Last night was Movie Night here at Today's Shoes. Me and the RLA* and another two couples got together for dinner and a movie. Dinner was supplied by the host couple (not us, thank G-d, but the bar was set quite high) and we brought the movie. The other couple were simply entertaining. They'll get their turn.

We did Indian last night, and as I mentioned, dinner was afuckingmazing. There were homemade samosas, and hard cooked eggs with a tomato dip and dal and a 9 treasure rice and a mango/cardamom ice-cream desert and chai. Every item lovingly and exquisitely made by our hosts.

The tone of the evening was set during dinner when, for reasons that are obscure to me now, we all tied our napkins on our heads, pulled our pants up to our armpits and, as our hostess came in from the kitchen, stood up, hunched our shoulders and yelled "Moi brain 'urts!"

The RLA has a notorious history of bad movie choices. He has forced me to sit through hours and hours of films whose celluloid stock would have had a better life as guitar picks. I cannot count the number of times I have squirmed in the dark, looking at my watch by the light of the exit guides buried in the aisles and praying for electrical failure to end my misery.

But Bollywood is Bollywood, and how bad can it be if it has my personal fave, Shahrukh Kahn? Well, last night we found out.

Three hours, and only four dance numbers, and one of them was a sort of reprise of the first number. Shahrukh doesn't show up until two hours in, and then he does a hot dream sequence dance number that must have been an out-take from some other movie, as it bore no relation to the plot in any way, shape or form.

The movie was a passionate plea for peace and end of tribal warfare, or so it seemed to think. The six of us are old cronies from back in the radio comedy show days, and so the three hours just flew by as we did our best Hindu Mystery Science Theater 2000 impressions. Our faces hurt from laughing, which was just as well, because the movie sucked. The RLA is now no longer allowed to pick foreign films, either, as it seems his track record for flops is in no danger of ending any time soon.

Shahrukh does get shot in the back, after which he runs, does a little kung-fu fighting, cracks wise, takes out an army of bad guys, saves the girl, runs some more, smokes his last cigarette, cracks wise some more, runs again, finally begins to bleed and spends another ten or fifteen minutes dying. The guy's a genius.

To add further insult to our marathon viewing, this was a modern day epic set in LA (except Vancouver stands in for LA) and somewhere on the northern outback of India. This meant no cool period costumes. There were special effects, notably some slo-mo, and a backwards running sequence that could just have been an attempt to do an MJ moonwalk.

Well, it was fun, and I can't wait to do it again. Couscous and Lawrence of Arabia?

*RLA = Renowned Local Artist

A few entries back I said I was looking on the internet for a soap I remembered from childhood. My Aunt Helga brought it to me from Germany. It was shaped like a teddy bear and grew fur. It had a toy inside.

When found, it turned out to be "Fuzzy Wuzzy" soap, and it was selling on e-bay for over $100. Another e-bay search turned up today's brand of the same item, imported from Europe... Germany, in fact. It's called "Soapy Soap" and comes in shapes like kittens and gnomes. It grows fur, and has a toy inside. It was selling for under $10 a bar.

I ordered two kittens, and a squirrel.

My Aunt Helga was a war bride. She was married to my most dashing and handsome Uncle Milton. Dashing is the perfect word for Milton, who was really my cousin and not my uncle. But dashing is an elusive quality, and not suited to this age. I suspect, that had my mother and Milton, who were first cousins, been living in the shtetl, and not America, Milton would have been my father. To me, growing up in the late '50s and early '60s, Helga and Milton were the most glamorous and sophisticated adults I'd ever seen.

Milton took me to my first horse show one summer's day in Newport, Rhode Island. He picked me up in his red convertible Mustang, with white leather interior. The top was down. We were on a date. I was maybe, at most, eight.

Helga, with her German accent, and a father who spent the war working as a "stationmaster", was a bitter pill for the immigrant Jews of my grandparents' generation. Even at eight, you can pick up on that tension. Helga took my mother shopping on Belleview Avenue. The stories of what my mother saw that day were often repeated.

Milton was an "efficiency expert" what ever the fuck that meant. In the early 60s it meant that he worked up at Cape Canaveral, doing something for NASA. He was somehow involved on the Mercury Project, something vague with the space suits. How cool was that?

They had two sons, each as glamorous and dashing as their parents. The older one lived for a year or so in a tepee, a real tepee (15 foot poles and canvas), in their wooded Connecticut back yard. He went to medical school, became a doctor, left medicine and was last heard to be living on a wooded island somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

The blonde one played sax, like his father, and was rumored to be a ski bum, a tennis bum and a few other dubious or vague professions.

The kids both moved west, Helga and Milton divorced, Milton died.

But I have rich memories, an extra bar of Soapy Soap, and an eight year old niece.

There is a wild ride going on in the blogosphere this week. The incredibly witty and popular Tequila Mockingbird's author, Julia, has been plagiarized by, as she would say, some random asshat. He (the random asshat) even went to far into the stupifyingly stupid zone as to request from Ms. Julia a link back to his blog, which is no more and no less than a patchwork of other blogger's words. Sometimes he alters the occasional he to a she, but pretty much not.

Ms. Julia sent a polite e-mail along the lines of "this is a copyright, and this is what is means, and what you are doing is a violation of that, you probably didn't know, so I've told you, and now you should stop."

Not only did the asshat (I'm really starting to like that word, Julia) NOT stop, he went so far as to taunt her on her comment board, while, at the same time, disabling his own comments.

Here is a link to Tequila Mockingbird, and the story in her own words. Really. Her. Own. Words. Here is another link, to another blogger's perspective on this. I won't give you the link to Bryan Lamb's (AKA asshat) blog, because really, why bother.

On the one hand, I'm a little jealous of Julia. Her talent, her audience. Hell, her stalker plagiarizes her. Mine only threatened me with death...

But since we're on the topic, I thought I would quote the ultimate authority on the subject: the inimitable Tom Lehrer. I present, in its entirety, his immortal ditty, Lobachevsky.

(From) TOM LEHRER REVISITED

Lobachevsky

(Spoken intro) For many years now, Mr. Danny Kaye, who has been my particular idol since childbirth, has been doing a routine about the great Russian director Stanislavsky and the secret of success in the acting profession. And I thought it would be interesting to st... to adapt this idea to the field of mathematics. I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, 3000 dollars a year just teaching.

Be that as it may, some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to wonder therefore how they got that way, and here, in partial explanation perhaps, is the story of the great Russian mathematician Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky.*

Who made me the genius I am today,
The mathematician that others all quote?
Who's the professor that made me that way,
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat?

One man deserves the credit,
One man deserves the blame,
and Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name. Oy!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache...

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize!

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please, "research".

And ever since I meet this man my life is not the same,
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name. Oy!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache...

I am never forget the day I am given first original paper to write. It
was on Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Metrization
of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifold.
Bozhe moi!
This I know from nothing.**
But I think of great Lobachevsky and I get idea - haha!

I have a friend in Minsk,
Who has a friend in Pinsk,
Whose friend in Omsk
Has friend in Tomsk
With friend in Akmolinsk.
His friend in Alexandrovsk
Has friend in Petropavlovsk,
Whose friend somehow
Is solving now
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk.

And when his work is done -
Haha! - begins the fun.
From Dnepropetrovsk
To Petropavlovsk,
By way of Iliysk,
And Novorossiysk,
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk
To Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run,
Yes, to me the news will run!

And then I write
By morning, night,
And afternoon,
And pretty soon
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed,
When he finds out I published first!

And who made me a big success
And brought me wealth and fame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name. Oy!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache...

I am never forget the day my first book is published.
Every chapter I stole from somewhere else.
Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory.
This book, this book was sensational!***
Pravda - ah, Pravda - Pravda said:
"Jeel beel kara ogoday blyum blocha jeli," ("It stinks").
But Izvestia! Izvestia said:
"Jai, do gudoo sun sai pere shcum," ("It stinks").
Metro-Goldwyn-Moskva bought the movie rights for six million rubles,
Changing title to 'The Eternal Triangle',
With Brigitte Bardot playing part of hypotenuse.****

And who deserves the credit?
And who deserves the blame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.
Oy!

(See how easy it is to copy when you give credit to the author?)

I crack myself up, even when I'm asleep.

Last night, I dreamt I was driving down the main street of the old down town of my home town. My husband was driving our car, and he pulled over at a cafe/cd store (which isn't there in real life, except for the cafe). He said, "Get what you need, and I'll drive around the block."

So I went in, to this old shop with wooden floors, and worked my way through the cafe to the Virgin Megastore-type cd store in the back. This was a 5 & 10 in my childhood, and there were still elements of that in my dream: high dark ceilings, wooden display tables. I saw a table that held stationery, with a sign that said 30% off, so I looked to see if they had any Shag art. As I was leaning over, a clerk came up behind me and said something unintelligible about a nice bag. Nice bag? Huh? What am I carrying? I reached around behind myself to feel for my purse and realized that I'm only wearing a sweater and an olive green Coach hobo bag. My ass is hanging out.

"Damn! Naked AGAIN??!!" I yelped. I must be dreaming. I grab the clerk, to see if I can feel him, which I can. Never mind. I know I must be dreaming, and so I force myself to look around the store and confirm that I am, in fact, asleep. I then clap the clerk on the shoulder and say "Thanks, dude. I needed to wake up."

I leave the store, and wait on the corner for my husband to come back with the car. He does, but not before I've yelled at a couple of bad drivers for taking the corner too close. I get in the car, close the door, and wake up.

And yes, it was time for me to get up. As I said, I can crack myself up awake or asleep.

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time writing. Yes, I'm still annoyed by damn near everything. Yes, I am still surrounded by stupidity, incompetence and swine-like behavior. So why can't I rant? Have I lost the will to rant?

What a thought. Who would I be, if everything slid off me like water off a duck...

I entered a blog writing contest, the BlogMadness thingy, and, as my entry, submitted, not a rant, but my piece about death and the loss of friends.

And even as I did, the word came around about another college friend who has shuffled off this mortal coil. Bill Kelley, one of the biggest film junkies ever, and in a sorrowful coincidence, the best friend of the late and always lamented Leapin' Larry.

Which reminds me of a joke card about the good die young, and yet you, weenie boy, are still with us, celebrating another birthday. It was too cruel to send, and there was no way I could send it anonymously to the ex-husband, the Anti-Christ.

My good husband, the Renowned Local Artist, entered his first street show in years, and has decided to price to sell. If you are in Miami on February 21 and 22, stop by his booth at the South Miami Arts & Crafts Festival to pick up your own original work of art.

Finally, in this wandering entry, I leave you with a link to the Bush in 30 Seconds web site where you'll see some good ads. Too bad they'll never see the light of media play.

My parents drank. After work, before dinner, my parents would have a cocktail. When we dined out, they would have a cocktail. Maybe two, if things were really swinging.

I drink. After work, I have a glass of wine or two. I may have a martini or two instead. When I dine out, I'll have a cocktail, or two.

Growing up in the late 50s through the 60s, drinking was a sign of adulthood. A sophisticated adulthood. The Rat Pack, James Bond, Holly Golightly: they all drank.

I went away to college and learned how to hold my liquor. Much to my relief, I discovered that I am a jolly drunk. I do not get loud. I do not get sloppy. I do not cry, or fight, or pass out. I tell stories and jokes, and can keep them straight. I may have to speak more slowly than is usual for me, but I do not go out and get knee-crawling, commode-hugging, sloppy, shit-faced drunk. I am a respectable drinker, and I stop long before I have too much.

Drinking is now a sin, like smoking. But that's another topic for another day. It's drink I wish to address. I love alcohol. I love the taste of a single malt scotch. I enjoy the rituals of drink mixing. I love the olive at the bottom of the glass, after it has absorbed as much vodka as it can.

But I am slowly being forced to see that I am an exception among my friends, in that I can say no. I can choose not to drink, or not to drink another. I am dragging my mental heels, but I have to admit that a number of my friends are alcoholics. They drink because they must, not because they can.

I no longer want to be their enabler. I don't enjoy their company when they drink. I don't want to watch my one neighbor become disgustingly drunk after a single martini: channeling the snake gods and terrifying my other guests. I don't want to lie and tell her that I forgive her drunken, savage calls to me when she's had too many. I don't want to have those conversations with her husband, where he denies his own alcoholism. I don't want to hear about still a third neighbor, who is dying of cirrhosis of the liver, and had to be Baker acted just to dry him out enough to be put in a nursing home to die.

I don't want to go out with my friend and watch him pass out in his food, and beg to be let go to wait for the rest of us in the car. I don't want to be part of it when he embarrasses his wife or abuses the waitstaff.

I don't want to carry my other friend into my house to pour black coffee down his throat and wait for him to sober up enough to drive the two miles to his home.

What is wrong with us as a nation, that we cannot do anything without doing it to excess?

We eat to obesity, we drink to unconsciousness, we smoke to death, we drive too fast, we spend too much money and save too little. On the other side of that same coin, we refuse to allow others to make their own choices regarding birth control, or marriage partners. We terrorize people who smoke, wear fur, or eat meat. We insult, abuse, and attempt to discredit people whose political views are different from ours.

We are become a nation of intolerant extremists, and that terrifies me. Enough that I think I need to go home and have a drink.