At the suggestion of the in-laws, and in their company, we went out Friday night.

The Dearest One chose the restaurant: a very good small Italian place in a fading mall. The in-laws chose the show: a community theater production of "Guys & Dolls." I went happily along for the ride.

The restaurant - Ristorante Mare E Monti - features a wood-fired pizza oven. I'd never seen the oven in operation because the old guy who used to make the pizzas retired before I got here. Last night, however, it was burning; after almost a couple years, they'd found somebody new to do it. But I ordered lasagna when it occurred to me that I'd never actually had lasagna in an Italian restaurant before. I felt in violation of some sort of unwritten dining code.

The in-laws are friends of one of the leads in "Guys & Dolls": the guy who played Nathan Detroit. He did a stand-up job of it, as did most of the cast. The doll playing Adelaide, though a little bit long in the tooth, couldn't have been better. Imagine a person with Mary Tyler Moore's face and timing, Gwen Stefani's over-the-top pipes tinged with Cyndi Lauper's squeakiness, and Lori Petty's lanky body; and imagine that she was raised on bad old New-York-gangster movies. She cut a fine figure of an appropriately stereotypical mobster-gal ingénue; and being in her fifties, she brought a hint of world-weariness to the role. ("Achoo.")

It turns out that "Guys & Dolls" is based on characters by Damon Runyon. I read a story of his recently ("Butch Minds The Baby") in a collection, and I certainly can see that it was a much shorter leap to the stage than the Adams Family took from being a cartoon in The New Yorker to being a sitcom.

The next day, Saturday, yesterday, oppressively hot and humid, the Dearest One and I went to the BowieFest at Allen Lake. The sign looked like it said "Alien Lake"... and it was sort of X-Filesy if you've got a strong enough imagination. For instance, there was a booth there for the production company that's staging the run of "Guys & Dolls", and somebody was at the booth dressed up kind of like Adelaide and talking like her - but it wasn't actually her; and at the Hawaiian Shaved Ice stand I saw one of the waitresses from the Italian restaurant - one of the very waitresses from the Italian restaurant. Yeah, makes the hairs on your arm kinda lay down all flat-like, don't it?

There were lots and lots of Christians there, too, recruiting. It was sad, the number of desperate Christians; more of them than there were local politicians and local politicians' supporters - and there were scads of those on hand. The politicians (including Maryland's Lieutenant Governor, Kathleen Townsend - a Kennedy) were all giving away stickers. The more enterprising BowieFest-goers were sporting a good dozen different stickers.

The Christians were more diverse. Some of them were giving away these little white cardboard boxes that, inside a little clear plastic bag, contained a calculator that looked like a cell phone. The front flip-down part said, "Calculate your need for Jesus this day!" along with their church's name and address and phone number and a verse from Romans. It filled me with a kind of a happy black-and-silver glow, and I began to sing, "And they'll know we are Christians by our calculators-that-look-like-cell-phones, by our calculators-that-look-like-cell-phones, yes they'll know we are Christians by our calculators-that-look-like-cell-phones."

Another group of them was giving away nice big fat pens, bright blue but otherwise understated, with their contact information on the barrel. These were clipped to a pamphlet titled "What Single Event in Human History Had the Power to Split Time?" The guy who handed me the pen-and-pamphlet said, "Did you know that when Jesus was born it was so important that they changed the calendar?" which negated the need for me to actually read the pamphlet. I told him that what he was saying just wasn't true. It took hundreds of years before it was common even for Christians to start counting from the (supposed, by then) birthdate of Jesus - and the Gregorian calendar we use today wasn't introduced until the 1500s. He didn't seem to care much. I guess it's like picking up chicks: he figured he'd found a good line and was gonna stick with it, no matter if it was right or true or not.

Ah, then came the prize! There was a booth there - I'm not even sure who sponsored it - giving away books. Giving them away for free. Tables full of books, and boxes full of more books. We pulled out a copy of Pride and Prejudice for the Dearest One, and me - is my life ever going to change!:


Exciting excerpts from the first chapter:

How to make and use "A Magic Money Bag" to receive gifts from the invisible world!... A woman used this method to materialize a man-servant out of thin air!

How to broadcast Tele-Commands that must be obeyed with the amazing Hypno-Phone!

How to join the Hidden Brotherhood and enjoy a wonderful new life of money, friends, and power... It's like an Insta-Matic Dial-a-Wish Service that actually works!

A Magic Street where you can go where pennies actually fall from the sky, every day, in great quantities. People have picked up as many as 1,000 in less than a hour!

A thousand pennies a hour? Why, that's... that's... ten bucks an hour! Woo-hoo! Amazing stories! Champagne, baby!