Judah's phone beeps.

CLAIRE
Who texted you?

JUDAH
This girl I almost dated.

CLAIRE
You should almost date her now...only more.

JUDAH
(shakes his head)
She's Born Again now.

CLAIRE
Oh, so she's underage?

Monks take vows of silence...

...so they must be good at charades.

And when a monk speaks in charades, the other monks have to use charades to guess what he said, and then the first monk has to use charades to guess what the others guessed...

O, how winters in the monastery must fly!

It turned into a concert hall blitz.

My mother and I went to the symphony on Saturday. It was delightful...until they played the Radetzky March.



The piece was charming, but, well...the audience started clapping along.

I leaned over to my mom, rolled my eyes, and whispered, "What a bold percussive choice, on Herr Strauss' part."

After two minutes, the audience realized they'd been clapping for two minutes, and started to peter out.

"I wish the orchestra would stop playing their instruments," I snarled. "I can hardly hear the clapping."

Finally the music ended, and the clapping blossomed into applause.

"We're watching a musical evolution. After all, applause is just improvised clapping," I observed.

"Seriously, fuck this audience," I added.

After the symphony, I Wikipedia'd the Radetzky March. Apparently audiences have been clapping along with it since its debut in 1848.

There are plenty of things to hate about the symphony. For one thing, you're not supposed to applaud between movements.

For a second thing, a lot of people don't know you're not supposed to applaud between movements.

For a third thing, the people who don't know they're not supposed to applaud between movements seem really happy to express their happiness when they applaud between movements.

But a march that institutionalizes clapping?

Fuck you, Johann Strauss, Sr. You're aiding the enemy.

"For never was a story of more woe...

...than this of Juliet and her Romeo?"

Fine. I'll concede that. But it's tied for first.

I saw West Side Story yesterday, and it featured equal woe to the story of Juliet and her Romeo.

In fact, there's equal woe in Shakespeare in Love, Pocahontas, and the Lion King Two Colon Simba's Pride, too!

With this much originality, it's only a matter of time before contemporary writers out-woe R&J!

Watch your back, Bill!

My grandma thinks I'm handsome.

My grandma thinks I'm handsome. She tells me often.

But she can't just give me a compliment. I have low self esteem, and don't believe compliments. So she's kind enough to convince me.

"You are so handsome," she insists. "You are so handsome, you couldn't even hide it with all the ugly haircuts you've had."

'Ugly haircuts?' I have no idea what she's talking about.

The art inside.

When Michelangelo was asked how he sculpted David, he explained, "I just removed everything that didn't look like David."

When Gutzon Borglum was asked how he sculpted Stone Mountain, he explained, "I just removed everything that didn't look like three racists on a zit."

That showed him!

I was at a restaurant, and I couldn't decide between ordering the fish, the chicken, or the hamburger. I was leaning towards the fish, but it was the most expensive of the three.

I asked the server for his preference, hoping he'd recommend the fish and thus, justify my extravagance. He didn't have a preference, and his response was rather curt...so I ordered the hamburger, because it was cheapest.

When the patty arrived, it was overdone and lukewarm. The cheese was even colder, retaining the thick corners of an individually wrapped slice. The lettuce, in my professional opinion, had liver spots.

I ate it nonetheless. Yes, every rubbery bite made me long for the fish...

...but the tip I left my server was only twenty percent of the cheapest entrée! That showed him!

Rest assured, I'll never patronize that McDonald's again.

My father offers me his porn collection.

Here it is. Quite a stack, no?
No. Not a stack. A tower.
A tower of Babel! Only, y’know, with different girls
instead of different languages.
Can you believe how tall it is?

Damn it.

I'd write a haiku, but that isn't possible: my 'Enter' key broke!