If this is Wednesday it must be Nostrum

Or, those who cannot remember Nostrum are condemned to repeat it. You have no one to blame but yourself. 

We left the Nostrumite working at Mr. Ma 'N' Pa's Video Bazaar. To follow up, I thumbed through the next episode, where he went into a permanent depression because a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie had lost traction in the AFI's top 100 films. I won't repeat that here because, well, you wouldn't know Fred and Ginger from gin and tonic, you spalpeen! (Then again, I remember a later slugfest, non-Nostrumian, with Bro Ryan—who is not a spalpeen—when Vertigo knocked Kane from the top spot, as he and I kicked around the strictures of educated criticism, so maybe there are more film fans out there than I think.) This was followed by the possibility of the Mite working at Pet-a-Porter, Mr. MNP's next enterprise, which led to a lot of incomprehensible French and fashion puns, and a line about exchanging Scream 2 for a Shih Tzu. Then there was a predictable rant when Tina Brown left the New Yorker. Then in the next epistle it turns out that the Mite ended up at the pet shop after all. Here's that one in its entirety, including its rather prescient preview of the incomparable Max's return to popularity.

We almost didn’t make it this week. The Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over Random House’s announcement of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. “Ulysses?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “Yeah, right. There’s a bit of beach reading for you. Like any of these people on that committee ever read the damned thing from start to finish. They’re only trying to sell their overstock from the last twenty years. They should be feeling the agenbite of inwit this very minute.” He bears down on me. “Have you ever read it?” he asks. Well of course I haven’t but his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. But I probably won’t. I was more intrigued by number 59, a little number called Zuleika Dobson. The Mite’s eyebrow arched. “Now you’re talking,” says he. “Although I’ll bet that book’s had fewer takers than Jimmy Joyce. The incomparable Max!” What’s a zuleika, I ask. “Last seen heading for Cambridge, my boy.” He sighs. “The poor devils don’t know what they’re in for.” Of course, I have no idea when the Mite gets to read all these books, but I think he actually does; there aren’t any Cliff Notes for Max Beerbohm. Lately he’s been spending sixteen hours a day getting the Ma ‘N’ Pa Pet-a-Porter shop ready for business. The parakeets, geckos and tetras have all arrived, plus a couple of Siamese cats and a three-foot long boa constrictor that keeps getting out of his display and giving the gerbil cage a run for its money. The Mite calls the boa Cassius because, he says, he has a lean and hungry look. Mr. Ma ‘N’ Pa, whose love of pets ends, I think, with renting the movie of Lady and the Tramp, has been bitten at least three times in places he doesn’t want to talk about, and seems to be showing second thoughts about the whole enterprise. The dogs, the last new arrivals, will be showing up Wednesday morning, opening day. Drop by; pick up a balloon. Or a Corgi. Whatever turns you on...

By the way, the Mite saw his first episode of “Dawson’s Creek” last week, which is my fault, I guess, because they were rerunning the premiere installment and I thought, what the hell. I was wrong; much the hell. The lad promises not to let the show influence his judgment, however (he makes no promises, though, about having it influence his hormones; “Isn’t there anyone on that show,” he asks, “who isn’t in estrus or musth or whatever it is that turns everyday empty­headed characters into sex-crazed empty-headed characters?”). He has managed to program the cable box so that there is no way we will be able to watch any future episodes, so I don’t think it will have a lasting impact.