Lizard

Louisiana crickets aren't making it to Pennsylvania in time for dinner. The crunchy insects, the diet of choice for pet lizards, are freezing to death en route, say local pet store owners. Last week, for example, not one of the 8,000 crickets survived the low temperatures while being shipped from a Louisiana cricket breeding company to Worldwide Aquarium & Pets in Upper Darby, said manager Tim Flood. "There are a lot of hungry lizards," said Tim McKenna, who owns Pet Paradise in Boothwyn.

Before he wore lipstick in the New York Dolls and got "Hot, Hot, Hot" as Buster Poindexter, David Johansen was a blues hound. "When I was 10, I bought a Lightnin' Hopkins record and I played to it death," said the chameleonic entertainer, 52, who will play this weekend at the Tin Angel in his latest incarnation: David Johansen and the Harry Smiths. "When I was 14, they had this 'hoot night' at the Jewish Community Center. I used to do my [version of] 'House of the Rising Sun.' " In 1971, the Staten Island, N.Y., native cofounded the Dolls, the glamour queens whose fabulously stylized hard rock would shape the punk and hair-metal explosions, and whose repertoire included Sonny Boy Williamson's "Don't Start Me Talking.

It's a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon in summer - a perfect day for swimming and playing ball outside and riding bikes. Or for sitting in a dank and dimly lit basement watching Godzilla movies. Given the choice, there are actually those who would go outside. These people are called normal. The rest of them are Godzilla Geeks, and this week they get the monster of all gifts - the G-Man himself, back on the big screen terrorizing Tokyo, bad dubbing and all. Look out!

Brain researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have uncovered strong evidence of what everybody already knew. In some important respects, men and women don't think alike. They literally use their brains differently. A study of brain use patterns in 61 Philadelphia-area subjects reported in the current issue of Science found a biological basis for long-noted behavioral differences between the sexes - differences such as that, for instance, men are far more prone to violence than women, or that women tend to have a harder time with math.

A couple of years ago, Hollywood caterer Bonnie Belknap got a call from actress Joan Collins. The megastar was having some friends over that night, and Collins ordered some hors d'oeuvres - a little duck pate, smoked salmon and deviled eggs with caviar. Belknap thought nothing of it until later that night when she heard on the news that Collins and husband-to-be Peter Holmes had thrown a small engagement party earlier in the evening and then flew off to Las Vegas to get married.

Professor Scott McRobert calls his current work "quirky. " That word, though, may not adequately describe his study, in which one person reads a Dr. Seuss book to Fido the iguana while another counts how many times Fido bobs his head. (Note: No taxpayer dollars are involved.) This work is not really unusual for McRobert, a professor of biology who spends much of his time surrounded by turtles, fish, frogs and lizards in a laboratory at St. Joseph's University, where he has been a professor for 10 years.

Ever hear the one about Flute the horny horn frog, who every morning at 2 o'clock during mating season would make this whistling sound ("like a kid's sliding flute") hoping to attract a honey? Or about Igor the irrepressible iguana, who escaped from its cage, knocked out the screen in the kitchen window and went squiggling down the alley in search of a partner? Lisa Bryant has. Knows why they did it, too. It's called nature. "You don't just invite them into your house and expect them to stop this mess," explained Bryant.

Buster Poindexter, only child of Beauregard and Beulah Poindexter, was born in Bogalusa, La., in the late 1940s. For the first years of his life, the boy was tended to by his grandmother, Brunhilda. His parents, a song-and-dance team, hadn't time to raise a son: They were itinerant entertainers, and their home was a series of hotel rooms in towns throughout the South. But Buster's mother could bear the separation no longer. She convinced her husband to bring the little scamp with them on the road.

They do double-dutch to '80s club hits. They perform twisty, fast-paced jumping, three people to one slender rope. They jump rope while spinning hula hoops, bouncing on pogo balls and executing gymnastic feats. "Don't try these tricks at home," the announcer's voice booms. "These are professionals. " Then they explode onto the gym floor, a tangle of yellow T-shirts, purple-and-teal ropes, and infectious energy - 12 members of the Jersey Jumpers, a precision team of some of the finest jump-ropers around.

Sometimes the last period is the noisiest in the Lenape High School library. But not this one. For once, something else supplanted high school gossip and hand-holding. Jazz. Live jazz. "If you close your eyes, you'd never guess you were in a high school library," said librarian Sandra Bazar as the sound of music punctuated the silence. The music was courtesy of the Lenape Lounge Lizards. March, it seems, was national Music in Our Schools Month. Missed it? The Lounge Lizards almost did, too. But when your bookings have been limited to school functions, you have to wait until there is an opening in the school calendar.