Daphne

IF YOU KNEW MEAnne RoipheLittle, Brown! 212 pages. $19.95Ollie Marcus teaches his high school English students "to honor their own stories." And in her latest novel, "If You Knew Me," Anne Roiphe tells a story worthy of honor. Leah Rose, a middle-aged New York scientist, is on sabbatical in an East Coast ocean resort town when she meets Marcus, a year-round resident who lives with his mentally deficient sister.Ms. Roiphe relates the details of Leah and Ollie's reluctant romance in such lyrical, almost poetic, prose that the bulk of the novel reads like a mood piece.

How do celebrities, who call tonier cities like New York or L.A. home, have a great time in Baltimore?While Penn and Teller may work together like magic onstage, the comic magicians sure have different views about how to live it up in Charm City. Teller says, "I have to confess whenever I'm in Baltimore I'm performing at night, so here's my idea of a perfect afternoon: I would go and have lunch at the Woman's Industrial Exchange. I remember being charmed by the cozy, maternal and somewhat severe look of the place.

WHEN VETERINARIAN Bill Benson lifted a 19-pound tumor out of Daphne, a 33-pound basset hound, ''I suddenly knew how the surgeon felt who lifted a record 80-pound tumor out of the stomach of a woman in India. The thought did pop in my mind at the time,'' says Benson, who described the tumor as the size of two basketballs with a very thin membrane and filled with fluid.The operation, with veterinarian Barbara Eidel assisting, took an hour and a half and was performed on Nov. 19 at the Reisterstown 24 Hour Veterinary Complex at 501 E. Main St. in Reisterstown, which Benson owns and where a staff of 26 keeps the hospital open daily around the clock.

On The Weekend Watch:A FOXY MOVE -- The new Fox series this fall have not exactly made a big splash, so the network is apparently trying to find viewers for some shows via the old ploy of schedule tampering. Tonight, for example (8:30, Channel 45), the mildly diverting "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" has an episode in the "Simpsons" former slot, then comes back on Sunday in its regular 8:30 slot. "Babes," displaced tonight, comes back next Thursday.THE PROMOTIONAL GAME -- Never doubt that TV is primarily a marketing medium.

Nothing delights Tim Reid more than a good fish-out-of-water tale. A story where, say, a decent man finds himself thrown from the life he knows and loves into one that's completely unfamiliar.Sure, he's summing up Frank Parrish, the Boston professor turned New Orleans restaurateur he played on "Frank's Place" or Venus Flytrap, the supercool yet sensitive disc jockey from "WKRP in Cincinnati."But the life he's also describing could be his own.That's because after winning praise playing offbeat TV characters, the 45-year-old actor has left the high-profile world of prime time to co-host with his wife, Daphne Maxwell Reid, a daytime talk show being taped in Baltimore.

IN THE Flite Three Studios out on Cold Spring Lane, Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell Reid talked to Cathy Rigby yesterday, taping the interview for a show that's essentially doing the same thing as Rigby's production of "Peter Pan" -- taking it on the road hoping for a shot at the big time.Rigby now knows that after 11 months of playing places like Baltimore's Mechanic Theatre, "Peter Pan" is going to Broadway. But the Reids won't know until sometime next year if "Tim and Daphne" will make television's equivalent -- national syndication.