The King of Pointland

Hai, Forsooth

My, what an exciting weekend.

Friday night, I returned to the Saloon to celebrate Goat's birthday. When last there, we had a heated discussion of world politics with the proprietor, the charming man I previously described. He is an Iranian ex-pat, as it turns out, and he informed me of many things. For example, I did not know that the late Ayatollah Homeini was a Freemason! He also held forth that the two largest holders of U.S. Treasury securities are the Saudis and the Israelis. With help from a friend, I found this.

Some might say I went a bit too far by bringing the proprieter a hardcopy of that data, but he smiled when I handed it to him, seemed genuinely excited, and was poring over it with the bartender when I left.

On Saturday, Andrew, Maureen, and I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival! I had never been there, and let me tell you: So. Many. Nerds. You couldn't walk ten feet without tripping over a nerd and his nerd friends. It was all somebody as cool as me could do not to bust out laughing.

But I kid.

The caber toss was highly enjoyable, and, frankly, so was the rest of it, although my Renaissance era falafel showed just how much progress we have made in chick-pea-and-tahini technology since 1534.

Today: Brunch at Plato's, coffee at ****ingtonia, and then a 5 o'clock showing of Lost in Translation. I'll share a little guilty schadenfreude with you: as I approached the theater, one of the employees was letting those in line know the bad news: the 5 o'clock showing was sold out. With a smug grin I walked past them to the automated credit card kiosk, swiped my Visa, and waited for it to print my moviephone-purchased tickets, while the couple next to me argued about what movie to see instead. They looked like they drove a Mercedes. Suckers.

It's not a bad movie, by the way, and the opening shot was worth the price of admission (your mileage may vary).