The Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (Literal translation: "Win one for the Kippur") is about repentance. Though the full explanation is longer, Jews basically spend 25 hours praying and saying we're sorry. It's like a marathon confession. Or as Jon Stewart puts it, we buy everything wholesale.

There are several traditions that go along with the repentance thing. We don't wear leather because it was a sign of affluence, and we're supposed to be humble. We don't eat, so we're not comfortable or lazy and we can concentrate better on our thoughts. (Though often those thoughts are a variation of "hey, I'm really hungry"). Most importantly, we're encouraged to ask for forgiveness. Which is a pretty good way to be forgiven.

Our forgiveness doesn't come from any higher power - it comes from our fellow people. Tradition dictates that the all-powerful being upstairs likes it when we apologize to anyone we've wronged. In other words, someone up there is saying, "Steve, tell your sister you're sorry or you don't get any desert."

I wanted, albeit a few days late, to apologize to a few people I've wronged in the last year. Tradition also dictates that if I genuinely apologize three times and it's not accepted, the onus is on the apologizee. So if you read this column three times, I'm golden.

To the guy I bumped into on 48th street: I really should have been looking where I was going. I'm surprised I didn't see you ahead of time, what with you wearing a purple velvet cape.

To the woman I purposely cut off on I-75: I shouldn't have lost my patience with you. I understand that driving 54 in the left lane of a 55 is perfectly legal. And if I had the life indicated by your choice of automobile, hairstyle, and "I'm with Stupid" bumper sticker, I wouldn't rush home either.

To the telemarketer I yelled at about my status on the do not call list: I understand that you are just doing your job. And though your job is evil, it is merely your job. A soulless, frustrating, jerkface job that you willingly chose knowing full well how annoyed you get when telemarketers call you. Maybe I'm not sorry for this one.

To the fine people at homestarrunner.com: I am sorry I have used up all of your bandwidth by replaying Teen Girl Squad over and over. Maybe if you just released a DVD like I asked, this would all be easier.

To my editors: I'm sorry that I occasionally have typos in this column. Sometimes when I re-read something, a spelling slipup or grammatical gaffe eeks its way through. Thankfully, I have three vigilant readers that point them out in the email edition, so we can catch them before this column goes to print. Thank you, three vigilant readers who need a hobby. You make our lives better.

To the third teller from the left in the bank I robbed: I shouldn't have shot you in the arm. Even if you were crying and I wanted to make an example out of you, I should have found a better way of doing it. Like saying, "hey, stop crying, you example, you."

To my readers: I shouldn't have lied about robbing that bank and shooting that teller in the arm. I wanted to do it, but some woman on the interstate took forever in front of me, and I was so frustrated I missed my exit.

To my readers: I shouldn't have lied about wanting to rob that bank. Really I just wanted a free checking account. But free checking! That's such a great deal, it may as well be robbery!

And to everyone else I didn't get to mention: I'd have gotten to each one of you individually, but the wrongs I committed against you weren't nearly as interesting as the ones I mentioned.

Maybe you should wear more capes.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at www.SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@observationalhumor.com.

Have you ever went over a friends house to eat and the food just ain't no good? I mean the macaroni's soggy, the peas are mushed, and the chicken tastes like wood?

With those and about 3,000 (yes, 3,000) other words, The Sugarhill Gang created what is widely regarded as one of the most influential rap songs of all time. "Rapper's Delight" came out in September of 1979, and as you can see by the lines I quoted above, it was largely about indigestion.

The verse I sampled goes on to describe how even if you run out on your friend's mother trying to feed you "ugly food that stinks," your friendship will still prevail. That's a nice message.

The song also discusses DJing at a club, the size of Superman's genitals, and about 85 similes and metaphors for how much Wonder Mike, Big Big Hank, and Master Gee are all, apparently, great. Unlike anyone wearing pantyhose, right, Superman?

Since it's the 25th anniversary of the release of the bang bang boogie, I thought I'd use my column space to look at some of the rap we've seen since.

Five years after Rapper's Delight, Run DMC released their debut album, with the single "Rock Box." Rock Box is about how Run DMC is great and everyone else sucks. "I'm great and you suck" is a common theme in rap, though not often found in other genres of music. (It'd be a bit odd to hear a country western singer crooning about sucker MCs perpetratin a fraud.)

Flash forward to 1990, a year that spawned MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. They had more lyrics about how they're great and other people suck than a Run DMC album and more rhinestones than a year's worth of Bedazzler commercials. It should be illegal to rap about how great you are if you've ever used a bedazzler.

Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" is about being great, but also has a nice interlude about running away from both gunfire and hot chicks. And a very nice tribute to Miami, a city full of both gunfire and hot chicks. MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This" is also about how great he is, while encouraging people to dance so they can lose weight. Really. Maybe he used to be a big guy himself - that's why his pants never fit.

"Nuthin But a G Thang" came out two years later, and, while also detailing how great Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre were, also taught listeners how to deal with hookers and uppity women. This is when mainstream rap really started deviating from discussing indigestion.

15 years after Rapper's Delight, Tupac released "Thug Life," his third of twelve albums, seven of which were released after he died. "Pour Out a Little Liquor" was a song about pouring out part or all of a 40 to remember fallen homies. That's actually a tradition started by Jews, who take away a drop of wine for each of the ten plagues on Passover. When Sammy Davis Jr. died, the streets were covered in Old English and Manischewitz.

Right around that same time, The Notorious B.I.G. AKA Biggie Smalls AKA Chris Wallace AKA Fat Guy in a Little Coat released "Big Poppa" about how much he enjoys his various nicknames. They original chorus was supposed to be "I Hate It When They Call Me Christopher."

20 years after Rapper's Delight and about ten after Vanilla Ice, Eminem became the first good white rapper. The lyrics to "My Name Is" read a bit like a therapy session, discussing Eminem's parental issues, fear of commitment, and frustration with the school system. The song also talks about how Dr. Dre thinks you should buy the album.

In the meantime, Puff Daddy AKA P. Diddy AKA Sean Combs AKA New York County Inmate #348-KL-12 released a lot of songs that had already been released. While the beats were old, the lyrics were brand new, and generally consisted of P. Diddy telling us that he's great and everyone else sucks. Also, apparently, money is really annoying.

And that brings us to the current and terribly overplayed stuff. Like Nelly's "Hot in Herre," made much more stylish because it has an extra r in the title. The song, like Rapper's Delight did before it, oddly references Sasoon jeans (everything comes back in style). But Nelly also references having a stripper's pole in the basement and how no one can stop his juice. A far cry from a song about indigestion.

Here's to 25 years of hip hop the hippie to the hippie. I left out a good deal of Hip Hop history, including my four favorites: Tribe Called Quest, Outkast, Jurassic Five, and some kid I saw once free-styling on the F-Train.

And if you disagree with my taste, let me just remind you that I'm great and you suck.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at www.SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@observationalhumor.com.

Yesterday, I turned 25. I am now a quarter-century old, and closer to 30 than I am to 20. As depressing as that is, I got some good news. I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance.

Which is well-timed, considering I got into my first accident a few days ago. It wasn't my fault. Someone swerved ahead of me, I stopped to avoid him, and the guy behind me was too close and hit me at about 30 MPH. My neck still hurts, and the inside of my trunk is a bit crumpled, but the guy's insurance is going to take care of it all. He's been 25 for quite some time now.

This is the last birthday that people look forward to, except perhaps 65 because then everything gets cheaper. So is it downhill from here? I hope not. Because if I'm going really fast downhill, I may hit someone else.

I've written about having a 9/11 birthday before - I use the day as a time of contemplation rather than celebration. This year, in addition to contemplating life in general, I'm contemplating getting older. Odd that I didn't do that before, since I have been getting older almost every single year of my life.

I did a few 9/11 benefit shows this weekend. I teamed up with Billy Bingo, a retired firefighter and comedian who does a lot of work for the Thomas Elsasser fund, which raises money for NYC firefighters killed outside the line of duty. I try to devote as much of my birthday as I can to helping anything related to 9/11. The rest of it is devoted to being annoyed when people call and don't remember to wish me a happy birthday. I'm kidding. No one ever calls.

Actually, the past few years, my friends have been wonderful about calling me to see how I'm doing. And the answer is that I'm doing great. Even if my neck hurts a little.

The shows were great as well. The folks at Worcester Polytechnic and Anna Maria College in Paxton (as if knowing it's in Paxton is going to help you know where the school is) were very friendly. After the Anna Maria show, there was a vigil for September 11th. The kids thanked me for coming - which was silly, since they were the ones extending themselves to me. I thanked them for having me. And demanded some cake.

Okay, so I didn't demand cake. But I was offered plenty of food afterwards, when we visited the firehouse in Auburn, Massachusetts. Billy knew a friend of a friend, and they offered us dinner and hospitality. I'd never been in a firehouse before, let alone stayed there. The guys were great and they were very happy to meet a New York firefighter, trading stories about people they saved and people they didn't. I was silent through it; I was both fascinated, and feeling ridiculous for ever complaining about my job.

When I stay at a friend's house and he gets a call at 6AM, I am allowed to complain. But not Friday night. At 6AM, I was woken up by a report of an 80-year-old woman with congestive heart failure that needed medical attention. She lived. Just like I did on the highway last week, and several thousand people did a few years ago when they were evacuated from the World Trade Center before it went down.

There's a lot that I wanted to accomplish by the time I was 25 that I haven't. Mainly because when I set those goals, I was 20 and had a very different view of the life I'm actually leading. But I'm fine with that. I am closer to 30 now. But I have the next five years before that actually happens, and I can use them to keep contemplating and set new goals and find the guy that swerved in front of me and whap him in the back of the head with a wet sock.

I am thankful I made it through that accident pretty okay. There was a fourth car that almost nailed me from the side. So I'm thankful I made it to 25 at all. And I am also thankful that, if that 4th car had hit me, there are people who spend their lives saving ours.

If you'd like to help the Thomas Elsasser fund, you can click on "merchandise" at www.billybingo.net and pick up an FDNY comedy t-shirt.

I just did. I can afford to now that my car insurance payments have gone down.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at www.SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@observationalhumor.com.

I don't care how shaved your head is. I don't care how faded your t-shirt is. I don't care how many friends you have whose names are also nouns. Your band sucks.

Maybe you're reading this, and happen to be a member of a great band. Maybe you're a Leader of the New School or a Lord of the Underground or a Pilot of some sort of Stone Temple. Or maybe you're just in a great garage band that doesn't even get gigs but has a nice sound. But odds are you are a bald, dollar-store-t-shirt-wearing guy with 37 friends named Moon, whose parents mistakenly bought him a guitar for his 12th birthday and have been apologizing to the world ever since.

You know who I'm talking about. The guy you meet at the bar, who gives you his number on the back of a flyer. The guy next to you on the bus, who sees you with a discman and tries to sell you a CD. The guy at the music store or the restaurant or the copy shop, who has to work there because his band sucks.

As a comedian, I know that artists get better with stage time. But as a comedian, I don't lie to people about how good a show will be to get that stage time. When I perform at Caroline's, I tell everyone to come. When I perform at a crappy open mic, I tell everyone that it's a crappy open mic. I don't want people to see me bomb and think that's the best I can do. It's basic pride math.

This phenomenon of ego-driven honesty, however, does not exist among most bands. The front man, typically named Travis or Skeeter or some other name that we made so much fun of in high school that he formed a band, will desperately try to get people to come to every show he has. And he'll lie to do it. When he tells you that "It's gonna be a rockin' show" and "make sure to get there early so you can get a good table," he is certainly lying. Very few rockin' shows have tables.

If someone wearing thick black non-prescription glasses and a tattoo with an esoteric reference to a cartoon approached me and asked me to come to his show, I would quickly decline the offer. Unless he was honest.

"Look," Skeeter might say. "My band sucks. But we're trying not to suck, and the only way for that to happen is to practice in front of a real crowd. Please help us to not suck."

I'd go to that show immediately. I'd even ask them to save a good table.

I used to want everyone I knew to come to every show I did because I was excited about being a comedian. But I learned quickly to stop inviting people to everything, so that my friends would only see me at my best. Why can't bands learn this? When I was in a band, I didn't invite anyone to see a show. That's right - A band and A show. Because we only had one of each.

I was in a band when I was 18. We were called "Damn the Core" and we were awful. We were funny, but awful. We performed three times - twice for Safer Sex Week on campus and once at an actual show. I did invite people to those first two shows, but that was only because I was involved in the planning of the whole week. When we had our real show - a gig in front of eight people at Nassau Community College - I only told others about it afterwards, while I drank myself stupid. I passed out no flyers. We recorded no CDs. I never got a job in a copy shop. I knew we sucked.

After the show, the friends of my bandmates came over to "congratulate" us with the kind of fake happiness previously limited to a Sears catalogue. I laughed and started drinking. I didn't ever want to hear another round of "well, you guys seemed really confident." My band days were over.

And I request the same thing of Skeeter and Travis, and anyone else currently fronting a band whose biggest gig has been the Lieberman Bar Mitzvah. You have no angst. You have no social unrest. And you have no room for three bassists. All you do have are two choices - quit or practice. Until then, stop inviting people to your shows. When you're trying to sell a product that's all enthusiasm and no substance, you're just wasting everyone's time.

Though Sears might tell you otherwise.