Profiles THE PEOPLE'S JUDGE by E. J. Kahn. PROFILE of Judge Joseph A. Wapner, 66, the judge on the half-hour television show "The People's Court". He can currently be seen by 20 million or so of his fellow-citizens-usually 5 times a week on 162 domestic TV stations, and in 20 foreign countries. He lives near...

Fiction Equal Time by Veronica Geng. In epigraph, writer quotes speech by Ronald Reagan, in which he quotes a statement made by Clare Boothe Luce. Luce told him that each man "'no matter how exalted'" will receive no more than one sentence in history. Writer gives examples, e.g. William Henry Harrison: He was the first occupant...

Fiction Sasquatch Watch by Tim McGinnis. Satirical piece which contains excerpts from the forthcoming "All-American Monster: An Oral Biography of Bigfoot.' Piece consists of quotes of people who knew Bigfoot. Some of the people included are: Mona Rabaz, his former high school girlfriend, who said "he really did have big feet: size-19," a cryptozoologist...

Comment by Lawrence Weschler. Assertions are traditionally judged along a scale sliding from factual to phantasmagorical, the judgement being based on the extent to which they accord with conditions obtaining in the actual world. Untethered assertions, statements with no or hardly any real-world referents, take, on a spooky half-life; they hover like...

Books by Richard Preston.

Around City Hall Loyalties by Andy Logan. Mayor Edward Koch was the speaker at the kind of event that appears on his formal schedule every few days... In this case the event, on Mar. 14, was the annual St. Patrick's Day luncheon of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, held at Antun's catering hall on Springfield Boulevard in...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Theatre LOST CHICAGO by Brendan Gill.

The Talk of the Town Back Then by William McKibben. Talk story about a Seventies event at Danceteria organized by Nancy Rapchak, who spins the platters there. It was called Match Game '86/Seventies Night. She told the writer that everyone is always doing the fifties and the sixties but no one has done the seventies. Present at the event...

The Talk of the Town Transformation by William Franzen. Talk story about Carl Bellavia, who works at the Regency movie theatre at Broadway and Sixty-seventh Street. Mr. Bellavia, a 32-yr.-old Queens resident, moonlights at the Regency several nights a week, and by day is a photographer's assistant. One of his main duties at the theatre is...

Fiction The Moon in the Orange Street Skating Rink by Alice Munro. Sam, a 69 yr. old Canadian widower, visits the town of Gallagher, and recalls the time he spent there in his youth When he and his cousin Edgar were 17, they left their parents' farm and were sent to business college there, and stayed in a boarding house, run by...

The Talk of the Town Hockey by Charles McGrath. Talk story about a letter from a friend about playing hockey. The writer is a transplanted New Englander living in New Jersey. He thought he had left the hockey bug behind almost 20 years ago. He's not sure what changed him but one day last fall he went into Gerry...

Poetry Communion by Mary Stewart Hammond. Lest we think he's gone, our brother...