<row><cell>Los Angeles<cell>9-mm Beretta with 16 rounds; 21-in. aluminum baton with a short side handle for two-handed leverage; small canister of pepper spray
<row><cell>Madrid<cell>Star 9-mm Parbellum pistol
<row><cell>New York<cell>9-mm Glock, SIG-Sauer or Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, currently replacing .38-cal. pistols; plastic or wooden baton; pepper-spray canister
<row><cell>Singapore<cell>.38-cal. Smith & Wesson; 38-cm wooden baton
<row><cell>Tokyo<cell>.38-cal. New Nambu revolver; collapsible aluminum baton, 530 mm when extended
<row><cell>Tombstone City, Arizona<cell>SIG-Sauer .45 semiautomatic pistol; pepper-spray canister; Remington 1187 semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun carried in the car
</table>
</p>
<p>ALWAYS SAY DIE
</p>
<p> Beverly Hills Cop III, opening next week, is said to be "Die
Hard in an amusement park"--one in a series of current Hollywood
projects in various states of gestation that have been described
as Die Hard in one place or another:
</p>
<list>
<item> Arena: Die Hard in a hockey rink
<item> The Dam: Die Hard in a dam
<item> Huddled Masses: Die Hard in the Statue of Liberty
<item> Off the Grid: Die Hard on a Canadian dam
<item> Return to Sender: Die Hard in a post office
<item> The Rig: Die Hard on an oil rig
<item> Rock Bottom: Die Hard in a cave
<item> Speed: Die Hard in a bus
<item> State of the Union: Die Hard in the Capitol building
<item> Strike Zone: Die Hard in Yankee Stadium
<item> Tunnel 3 Down: Die Hard in a New York City sewer
<item> Trackdown: Die Hard in the Chunnel
<item> White House One: Die Hard in the White House
</list>
<p> Sources: The Hollywood Reporter and Silver Pictures
</p>
<p>IT COULD'VE BEEN WORSE
</p>
<p> The networks have announced their fall lineups, with a handful
of new shows chosen from among dozens of contenders. Here are
a few that didn't make the cut:
</p>
<p> COMEDIES
</p>
<p> Double Rush: A ragtag crew of bike messengers in an updated version of Taxi.
</p>
<p> Galaxy Beat: A ragtag crew of intergalactic peacekeepers travels the cosmos
in the year 4049 A.E. (After Elvis).
</p>
<p> Girl's Best Friend: A single woman has a pet dog who suddenly turns into Paul Sand--but only she can hear him talk, and he still looks like a
dog to everyone else.
</p>
<p> Weldon Pond: An animated sheep that used to star in sleeping-pill advertisements
haunts the ad agency that created him.
</p>
<p> DRAMAS
</p>
<p> The First Gentleman: The husband of the first woman President is an ex-cop--one
who can't stop solving crimes.
</p>
<p> Taking Liberty: Set in 1778, this drama claims that the true hero of the American
Revolution was a barmaid named Nell. With David Ogden Stiers
as Ben Franklin.
</p>
<p> The Book: Small-town librarian helps troubled patrons by lending a mystical
book. Executive producer: Brandon Tartikoff.
</p>
<p> Frogmen Retired: Navy seals reunite in civilian life for adventures under the
leadership of O.J. Simpson.
</p>
<p> Source: Betsy Frank, Saatchi and Saatchi
</p>
<p>MONITOR
</p>
<p> 1600 Melrose Place
</p>
<p>By Bruce Handy
</p>
<p> He may not think so. His wife may not think so. But Bill Clinton
has been having a great sweeps month, caught up in scandals,
scrapes and cliff-hangers just like the networks. Unlike the
networks, however, the President may not find this kind of programming
to be good for his ratings.
</p>
<p> Sweeps--as most Americans are no doubt aware in the Entertainment
Tonight, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, E! Entertainment Television era--occur every November, February and May. These are the months
when TV stations receive ratings that will allow them to fix
their advertising rates for the coming months, prompting the
networks to trundle out their most lurid and spectacular offerings.
This May, for instance, ABC has scored with an apocalyptic four-part
mini-series based on Stephen King's The Stand; CBS is airing
a TV movie with the can't-miss title Menendez; Fox inexplicably
wasted its own Menendez movie on the nonsweeps month of April,
but has countered with episodes of some of its most popular
programs in 3-D and scratch-'n'-sniff "Aromavision."
</p>
<p> The White House's offerings this month have been every bit as
attention-getting, beginning with a shocking one-two punch:
the down-to-the-wire vote in the House on the assault-weapons
ban that came on the very same day--No way! shouted millions
of electrified C-SPAN viewers--that Paula Jones' lawyers were
toying with the question of whether or not to file a sexual-harassment
suit against the President. The latter story line was echoed
in the recent two-hour season finale of Melrose Place, a currently
hot nighttime soap that was floundering until old pro Heather
Locklear--a sort of Lloyd Cutler with dark roots--was brought
in to get the show on track.
</p>
<p> The second week of May saw the nation spellbound by the President's
agonized dithering over a Supreme Court nominee, a development
for which there wasn't really a Melrose Place equivalent--unless you count Jake's ping-ponging between sexy, bitchy Amanda
and not-as-sexy, pregnant Jo. But get this: Clinton, his writers
even more shameless than Aaron Spelling's, was torn between
three possible candidates, though the President betrayed a misunderstanding
of basic genre requirements in that none of his picks looked
good in a halter top (still, some people admit to finding Bruce
Babbitt cute in a kind of cheerful, nonthreatening way).
</p>
<p> Here's the latest Clinton plot twist: Can Dan Rostenkowski prod
the big health-care bill through his Ways and Means Committee
before he's indicted on low-rent financial-irregularities charges?
With the fate of the entire presidency allegedly resting on
the shoulders of this unlikely hero, one can only note that
even Melrose Place pays some obeisance to the notion of plausibility.
Still, we all want to see what happens next.
</p>
<p> We didn't use to think of politics in quite these terms--Eisenhower,
surely, would not have appreciated being bound up in a flip
essay with Aromavision (Clinton probably doesn't either, but
one imagines he's grown used to this sort of thing). Thirty-odd
years of expecting Presidents to be adept television performers
and 30-odd years of Presidents' playing to that expectation--the catch in Reagan's voice, the tug on Clinton's lip--have chipped away at our notions of intimacy, dignity and content,
leaving behind a fat appetite for sheer spectacle. Not always
by design, the Clinton Administration is far and away the most
entertaining in recent memory (excepting, of course, its wonky
bits). Nannygate, the $200 haircut, Gore-Perot, Whitewater,
Troopergate, Hillary's commodities trades...we've had a government
in chronic sweeps mode for more than a year.
</p>
<p> Whether all this is good governance is beyond the purview of
this essay--and probably this electorate. The only real question
is (you ask it, we ask it, the White House asks it): Will the
