There is nothing in life that won’t remind red-blooded American men of a line or lines from Caddyshack. Saturday Night Live once did a skit to this effect. In my column today, I have a little rant about government pressure on McDonald’s. I end it with, “I mean, is this America?”

A red-blooded American reader writes, “You’ve reminded me of Caddyshack.” Well, what doesn’t? Our reader was reminded of this, specifically: Walking down the fairway with Danny, Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) says, “You don’t have to go to college. This isn’t Russia. (Becomes quizzical.) Is this Russia? (Confident again.) This isn’t Russia.”

In other news, a reader has written about Maya Plisetskaya, the prima ballerina assoluta whom I mentioned earlier today. He actually encountered her in the flesh — i.e., on the stage:

I was in the USSR during 1965 and 1966 and saw Plisetskaya perform several times at the Bolshoi, including The Little Humpbacked Horse [which the Mariinsky brought to New York a few weeks ago.] I was in my twenties then, a California boy and little schooled in music and dance. I have to say I had never seen anything as beautiful as her performances — they have stayed with me ever since.

Lucky dog. The rest of us make do with video — which is better, a lot better, than nothing. Still, there’s nothing like live. Remember what Sergiu Celibidache (the eccentric, studio-averse Romanian conductor) said, about LPs and such? “Listening to a recording is like kissing a photograph of Brigitte Bardot.” (I’m not 100 percent sure he said “kissing.”)