Kiss

I feel sorry for Mrs. T.J. Simers. Her husband has announced that he has never kissed her after a Dodger home run [Aug. 25]. One must assume that in this declaration, old T.J. is telling us he never kisses his wife while out in the light of day. That's too bad. If Al Gore is safe laying his lips on Tipper in Los Angeles on national television, surely Mr. Simers can come out of his closet and kiss Mrs. Simers somewhere in view of the public's eye....

Well, here we are back for another chapter of the "Kiss And Tell" playoffs, the NBA's answer to "From Here To Eternity." You'll remember last year at this time when Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas set a kind and gentle tone for the NBA finals by exchanging pecks on the cheek. (There's a custom in international basketball of players giving each other gifts before the game, but it's usually a banner or a T-shirt. If it were kissing, you might hear something like this at the jump-ball circle: "Not tonight, Arvidas, I've got a headache."

At one point Sunday there were hundreds and hundreds of people running around with their faces painted white and black, some of them wearing silver armor, bombs in the distance, security personnel everywhere-- making it feel very much like a Raider game. The stadium was full of fans, however, a dead giveaway this was not a Raider game, not to mention it was the Super Bowl and they're never invited to the big game. But why would 74,000 people pay at least $325 a shot to have KISS yell at them?

Because of Kobe Bryant, Elyce Wakerman wonders if it is rape "when you have willingly joined someone late at night [and] he hasn't drugged you or strong-armed you" (Voices, May 15). If you let someone sit in your car, even have the keys prominently displayed, is it car theft if they drive away without permission? We have the right to control our possessions, including our bodies, at any time. We have the right to change our minds on the loan of any item, including our bodies. Yes, it is rape if we say no even after kissing and fondling has begun.

Later this month, kisses will be exchanged on cards, in boxes of candy -- and, of course, on the lips. Scientists know how humans kiss and what happens to the body during a kiss, but why people began puckering up in the first place remains unknown. A romantic kiss, blandly stated, involves movement of the lower jaw (the sole movable bone in the head) and contraction of 34 muscles in the face, neck and head -- principally the orbicularis orbis, which surrounds the mouth and allows the lips to pucker.

Whoops. The film career of Whoopi Goldberg has descended from "The Color Purple" to her role in a made-for-TV movie tonight as a pool shark, a la "The Color of Money." Alas, the color many viewers are likely to be seeing well before the end of "Kiss Shot" (at 9 on Channels 2 and 8) is the color of the inside of their eyelids. Other than her hair, which is braided and unbowed, the wildly subdued Whoopster is allowed no flamboyance whatsoever in her thankless role as struggling single mother Sarah Collins.

UNDERRATED 'The Master' : It's a gorgeously filmed meditation on the mentor and protege dynamic and the rise of a cult, and features an acting tour-de-force from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, whose posture alone is twisted in such a puzzle of demented humanity he's practically the embodiment of the border between beast and manhood. And at the helm is Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the few filmmakers unafraid to allow you to leave the theater with more questions than answers.

Kathryn Grayson, an MGM singing star in the 1940s and early '50s in musicals such as "Anchors Aweigh," "Kiss Me Kate" and "Show Boat," has died. She was 88. Grayson died Wednesday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, said publicist Dale Olson. A dark-haired beauty with a heart-shaped face and a brilliant coloratura voice, Grayson signed with MGM as a teenager and made her screen debut in "Andy Hardy's Private Secretary," starring Mickey Rooney, in 1941. She went on to appear opposite Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in "Anchors Aweigh," Kelly in "Thousands Cheer," Sinatra in "The Kissing Bandit," Mario Lanza in "The Toast of New Orleans," Howard Keel in "Show Boat," "Lovely to Look At" and "Kiss Me Kate," and Gordon MacRae in "The Desert Song," among other musicals.

Here are the ups and downs of being a teenage actress on a television show with strong adult themes: Your training at a prestigious ballet school has to be dropped, bad. But you get to spend your summers on the beach in California, good. You get to kiss the boy you've had a crush on because it gets written into the script, good. But this is your first kiss -- like, ever -- and so your first kiss will take place on camera, beneath a boom microphone and in front of the crew . . . along with your mom. Bad. You're on TV, cool.