My dear Buttercup,

(Ah, I'd always remember your star turn as Buttercup in the simply spectacular, impromptu production of H.M.S. Pinafore that we did in The Pines o, so many centuries ago. (Or was it H.M.S. Pine-a-fore that we did in The Pins? No matter.)

I am in good spirits today, in spite of the rather nasty telephone calls I've been receiving at highly inappropriate hours. You-Know-Who has taken to venting his spleen electronically, and though I have already changed my telephone number twice, he keeps finding the new number. (You wouldn't know who's responsible for this, would you, o meddlesome she-devil?) I shall be attempting a mid-afternoon siesta and then, ring-ring, and a lifted receiver permits a string of unending vituperation to come spilling into my sensitive ear.

Y.K.W. needs help. I wish I could provide it, but I have my hands full at the moment dealing with the adoration of The Lad. It isn't fair, I know, but I cannot undo what has been done and Y.K.W. cannot manage to get around his - angst.

And speaking of angst, did you know Miss Olympia Dukakis returned to the New York stage some weeks back, to grace us all with a performance of such unrelenting wrongheadedness, that it left us all breathless.

It seems Miss Dukakis got it into her head that some simply shockingly annoying drivel entitled The Hope Zone was worthy of her worthy talents. After having performed it outside the Mighty Apple, she assured the teetering Circle Rep. that she would be happy to perform for them, provided they produced The Hope Zone.

It was, perhaps for all concerned, a miscalculation. That puts it mildly.

It is a play of such emptiness, such insufferable nothingness, that not even Miss Dukakis could have saved it. The nadir of the evening was a coup de theatre in which the protagonist's daughter plunges her hand into a bag of broken glass causing the aforementioned hand to be cut to now-mentioned ribbons. Ucky. Poo.

It is a play of child-abuse, and twisted spirituality, and alocoholism, and drug addiction andŠ Well, the fun just rolled on and on. And on. And onŠ

My evening's companion (not The Lad, who happened to have a class that night - o, lucky youth) suggested that a mass suicide of the actors and audience might expunge the evil of the play. I countered with a suggestion that a limited imbibing of margarita's and chips around the corner might accomplish the same thing at a less serious cost. My companion saw the wisdom of my simple suggestion.

I can only hope (Hope used to be such a positive thing) that neither this dreadful play, nor Miss Dukakis's performance in it shall be remembered beyond the twentieth century. Given the short attention span of the world's population ("Ronald Reagan was a governor, too?") I suspect it shall all disappear, sans trace.

I am going to soak my corns. If you send them to me, I'll soak yours.

Peace to you.