Well, didn’t I have a jolly old time with today’s Valentine’s Day column.

I decided to ask my family and friends which were their favorite romantic movies (romantic being the operative word). The fun part was that since I am neither a Gallup nor a Zogby, my polling methods did not have to march in lockstep with excellence. I just made up the rules as I went along.

These included: (1) If had not heard of the movie, it automatically got bumped. (2) If I liked their favorites and I liked them, people were allowed to have more than one choice. (3) Any movie I hated was instantly exiled. (4) If it amused me to do so, I listed the same film in more than one category. (5) Few of my categories make sense.

TOP PICKS: Casablanca and The Thorn Birds.

Interestingly, in neither film does the guy get the gal. Both are love stories, but stories of thwarted love. At the end of Casablanca, cynical, war-weary Rick sends Elsa off with her courageous husband, Victor Laszlo, who is nowhere near as sexy as Rick. By giving her up, Rick not only gets back the love that he and Elsa had lost, “We’ll always have Paris,” but he regains his sense of honor and resumes his fight against the Nazis.