We adopted a male dog around the time of the 2000 election. The ballots in Florida were still being counted, kind of, and we took the poor guy to get neutered. The vet breezily said, “So we’ll just take off these hanging chads; we’re going to have to keep him overnight or maybe for a couple of days...”

I only vaguely remember the movie but I believe Kristy McNichol’s family is Jewish and they own the store where the POWs are let out to get stuff every so often and one of them escapes. So the story is a Jew (or “Jewess”) is hiding a Nazi soldier, and not the other way around. I’ve never read the book.

It could have been. I just googled again. SOMGS won the NY Times Book of the Year in 1973. It probably inspired lots of variants.

I did not, and never have, referred to my mother-in-law as a Negress, lest the sarcasm sink beneath the waves of literalism.

Are you thinking of Summer of My German Soldier? I’ve never read it but the book was a huge hit in the 1970s. They made a movie out of it, and I had to google this to refresh my memory, but the protagonist is played by Kristy McNichol and the Nazi is played by Bruce Davison and Esther Rolle is in there somewhere,…

Just the other day I called my mother-in-law “my most beloved Negress.” (My mother-in-law is, in fact, black.)

In 2015 the nomenclature “Jewess Hadassah Benjamin” is almost like satire. I wonder if the Amazon reviewer is the ghost of some guy from the America First campaigns of the 1930s. Or Father Coughlin, maybe?

The first and only time I’ve ever been to an IKEA was years ago. I wandered the labyrinth and needed tons of stuff for a new apartment. I had a list but it was a little vague (“something to cook with. Something to eat off of...”) So I wrote down what I found, and it was a lot, and descended to the basement, where you…

This is actually kind of fascinating to me because I’ve always lived in the crowded Northeast Corridor (BosNYWash) and I will say the motto is true, when you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns. And cops, who can go over the line themselves every so often.

Why in the world do you think you’d ever have to pull a gun on someone? Do you just drive around, pick up a gallon of milk at a local market, and when the gunfire breaks out it’s everyone for himself? I’m not criticizing, just curious.

It might be a different experience in different regions? In southern CA and the one in Palm Springs it’s pretty good. In the Northeast it’s kind of post-apocolyptic.

Speaking of the Subway story, the Subway lady who asked for white cheese might have been of a certain age. In the 70s my family used to buy groceries at a large, modern supermarket and we’d wheel the steel cart over to the “cheese” section and the only offerings were Kraft singles, some yellow, some white. She’s…

No, I meant younger, rereading that sentence even I’m not sure what I meant. Poor Charles. 66, and doing all sorts of useful stuff and yet kind of waiting around for his mother to die. I read somewhere, and I can’t remember the circumstances, where he was talking to someone whose mother had died and he commented, “I…

Fahrenheit 451. My father thought this was hilarious and bought me a dozen copies to be donated personally to the lovely Library Lady, to the astonishment of the others. And then I showed up with Erica Jong’s’ “Fear of Flying.” three copies (hard bound) which my JH school board found obscene, and it is actually, but…

The sad news is I think my husband’s mother is dying. I went to her husband’s funeral and I don’t want to go to hers.

Oh the whole movie is so strange. We watch a lot of crazy stuff and our dog will watch along with us (he’s particularly fond of the Twilight series, and anything by Douglas Sirk or Busbee Berklee) but the minute I queue up “Flipper, That Wonderful Whale” he runs to his bed and hides. And he’s a Black Lab so I would…

No, turns out he was was fine, me not so much, but to see him leaping in the air and twisting and there I was trying to catch him and he weighs over 70 lbs and I’m into my 50s, it’s not a good match. Plus I wear glasses. I’m a really hot catch. But my husband and my hound seem to like me.

FLIPPER! With Chuck Conors as the Dad. So much early-60s homo-erotica!

All About Eve. But then again almost all gay men can recite All About Eve from memory.

I took my crazy Black Lab puppy for Agility Training this morning (Saturdy morning) and he did this back flip. I threw out my back in response. (I tried to catch him and the trainer said it was “natural.” Turns out it was !)