Also in this issue: With You in 4/4, Pretzel Logic, World Wide Weird, From the Booth
My friend Greg and I have spent the entire morning recasting I, Claudius with people we work with. This is a really fun exercise and a great way to waste time at the office. Our favorite movie to recast is All About Eve. Greg always, always ( ! ) , casts himself as the acid-tongued ( and very gay ) theater critic Addison DeWitt. And I'm usually stuck in the role of the solid, sensible Karen, the long-suffering friend of the great Margo Channing.
The reason I bring this up is that it's a clever way to insult people you don't like. And, if they're not movie fans, they have no idea you are ridiculing them. For example, we refer to a dreadful, perpetually pregnant woman we work with as Rosemary Woodhouse, the mother of the demon baby in Rosemary's Baby. We refer to our arch-enemy at the office, a woman with an unfortunate resemblance to a young Eleanor Roosevelt, as 'little Miss Evil,' which is what Margo Channing calls the scheming Eve Harrington in All About Eve.
We've created a lot of fun ways to get through the dreary work-a-day world, and I've decided to share one of our favorites with my readers because I'm currently brain-dead and can't think of one lesbian-related topic to address this week. This game is called 'Either/Or,' and it's only objective is to spark hours of meaningless conversation about such ridiculous topics as whether it's better to be a morning person or an evening person or whether you prefer Bette Midler over Barbra Streisand. You can make up your own categories, but here are some of our favorites ( I've put my choices in parentheses after each category ) :
• morning or evening ( morning )
• Bette or Barbra ( Bette )
• dogs or cats ( dogs )
• Truman Capote or Gore Vidal ( Capote )
• East Coast or West Coast ( East Coast )
• water or desert ( water )
• Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric ( Oh, come on! No contest. Diane! )
• Blondes or brunettes ( refer to answer above )
• Cole Porter or Irving Berlin ( Cole Porter )
• Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett ( Sinatra )
• really smart or really sexy ( really smart )
•The Godfather I or The Godfather II ( Godfather I )
• Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe ( Elizabeth Taylor )
• potatoes or rice ( rice )
• Mary Richards or Rhoda ( Mary )
• showtunes or opera ( showtunes-duh! )
• massage or facial ( facial )
• summer or winter ( winter )
• fiction or non-fiction ( fiction )
• angry, vengeful God or loving, forgiving God ( angry God )
• Dorothy Parker or Edna St. Vincent Millay ( Dorothy Parker )
• John Stewart or Stephen Colbert ( Colbert by a nose )
• white sauce or red sauce ( red sauce )
• Cubs or Sox ( who cares )
• Beatles or the Rolling Stones ( Stones )
• The British or the French ( Germans )
• root canal or colonoscopy ( root canal )
• Richard Nixon or George W. Bush ( Nixon )
• primary colors or pastels ( primary )
• friend or lover ( friend )
• David Mamet or Edward Albee ( Albee )
• city or country ( country )
• drunk or sober ( depends on the time of day )
• nurturing or demanding ( demanding )
• email or phone ( email )
• Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren ( love 'em both )
• impressionism or expressionism ( impressionism )
• glasses or contacts ( glasses )
• The Algonquin or The Royalton ( The Algonquin )
• Queen Elizabeth or Princess Diana ( Queen Elizabeth )
• breast or thigh ( breast... breast is always my answer no matter what the other choice is )
• Christmas or Easter ( Easter )
• Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly ( Fred Astaire )
• tulips or roses ( tulips )
• plastic surgery or wrinkles ( wrinkles )
• authority or anarchy ( authority )
• singing or dancing ( singing )
• young, slim Catherine Deneuve or aging, fat Catherine Deneuve ( aging, fat Deneuve )
You got something to say to me? Contact me through my web site: www.jenniferparello.com