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This Christmas season, is there any better way to say “I love you” than to make someone watch a 300-pound transvestite eat dog excrement? The only honest answer here is “yes.” We joke, because we love. But if you’ve got a strong stomach or need to buy a gift for someone who does, feast on this six-pack from John Waters. The self-proclaimed Pope of Trash, Waters was a no-budget Baltimore filmmaker with a taste for true weirdness and a group of likeminded deviants (like the gigantic Frankenstein-fabulous Divine) all willing to do anything to help get their movies noticed. We mean anything. His early films can’t be called good by any normal meaning of the word. But he knew how to pile on the shock value, presenting a warped and scatological vision of a suburbia populated by freaks and perverts (there are chickens involved sometimes, and that’s all we’ll say). The shocks were so appalling that you can’t help but admire his audacity—Waters was the Ionesco of the sewer, the original Johnny Knoxville of the big screen. Divine’s between-meal snack makes Pink Flamingos still his most infamous movie, but each of the pre-Hairspray bunch here go for broke in their own lurid way. True, the man mellowed with age. Hairspray is his cracked, nostalgic look back at the world of 1960s TV dance shows. It’s still utterly strange judged against mainstream teen-dance stuff like Footloose . But when you can only describe a John Waters comedy with words like “sweet” and “sentimental,” something very strange is going on. That’s an attitude completely at variance with the ironic vulgarity he’d embrace again for Cecil B. Demented , but he nails Hairspray’s abnormal innocence with surprising aplomb.

Just about the only thing these three films have in common, besides starring William Holden and beginning with the letter S, is director Billy Wilder. He was a director equally at home with chilling psychological breakdowns and sunny romantic comedies, and had a rare aptitude for coaxing just the right tone from his lead actors to color the mood of his films. Sunset Boulevard is the best of his career, a twisted, claustrophobic descent into the madness of obsolete movie queen Norma Desmond, superbly portrayed by Gloria Swanson, whose final close-up is one of the iconic images of screen dementia. Holden’s cynical screenwriter was a fine foil for Swanson’s shrill petulance and unnerving stare. But of his three performances here, we’ll take him in the prisoner-of-war thriller Stalag 17 . The actor won his only Oscar as the disillusioned sergeant whose facility at fleecing his fellow POWs backfires when someone in the camp is suspected of being a German spy—and he must find out who before his bunkmates happily string him up for the crime. Wilder had a nice touch for comic romance too, but we’d point you toward The Apartment , not Sabrina . No movie with Audrey Hepburn’s elfin innocence can be all bad, but she’s got zero chemistry with dour and much older Humphrey Bogart.

A Harry Potter book is that rare children’s title we’ll read in public without shame, not even hiding the cover under a Thomas Pynchon dust jacket nor claiming loudly that we’re “just holding it for someone else.” Truth be told, we’re looking forward to Book Five more than Film Two. But while J.K. Rowling continues to struggle with Order of the Phoenix , now delayed until 2003, Chris Columbus’ film franchise zips forward. It has the advantage this time of lowered expectations—not to say that it won’t do huge box-office, but Pottermania has died down since its peak. Having met expectations with the first film, the main thing now is for Columbus not to screw this one up, and wreck the rest of the series. It helps that the story is less byzantine than subsequent installments, which all begin to feel like setup for whatever Rowling has planned for the seventh novel. In this episode, something is turning students at the Hogwarts wizardry school into stone, and when suspicion falls on Harry, he and his friends have to track down the real culprit. Kenneth Branagh comes on board as Gilderoy Lockhart, Harry’s insufferably vain new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Lockhart provided some of the books’ best laughs, and while we think Branagh’s a better Shakespearian than a comic actor, he can certainly pull off pomposity.

They were the Mr. Show of their day—sarcastic, wildly inventive, and a hit with the college crowd, but sometimes almost a little too smart for their own good. And that’s why Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and sometimes Zeppo have stood the test of time, while Charlie Chaplin now seems mawkish and Laurel and Hardy seem quaint. (For purposes of this argument, pretend Harpo’s lo-o-o-ong musical interludes never happened.) When given free rein, they were zany and anarchistic, with no regard for dramatic structure, if there was a joke to be had. The Three Stooges had the attitude but were almost entirely slapstick, lacking the crazed insouciance of Harpo’s mime-from-Mars shtick and Groucho’s machine-gun genius for loopy punning riffs. (“You can leave in a taxi. If you can’t get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.”) Though some of his dialogue was scripted, his wit was the real thing, and he delivered his daggers with dry, eyebrow-wagging, subtle hostility and the skill of a Charlie Parker. This series screens what’s generally agreed to be the four best films, but if you only see one, see Duck Soup , their gleefully scathing satire of dictatorship, war, and mirror impersonation. It was the zenith of their madcap style, but audiences weren’t ready for it in 1933. When it bombed, the Brothers changed strategies (and studios) for A Night at the Opera , their biggest popular success but the start of a slow slide into suffocating structure and tacked-on romantic subplots. Oak Street Cinema, (612) 331-3134, www.oakstreetcinema.org

I’ve been a waitress for seventeen years. That’s pre-pepper grinder, fusion cuisine, touch screen, and “Sparkling, still, or tap?” If you look me up on the chronology of food-service evolution, I’m right there close to the beginning, walking upright and sporting thumbs, but with a hump on my back and a heavy, weighted brow indicating a double shift on all-you-can-eat brunch Sunday. This month, this very year, I mark an anniversary. And I’ll tell you something about that. No one ever starts out thinking they’ll be a waitress for 17 years; it’s just something that sort of sneaks up on you. You start out that first year thinking to yourself, “Hey! This’ll be fun… for a summer! After that I’ll figure out what it is that I really like to do!” The next thing you know, you’re 34 years old, discussing the obvious merits of catfish “fingers” over chicken “fingers,” while wearing a nametag.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I’ll come clean—I like it. I like people, I like bustling around, and I really really really like to snack. If I had an office job, I’d be forced to stuff coins into a vending machine in order to snack on hard, dry kibble like a dog. Where I work, hors d’oeuvres fall like manna from heaven… fresh, hot, and plentiful. Mostly, I forgo the three squares in favor of a constant stream of tidbits. As far as I can see it, this profile leaves me with two career choices: socialite or waitress.

The other thing I like about working in restaurants is the people-watching. A café is the perfect place to see a demonstration of all kinds of mating rituals. On a Friday night, it can be like Wild Kingdom with high heels and hair gel. (Look how the double-breasted braggart preens and stomps to dominate the attention of the hollow-eyed Uptown warbler. Uh oh! Their plates are empty, let’s send my wait assistant Jim in there to clear the debris so we can get a better look. Be careful, Jim! They still look hungry!)

I like the theory that anyone can do restaurant work. It’s democratic. People re-entering society often get placed in food-service jobs because of this. Anyone can try. Three restaurants ago, I worked with a woman I’ll call Baby. Baby was in an outpatient treatment program after touring with several odd heavy-metal bands in a county fair circuit. Hey, it could happen to anybody. Baby, although beautiful, was unaccustomed to flirting while sober. During one shift, Baby asked a 40ish man in her section, “Sir, what would you like for lunch today?”

The man eyed her form filling out the snug uniform, and leered. “Oh, don’t call me sir.” He began laughing at his own joke. Baby laughed too, but with a hint of fear to it, not understanding what the hell the guy meant. I could smell Baby’s confusion from all the way across the dining room. After several tense seconds, Baby hit on an answer. “Um, okay, what would you like for lunch today, dude?” I was so happy for her I could have cried. Unlike an office, where someone else’s failure might mean your success, in a restaurant, you have to watch each others backs, because if the guy next to you goes down, you’re next. This creates kind of a pirate-ship mentality that all food-service workers past and present share.

Of course, there aren’t many lifer buccaneers. What about folks like me, who are working on their 20-year pin? I recall the words of an early career food-service mentor, Paul, a slight man who watched my back at Mickey’s Diner off and on in between writing western novels. “You know, Colleen, how people on the highway slow down to look at an accident while they are passing by? People slow down and stay in this business because they just have to see how it turns out!” I’ll keep you posted.