Hazing

Two enlisted Marines face potential punishment for allegedly hazing a fellow Marine from California while their battalion was in Afghanistan, according to a report in the Marine Corps Times. Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, 21, of Santa Clara committed suicide within hours of the rough treatment, the newspaper said. Before putting a machine gun to his head, Lew left a note on his arm: "May hate me now, but in the long run this was the right choice. I'm sorry. My mom deserves the truth.

The lockout might not be the only thing that ended in the NFL. Hazing seems to be on the endangered list too. The Dallas Cowboys and Jacksonville Jaguars recently curbed the decades-old practice of veterans' roughing up rookies, setting an apparent trend of limiting the embarrassing incidents involving first-year players. There's a long tradition of rookies being tied to goal posts, singing off-key songs in front of teammates and donning silly costumes at training camp. But is hazing now considered hazardous?

. — An enormous wildfire that forced the evacuation of several mountain communities in eastern Arizona has grown to more than 300 square miles, sending smoke and haze across five states and as far east as Iowa, authorities said. Officials said the blaze has burned nearly 193,000 acres since it started more than a week ago near the White Mountain town of Alpine. Authorities believe an abandoned campfire may have sparked the blaze. The flames have destroyed five buildings but no serious injuries have been reported.

Cal State Bakersfield has been rocked by allegations that four students were repeatedly beaten and shot with a BB gun as part of an initiation to join an unsanctioned fraternity. Bakersfield police began investigating the reports of hazing on April 28, a few days after a 25-year-old student was admitted to a local hospital with severe injuries. Authorities allege that between March 28 and April 25, the hospitalized student and three others were assaulted on numerous occasions, including being shot at close range with a pellet pistol as part of pledging rites with a group claiming affiliation with the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

Whether or not you've ever pledged a fraternity, the process of ritual humiliation known as hazing may seem brutal and unbearable. The new movie "Brotherhood," the debut feature of Will Canon, seems happy to confirm those sentiments. Canon's film takes place in one long, no good, very bad night at a fraternity house at an unnamed college somewhere in the South. Jon Foster (brother of actor Ben Foster) stars as a fraternity brother who is forcing each pledge to rob a convenience store as part of his initiation.

You may have noticed that I've had "the day off" for the last three weeks. That's something of an understatement, since I was actually in the hospital for 11 days, four of which I was intubated and sedated in the intensive care unit. I received two platelet transfusions, one blood transfusion, a spinal tap, three EEGs, three MRIs, two CT scans and round-the-clock infusions of four kinds of antibiotics. I had liver failure, kidney trouble and meningoenchephalitis, a swelling of the brain and the lining around it. I had a breathing tube and a feeding tube.

The Los Angeles Unified School District athletics office distributed an e-mail today to its coaches, instructing them to counsel their athletes about hazing and warning that they could be held responsible for "negative consequences." There have been two hazing incidents involving City Section football teams this season. On Aug. 27, four Granada Hills varsity players allegedly "manhandled and roughed up" a teammate in the locker room, according to Brian Bauer, the school's executive director.

Nine Cal Poly Pomona students have been suspended after an investigation of a March hazing incident, in which a new fraternity member suffered second-degree burns on a third of his body. Another 45 Sigma Phi Epsilon members received probation, a university spokesman said last week. During a fraternity bonfire ceremony in the high desert, a member splashed gas onto the fire for "dramatic effect," injuring the new member, said university spokeswoman Esther Chou. The student, who has not been identified, asked for medical treatment but did not receive it until hours later, she said.

Inherent Vice A Novel Thomas Pynchon Penguin Press: 384 pp., $27.95 -- "Inherent Vice" is Thomas Pynchon doing Raymond Chandler through a Jim Rockford looking glass, starring Cheech Marin (or maybe Tommy Chong). What could easily be mistaken as a paean to 1960s Southern California is also a sly herald of that era's end. This, of course, is exactly the kind of layered meaning that readers expect of Pynchon.