Side show

By SHARON FINK

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 24, 2001

BOOK OF THE WEEK TO AVOID: The Seven Stories of Love: And How to Choose Your Own Happy Ending, by Marcia Millman. Her premise: Movies portray seven basic love stories. These movies can help us understand our romantic attractions and disappointments. Once we understand, we can ensure that our romances have happy endings.

If it were only that simple.

Here are Millman's basic stories and an example of a movie that is supposed to lead us to a higher consciousness:

First Love (Titanic)

Pygmalion (Working Girl)

Obsessive love (Fatal Attraction)

The Downstairs Woman and the Upstairs Man (Pretty Woman)

Sacrifice (Casablanca)

Rescue (Beauty and the Beast)

The Courage to Love: Postponement and Avoidance (Sleepless in Seattle)

This book is crying for a companion piece: The Seven Stories of Love: And How They Can Permanently Mess Us Up.

DON'T ORDER ME THE TOFU BURGER WITH PAPAYA: Nature can be so unfair.

Reader's Digest lists the five best foods for men and for women to fight off various ailments, and as often is the case, women get the worse end of the deal.

Five best foods for men:

Tomato sauce, oysters, broccoli, peanut butter and watermelon.

Five best foods for women:

Papaya, flaxseed, tofu, buffalo meat and collard greens.

BUTTON HIS LIP: A honcho of a British chain of menswear stores issued this assesment of his average customer: "hooligans" and "beer-swilling lads" whose only need for a suit would be "for his first interview or first court case." David Shepherd was exaggerating to make a point, his boss said later. No one seemed to know what that point was.

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