Humorist Jean Shepherd has written six best-selling novels about growing up sardonic in the Midwest. His short stories have long distracted Playboy readers from the magazine's more prurient features. He's turned three of his tales into public television specials with titles like "The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters." He's delivered monologues on two PBS series ("Jean Shepherd's America" and "Shepherd's Pie"). And now, one of his middle-American yarns has been turned into "A Christmas Story, a movie that's currently the nation's top box-office attraction...