Gorgeous

THE KNOCK on the door came about 15 minutes before 10 on Tuesday night. I answered, and there stood Hannibal Brisueno. Hannibal Brisueno was just one of the neighborhood teens when I moved to the 4900 block of Edgemere Ave. in 1986. He was grown now, with kids of his own, and had long since departed. His appearance at my door brought sad news. "My father died about an hour ago," he said, knowing that I, and every soul on this block, would want to know. Anibal Ayala Brisueno, retired Marine Corps master sergeant, community activist, anti-drug crusader and scold, and nemesis of every scofflaw and lowlife in our Pimlico neighborhood, died Tuesday.

The Last Promise, by Richard Paul Evans. 320 pages. Dutton. $22.95. The Last Promise bills itself as a romance from the heart and for the ages. Preaching an easy gospel of true love as destiny, it quickly reveals itself to be a romance from and for the recycling bin. Richard Paul Evans made his name with the story-length Christmas Box in 1995 and has published a rapid-fire six novels since. He has sold 11 million books worldwide. Can a few million devoted readers be wrong? Apparently, they can be hoodwinked by Evans's quasi-spiritual cant.

COLLEGE PARK - The NCAA men's basketball defending national champions opened a new year and a new era in style last night as a roaring, near-capacity crowd at the brand new Comcast Center officially welcomed the Maryland Terrapins. Most of the arena's 17,950 seats were full by the time a most unique Midnight Madness event, complete with a laser show and spotlights, heralded the arrival of a new season. Freshman forward Nik Caner-Medley was the first player on the floor, and he greeted the throngs of cheering spectators with a two-handed dunk.

She's a first cousin to Madame Butterfly; they're both exotic Easterners who commit suicide over a Westerner with some annoying notions about duty. She's a second cousin, once removed, to Carmen; they both have to put up with a boyfriend in the military who feels drawn to the call of the barracks at inopportune moments. And she's even distantly related to Norma; they both are priestesses of ancient religions who incur their fathers' wrath by allowing a non-believer into their sacred domain.

SUN SCORE **1/2 In the French farce My Wife is an Actress, actor-director Yvan Attal spends as much time dodging emotional bullets as hitting comic targets. Combine the title with the image of a dazzling female and a frazzled male, and you've got the movie perfectly. The picture has its moderate appeal, thanks to elegant film craft, an even more elegant female lead, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and a second male lead, Terence Stamp, who is elegant to the third power. But it leaves you feeling as if you've seen a grab-bag pilot for a TV series that didn't make the cut. As a sportswriter also named Yvan, who is married, just like him, to Charlotte (the daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, she goes by her first name in the movie)

Mr. Potter, by Jamaica Kincaid. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 195 pages. $18. I know it's a thuggish thing to ask, but I wonder how many readers there are, in 2002, for Jamaica Kincaid's prose. Let's start with the first sentence of Mr. Potter, her new novel: "And that day, the sun was in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, and it shone in its usual way so harshly bright, making even the shadows pale, making even the shadows seek shelter; that day the sun was in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, but Mr. Potter did not note this, so accustomed was he to this, the sun in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky" That's not the whole sentence, but it is more than half, and I wonder how many readers there are, in 2002, for that brand of lyricism, that repetition, in rhythm and word choice, with which Kincaid attempts to re-create consciousness itself, and resurrect her dead father, the titular Mr. Potter, whom she never knew.

When we moved here, there was a single Oldfield birch tree canted at an improbable angle by the driveway. Ash-colored and striated with charcoal, it glowed in the evening light like a slim Leaning Tower of Pisa. In fall, it carpeted the ground with brilliant yellow leaves, a striking contrast to the crimson of the dogwood and the paper-bag brown of the sycamore. During my Earth-mother phase, I used its bark and green shoots to make birch tea, which I had read is a good general tonic. The flavor wasn't great, but I felt both healthy and self-righteous, which helped to make up for it. Birch (Betula)

LOS ANGELES -- One is a double agent for the CIA. Another is a professional thief forced to work for the police after being arrested during a failed heist. Another yet is an undercover agent who loves the feel of an automatic weapon firing red-hot in her hands. They are the new, kung-fu kicking, young women of prime time, coming to a television screen near you this fall. Taken together with Max (Jessica Alba), of Fox's Dark Angel, and Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), of UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, network television is going to be populated by young, leather-clad, female action adventure heroes like never before.

A FRIEND advises that these days he worries less about the big picture and finds that things go better when his thoughts dwell on the small. "I ask myself: `How is my family doing? OK?' Then it's OK," he says. "I watch the birds and say, `Isn't that bird lovely?' Or, I say, `What a gorgeous tree in a gorgeous park.' The attempt to situate myself in awe-producing places as a tool of spiritual development has paid substantial dividends. In reality, we have little control over much of what goes on around us. Our greatest source of personal power is our choice of perspective."

The Sandy Lane Resort Hotel in Barbados has always been a celebrity kind of place. Elton John, Mick Jagger and Kevin Costner have stayed there. Aristotle Onassis strolled among the palm trees with Maria Callas. Members of British royalty have been guests there. The luxury hotel - known for its imposing white coral, private balconies and lush gardens overlooking the Caribbean Sea - has been a refuge for big spenders and tourists on a fling since opening in 1961. My husband and I got as close as the security fence.