Welcome Back, Kotter is one of those shows that are actually a lot more painfully bad than you remember—though I have to say that the sight of the DVD unexpectedly popping up in my Amazon cart, and the realization that my wife put it there, made it too delicious to pass up (the disc is now in a player at a friend’s summer beach share, where it shall reside indefinitely). Yet the theme song remains the greatest (especially the remix by Mase), and thus we dedicate it to Maer Roshan and the whole zoo crew at Radar magazine, now approaching its latest reincarnation as a print magazine, preceded by a relaunch of the Web site. Unlike Kotter, Radar is better than I remember it. SMITH wishes Radar a long and fun third life.

Radar, like SMITH, has lots to learn from the off- and online sensation Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post has been one of the great Web success stories since it’s debut last May. Arianna’s MO is all about obsession and passion and promotion—and it works. HuffPo (where a few SMITH editors occasionally blog) continues to expand its reach beyond pure politics with the launch of a new section, Becoming Fearless. Just a week old, it reads so far like a more blogger-powered version of Salon’s Life (b. “Mothers Who Think”), with a bit more of a “you go, Guerilla Girl” vibe. That the section is named after Arianna’s just-published book, Becoming Fearless, is either another brilliant stroke of HuffPo-sitioning or a little over the top. SMITH wangled an invite to her book party tonight in San Francisco, so we’ll have to ask her about this. What we will not ask her is if we look fat in these pants.