Viper

"Knight Rider," move over. NBC rolls out its version of demolition derby at 9 p.m. Sunday with a two-hour premiere of "Viper," a series about yet another crime-fighting sports car and "the three-man vigilante team behind it." This clunker's regular time slot, on Channels 4, 36 and 39, is 8 p.m. Fridays.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it is investigating a rear suspension problem with the Dodge Viper that could cause the car to lose control. The NHTSA disclosed the investigation on Tuesday but has not issued a recall. The probe covers about 2,500 of the high-end sports cars from the 2005 and 2006 model years. The agency said it has received has two complaints in connection with the problem, including one from a doctor from Arkansas who said the failure sent his car into a slide and then up an embankment, causing it to go airborne before landing in the woods.

Chrysler Group, the U.S. automaker run by Italy's Fiat, said it had decided not to sell its Dodge Viper sports-car business. The Detroit plant that makes the $91,000 car will continue production, Auburn Hills, Mich.-based Chrysler said. The factory had been slated to close at the end of 2010. U.S. sales of the Viper fell 48% to 309 in this year's first half. The two-seat car, which began sales in 1992 and features a V-10 engine, is more than twice as expensive as any other Chrysler model.

Don't say Ralph Gilles isn't competitive. Gilles is the head of Chrysler's SRT division -- the brand that recently introduced the all-new 640-horsepower Viper sports car. Shortly after the Viper was introduced, Motor Trend took it to Laguna Seca racetrack in Monterey for a head-to-head comparison with a rival 2013 Chevy Corvette ZR1. The Corvette beat the Viper and set a course record -- one previously held by an older Viper. Gilles was not pleased. After all, the Viper just got redesigned.

Six Flags Magic Mountain is expected to add a terrain-hugging launched roller coaster in 2013 featuring the world's tallest loop, according to an employee who wasn't authorized to speak on behalf of the amusement park. A Magic Mountain mechanic inadvertently revealed closely guarded facts about the record-setting  attraction while casually talking with a group of coaster enthusiasts during the recent West Coast Bash event at the Valencia amusement park. Details of the conversation quickly appeared on the Theme Park Review  website and rapidly spread through the online coaster community.

When William Haast goes to his office each morning, 1,000 deadly snakes await him. By his count, he has given hundreds of thousands of snakes at least 2 million chances to kill him in the last 40 years. One, a Pakistani viper, nearly succeeded a few weeks ago when it sprang from its gold-painted box cage and bit Haast on the left thumb. Within 24 hours he was near death, and efforts to save his life created a stir in Iran and at the White House as his friends searched the globe for a serum.

Motivation and exercise? An impossibility, you say. Not according to several Life & Style staffers who offer their secrets to what gets--and keeps--them going. * When I tell people that I rise each day well before dawn to go to the gym to sweat like a farm animal, I invariably get that squinty-eyed, cocked-head look that says, "You are more than insane." Maybe. But it sure beats the alternative--10 years ago I weighed close to 200 pounds, had constant headaches and was always tired.

Maybe we can blame snakes for our wrinkles. After all, as the story goes, it was a snake that tempted Eve, getting her expelled from Eden and doomed to a mortal life filled with fine lines and wrinkles. So isn't it about time that the slithering serpent made amends? More than a half-dozen skin-care companies think so, incorporating a synthetic venom into their formulations to help diminish signs of aging. The products sprang from an "aha!"

The Viper militia as well as other lunatic fringe organizations have said they are preparing for a war with the United States government (July 3). At first blush I was tempted to say, "OK, they want a war, let's give it to them." But that would be self-defeating. The self-styled defenders of the American way would only last a few minutes, a flash in the pan, against the armed forces of the government they despise. They would gain martyrdom and only add to the inflammatory rhetoric of others of like mind.

In reviewing Peter Kurth's "American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson" (Aug. 19), Chris Goodrich writes: "Her eclipse is due in some measure to her conclusion--following an interview with Hitler in the mid-'30s--that he would never come to power." Is this a gaffe on the part of Kurth or Goodrich? As we all know, Hitler was already firmly in power by January/February/March 1933. Whatever, the fact is that Thompson's star dimmed not just because of one wrong prediction but because as the years passed she lost all semblance of objectivity regarding both world events and personal contacts.

Chrysler is recalling some model year 2003 and 2004 Dodge Viper sports cars because of an air bag defect that may cause them to deploy unexpectedly while driving. The Dodge Vipers were manufactured from Nov. 1, 2001, through June 30, 2004. The recall involves more than 3,600 cars. Chrysler says that a component in the air bag control module may fail, causing the front air bags to deploy inadvertently while the car is being driven. The same problem may also activate the car's seat belt pretensioners.

Lest you worry that auto shows were only focusing on the latest lean and green offerings from automakers, Chrysler Group used the 2012 New York International Auto Show to unveil the all-new SRT Viper. Although it's no longer under the Dodge nameplate and instead falls under the SRT brand responsible for performance variants of several Chrysler products, this 2013 Viper picks right up where its predecessor left off two years ago. It's powered by an all-aluminum, 8.4-liter V-10 that produces 640 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque.

Six Flags Magic Mountain is expected to add a terrain hugging launched roller coaster in 2013 featuring the world's tallest loop, according to an employee who wasn't authorized to speak on behalf of the amusement park. A Magic Mountain mechanic inadvertently revealed closely guarded facts about the record-setting 2013 attraction while casually talking with a group of coaster enthusiasts during the recent West Coast Bash event at the Valencia amusement park. Details of the conversation quickly appeared on the Theme Park Review website and rapidly spread through the online coaster community.

This is a rare chance to hear alt-country's original siren, Lucinda Williams, in the intimate confines of the Viper Room. Best know for her early album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," she's stayed the foremost documentarian of the ravages of booze, drugs and heartbreak atop unerring modern folk-rock. Viper Room, 8852 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. 9:45 p.m. Fri. $100. viperroom.com

Chrysler Group, the U.S. automaker run by Italy's Fiat, said it had decided not to sell its Dodge Viper sports-car business. The Detroit plant that makes the $91,000 car will continue production, Auburn Hills, Mich.-based Chrysler said. The factory had been slated to close at the end of 2010. U.S. sales of the Viper fell 48% to 309 in this year's first half. The two-seat car, which began sales in 1992 and features a V-10 engine, is more than twice as expensive as any other Chrysler model.

It takes a special kind of singer-songwriter to find pathos in a party-punk song titled "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked." The raven-haired, kohl-eyed Norwegian singer-songwriter Ida Maria and her three-piece band left Tuesday's crowd of adoring indie boys at her Viper Room show ready to go home and bite holes in their turntables, true.

MASON, Ohio -- With 14 roller coasters, Kings Island ranks just behind North America's coaster capitals: California's Six Flags Magic Mountain (17), Ontario's Canada's Wonderland (16) and Ohio's Cedar Point (15). Photos: Top 10 Kings Island roller coasters Kings Island, just outside Cincinnati, traces its history to Ohio's Coney Island park, which dates to 1867 as one of the oldest amusement parks in the United States. Many of Coney Island's rides -- including Scrambler, Dodgem and Monster -- were relocated to Kings Island when the 364-acre theme park opened in 1972.

For the Viper Room's new owner, Harry Morton, the path to the future at the Sunset Strip club runs through the past. No, onetime co-owner Johnny Depp is not coming back, but an act Depp brought to the club in the 1990s via his friend Christina Applegate will: the Pussycat Dolls. The burlesque-inspired troupe, not to be confused with the pop group of the same name, is effectively taking over the recently remodeled club every Friday and Saturday night for a year starting this weekend.