New York Harbour (Julja)

Dear Julja,

° I blame Sandy.

° "Has Julja gone out to the Island?"

° "No, she's 'resting' at her country place."

° As bad as that, I thought to myself. For in Southrunese "resting" is a euphemism for "at Death's door," "lying in after an abortionvacation up North," or "still swollen and bruised from the face lift." As you require no plastic surgery--if you ever hear that I'm resting, you'll know that the next time you lay eyes on me my own eyes will be a quarter inch higher up my newly Dietriched forehead--and, being French, have better sense than to require an abortion, I naturally supposed your horse had wallowed upon you and the doctors given you up for lost. Or else killed you outright through voodoo medication. (As the Mexican Medicine Man says, "I can cure you for $300, or they can kill you for $3000.")

° But I forgot that Sandy's language has been debased by her lengthy sojourn amongst the Yankees, so apparently when she said you were "resting," she simply meant, "riposa."

° Well more Fool me.

§

° Ah, the Island, the Sea, the Channel, the Swans(!) No wonder you regret every moment spent inland, who wouldn't? I myself clickandzoom longingly Roman's fotos: Panama, washed in two oceans, and the great Canal to boot.

° Albeit we've been so hurricanedrenched hereabouts that we're almost no longer landlocked.

° Just what the global warmers predicted, first we get warmer and wetter, then hotter and drier, finally the forests die off, and abracadabra! Dune, Desert Planet.

° Don't tell Bush, it only annoys.

§

° I've encountered a hedging plant for your consideration, the Southern wax myrtle, evergreen cousin to the more familiarly aromatic myrica pennsylvanica. Small plants remind me of oleander or pomegranate. Large ones look like stunted live oaks. A plant for ripieno effects on a fairly large scale, an undergrowth for mature willow oaks.

° And yes, I like most of all this myrtle's confirmation of my invincible ignorance. 25 years of broadleaf evergreen specialisation, and here's one slipped my nets.

§§§§§

° Hurry back, however, before frost, the brugmansia and the hybrid gingers are prouding, their clean, alcoholic scents cutting the rich spicy fatness of the tuberosey butterfly hedychiums.

° At least hurry back before the blue October skies are quite done.

° I have an expedition planned.

° An eatingexpedition (though you are welcome to antique to your heart's content).

° I have six or seven pasticcierie on my list, each not to be missed. Parisian "mama-rangues," chocolate meringues spiked with toffee. Real cannoli and sfogliatelli confected by a real Italian. Ghanaian peanut butter soup. The tres leches cake at the Sri Lankan Mexican bakery. I pass on the amaretto carrot cake, but Key Lime pie is always fun. The Judgement of Paris enacted by you and by me on the rival chocolate bombes: the organic one, the French one, the goldleafed Chinese one.

° Then we'll stop in at the Macelleria Spagnuola, stare at the blooddripping pig's heads with their innocuous and intelligent eyes just a'staring back, and after a brief Princess Diana moment, it's off to lunch at the newly restored Senz'Amore Café.

° End World Hunger Now! chant I.

° And that afternoon, there'll be the beignets at--o well . . . .

° For, as the scattered saplings of volunteer avocado trees here at Meloncord will show, foods, or rather, sapours have become quite my avocation. Tuscan bread slathered with olive oil, creamed with fresh garlick, lightly toasted, then romanoed. Avocado smushed with pepperandsalt, oil, balsamic vinegar. Merckens yucatan buttons with Bodumbrewed Frenchroast coffee, 2.33 tablespoons to the 6oz. cup. Panna cotta enveloping toasted pecans; my great grandmother's gingerbread, topped with sourmilk toffee.

° Papaya spears, Turkish apricots, dried pie cherries, sugared crystallised ginger root, green tea.

° My own polentalike cornbread, soggy with butter and sorghum.

° For protein, chunky ground peanuts.

° For high feast days, artificial chikken.

° For guests, eatingexpeditions to Overton.

° No, haven't gained an ounce, the secret's in eating as much as you want of the things that you want as often as you want.

° Or if that's not it, must be a tapeworm from all those catkisses.

° Before dark, dank November, Giac.

In Riposo

fool and juggler--in riposo

M. Piers Bellow's Coat of Arms (Foto)

Lo stemma della famiglia Bello.

The Hanged Man (Coz)

Caro Cugino,

° All'erta, gitano che sei!

Chi del gitano i giorni abella?

Chi del gitano i giorni abella?

Chi? Chi? i giorni abella?

La zingarella! Lo zingarello! La zingarina!

° Beh! L'inno nazionale cantato, all'erta ben diversa: faccia presto, clicca qui, guarda la terza foto, la considera, ritorna subito.

° Tic tac tic tac tic tac--ah, ben venuto.

° All'ora? Sei stupefatto?

° Anch'io.

° E' l'Uomo Impiccato, senza dubbio. Senza mia cerca conscia.

° Che significa? Sì, i soldi che cadono dalle tasche, questo però è la condizione normale per noi tutti, non bisogna il predire.

° Secondo Charles Williams, i due Amanti, avendo calpestato la Ruota di Fortuna, incontreranno l'Uomo Impiccato; poi la Morte (Santissima) e il Diavolo loro attaccheranno; corrono via (gli Amanti), entrano la Torre Crollante, si separano.

° Si alzano le Stelle, la Luna, il Sole. Risplende il cielo.

° E poi, lo Sciocco--che son' io--tocca una tomba, da cui esce lo Scheletro, il quale s'unisce cogli Amanti. Ma, per bene!

° Tutti spariscono, se non lo Sciocco--che son' io--e il Prestidigitore--che sei tu, diletto Cugino zingaro. Noi ci avviciniamo, ci abbracciamo, cadono da tutte le parti le tue palle d'oro . . . .

§§§§§

° Ho ragione? Sarà così?

° Il tuo Cugino, Giac.

"Miss Bacall" to Y'all (Sandy)

Dear Sandy,

° I quote you to your face: "Gina says that if she'd known Edwina could be placated, and that you (Giac) knew how it was done, you'd've been invited to all the club meetings."

° Ah yes, Mavis. For you well remember that I was the only living soul who loved her, fluffy and subtly shaded as she was, invariable as she was in selecting the bathtub for her wastings of both the drier and the damper sorts. A cat whose temperament was modestly softened by having her brainpan squashed by a car, her jaw broken and reknit permanently crooked, and her eyes blinded. Intact, she had been a bramble thicket of claws and teeth at the least scent of a human, but after her misadventure she began to present herself to be stroked at six o'clock sharp every evening, and continued that drill for the many years till her death.

° And it was I that did the stroking.

° What was my secret, with Edwina? Well I will tell you.

° But not just yet.

§

° O for the good old days. Mae West used to have a plugugly cauliflowereared exboxer in her entourage, just to reprove any journalist who dared to say, familiarly, "Mae . . . ?"

° "Miss West!" came the growl from the reckless muscleman.

° "Miss West, I mean," was the invariable, prudent response of the newsman.

° I have read Nietzsche.

° I have read Sade.

° I have read Piers trinitatis.

° But when the day comes that I am so sufficiently beyond good and evil that I can torment a 79yearold Lauren Bacall with stupidaggini like "And isn't your thirtysomething legendary principal, Miss Kidman, something else?"--well that'll just be the day.

° A ninetysomethng Lillian Gish costarring with eightysomething Ann Sotherns and countlesssomething Bette Davises--in those days legends didn't outlive the memories of their fans.

° In these days, when memories are shorter than Tom Cruise in flipflops, legends need to die at 33, just to be on the safe side.

° And really, I'm sorry for anybody who ignorantly watched Dogville without feeling that extra shock when Schatzi, just graduated from How to Marry a Millionaire, just costarred with Betty Grable (who? say the simps) and Marilyn Monroe (who? say the simps), hardveneered heartofgold Schatzi, who accidentally won the gold ring--when Schatzi suddenly bares her teeth over the innocent trespassing of a gooseberry path.

° As Mother's cook R---- used to say, "The world grows wickeder, nor wiser."

° Underline the "nor."

§

° The other day I was waiting for Coz onehandedly to finish juggling orders from a line halfway out to the street, so he could come play Fool and Juggler with me a moment or two.

° So I had plenty of leisure to observe, and plenty of aural acuity to overhear, the doings at a table in the corner of the room. By "leisure" I mean I was not so busied with joking with the queue, keeping an eye on a couple of guys outside the window one of whom looked remarkably like Kiel but unblondined, watching a seedylooker stockpile sugar from the condiment stand, examining current fashion with an especial emphasis on footwear, your fave; meanwhile--well I had the leisure, through the miracle of multitasking nosiness.

° A quite finelooking female (of a certain age), immaculately dressed in a tailored--not indeed Juljalike, but efforts clearly made--was sitting with a teeshirted, closecropped, slightly pierced and plain twentysomething female and a cargotrousered twentysomething boy, effeminate and extremely goodlooking. I make no guess as to relationship, but I know who paid the tab.

° Before the line had quite played out I overheard three times, like Peter's cock's crow, the following exchange, exact wording altered each time:

Fiftysomething: "It reminds me that Aunt--"

Twentysomething boygirl to twentysomething girlboy: "Me and J--- got home falling down wasted last night."

Twentysomething girlboy to twentysomething boygirl: "It was some righteous f------ s--- all right!"

I myself longed to know what "Aunt --" had said or done. I felt it might have been quaint, not just banal.

° But overhear as I might, I never did hear what "Aunt --" had said or done, nor later what "Dr. --" had warned, nor finally what had happened "back when Jim was still with us . . . ."

° Nor did I care, for the line had worked itself down, and Coz was free to--well that lasted about five seconds, till the line began to refill.

§§§§§

° You yourself have dropped ten years this summer by working your mind and body overtime and by recreating a b&b life for yourself in the company of thirtysomethings.

° I myself am ageing something fierce, if Piers doesn't abandon his twenties soon, it's stuntwork on Nip and Tuck for me.

° Edwina is 75 (to round off a number). A wonderfully preserved, wonderfully vigourous, wonderfully prosperous 75.

° I was the only one there, besides Edwina herself, who remembered how much more vigourous she had been at 65, 55, 45. Lordy but she could rack the horses. While effeminate females were burning bras and banishing the suffix "-ess" from the English language, Edwina was trampling male competitors as if they were limp pansyflowers. More power to Edwina.

° And now she's sitting on a mountain of money and it doesn't buy her a single thing she wants.

° For what she wants is not to be transparent. She has disappeared in plain view.

° She is old.

° "Cranky"? That's what "journalists" called Miss Bacall. "Cranky," as in, "needs placating."

§

° But I said I'd tell you my secret, and I'm nothing if not aspergerially truthful.

° It goes without saying that I did no such thing as "placate" the "cranky" Miss Edwina.

° What I did, and it was absolutely the only thing I did, or needed to do, was hand her the 1940 yearbook already opened to the page whereon her young love still dwells in blackandwhite halftone.

° Do you understand?

° I simply made a gesture that she could not fail to understand had been made for her alone.

° And yes, I'm ready to interview Miss Bacall, havemercy the stories she'd tell me . . . .

° Love, Giac.

° P.S. The house was splendid, the colours freshly reinterpreted by the change from daylight to artificial, the mood mellow and enveloping. The parfait! Congratulations on so many jobs so well done.

La Maschera (Foto)

La Maschera pel Ballo . . . .

Gypsy Barons (Piers)

Dear Piers,

° You may wonder why I was late for Mass yesterday. (You may wonder why I was there at all, but that just means you haven't been reading your coffee scum religiously these last few weeks.)

° It was Coz's fault. He's found proof that he's a gypsy, on his mother's side twice removed. And since I have always maintained that if he's a gypsy I'm a monkey's uncle, I had to do a little cosmetic backtracking, to cover what theologians would call my "wellnigh invincible ignorance."

° So we were sitting there at Corner Coffee during a lull, and he was drawing family trees in spilt sugar--and anyway, our common ancestress was back in the mid 1700's, so it's nothing to me--and as incontrovertible proof he suddenly removed his cap and ran his fingers through his amazingly frisky, crispy hair. And of course one thing led to another and before you could say jack rabbit--

° --jack rabbit, I had pulled one of the curtains off the rod. But that didn't work. So then I stripped the pillows of their cases. But that didn't work. And then came the napkins, the tablecloth, same story. Finally I took the scullery towel, spottily marbled with coffee tea milk and futile bleach, wrapped it firmly about his head, and eccolo! my cousin, the gypsy baron.

° Magari! He just looked like a pirate. So we duelled with the wooden stirring spoons and he killed me seven or eight times in a row, for I'd just seen Zatoichi, and therefore kept my eyes shut the whole time, while he'd just seen Hero, and was flying across the room like a broadband wireless Peter Pan.

° Bimeby a customer came in, I peeped at the clock, and "Ratsasses!" said I in devout tones, "no sortie for me."

° For I had intended to slip into a side aisle, hear your Communion improv and closing Duruflé, pee and drink weak coffee, watch choir rehearsal, hear your opening voluntary, draw a tarot deck on leaflets leftover from Matins, and return to Corner Coffee to scare the bejeebers out of the gullible: "O my pore chile, have you made your will yet?"

§

° I forgot to mention that Coz, after rereading my coffee scum--for I had seen only his Crocodile, my Bird, and your Pup; he saw a deeper omen, gl'insetti--had asked me how things had worked out at Assumption after last January's Are the Weaker Sex, Coloured Folks, and Pansyflowers Human? seminars. First I'd thought about it in months.

° Nor is any further proof of Coz's Romerishness necessary beyond this premonition. For scarcely had you returned to the instrument for the Elgar "Nimrod" (Enigma Variations), of which I heard about two measures, than the most wellmeaning of persons, albeit an alto, desired to celebrate my return with a complete rehash of the entire fiasco.

° And toward the end, about the time that she said, "Your heart is hurt," and I retorted, "No, sweetiedarling, my heart is militant," and she corrected me, "No, your heart is hurt," about that time I began to recall why I swore I'd never darken those doors again. Though if you have any personal doubt whether I'm more of a nature to have my feelings hurt or more of a nature to blow like Krakatoa, then I can give you a list of witnesses to the latter, and nary a soul who can prove the former.

° She, may be, could not hear me. But half the aisle were cutting their eyes back at us, so I'm pretty sure the fault didn't lie in the volume of my stage whisper.

° "Asscovering," "neurotic closeted mufmuf-wuf married with childrener," "utterly incapable," "Cameron Carpenter!"--that just about covers it, minus the "weak as dishwater" part. ((And what did my horoscope that evening say had happened to me that day? "Non è il caso di confidarti con chi vuole carpire la tua buona fede e potrebbe riuscirci." So there you are.))

° Bimeby I noticed that you had finished playing, and the Choir were thinking about forming processional, so I rearranged my ruffled feathers and awaited further musical developments.

° And when I had escaped, just after the Gospel--o that was a slick elision from Ecclesiasticus: who decided to omit "Arrogance is hateful to the LORD and to mortals, and injustice is outrageous to both"? One knows very well who! and why!--and verified through the arcade that you had done the same--my own true and upright genius boy!--who comes trotting through the cloister but--yes, that's who.

° Baron Scarpione, that's who. Though if he's a baron, I'm--o well . . . . That very same Scarpione who used the seminar for the slyest little piece of bashing--innocently and hurriedly seconded by poor hapless priestness--you've ever heard.

° So here he comes out of Bouvier Hall, and here comes Bastien round the corner of the Church. Bastien in black silk, no blonder blondness can there be without recourse to peroxide.

° "Ciao, Blondello," says I, "just look who it is." And I directed a glance toward the Baron. Without, of course, making eye contact, I always simply don't see him, avoids the rudeness of cutting him downright. Bastien, however, simply glared at him. Bastien, si sa, non ha paura di niente, nor, as in this case, di nessuno.

° "Blondello, how silky your silk is today," says I, and I test the arms, shoulders, and finally the upper front of the shirt to be sure it's all the same texture. Bastien didn't remit his challengeglare to the Baron for an instant.

° "Blondello, how fresh from the shower you are," says I, and I bent to his left neck, his right neck, his hair, his--and truly, his skin bore the perfume of recent hot water and scentless soap and peachlike blondness.

° Bastien broke out in a great "Ga!" I quickly saw his point.

° For Baron Scarpione, so engrossed in the spectacle of one dog sniffing another, had tripped on a loose brick in the courtyard, and was lying sprawled across the camellias, broke several branches, but they grow fast. Won't bloom this winter though.

° Must not laugh must not laugh must not laugh. Leave the laughing to God, for the Providential Irony is all His'n.

° Indeed we--well it was Bastien, it would've been awkward for me to "see" the Baron after all the notseeing--"we" ran to Scarpione's assistance, ascertained that the bone was clear through the flesh, phoned E-911, and alerted the Church attorney, for there will certainly be a negligence suit.

° Well okay, it was just a sprained ankle, hardly even that.

° But he'll probably sue all the same.

° The brick, after all, was loose.

§§§§§

° I knew a woman once, prima donna assoluta of an Anabaptist Choir; much as she appreciated her pastor in all other ways, she always left the loft and sat in the vestibule during his sermons--because of that sect's revulsion against womankind. This protest went on for years, until its aim was forgotten.

° A year before he was murdered, Martin Luther King gave a seminal speech at Riverside Church--this was back when there used to be a progressive wing of JudaeoChristianIslamism--in favour of Peace. Or, as some thought, against War. For he considered it supremely ironic that America was sending such multitudes of Poor Persons of Colour to Viet Nam to kill as many Poor Persons of Colour there as possible. And all to fill the Pocketbooks of Paleface Poobahs. He died before it could be proved how utterly he had failed in awakening a love of Peace in his fellow citizens, or, indeed, in his fellow human beings anywhere in the world.

° And think of Gandhi himself, think of Kashmir, think of burntout mosques, burntout temples. Utter failure.

° Think of Harry Potter, think that if Hermione'd called in sick, not just the Hippogryph and the Pumpkin, but Sirius and Harry to boot would've croaked.

° St. Peter Pettigrew, patron of all lost causes.

§

° Why are we all such sheep?

° Because there's safety in numbers, even in minority numbers.

° Why are we all such conformists?

° Because that's how we prove we're sheep.

° Why are our shepherds so hidebound and visionless?

° It's all the fault of the Big Bad Wolf.

° For we sheep select our shepherds out of our fear of the Wolf, whether there is one or not.

° Small wonder that our pasturage is so neglected . . . .

° And anyway, the pasturage we can find for ourselves.

° I browse Nathan, who grounds me.

° I browse Coz, who, all unselfconscious, dwells inside the Dance.

° I browse you, Piers, who focus my blurs.

° Every sheep knows its own food.

§§§§§ §§§§§

Coda e Cadenza

Scrive Davide, Re d'Israele (Ps. CXI, viib):

Ab auditione mala non timebit.

Propone Piers:

Pédale Bourdon 32; Récit--Otez Hautbois et Gambe, mettez Voix humaine et Tremblant.

Giac risponde di sì.

Scrive Innocenzo III, Pontefice Supremo:

O Jesu, Mariae Fili.

Propone Piers:

Non mai udirete questo detto a voi!

Giac risponde di sì.

Piers riconosciuto, Piers conosciuto a fondo, Amen.

° The rhythm of the Dance restored, the mischief managed, the ears tenderly nibbled, Giac.

Vanity Fair by Mira Nair (Coz)

Dear Coz,

° Splendidly mounted (the Indian visual elements are most welcome), splendidly cast (poor Miriam Hopkins so out of her element in the '30's version), the best anybody's ever gonna do with English lit's most brilliant flop (the heroine bursts the mouldy seams of her own novel). Too short (to flesh out the multitude of characters) and too long (about a third of the way through I began to feel Time falling out of warp drive) and just right (for at the end I was surprised to find it was already getting on for teatime, from a 13:30 start).

° Becky has been given the rudiments of a heart, but she overcomes it. The tale has been given a social conscience, but that plays better than the cardboardconscience of the original. And Mira Nair has clearly seen Gone with the Wind, up to now the most successful screen adaptation of the Life and Times of Rebecca Sharp.

° And o yes, Becky takes the booby prize at the end, hope she became a maharani.

° (Where is Chris Marlowe when he's wanted? Tamburlaine the Great, aka Giant, the Jackkiller.

° For the inherent disappointment in all versions of Vanity Fair is Becky's rotten, rotten luck--she should've married and buried Sir Pitt, then had her adventures.

° But I guess that's E. F. Benson's Lucia.

° Your cousin, Giac.

Astoria (Foto)

Astoria, offspring of Dar-Goh the Nasal, Tutelary Deity of the new espresso machine.

Flickpicking (Lad)

Dear Lad,
° I see your point. Netflix is all very well and good, but how to select from 20,000 offerings that one you wish to view?
° My quandary last weekend was even worse, because it was my quandary. 10 flicks opening in Overton. 10. At least two days' worth, and me with only a single August afternoon to while away . . . .
° Exorcist: The Beginning. No review available, no prescreening allowed. Translation: stinks so badly the distributor just hopes to sell a few tickets the first weekend. That sounds promising, I love smelly movies. But I never even saw the original film, don't remember why, but no use rethinking it now. Skip.
° Benji: Off the Leash! Three stars, really rather glowing review. Movie argues against cruelty, I myself am opposed to cruelty. Skip. (What do you mean why? Just look at the cutesy little pookypoo, just an invitation for some Big Bad Grim Wolf to inhale. Rowr!)
° Open Water. Threeandonehalfstars, really glowing review. Supposed to make Jaws look like the Three Little Fishies. Skip. (Why? The trailers and synopsis make it clear that one is fixing to watch the brinesoaked heads of two folks float in fishy water for a solid hourandahalf. Might as well film paint drying.)
° Once upon a Time in the West. Four stars, new print, big screen. Skip. Roy, Trigger, Gene, Gabby, Silver--don't care if I never see another western as long as I live; besides, I already saw this one new, on a bigger screen, in Italian, long time gone.
° The Corporation. Four stars. Skip. It's too hot for polemic, my brain just begins to melt and ooze out my left ear.

§

° Well there's half of 'em culled, and not a watt of brainwaveage run through the meter.
° Without a Paddle. A single star, a review so corroded with scathing bitchiness, this must be a really really bad movie. Paydirt! I quote the beginning of Chris Hewitt's opinion:

If the Without a Paddle script were good, the movie would star Matt Damon, Ben Stiller and Will Smith. If it were OK, Chris O'Donnell, Elijah Wood and Jason Biggs would have signed on. But it reeks, so we get Matthew Lillard, Seth Green and some other guy.

"Reeks," o goody goody, bitchy bitchy. But he's just an amateur:

Yes, Chris, says I, and if the script were way excellent, the movie would star Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and the cloned remains of Sarah Bernhardt.

For everyone nowadays is a male chauvinist pig (vuol dire, "a postfeminist") I reckon, but me and you.

° Mr. Hewitt has guessed my values all wrong. I haven't seen a Matt Damon vehicle since Ripley. Chris O'Donnell who? But Oz, this movie has Oz, and with any luck at all he'll transform into a werewolf partway through and devour the other actors, then repent, then confess to Willow, then saddle up a convertible and head down Route 66. I'd pay good money to see Seth Green eat his costars.
° This movie, however, is playing three screens in Pope, no fieldtrip needed.
° Garden State. Three stars. Clever visual of the shirt matching the wallpaper. Lithium, Zoloft, cold turkey. Must see. I often think the entire country's been prozacked into an evolutionary deadend. I mean, how can one overcome setbacks when no setbacks can be sensed? One screen in Pope, still not worth a fieldtrip.
° A Home at the End of the World. Twoandahalfstars, damned with faint praise. Glowing reviews for Colin Farrell's characterisation. Shocked reactions to the ubiquitous drug usage and general sexual and psychological screwedupness--o this is a must see. Won't come to Pope at all, fieldtrip positively necessary.°

° Touch of Pink. Onestarandonehalf. " . . . a rickety little romantic comedy . . . ." Must see. It'll never come to Pope, 'cause it's a Colinless samesexer. Yet somehow Kyle MacLachlan costars as Cary Grant. Add Isabella Rossellini and it'd be Pink Velvet. Add Robert Sterling and it'd be Topper. O yes, must see.

° The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi. Threestars. "Starts out fairly far-out and happily only gets weirder." Must see. How weird can a martial arts movie get?

§§§§§

° So I ate Avena Selvaggia pizza to store calories, peed like there was to be no intermission, and settled in for a triple feature.

° Home. What in country music would be called a crossover. A bothsexer. Apparently edited down from a fourhour movie, so much is communicated by ellipsis. Howcome Dallas--lovely as he is--would leave Colin Farrell backhome just to go to NYC and catch AIDS? Howcome there is not a single case in recorded history of a mom as mellow as Sissy Spacek? Howcome Claire fell in love with Jonathan, and when was that? Howcome Child Welfare didn't take nineyearold Bobby away from his adored older brother's sexandacidism? Howcome Colin Farrel was still a mixedsex virgin at 24? Howcome the minute Jonathan begins to mince, he loses all our sympathy? Howcome--but there's a happy ending, sort of, only it happens both before and after the final scene. And there is the usual verdict on threesomes in the tourdeforce change of expression on Claire's face--from joy to dismay--as she watches Colin and Dallas dance on the front porch.

° And o yes, a death scene early on that's worth the ticket price by itself.

§

° Touch. An allmale audience, box office suicide. Attractive romantic leads, especially Alim (Jimi Mistry). Touching, admirable, lunatick relatives. Boy can those Ontarionkenyanpakistani muslims throw a wedding! Cousin Khaled's stupendous nose, Cousin Khaled's stupendous whitesilk bridegroom's suit, Cousin Khaled's stupendous advice: "It's fine to f--- men, Alim, but you'd have to be nuts to love one." Kyle--ah yes, the Cary Grant thing just comes across as Harvey, the giant imaginary Bunny, doesn't work at all, probably did on paper.

° Happy ending, so important. But not credibly happy. Chris, displeased with Alim's unwillingness to "come out"--yes, male samesex films always seem to run through that briarpatch--asserts, "This is not the relationship I signed on for," and goes out a'shagging. You don't have to email Carolyn Hax to ask what the future holds for these two lovepuppies.

° But yes, Alim is very sweet and sympathetic, not at all "gay" like Dallas-Jonathan. Perhaps someday male samesex romantic comedies without characters who seem like they might could possibly have samesex tastes can do boffo box office--well that'll be the day . . . .

§

° Blond (bleached) blueeyed (blind) bloodburbling baccaratbluffing bodybuffing--Zatoichi. Why this is as bad as Dumas, I groused at the first bloodbath. Then I noticed the purposeful cheesiness of the severed arm special effect, then I realised there wasn't a pig left in Japan with a bladder, so many had been excised for Shakespeare's favourite effect. Then I figured out Osei. Then came the soak tub. Then came--I don't believe even Ruby Keeler could've tapdanced in wooden flipflops.

° How weird can a martial arts movie get? I asked a while back. No weirder than Zatoichi, that's for sure, save a dvdsized space in the toe of your Christmas stocking, I'm ordering copies by the gross.

° Just be a good lad and act surprised.

° Affectionately, Giac.