Bald as I Wanna Be

Washington Post syndicated columnist Kornheiser assembles another collection of his newspaper pieces in this uneven offering. The book gets off to a creaky start with 10 selections on those hackneyed topics dear to middle-aged humor writers--falling hair, widening waistline, foggy vision. The next section, on home and family life, is something of an improvement, especially an entry on a Thanksgiving weekend with the extended family, which begins as a love fest and ends almost as a shooting war. There is the expected untrainable dog, a son who wants a canoeing adventure and an elderly father who saves everything. In the section titled ""It's a Jungle Out There,"" Kornheiser complains about the commercialization of events by publicizing sponsors' names and offers to sell his own for a modest fee. He hits his stride in the two concluding sections, where he considers celebrities whom he finds sleazy, among them Hugh Grant and Billy Martin, and the Washington scene, about which he is knowledgeable. (Nov.)