By E. Graydon Carter

"Since I was 14, I have wanted to be the director of a ballet company. Isn't that strange, to be so sure? I must be a fanatic." Or he must be Peter Martins. The dancer-choreographer made the observation three years ago, and now that he has become head of the New York City Ballet, along with Jerome Robbins, he intends to let nothing stand in the way of his dream. Not even his dancing. Last week Martins, 36, announced that he was giving up his calling of the past 29 years. Said he: "I'm too vain to dance badly; too professional to direct poorly. One or the other would have to suffer." He will probably dance his last in November, in City Ballet's annual production of The Nutcracker. That has a nice symmetry to it: Martins would be exiting in the same role that he performed in his New York debut with the company 16 Christmases ago.

With good roles for black actors something of a rarity, Lou Gossett, 47, is being offered just about every part that isn't suitable for Richard Pryor, 42, or Eddie Murphy, 22. Coming off his Academy Award-winning performance in last year's An Officer and a Gentleman, Gossett is now working on a four-hour TV biography of Egypt's late President Anwar Sadat. The tough bootcamp bearing Gossett picked up during his stint in Officer should come in handy. For Sadat picks up the Egyptian leader's life when he was a junior military officer renowned for his rigid back and fierce determination.

Dear Jaclyn and Kate,

Hi you guys. You probably heard that I came to New York this summer to try to beat the old Charlie's Angels rep and that all I have been getting is grief. To begin with, this city is like so gross and dirty and just, well, un-California. You can't imagine the trouble I have finding a hot tub, never mind one of those matching jogging outfits with the little slits up the thigh. But I've been hanging in here to prove that I'm more than a pretty face and a gorgeous bod. I signed up to do an off-Broadway play called Extremities. It's all about this cute young thing (me) who is attacked by this rapist whom I fight off and capture. It's sort of like an Angels episode only heavier, and you have to remember all these lines!!! So last week, on the night that the critics came to watch me, I'm just acting away, not bothering anyone, when this guy from the audience stands up and just starts yelling at me. "Did you get my Marine Corps picture which I mailed to you three years ago?" he says. Three years ago! And then he comes toward the stage waving this thing that looked like a pipe. Luckily, it turned out to be a rolled-up poster of Brooke Shields. What? The guy couldn 't find a copy of my pinup? Actually, it really shook me. And now I hear that he's out on parole for murder. They took him away and everything, but it sure made me homesick for the good old days and Los Angeles sound stages. I know they say there's nothing like the thrill you get from a live audience. But this was too much.

Kisses, Farrah

Love Boat, ABC's floating barge of Burbages, has taken its act to the Orient. After shows were filmed in China and Hong Kong, the prime-time liner steamed on to Japan. The special two-hour episode for next season will feature a dream sequence that should appeal to the Japanese fondness for miniaturization: it takes place within the mind of Captain Stubing, played by Gavin MacLeod. Along for the samurai somnambulance were the other series regulars: Lauren Tewes, Fred Grandy, Ted Lange, Jill Whelan and Bernie Kopell. MacLeod, who plays a warrior shogun in the dream, boned up on the local thespian style by visiting a Kabuki theater. Unfortunately, he did it after the sequence had been shot. "If I had seen it earlier," says MacLeod, "I would have played the shogun part differently, with more grunts and groans." What, and leave the viewers with nothing to do?

--By E. Graydon Carter This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.