The mushroom ravioli, however fresh, had too much butter when it appeared recently as a special, and the cavatelli with arugula, shrimp and shiitake mushrooms, another special, was overwhelmed by briny shrimp (although the arugula is deliciously nasty and the roly-poly cavatelli are obviously homemade).

Simper leered like he'd been given per- mission for some deliciously nasty self-indulgence.

As Mama Morton, the proudly corrupt prison matron, Ms. Lewis is as vital and deliciously nasty as she was in 1996, giving the lie to the notion that long runs make stale actors.

This deliciously nasty French deconstruction of male pecking orders, directed by Bernard Rapp, should send a pleasant shiver down the spine of anyone who has ever obsessed about wanting to please a devious and manipulative boss.

The eager undergraduate narrator of Debra Weinstein's deliciously nasty first novel, "Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z.," is thrilled to be allowed into the life of her favorite poet.

She is also a coldblooded fraud, as Annabelle Goldsmith, Z.'s undergraduate assistant and the narrator of Weinstein's deliciously nasty first novel, discovers.

"The Puttermesser Papers" includes a deliciously nasty sendup of a rivalry in Jewish intellectual life featuring two magazines, Motherwit and Shekhina, that are thinly disguised surrogates for the real-life Commentary and Tikhun.

The book also works as a deliciously nasty send-up of those who play, manage, administer and own baseball.

He takes deliciously nasty potshots at his critics and delights in parading as a populist, defending little people from the evildoers everywhere.

The songs are charming, from "I Gotta Crow" and "I'm Flying" to Captain Cook's deliciously nasty little ditties, delivered with outrageous verve by the marvelous Cyril Ritchard.