and party every day

There's an old joke that says Jews don't recognize Jesus, Protestants don't recognize the Pope and Baptists don't recognize each other in the liquor store. Which is why it's funny that two former Baptists I know both sing the praises of a liqueur called Rock & Rye.

The two women do not know each other. Both are very active in their respective church choirs. They take a little Rock & Rye if they have a sore throat the night before they have to make their joyful noise. I thought that maybe it was a Southern thing but I found a reference to the use of the liqueur as a cold remedy in a 1934 New Yorker article.

My wife bought a small bottle of the drink a few years ago. I never tried it until recently when I had a mild cold that didn't respond to Nyquil. I finished off our old bottle which meant there was none left when my wife needed some a few days later. That's how I found myself in two liquor stores, looking for a replacement bottle.

I couldn't remember the brand name of the bottle we had at home. I just knew that it had an orange rind in the bottom. The first store had small bottles of Leroux Rock & Rye, which had no orange rind. I drove over to Bob's Package Store and found a small bottle of Leroux and several large bottles of Mr. Boston Rock & Rye. It had the rind but I didn't think I needed a bottle that big. I got the bigger bottle not only for the rind but because I recognized the picture of Mr. Boston. However I didn't see any people I knew, Baptist or otherwise.

fecundity

"Knocked Up" did well enough to take a strong second place at the box office this weekend. To beat the opening weekend crowds, we arrived at the theater at 3:00 this afternoon. Instead of buying tickets for the 3:05 show, we chose the 3:30 show and were the first people in that auditorium. The movie is very, very funny. It drags just a little when the married sister becomes suspicious of her husband but that fight sets up some good comedy down the road.

I am always amazed by the parents who choose to bring their underage children to R-rated movies. Today I saw one mother get up and walk her child out after a particularly descriptive exchange about the bedroom misunderstanding that results in the title pregnancy. In addition to the sex and profanities, the movie is full of drug use. To me, the pot smoking was excessive but the combination of mushrooms and Cirque du Soleil was hysterical. I saw one of their shows years ago in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica and hated it.

Two or three of the stoner characters get the pinkeye in a brief scene. Their theory on how they got sick makes me wonder what I might have touched at the place where I came down with it. Although my doctor wasn't sure if I had the bacterial or the allergy-associated pinkeye.

While we're on the subject of cinema, let me say that the MTV Movie Awards seemed like a giant commercial for "Transformers." I usually love parodies but the viewer submitted clip for "United 300" was in questionable taste.

avoid rubbing

Tonight was the first time I had to miss an Einstein Simplified performance due to illness. More on that later.

As an improv fan, I like the concept of "Thank God You're Here" but I didn't love the execution. The celebrity who walks into a scene had to completely improvise but the rest of the cast stubbornly stuck to their scripted outline even if it meant denying the improviser, a cardinal sin of the genre. I started liking the show a little better when I began to think of it as a fleshed out version of an improv game called "Every Other Line." A reviewer for TV Squad pointed out several specific examples of the denials that drove me crazy.

Since I was at home tonight, I watched "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" in real time. That reminds me, what were Lance Bass and Alfonso Ribeiro doing together in the audience during Monday night's dancing show? Maybe they were doing some belated joint promotion for their 2005 made-for-TV movie "Lovewrecked." I did a Google Blog Search and found only one other person in the blogosphere who also noticed them. During tonight's Big & Rich performance (with special guest Drew Lachey), I called WATE to complain that the broadcast was not in HD. Like any red-blooded American male, I wanted to see Cheryl Burke fill the screen. A nice man in the control room told me it was not his fault, it was a network problem. Nobody else could see the show in HD either. While I had him on the phone, I got a chance to mention a pet peeve. I told him that I didn't like the way they always switch back to SD a couple of seconds too soon before airing local commercials during "Lost."

During the commercial breaks in tonight's shows, I sent invitations to join LinkedIn to a few people whose email addresses I didn't have handy when I first registered with the site. I now have 39 connections. But I also have 179 outstanding invitations.

Yesterday my wife, our son and I rode the Mystery Mine, the fantastic new roller coaster at Dollywood. After the ride, we had lunch and then went to see "Rhythm of the Dance" in the same theatre where I had seen the Fercos Brothers last July. There must be something soothing about the sound of pounding Irish feet because just like when I went to see "Riverdance" in LA, all I wanted to do was relax and go to sleep. At the end of the show, I could barely get my eyes open. That's when I first suspected that I had the pinkeye!