Au Revoir

I'm on my way to Geneva, but I will be back in a few weeks with stories to tell.

They even sing

Context: The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a fifty-year-old political theatre company. They produce a play on some socially relevant theme every summer and perform in local parks. They are not, nor to my knowledge have they ever been, mimes. I don't know why they're called that. Perhaps if you were to do the research that I am too lazy to do, even with the aid of the internet, you would discover that the word "mime" has some connotation of communist artist collective. Anyway, as with anything that you've been familiar with all your life, you tend to assume that everyone else in the world is also familiar with it. You are rarely correct. To wit the following conversation with a friend visiting from Boston.

The group of us who had seen the play (speaking over one another): The end message was "refuse to pay the interest on your credit cards" rather than "live within your means," which we agree is problematic, but very typical of the Mime Troupe...

Visiting friend who met us in the park after the play (interrupting): How the hell do they get that across in mime?

Point of view

For the past several minutes I have been scrolling through a list of events happening in San Francisco tomorrow night. Among them is a "Knife Skills Class." When I see that it is being held at Sur la Table, a kitchen supply store, I realize these knife skills have to do with cooking. But when I first read it, I was certain it had to do with knife throwing. And that seemed perfectly plausible.

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed.