Saturday Salad Bar

My 19-hour birthday passed even faster than I had anticipated, and since I was traveling, I did manage to avoid even a single happy birthday wish from any friends or family, allowing me to make people feel guilty for the next year.  Making it even better was when I stopped at an Internet cafe in Amsterdam and received an email from NFL.com wishing me a happy birthday and offering me a discount on NFL products.  You would not believe my excitement that the National Football League managed to wish me a happy birthday and my wife didn’t.  This will ease any guilt I feel this coming fall and winter for spending too much time playing fantasy football and gathering with other Green Bay Packer fans to watch games at local pubs.  If my wife tries to make me feel guilty for spending more time with football than I do with her, I’ll ask, “You’re always knocking sports, but how come sports remembered my birthday and you didn’t?”

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The Fonz has been learning about gravity in school, which is what probably inspired this dinner table observation, “If it weren’t for gravity, our dead bodies would be on

Now it creeps me out to think of the moon watching us.

the moon by now.”  It’s been a while since I studied gravity, but can anyone confirm whether the moon has a gravitational force that would attract earth’s dead bodies if earth’s gravity stopped working?

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The Fonz and Optimist Prime spent most of their Saturday competing to see who was funnier.  First they had a staring contest to see who would laugh first.  When these results proved inconclusive, The Fonz upped the challenge by trying to make a plum laugh.  The results were still unsatisfying.  Next he tried making a fork laugh.  Trying to make inanimate objects laugh is certainly setting a high bar for himself, and there’s something very Zen about the challenge.  I told him, “Don’t let anyone discourage you.  He who can make a plum laugh, can also make all eaters of plums laugh.”

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I had a great experience in Edinburgh and appreciated the opportunity to make contacts and gather information on how to get one of the shows I’ve written into an international festival.  I’m very optimistic of getting a show into the Adelaide Fringe Festival next February/March and plan to focus on this project in the coming months.

Edinburgh by the numbers:

I saw 40 shows.

I performed 26 times.

I saw 8 celebrities whom I didn’t know were celebrities.

Other people in the cast saw John Malkovich, Julian Sands, Harry Shearer, and David Hasselhoff.  Good thing I didn’t bump into David Hasselhoff because I’m technically supposed to keep 500 yards away from him at all times.

Made 6 ironic/sarcastic observations that British friends did not understand and did not think were funny.

Turned down 4 invitations to eat haggis.

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One day left to submit a caption in the caption contest.  Don’t let past failures to make the short list discourage you.  Tell yourself The Good Greatsby made a mistake and maybe this will be the week my jet lag will enable me to finally get your sense of humor.

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I asked my wife is she wanted me to bring her anything back from Edinburgh that she couldn’t find in Shanghai.  She asked me to buy her some wrinkle cream, which I did, but I learned the hard way that when you ask the lady at the beauty counter for wrinkle cream, you should always specify anti-wrinkle cream, otherwise, they might give you cream for wrinkles instead of against.