Stiff Upper Lip

It is eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night and, well, there must be some mistake. The television screen is filled with a montage of classical statues of naked bodies, lit in pink and green. Each figure is being caressed by multiple sets of hands. And the sound is that of panting and grunting, muttering voices and then a crescendo of husky, breathless whispers. Finally, the audiovisual pyrotechnics come to an end, and there, in a dimly lit studio, are eight men and women on a long, semi-circular couch.

After seven extraordinary days, Britons awoke yesterday with an emotional hangover. For a whole week, a nation famous for its stiff upper lip had wallowed in grief at Princess Diana's death. Men had wept openly in public. Total strangers had hugged each other in sympathy. Flowers were everywhere. If people had any tears left to shed, they shed them on Saturday watching Diana's ex-husband and her two brave sons attend a funeral of pomp, pop and bitter recrimination. In the evening, streets remained unnaturally quiet as many people stayed at home to light candles in Diana's memory.

You have to wonder what image the mayor is going for. Is it Fu Manchu, Salvador Dali, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X or Emiliano Zapata? It's hard to figure because Mayor Goode's budding bristle above the lip, first spotted by reporters last week, is only 10 days old. The way it curls down around the sides of the mouth indicates perhaps the mien of that Asian mean guy Fu. On the other hand, if allowed to grow, it could be curled up, Dali-style (also favored by the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot)

Say what you will about Kathie Lee Gifford, beleaguered talk-show hostess, Princess of Perk, and, for at least another 14 minutes, this country's most famous victim of infidelity: she comes through for her family. Last night Gifford's father, Aaron Leon Epstein, won an award from The American College in Bryn Mawr, from which he earned two degrees in underwriting and financial consulting. It was, as luck, or fate, or tabloid dreams would have it, the first-ever Family Values Award: given, college president and CEO Samuel H. Weese explained, to a graduate who "recognizes the value of the family and the interrelationship between life insurance and family values.

Attending a small school like Lincoln University, in southern Chester County, gives students the opportunity to get to know their classmates. Yesterday, though, students at the historically black university experienced the sad side of that closeness, as they mourned the deaths of two women whom they had come to know over the last year and a half. Latoi Nickelle Paige of White Plains, N.Y., and Olivia T. Fleming of Jersey City, both 19-year-old sophomores, were killed in a car crash Tuesday evening in Chester Heights, Delaware County, after the Mitsubishi Mirage they were riding in crossed the concrete median on Route 1 and was struck by an oncoming car. The Mitsubishi's driver, Taheera Bilal, 18, also a Lincoln student from White Plains, was critically injured and was in stable condition last night at Crozer-Chester Medical Center.

The Americans are not coming, and the British are not happy. The British - by reputation, steadfast practitioners of the stiff upper lip - say war has proven that Americans are a bunch of "wimps. " Since the start of the Persian Gulf war, American business travelers and tourists, worried about the threat of terrorism, have been staying away from Britain and the rest of Europe in droves. Bookings are said to be down 50 percent. In London, the news media are filled with reports about the most visible aspect of this phenomenon: American celebrities canceling appearances here rather than risk taking a transatlantic flight.

This production by an independent "collaborative" headed by composer- pianist Michael James Ogborn is the first presentation in an occasional program of "hosting" projected by the Wilma Theater "to give greater opportunities to local playwrights, directors and actors. " In addition to making its facilities available to Ogborn and his associates, the Wilma evidently is providing a package of essential support services. Whatever the future holds for so community-minded a policy, the Wilma has extended its largess to an act that may be hard to follow in terms of spirit, passion and professional savvy.

Music Keane. Is this piano-pounding British outfit a less-cloying Coldplay? Ben Folds Five with a stiff upper lip? U2 without the emotional baggage and the tour trucks to carry it? All three? Could be: The Sussex, England, band, with vocalist Tom Chaplin, pianist Tim Rice-Oxley, and drummer Richard Hughes, started life as a cover band. Their brand of cool pop benefits from all the unholy influences listed above. While 2008's loud, guitar-filled Perfect Symmetry opened the doors to raving and rage, this year's Night Train brought Keane to a collaboration with Somali emcee K'Naan and the bracing snort of cold funk.

Read his lips. No, not George Bush's lips, which are thin and tight, and promise no new taxes but not much in the romance department. Read, please, the kisser of the 1989 heartthrob. In 1969, the eyes had it: Remember swooning over Paul Newman's and Robert Redford's baby-blues? In 1979, we rhapsodized about the rippling muscles of urban cowboys Richard Gere and John Travolta, their eloquent body language. For the 1989 screen Romeo, the lips have it. Not since Brando and Belmondo has there been such a focus on actors with sensual mouths.

TO BE OR WHAT TO BE With all this talk about Mel Gibson's "Hamlet," a poll was in order to see if any other of Hollywood's hot guys is thinking about tackling the Bard. "I've never had the nerve to attempt 'Hamlet,' but I'd love to do Caligula," quipped the hunky Patrick Swayze. "I'd like to play King Henry," was Ed Asner's reply. "If I was alive at 85 and I was able to do King Lear, it would be great," said Gabriel Byrne. While Matthew Modine thought he'd make a perfect Puck, not everybody was game to attempt a shot at Shakespeare.

CHICAGO - Only three current 76ers before this postseason had ever reached the second round of the playoffs, since the team is mostly filled with very young players. Elton Brand, Tony Battie, and Sam Young advanced out of the first round in their careers, and each knows how tough the close-out game of a series can be. "Close-out games are notoriously tough, but I'd rather be in the position to be up 3-1 and have an opportunity to close things out," Brand said Tuesday before Game 5. "But it's never easy.

Music Keane. Is this piano-pounding British outfit a less-cloying Coldplay? Ben Folds Five with a stiff upper lip? U2 without the emotional baggage and the tour trucks to carry it? All three? Could be: The Sussex, England, band, with vocalist Tom Chaplin, pianist Tim Rice-Oxley, and drummer Richard Hughes, started life as a cover band. Their brand of cool pop benefits from all the unholy influences listed above. While 2008's loud, guitar-filled Perfect Symmetry opened the doors to raving and rage, this year's Night Train brought Keane to a collaboration with Somali emcee K'Naan and the bracing snort of cold funk.

Tracy Bonham One of the songs on Tracy Bonham's new album is called "We Moved Our City to the Country," inspired by her own experience shifting between Brooklyn and Upstate New York. It's representative of the hybrid charms of Masts of Manhatta (the album title comes from a Walt Whitman poem). Working with a small combo featuring former Beck guitarist Smokey Hormel, the violinist-guitarist and onetime alt-rock hit maker turns down the volume and offers a beguilingly low-key mix of urban and country - pop and pastoral - with hints of a jazzy vibe.

If former state Sen. Vince Fumo's life were a book, last night would make sure you kept turning the pages. Heading off to federal prison in 12 days, Fumo threw a party at Popi's, in South Philly, to celebrate his engagement to Carolyn Zinni. "We're turning a page in the book and starting a new chapter," said Fumo, flanked by the woman who stood by him through an arduous corruption trial and conviction on 137 counts. "What I have ahead of me doesn't make me happy. " Fumo and Zinni laughed off a question about whether the party could become a surprise wedding ceremony.

All you have to know about "Battlefields: Dear Billy" is that it's one of the best comics you will ever read and one of the high points in the legendary career of writer Garth Ennis. Ennis not only manages to tell a fresh, unique World War II tale, but brilliantly focuses more on the characters rather than the bullets, bombs and blood. Ennis is determined to present the collateral damage of war - the emotional and psychological toll it takes on all those who participate in it - rather than a "Saving Private Ryan"-esque epic.

NEW YORK - As the New York Mets continued their stunning meltdown last night, the players and manager Willie Randolph kept a stiff upper lip. The latest blow was a 3-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals at Shea Stadium. Coupled with the Phillies' 6-4 win over Atlanta, the Mets' loss dropped them into a tie for first place in the National League East with three games to play. Both teams also remain very much in the wild-card hunt. The Mets will host the Florida Marlins and the Phillies the scrappy Washington Nationals in three-game series to end the season.

British writer-director Shane Meadows makes "This Is England" his most personal film yet. Like "TwentyFourSeven," "A Room for Romeo Brass," "Once Upon a Time in the Midlands" and others, it's concerned with coming of age, and what it means to be a man, in his nation's working-class heartland. But Meadows' own youthful involvement with skinhead culture, coupled with vivid memories of the Margaret Thatcher era, lend "This Is England" more immediacy and passion than ever seen before in a Meadows film.

You're terrified that that touch of flu you've had all week might be anthrax, and, if you hear one more windbag pundit on CNN, you?ll scream and throw the cat out the window. Sure, times are grim, but cheer up. Help isn't far away. Michael Frayn's Noises Off, that peerless tour de farce, is back on Broadway and, in more than one way, it's an instance of perfect comic timing. It is, after all, hard to keepthe mind on the woes of the world when the body is in the gripof helpless laughter.

Cake, champagne, an engraved mug from the staff - it could have been the goodbye party for your coworker down the hall. In the end, maybe that was Kathie Lee Gifford's appeal all along. For 15 years as cohost of the syndicated chat show Live With Regis and Kathie Lee, a job that ended yesterday, she was just like us, only more so: larger than life, with twice as much eyeliner. Think of her as your goofiest girlfriend, the one you love to hate, the one who's smart but ditzy, talented but unfocused, deeply self-involved but always hungry for your high regard, and always getting herself tangled up in some kind of unbelievable mischief that you, as a sensible, level-headed person, have managed to avoid.

It's Tea With Mussolini time: Florence, Italy, the late '30s, fascism and Nazi fervor are rampant, xenophobia reigns, and a community of "By Jove!"-ing British expatriates carry on with their high teas and fox-trots as if all's right with the world. So begins Up at the Villa, a disappointing romantic drama from a W. Somerset Maugham novella, starring the impossible-not-to-watch Kristin Scott Thomas (nobody gnaws at her nails more beautifully) and a woefully miscast, mumbling Sean Penn.