Writer knows true story behind tabloid headlines

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PORTLAND, Ore.

You plop your can of pork and beans on the supermarket's checkout belt and move past the tabloids bleating lurid details of the escapades of this or that starlet.

Then, in the world's blackest ink, you see:

"Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent"

or "Bag Lady's B.O. Kills Five People on Bus"

or "Grandma Turns Dog Inside Out Looking for Lost Lottery Ticket"

Who, you may ask, writes this bilge?

For a while it was Tom D'Antoni, a freelance writer and producer of television documentaries.

Mr. D'Antoni says the work wasn't easy and it left a dark mark on him. He also wrote the stories, and, yes, he says, he made up everything. That didn't bother the Florida-based tabloid the Sun, which bought his work in the mid-1980s.

Some of his best (and, he notes, his worst) are detailed in his book "Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent," published by Villard Books.