Camille

Who said good ideas propagate? Well, it's true. In 1848, Alexandre Dumas wrote La Dame aux camelias. Four years later, he turned the popular novel into the play that would inspire Verdi's beloved opera La Traviata. In 1936, along came film director George Cukor, whose brilliant notion it was to have Greta Garbo star in Camille, another reinterpretation of the Dumas love story. Now, another good idea: To preview its forthcoming production of La Traviata, opening Nov. 9, the Pennsylvania Opera Theater (TPOT)

QUOTE "I'll be as I always am: polite until otherwise indicated. " - Punk icon Johnny Rotten, describing his interview style for his new VH1 series, "Rotten Television" Oy, Kelsey Grammer. If the "Frasier" star wants to make his wife Camille a star, he ought to get her a better cause. Grammer, a former Playgirl, went public yesterday with her personal affliction, irritable bowel syndrome. Yes, and the syndrome (highlights of which include both constipation and diarrhea)

Camille is a professor at a Protestant college in Toronto. Her world is one of tidy desks, perfectly sharpened pencils and well-dusted corners. There is no clutter in her mind, her job or her Vermeer-lit apartment. To make her professional and personal life completely symmetrical, she is engaged to her colleague Martin, a professor and minister. If they wed, hint the college trustees, they could become co-chaplains. But then one wintry morning, Camille's beloved mutt, Bob, disappears.

The French import Every Other Weekend gently addresses the emotional violence of that divorce byproduct called "visitation," by which the children of an ex-couple are batted between parents like shuttlecocks across a net of thorns. As directed by actress-turned-filmmaker Nicole Garcia, this memorable, unsentimental document of the splitsville era focuses on the noncustodial parent, in this case the mother. Sullenly charismatic, as is the Gallic way, Nathalie Baye plays the unreliable mother in what has to be the best portrait of maternal ambivalence since Judy Davis essayed High Tide.

It is the aim of most festivals to hit the ground running, to start with a bang that announces that something special has arrived. Unfortunately, "Wet Carpets," the lead production of this year's Black Theater Festival at the Theater Center Philadelphia, sags under the weight of being first out of the box. Marian Warrington's story about the gathering of Tutelia (Ruth Blake), Nedra (Patricia Langford) and Camille (Jo Ann Ford) Nelson to celebrate the high school graduation of Camille's daughter, Darlene (Nicole Fite)

"Wet Carpets," a two-act drama by Marian Warrington, directed by Thom Wilkins, at the Theater Center Philadelphia, 622 S. 4th Street, through July 26. It is the aim of most festivals to hit the ground running, to start with a bang that announces that something special has arrived. Unfortunately, "Wet Carpets," the lead production of this year's Black Theater Festival at the Theater Center Philadelphia, sags under the weight of being first out of the box. Marian Warrington's story about the gathering of Tutelia (Ruth Blake)

The French regard Alfred de Musset as one of their great playwrights, but productions of his plays in the United States are rare. The McCarter Theater Company's presentation of Musset's Don't Trifle With Love in Princeton, N.J., is the start of an attempt to correct the situation. Artistic director Nagle Jackson has translated the 19th-century play gracefully and staged it with a conscientious sense of the difficulties it presents. They are formidable problems. Dealing with the confusions of young love, the play behaves for most of the way like a comedy, but ends tragically.

"Don't Trifle With Love," a play by Alfred de Musset, directed and translated by Nagle Jackson. Costumes by Elizabeth Covey, lighting by F. Mitchell Dana, set design by Pavel M. Dobrusky. Presented by the McCarter Theatre at 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., in repertory through April 5. The McCarter's Nagle Jackson is not your run-of-the-mill regional theater artistic director. He is writer, director, actor, translator and all-around intellectual gadbee - a one-man center of the performing arts.

With their coxswains bellowing encouragement, crews shoot the two eight- oared shells along the river and then collapse in panting exhaustion as the they cross the finish line. The applause from the spectators is politely restrained. It's only an event in a regatta, but, as one miffed observer muses, "We shouldn't give them ideas of victory. " The race takes place in French colonial Indochina in 1930, and the victors are a motley native crew that has just bested a favored team of French Navy cadets.

DEAR ABBY: My mother does other things while she's driving, and it's a big problem for me. I only just got legal to be in the front seat (I'm 13). I don't want to be in the car with her. She does things like put on lip liner and lip gloss and texts while she drives. She also takes both hands off the wheel and drives with her knees. When I ask her to stop, she tells me not to be a back seat driver. I have even told my grandparents what she's doing. What else can I do? - Getting Gray Hair at 13 DEAR GETTING GRAY: If ever I heard of someone who NEEDS a back seat driver, it is your mother.

I JUST GOT an early birthday present. Last Tuesday, while perusing the latest edition of Philadelphia Magazine , I happened upon a list of the "31 People We Wish Would Just Shut Up. " The "we" in question were the editors, of course. And there, at No. 10, was yours truly. My first reaction was: Really? Out of all the annoying people in this city, I made the final cut? (It wasn't actually a surprise. There is a petition to have my columns axed from the Daily News as well.

Lesson of the day: Steer clear of Patti LaBelle 's stuff. A West Point cadet caught a brutal beating from the singer's bodyguards in the parking lot at Houston's Bush International Airport in March for standing too near her limousine and luggage, a lawsuit alleges. Richard King , a senior at the U.S. Military Academy, is suing LaBelle and three of her entourage for unspecified damages after suffering a pummeling and concussion. "Apparently, defendant LaBelle believed King was standing too close to her [no doubt expensive]

DEAR ABBY: My mother does other things while she's driving, and it's a big problem for me. I only just got legal to be in the front seat (I'm 13). I don't want to be in the car with her. She does things like put on lip liner and lip gloss and texts while she drives. She also takes both hands off the wheel and drives with her knees. When I ask her to stop, she tells me not to be a back seat driver. I have even told my grandparents what she's doing. What else can I do? - Getting Gray Hair at 13 DEAR GETTING GRAY: If ever I heard of someone who NEEDS a back seat driver, it is your mother.

Camille Cates Barnett will get nearly $50,000 annually from the city pension fund for the rest of her life after June 30, when she leaves her post as Philadelphia's managing director after two years, five months, and 24 days. On the same day that a City Council committee moved to close the loophole that allows short-time employees such as Barnett to buy credit in the city's pension fund based on public service elsewhere, the Board of Pensions and Retirement revealed that Barnett had done just that.

Managing Director Camille Barnett - who came to the city government weighed down by grief and never took on a strong public role like some of her predecessors - yesterday announced her resignation. Rumors of Barnett's departure had echoed through City Hall for weeks. During a tearful news conference, Barnett said the decision to leave was her own, saying that she needed time to rebuild her life. Her last day is June 30. "I first want to tell you I really appreciate what you have done to support me in the last two years," said Barnett, who has served since Mayor Nutter took office.

Camille "Bud" George, the plain-talking state representative from Clearfield County, has never been one to mince words. Through closed doors yesterday, he could be heard scolding fellow House Democrats as they caucused at the Capitol for the first time on details of a tentative budget deal their leaders had agreed to 11 days earlier. George stormed out of the meeting in the afternoon and let his colleagues have it again when a reporter asked him to recap what he had just said in private.

CAMILLE Barnett doesn't own a hazmat suit. She doesn't ride on trash trucks, stop at fires, manage traffic disasters or hold news conferences, as previous Philadelphia managing directors have. But Barnett says that behind the scenes she is running things in her own way. "How it works is, things that need to be done, get done," Barnett said. Since joining the administration 18 months ago, Barnett - who held top city jobs in Austin, Texas, and in Washington, D.C. - has kept a low profile.

Lean, mean and out for blood, Daniel Craig makes his second appearance as James Bond in Quantum of Solace . It's a title that hardly makes sense - if I've got my Webster's Dictionary right, it translates to measurable amount of the alleviation of grief . But who knows, maybe it'll become a generational catchphrase. Or at least it's something you'd say to a Starbucks barrista: I'll have a venti latte with a quantum of solace, thanks. A sequel to Casino Royale (the action starts almost immediately where the last one ended)

There's a simple solution for South Jersey Democratic leaders who are trying to figure out who to put on the ballot to replace U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews. Forget about it! Voters have already chosen their candidates for the First Congressional District seat. They did so in the party primaries held June 3, in which the incumbent's wife, Camille Andrews, won by a wide margin. Voters chose her even though Camille Andrews had said she would step down if party leaders later decided they wanted someone else on the November ballot.

Weeks after the primary in the First Congressional District, voters still don't know who the real Democratic nominee will be. The legal candidate is Camille Spinello Andrews, who ran in the June 3 primary election but has said she would step aside if party leaders want to choose another candidate. For the moment, there is speculation the party may turn to her husband, incumbent U.S. Rep. Robert E. Andrews, who ran for U.S. Senate and promised not to return to the House. Andrews loyalists say he is getting pressure from Washington Democrats who don't want to lose a congressman with 18 years in the House.