T E Lawrence

Through its 83-year history, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service has lived up to its title: The government has never officially acknowledged its existence. And unlike its counterparts--the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Russia's KGB--the British spy service's headquarters here is an unmarked high-rise London office building, which security guards identify only as "Ministry of Defense."

"Indiana Jones--The Psychological Underpinnings." That would be a more accurate title for ABC's talky two-hour premiere of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" at 8 tonight on Channels 3, 7, 10 and 42. It would also reflect the initial low-intensity level of this ambitious George Lucas series about the youthful global exploits of Harrison Ford's heroic archeologist-adventurer in the "Indiana Jones" movie trilogy. The series will regularly air at 9 p.m.

"The Enormous Room" by E.E. Cummings, a neglected American masterpiece, written in the author's early 20s, his first book and a true story, was published by Boni & Liveright in 1922. John V.A. Weaver praised the book as "a literary achievement of the highest order . . . the most interesting book the war (WWI) has produced." Cummings, who had earned his Harvard M.A. in 1916, volunteered a year later for the Red Cross ambulance corps in France with his friend, "W.S.B." Censors intercepted B.'

These boots were made for walking. Serious walking. Walking over long, lonely stretches of African desert. The kind of boots T.E. Lawrence might have wished for to keep his tootsies free of Arabian sand. They're the Clarks Desert Boot. Homely but utterly practical, the shoe was developed in 1950 by Nathan Clark for the English footwear company known for making European comfort shoes.

The fabled lost city of Ubar, celebrated in both the Koran and "A Thousand and One Arabian Nights" as the center of the lucrative frankincense trade for 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, has been found by a Los Angeles-based team of amateur and professional archeologists.

John Glubb, who developed Jordan's Arab Legion into one of the strongest armies in the Middle East and became renowned as a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, died Monday in his sleep. He was 88 and died at his home in Mayfield in Sussex, where he had lived since Jordan's King Hussein dismissed him as head of the kingdom's army in 1956. Under his command, the men of the Arab Legion were known as "Glubb's Girls," so called because of the length of their hair and flowing robes.

For fans of the extended instrumental jams that have earned Phish its loyal following, there's no more mind-bending a way to wrap up the summer's final weekend than with a dose of Phish under the Orange County stars. * Phish, Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. 7 p.m. $23. (949) 855-2863. noon: Festival Everybody samba! It's Brazil's independence day, and that means it's time for a Brazilian Street Carnaval.

Adventure movies don't often deal with anti-climaxes, and "Lawrence of Arabia" didn't dwell long on T.E. Lawrence's post-warrior life, for obvious reasons. Still, there's a certain depressing fascination in the clean-up after a battle, and in the mire of bureaucracy that follows any large-scale action.

If you love movies, but can't stand the crowds lining up for the newest summer releases, there are plenty of local alternatives in the week ahead. First on the schedule is Saturday's Classic Cinema night at the Thousand Oaks Library, featuring the original 1962 version of "Lawrence of Arabia." The epic motion picture, starring Peter O'Toole, Alec Guiness, Anthony Quinn, Claude Rains and Omar Sharif, picked up seven Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture and Best Director (David Lean).