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If you've been listening to The Howard Stern Show lately, you know that the self-crowned King of All Media seems to expect his upcoming movie, Private Parts, to gross slightly more than Independence Day. And judging by Stern's immense popularity in cyberspace, where listeners have constructed more than a dozen Web shrines and bombarded the alt.fan.howard-stern newsgroup with thousands of messages, that may well be the case -- assuming, of course, this legion of PC-bound acolytes doesn't share Stern's addiction to cybersex to the extent that they refuse to leave the house. In the tradition of Stern stooge Stuttering John -- the press-conference pest who once asked Martina Navratilova what she looked for in a man -- we thought we'd pose some inappropriate questions and see if the Web could supply some answers.

-- Stern is a Jewish celebrity. That's kind of unusual, right? The Famous Jews -- Interactive! page (ucsu.colorado.edu/~ jsu/cgi-bin/famous.html) lists Stern as the fourth most popular Jewish entertainer in the nation (at press time), behind Jeff Goldblum but ahead of Jerry Seinfeld. And here's reinforcement for Stern's struggle with those who object to his ''Who's the Jew?'' routine. Webmaster Steve Ruttenberg challenges anti-Semites to ''try to boycott these Jews and their contributions (Hint: You can't!).''

-- Do Stern's fans share his obsessive-compulsive disorder and need to shower 75 times a day? If they do, they can ''rub Howard Stern all over'' their bods by visiting www.avalonmall.com/Howard.html and ordering the ''exclusive'' $29.95 Howard Stern bath towel (unused -- sorry), part of the Howard Stern Bath Ensemble.

-- Stern has battled the FCC, struck major blows for the First Amendment, and charmed Very Important People into appearing on his show. So how big is Howard's johnson, anyway? According to the unauthorized Howard Stern Frequently Asked Questions list (scifi.maid.com/howard.html), Stern is being overly self-deprecating when he compares his private part to ''a raisin.'' Carefully weighing all available evidence, the anonymous author delicately concludes, ''We can only, therefore, assume that Howard has a small penis [sometimes] and an average size penis [at other times].''

-- How many of Stern's listeners have advanced degrees in particle physics? In the ''Retards'' section of his Stern website (www.cris.com/~simpsonm/koam), Matt Simpson complains, ''I may soon need a whole separate page for dorks trying to cash in on the Stern phenomenon.'' Ummm...

-- Don't Stern's guests tend to be awfully mild-mannered? Not only did hypertrophically endowed erotic dancer Uzo -- a Stern discovery and frequent guest on his E! TV show -- have her own public-access TV show in New York and L.A., but her website (www.uzo.com), which includes raunchy Stern quotes and a photo album, has diverted thousands of Stern fans from their idol. Rants the self-described Jungle Princess, ''I promised you the best in-your-face kick-ass page and that is what you are getting, you will never ever find anything as f -- -ing complete and good as my page on the Net!''


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