On Saturday morning, the International Film Channel shows Japanese movies. Mostly these are about samurai warriors. Edward watches these. I listen from another room without really wanting to. They are, of course, in Japanese with English titles. The language is guttural with abrupt, explosive exclamations. I have spent some time imitating these sounds the way Sid Cesar used to do with foreign languages. He would approximate the sound of the language with gibberish. Sometimes, I lunge as I express myself, imagining I am goring some foe with my samurai sword. What, you never did this?

The women in these movies are graduates of the High Giggle School of Drama. Depending on the speed of the tremolo, they are either joyfully gamboling around the garden with their lover, or have just been raped by their lover’s arch enemy, their house burned, and their silk kimono torn. It’s all in the quaver.

The Japanese, as far as I know, have never filmed a romantic comedy. It appears to be an alien concept. I am filling you in to round out your knowledge of foreign films.

When these movies run their course at our house, there is the Western Channel. In New York City, there is no Western Channel. When I learned there was one down here, I said, “Kill me now, God.” Ed has watched every John Wayne movie many times. Tonight we get to watch “Rio Bravo.” It isn’t bad as Westerns go, but that’s only for the first 152 times. Wayne’s non Western roles cast him as a man of morals so rigid, one imagined he made love using lab equipment. I grew to dislike him along with Charlton Heston, another actor who gravitated to roles of high judgment and low tolerance.

When I was a really small child, I loved Westerns because of the horses. Every small child loves horses. The movies I saw then were B movies with cowboy heroes like Lash LaRue, Tim Holt, Johnny Mack Brown (a former football star turned actor), Charles Starrett (I thought he was the handsomest of all). I remember leaving the local movie house with my parents at that part in the movie where we had come in (in the old days, you came and went at will without regard to starting times). I was perhaps 5 years old -- I turned to the screen as we walked up the aisle and called out, "Goodbye Tom Mix" to the amusement of the other patrons. I remember it clearly.

I left these joys of moviedom in the dust as I began to listen to dialogue and fell in love with English movies, comedies of manners, biting wit and George Sanders in the role of The Saint.

Ed said when he combs his hair back he looks like Sanders and I do see a resemblance but, of course, the facial expressions are different. In my teens while other young girls were screaming and fainting at live performances of Frank Sinatra at the Chicago theatre, I was sighing over the likes of George Sanders and Ronald Colman.

My movie heroes are all gone now. Sigh.

xx, Teal