• Don't Deserve to Be Kidnapped: Being arrested for trying to smuggle heroin out of Thailand, for example, will not make you as sympathetic a figure as being kidnapped by extremists in pursuit of truth.
• Make Your Rescue as Dramatic as Possible: David Rohde actually escaped, from a Taliban prison! Ling and Lee were rescued by "Big" Bill Clinton, on an airplane! These are the types of high-profile rescues that make for exciting news stories. Being turned over quietly to a low-level embassy employee after quiet negotiations does little to get your name in the headlines. To the extent you can, keep your situation dramatically charged. If necessary, act as a double agent to make sure the whole thing doesn't go too smoothly.
• Pray For a Slow News Cycle: Ling and Lee were front page news for days—mostly because they had the good fortune to be rescued in the midst of the hot, boring, summer, when reporters will drag out any semi-respectable story as long as possible to fill the gaping news hole. Compare their fate to that of Ezterhas Rocococo, the E! journalist freed by the Tamil Tigers after seven years imprisonment. Why haven't you heard much about his story? Because he was set free on September 11, 2001. And because we made him up.
• Practice Your Humble Homecoming: You can't come back like some raving lunatic who went crazy on the inside. You also can't come back like some huge asshole always being the guy at the reporters' bar saying "Yea that Bloomberg press conference sounds crazy, reminds me of when I was eating bugs with an AK two inches from my ear in a bamboo cage, back in '06." You have to fake being humble. "I just want to get back to work," etc. Patently false, but still.
• Book, TV, Movie: That's the order. The book deal gets you the TV promos and then—hopefully—the movie. So write your book with Angelina Jolie's tastes in mind.
• Get the Fuck Outta Journalism: This is the endgame. What did you think it was? Pulitzer? Do you know how much a Pulitzer pays? Not much, my friend. You have to ride this kidnapping thing all the way up the ladder. Think about it: "From Helpless to Hollywood: My Journey From an Al Quaeda Prison Cell to Hollywood Squares." The next book writes itself.

They had left me with a chipped tooth, bruised ribs and a concussion, and they had snatched my cellphone — enough to support a charge of second-degree robbery. I subsequently discovered that my girlfriend had been pushed to the ground and took a fist to the cheek while trying to break up Round 2. Still, I consider us all very lucky.

Then a curious thing happened. A wave of fashion broke through the sea of blue uniforms and twirling lights.

"Is that Sarah Jessica Parker?" one of the women asked. It was. Seemingly oblivious to the mayhem swirling around them, the "Sex and the City" star and two female friends made their way through the throng of officers and down the street.

The attacker was arrested even though Derry's girlfriend couldn't ID the attackers. Derry goes on to posit that they could recognize ol' SJP but not the kids because we're used to staring at famous faces. Hmm. Though we don't know the race of anyone involved—although we just heard Derry's answering machine message and he sure "sounded" "white" to us, and he does work for the Yankees—we do know that, 1. they were walking by those projects between 9th and 10th Avenue, which are pretty much all-black and 2. to white people, all non-white people look the same and 3. as mentioned, Duffy's girlfriend couldn't ID the suspect in a lineup but no one had any problems identifying a white one-time guest star from "Square Pegs." (No one returned calls, including the police.) Double-hmm! And yes, there was another sighting of a white and famous face in store for them!

My girlfriend and I held hands as we left the precinct house, struggling to make sense of the entire ordeal. As we walked, we saw Lance Bass, the former 'N Sync singer, who had just crossed the street in front of us. I was dumbfounded at how quickly we could recognize him and had recognized Ms. Parker, people familiar to us only from television shows and gossip columns, despite the fact that we were unable to identify someone with whom we shared a physical connection....

[W]hen Mr. Bass walked in front of us, he brought with him an opportunity to close the unique celebrity angle. My girlfriend, who knows all too well of my struggles to be a writer, acknowledged that fact when she said, "That was your literary gift from heaven."

[Image: A.P.]