| | I was yapping away to Sunshineboy78 the other day, and he reminded me of this scary movie I saw once as a child that completely terrorized me and made me afraid of the dark for the next 5 to 20 years. I remembered the title as 5,000 Years Before Earth, or something like that, and I'd seen it as part of some discount program the local movie theater had where they would show a weekly movie for the students, and you'd buy a series of tickets of not-properly-screened-for-content movies. I'm not remembering everything so clearly except for the terror I felt when they dug up some creepy old alien spacecraft and found large dead cricket skeletons. Anyway, thanks to the magic of the interweb I found the actual movie so I'm going to get it from Netflix. I'm curious to see how actually scary it is now that I'm an adult and only moderately terrorized by the thought of ancient alien crickets roaming the earth. I don't know if I mentioned it, but last week Mister Goats and I foiled a shoplifter at the Gristedes on 14th Street. While shopping for mixers for New Year's Eve, Mister Goats told me he saw this guy standing near us in the candy aisle putting candy into his backpack. "I almost want to say something about it!" he said. Well, I'm more timid than him, but when we walked away a little more I could see the guy looking around, choosing some more candy, and shoving that into his backpack. I mean, he was doing a full shopping trip, only he was skipping the boring part where you wait in line and pay. Well, I have to say that the Gristedes on 14th Street is practically dead already, it's so decrepit and undershopped, and there's no way it can stay open if people are just stealing from it, so I walked over to a rather burly man behind the deli counter and said "That guy in the green jacket is putting things in his backpack." I thought that was a nice compromise - I didn't actually say he was stealing, since he hadn't left the store, but as we were waiting in line to pay I saw him being led out the store by burly deli man, so I was glad. I wanted him foiled but not arrested, but it's not like he was homeless or stealing something he needed, since he couldn't possibly have needed 15 one-pound Hershey bars. (I'd perhaps - maybe - be slightly more sympathetic to a starving homeless man stealing a rotisserie chicken, is what I mean, and not a healthy adult man with clean clothes stealing junk food to sneak into the movies.) In other news, my brother is in town visiting us, and last night we went with Mister Goats to see Joy Behar perform a standup set. I'm almost certain I was the youngest person in the room, and several women there clearly would have answered to the name "Grandma Yetta" if you yelled loud enough. It was cabaret seating, with teensy tables and chairs, and as a group of three, we had an empty seat next to us (my brother was across from me, and Mister Goats was to my right). After we were seated they came over and asked my brother to move over one seat, so a couple could sit down opposite me alongside the table on the opposite side - so it was this total stranger redheaded lady across from me, her friend to her right, Mister Goats to my right, and my brother opposite him. The redhead lady sat down and almost immediately placed her handbag on top of the votive candle on the table, and my brother just as quickly helped her move it so it didn't start on fire. He's thoughtful like that. Then there was a bit of fawning on the part of the waitstaff, which led us to believe our new neighbor was someone important, except none of the three of us could place her. Then a different and completely ridiculous lady in a sort of caftan-y flowing garment sat down next to Mister Goats, and after fumbling for a minute asked him, and then, gaining nothing from him - me, to help her fasten her huge semi-precious jeweled bracelet. This distracted me for a while but I kept taking sidelong glances across the table to see if Mystery Celebrity Lady would give off any clues as to the nature of her celebrity. There was a two drink minimum, and during the show the ridiculous caftan lady ordered a hot tea, which I found quite silly, considering the delicious assortment of overpriced martinis available, and then they brought her a small cake, which she sent back, and she was then brought a small fruit pie. (This becomes relevant later.) Ridiculous lady also had an unfortunate habit of talking too much to Joy Behar, since she was seated almost at her feet, and kept suggesting people for her to make jokes about (Star Jones, Bill O'Oreilly, etc.) this was sort of encouraged by Joy, but she was sort of also encouraging everyone but this ridiculous lady, who did not have have the excuse of being drunk for being such a chatterbox. Then finally Joy gave a shout out to her celebrity friends in the audience, so we finally knew that Mystery Celebrity Lady across from me was Tina Louise, the "movie star" from Gilligan's Island. She looked pretty much the same, actually, but I never watched Gilligan's Island enough, I guess, to make the connection. (I think I kind of paid more attention to the Professor, even at that age.) After Joy's standup was over, we would normally pay for our drinks and the cover and leave, but the waiters were sleeping or something so by the time the show was over we still hadn't gotten a check. Ridiculous pie lady turned to Mister Goats and said, "I don't know how these things work - how do you pay? I've never been to one of these places before." Mister Goats brushed her off and said, really loud, after she'd walked two feet away, "I hate it when other people make their problems your problems," and then we went up to the front to seek out our check to pay. While we were standing there, Ridiculous Pie Lady was yapping away to some waiter or another, saying how she hadn't gotten a check, "But I can tell you what I had: two teas!" But then she just stopped talking. I was within earshot, and I was just standing there, waiting for her to say, "And a huge-ass piece of pie that looked especially ridiculous sitting in front of me when I chimed in to tell Joy Behar that I, too, was dieting for the New Year." But she didn't say that - in fact, she just entirely omitted the pie. Again I was faced with the task of turning in a shoplifter, but this time I just kept quiet. It sure would have been interesting to see the expression on her face if I'd reminded her about her pie in front of the waitress...but instead I just went home. Maybe I'm a racist - but really, it's one thing to accuse someone of stealing when they're standing right there. I think maybe next time something like that happens, I'm turning whoever it is in to the proper deli or waitstaff authorities, not really for ethical reasons, but mainly because I think the anecdote turns out better that way. As it was, I spent several minutes trying to decide if Tina Louise or the pie theft was the more interesting anecdote of the evening. I think the pie still wins. (Sorry, Tina Louise!) That is all. |
