Even though the concert was a few hours away, he was already wearing the papier-mâché head: two wide bug eyes staring, a mouth frozen into a half-smile, red lips slightly parted, as if mildly surprised, very flat hair, a permanent tan - there in the dingy half-light of this empty pub.
One minute you're driving down Route 22 in Dutchess County, and suddenly, as fast as you can say western Tennessee, there's the scent of hickory smoke in the air and a truck on the side of the road with a picture of a smiling red pig holding an oversized fork.
I broke character and smiled, red-faced.
The smiling, red-jacketed army was soon on to the next door, and the next.
And at the bottom, smiling, red-cheeked and a bit frosted by snow, I entered the lodge, where a few dozen people were unloading bags and putting on boots.
One morning, we went to the Bon monastery, on a promontory above Lake Phoksundo, where a smiling, red-clad monk showed us the four-hundred-year-old rooms, with murals of lamas on horseback and painted Buddhas in the lotus position — the colors were blue, green, yellow, red, and white, like those of the prayer flags fluttering in the sunshine.
He followed the sound to a woman with smiling red-stained lips in a hip-hugging minidress a sight far too modern and incongruous in a city renowned as the heart of traditional Javanese culture, where many women, including the one accompanying her, resisted Western influence by continuing to wear the classic batik sarong and lace blouses.
The dancers came close, her smile lipsticked red.
"Willy and I are skiing lap after lap today," Mr. Nafstad said, a frozen smile pasted red on his face.
Angle is a small woman, a sixty-one-year-old grandmother with a broad, open face, a toothy smile, and red hair worn in a pageboy.
On Monday, her friends and admirers remembered the more intimate aspects of her personality: her infectious smile, the red cowboy boots she wore and the pub on the East Side of Manhattan, Neary's, where she was a regular.
