• March 10, 1997
• Vol. 47
• No. 9

Picks and Pans Main: Bytes

Talking With...

Three years ago, Karen-Kristie Doyle was living the jet-set life of a model, strutting Parisian runways for such designers as Prada and Vivienne Westwood—and hating it. Subsisting on 800 calories a day, Doyle got burned out. "I was blonde...my eyebrows were shaved; I weighed 114 pounds," recalls the 5'10½" natural brunette. "I looked in the mirror and said, 'This is not where I want to go.' " After taking a break to first learn, then teach yoga, Doyle, now a fit 150 pounds, is back in the business—dispensing advice to wannabe models on the Style Channel, an area of America Online that draws a million visits a month. Using her nickname KK, Doyle ventured onto the service last June and started informally answering questions about modeling in the Style Channel's discussion groups. "My first AOL bill," she says, "was something like 700 bucks." Fortunately, in October AOL saw the following Doyle had developed—she was receiving up to 400 e-mail messages a day—and hired her as director of Virtual Agency, a site within the Style Channel. Logging on from her laptop in New York City, Doyle shares her wisdom on AOL's bulletin boards and hosts chat sessions every Sunday and Wednesday at 9 p.m. While she still takes occasional modeling gigs—her legs currently grace packages of Donna Karan hosiery—the Oklahoma native spends more time gently counseling young surfers convinced they must be the next Cindy Crawford. "All these letters I get are from 5'2" girls from Ohio. Agencies are looking for girls that are 5'11" and weigh 114," she says. "I don't want to break anyone's dreams. Dreams are important...but I just try and redirect them."

It's Barbie Fashion Designer for the Martha Stewart set! The CD-ROM Picture This Home! Kitchen lets users visualize every aspect of a remodeled kitchen, from the location of a dishwasher to the color of the countertops. Drawing on the included catalogs of such name brands as General Electric and Dutch Boy Paints, the disc makes it easy to plan and price your dream cookery. Kitchen (a Bath disc is on the way) is the first consumer venture from Autodesk, the biggest maker of design software for professional architects and engineers. The technological savvy shows—pick a shiny Sub-Zero fridge and watch how it reflects sunlight onto, say, an oak parquet floor. Though the $50 program's controls take some time to figure out, they are a breeze compared to the headache (and legwork) of real-world shopping. Just don't try for that '70s look—nothing seems to come in avocado anymore.

>Rob Schneider

SHOOTING FROM THE LIP

In movies like Judge Dredd and Demolition Man, Rob Schneider (now seen on NBC's Men Behaving Badly) has played irritating sidekicks. In the new live-action CD-ROM game A Fork in the Tale, Schneider's smarmy schlemiel (or at least his voice) takes a starring role. The player chooses from among 5,000 lines of wiseacre repartee recorded by Schneider and some comedian pals to outwit B-movie baddies like bikinied huntresses and marauding apes. "Some of the jokes are pretty stupid," Schneider admits, "but they make me laugh."

Was it fun to be the hero for once?

It's a lot of responsibility being Everyman, but I like that description of me. He gets burned to death, he gets buried alive, he gets chased, men beat him up, women beat him up. Everyman turns out to be a coward and a smart-ass.

Was it tough to make?

It was like doing five movies...it's a massive number of jokes. They kept us in a little tiny sound booth for 12 hours a day...well, 10. And there was a lot of food.

In real life, are you geek or chic?

I lean to the chic side, but I'm secretly a geek. I spent a lot of my youth playing Ms. Pac-Man.

• Contributors:
• Maria Speidel,
• Samantha Miller.