The Great American Melodrama in Oceano, California is pretty neat. (In a weird way it reminds me of Rawhide, a Western-themed amusement park we visited many times when I was a kid. I'd like to go back. Hope it still exists.) Anyway, Rieschelle got me Melodrama season tickets for my birthday. Lucky me. We went last week and it was another fantastic evening. They performed a playlet called "Silence of the Hams," which was a real hoot. It was a sort of play within a play set in the silent film era. The set was created in stark silver and grey tones to look old Hollywood. (Even the pasta they used looked white-white and for some reason it brought to mind the scene in The Apartment where Jack Lemmon strains spaghetti with a tennis racket. I love that movie!) One of the main actors is just swell. He can sing, he can dance and he's funny as hell. He has a great joke about keeping the aisles clear so as not to have a sweaty, patchouli-smelling actor fall into your lap. Plus he's so dashing. Even the Maggie Gyllenhaal-loving Amie B. went up to him after one show to tell him how handsome he is. Cojones! I can't wait till the next show.

My new catchphrase of the moment is "batshit insane." Chuck Klosterman used it in a recent article and it made me laugh. It works in many different contexts. I expect it will lose its appeal by sometime next week.

Every time I see footage of Tom Cruise on Oprah I just crack up. That guy is batshit insane for Katie Holmes. (See, it works.)

Joe Pudas: Video Store Clerk? Never would have seen that coming.

Please pardon me. I've got the cold from hell. I just took some cold/flu stuff and it seems to have made me a little loopy. And so a loopy post. Elderberry Ricolas are not bad.

I think I just caught a glimpse of the actress who played Blair's cousin Jerry on The Facts of Life on an episode of Deadwood. Loopy, I say.