All he needed on the final hole was a par to face Nicklaus in a sudden-death playoff.

Luckily for 76ers power forward Elton Brand, he said he doesn't have an ego. He said he did in his younger playing days - he's 29 now - but no longer. If he did have an ego, it might have been tough watching the team he was supposed to anchor soar through the roof without him. Today, Brand says he is about winning. And, lately, Brand has watched a lot of winning: While he sat for 16 games with a dislocated right shoulder, the Sixers, after a 1-4 West Coast swing, went on a seven-game winning streak and finished 9-7. Brand, who signed in July for $80 million over five years, hasn't played in a game since Dec. 17. Before his injury, the Sixers were 11-14; Brand was averaging 15.9 points and 9.8 rebounds a game.

The constant pats on the back, the endless attention, the pile of awards - Cherrise Graham could live a happy life without them. Really. Which makes Archbishop Carroll's Graham, The Inquirer's Main Line and Delaware County girls' basketball player of the year, somewhat of an athletic rarity. She is the star athlete without the attitude; the athlete with the type of personality that makes friends, coaches and acquaintances gush over her. "That's the last thing [a big ego]

More years ago than I like to admit, I worked on Capitol Hill, thus gaining the opportunity for a close look at the U.S. House of Representatives. It was a fascinating study in diversity. There were huge people like Tip O'Neill and Rogers Morton and petite people like Carl Albert and Shirley Chisholm. There were theatrical people like Dan Flood and Roger Zion and shy people like Bill Barrett and Bob Nix. There were patricians like Peter Frelinghuysen, blue-collar guys like Earl Landgrebe and country boys like Carl Perkins.

THE WORLD is full of people whose egos are bigger than their accomplishments, but we don't know of a city with a higher per capital number of puffed-up chests than Washington, D.C. - especially at 545 Seventh Street SE, otherwise known as the U.S. Capitol. Yet, what inflates must also deflate, and this week we're witnessing the air going out of two of the biggest gas-bags in Washington. First, on the Republican side, is the retreat and surrender of former House Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay.

"What we need now is someone who will really discipline us, someone to show us who's boss. " This remark was made a few days ago by a member of a West Coast orchestra in a conversation about the merits of the group's new music director. It's not the kind of statement that many orchestra players would admit making, nor the sort of thought that many listeners might expect musicians to have. The concert stage isn't generally regarded as an arena for power struggles. Musicians look like a fairly genial lot, after all, especially when they're performing.

Bruce Willis shoots into the hotel suite like a blue-eyed bullet, head shaved, T white, jeans pale as his orbs. The wiry actor is trim, more like a spokesmodel for the imaginary health supplement Diet Hard than an aging action hero flogging a movie franchise last seen during Clinton's first term. After an absence of 12 years, Willis' alter ego John McClane returns to theaters Wednesday in Live Free or Die Hard - or Die Hard 4.0 , as it's called in Europe. Willis, 52, reprises the role of the battle-scarred NYPD detective who shoots from the hip and the lip, this time taking aim at cyberterrorists.

Sometimes you pick 'em right, and sometimes you don't. This was one of my don'ts. I chose EgoPo's The Life (and Death) of Harry Houdini as one of my three PIFA recommendations in Friday's Weekend section. Although I wasn't naive enough to expect a real magic show on stage, I did expect some stage magic, and not a dramatized Wikipedia biography of the world's most famous escape artist. Created/written/directed by Brenna Geffers (who has repeatedly proved herself an excellent director and who should stick to that)

As summer becomes autumn, Dito van Reigersberg's fancy turns to frivolity. For the avant-garde performer, that means two things: his Pig Iron Theatre Company's starring role in September's Live Arts Festival, with its new show Zero Cost House , and his musical drag persona Martha Graham Cracker's celebration of her (or is it his?) seventh anniversary of glitz and surprisingly soulful song. After calling Zero Cost House a "beautiful puzzle" about how one's past self and present self meet, van Reigersberg focuses on the marvelous Martha and how, after seven years of a low life in high heels, he keeps that character's experimental edge.

The frightening Jewish folkloric notion of a malevolent "dybbuk" draws that name from the Hebrew word for attachment — which is exactly what a dybbuk is. It's the lost soul of a dead person that for various reasons is doomed to wander and that can attach itself to a living person. The classic drama The Dybbuk was written in Russian in 1917 by S. Ansky, and it has had its own transformations. A Dybbuk, a 1995 stage version by American playwright Tony Kushner, has never been produced professionally in Philadelphia until now. It's being done by Ego Po Classic Theater in a way that salutes the story — the production bows to the melodrama inherent in this tale (or any tale)

Brace yourself. OK, now unbrace yourself. Unnamed Source, who gets around, tells Us Weekly that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, who revealed their romancelet only a scant month ago, are getting "serious. " Ego plus ego equals eek! They're talking "getting rings," it says here. (What, we're on a merry-go-round now?) This is not really a story, not a sniff of evidence there's anything at all here, but the faux(?) couple(?) are said to be "talking marriage. " Dizzying, ain't it? A romance that may not be, escalating to an engagement that might be, for a wedding that shouldn't be. Whatever the heck is going on, if KK really wants to become Mrs. KW, first she needs to get her gorgeous, talent-free self divorced from basketballer Kim Humphreys.

The rich stories involving a golem - a fictional Jewish guardian imbued with the dangerous power to protect at all costs - make perfect sense in light of Jewish history. A golem is like a security blanket, but much scarier: It provides comfort but also must fight oppression. The most famous golem story - they are all tales, with golem springing from an ancient Hebrew word that means a shapeless form - is set in 16th-century Prague. In the world-premiere play called The Golem, which Ego Po Classic Theater opened Thursday night with an experienced cast and unwavering sincerity - there's a neat twist.

A federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania Health Secretary Eli Avila alleges that, in a cafe snit over an egg sandwich, he barked, "You don't know who I am. " For my money, Avila's greater offense is presuming a fry cook - or anyone - would care. That's because Avila, a supremely qualified doctor, lawyer, and celebrity look-alike (see Gru, from the animated movie Despicable Me ), toils in state government. In star-blind Pennsylvania, of all places. Avila may fancy himself a public-health rock star, but he's a bureaucrat.

ARIES (March 21-April 19). Your daring mood will be amplified by the opportunities of the day. Your Halloween alter ego: a risk-taker extraordinaire. TAURUS (April 20-May 20). You have a connection to the land and the spirit of the Old West. Your Halloween alter ego: an American Indian, a cowboy or cowgirl, or a country-music star. GEMINI (May 21-June 21). You'll be in an expressive if not rambunctious mood. Your Halloween alter ego: a reality-TV star. CANCER (June 22-July 22)

Former head coach Ray Rhodes called it the "Pro Bowl glide," interspersing the phrase in several places with his favorite adjectival emphasis. Rhodes wasn't right about very much as the Eagles came apart under his guidance, but he could sniff out a team that thought more of its abilities than the evidence on the scoreboard would support. After three straight losses in which the Eagles played well enough to build a lead, then poorly enough to lose it each time, this suddenly looks like that kind of team.

Question: One of my dearest friends has been living abroad for the past three years teaching English. I am so proud of her for all she's accomplished, and so thrilled she's been able to see the world. The problem is, every time she's returned home for summer vacations, I've noticed she thinks a lot more highly of herself, and it's not a healthy sort of confidence so much as a big fat ego. It's "her way or the highway," and I always used to think of her as so easygoing and understanding.

CANASTOTA, N.Y. - Aspiring authors are always urged to "write what you know. " It thus probably made sense for a struggling actor and screenwriter named Sylvester Stallone to crank out a story about a down-on-his-luck boxer who caught lightning in a bottle and proved to the world he wasn't just another bum from the neighborhood. Not that Stallone - who will be inducted here tomorrow afternoon into the International Boxing Hall of Fame (non-participant category) - ever actually boxed, but just like Rocky Balboa, the South Philadelphia pug he created, he was from the wrong side of the SEPTA tracks, so to speak, and on an express line to nowhere.