Vagabond

Beer is America's historical beverage of choice for picnics. To me, however, wine can offer more. Even jug wine. The only drawback is the logistical problem of getting it--and all its accouterments--to the location in good order. After all, good wine isn't usually found in cans. And often it's not until you're at some remote spot ready to dole out the smoked salmon that anyone realizes there's a problem. To begin with, there's Murphy's wine law: No matter how good the planning, there's never a corkscrew around.

Nobody ever had a more prophetically titled debut on the pop charts than Doug Sahm. He was fronting the Sir Douglas Quintet in 1965 when the band burst into the Top 20 with "She's About a Mover," a rough and playfully rocking number that sounded as if it had been concocted in a backwoods still. Since then, Sahm's career has been about moving his person from place to place and his music from style to rootsy style. Over the phone recently from Austin, Tex.

This will be a pivotal season for the Washington Capitals, an aging team still searching for its first championship pennant. It also will be a key season for left wing Geoff Courtnall and defenseman Neil Sheehy, two newcomers who would like to help provide the Capitals with that needed push over the top.

Hotel Investors Trust in Woodland Hills said it has agreed to sell its three remaining Vagabond motor hotels to Northview Corp. for $11.5 million in cash. The hotels are in Woodland Hills, Rosemead and Sacramento. Northview Corp. formerly was headed by Ivan Boesky, who is serving a prison sentence for insider trading. Northview was recently acquired by Calmark Financial Corp. in Los Angeles.

"A Farewell Tribute to Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth" will reopen the Vagabond Theater next Friday. One of Los Angeles' pioneer art and repertory theaters, the Vagabond, 2509 Wilshire Blvd., has been refurbished by veteran exhibitor Louis Federici after having been closed more than a year.

Vagabond Inns has begun an ambitious enrichment of its almost year-old Club 55 program for mature travelers. It is putting on a series of special events at many of its more than 40 properties in the West, plus motor-coach tours and other travel activities. The San Diego-based chain has also signed marketing agreements with two other Western hotel chains: Nendels Motor Inns (in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Utah) and Sandman Hotels & Inns (Western Canada).

It has become a demented ritual at St. Genevieve High. Each day before basketball practice, three or four members of the Valiant team pile into the 1966 Mustang of team co-captain Dion Contreras and drive to whichever gymnasium Coach Pete Cassidy has managed to finagle for the day. A couple of hours later, after their workout, three or four smelly Valiants pile back into the same Mustang and roll the windows down for the aromatic drive back to school.

"Legal Eagles," which failed to soar at the box office, will swoop into video stores on April 9, weighed down by an $89.95 price tag. This new price, $10 above the norm, just might be the industry standard for major titles by the end of the year and may translate into slightly higher rental fees. CBS-Fox's "Aliens," due Feb. 26, and RCA/Columbia's "Stand By Me," a March 19 release, will be the same price.

Just how Agnes Varda has kept "Vagabond" from being a monumental downer is interesting, but she has. It is haunting. It is melancholy--as the sight of a young life, wasted and finally spent before our eyes has to be. But ultimately, beyond its central tragedy, it is an exhilarating film, the sort you leave burning to talk about with friends.

"It's been a very good year" for women in the French film industry, according to Agnes Varda, the French director generally considered to be the "mother" of the French cinema. "We still have a long way to go. Women do not make up 50% of our industry. But I think we're at last able to put aside that tiresome question, 'Why not more women directors?'