Bill-killing

I played but a single game of San Juan at GC last night before a bunch of us went off to see Kill Bill Vol. 2. I wish I’d bought a ticket for bugsybanana; the movie does enough recapping that you can probably enjoy it without having seen the first. Lots of cool fights, lots of references to other movies, lots of melodramatic over-acting by a guy with a great beard.

Afterwards we dined at Big Nick’s, where I introduced a new generation to the joys of garlic soup. Then a voyage crosstown to bigscary’s place, where he showed us a few episodes of Mister Keaton, an anime show that I might be able to google up a link for if it weren’t for Buster Keaton and Family Ties. Think of it as MacGyver working as an insurance claims adjuster. (Update: It’s Master Keaton, says stormsweeper.)

Best line of the night: “They’re either catamites or catatites, depending on whether they top or bottom.”

Slept over at BigScary’s, made my way home smelly and unshowered.

It beats the persecution

David Bernstein, of the Volokh Conspiracy, quotes from the April 26th issue of People Magazine (which isn’t online):

She’s got the deejay blasting Beyonce and a computerized light show. She has nearly 100 friends crammed into Manhattan’s ritzy Bryant Park Grill. She’s got the gift table groaning with Tiffany bags and guests greeting her dad at the door with “Mazel tov!” Everything is perfectly poised for 13-year-old Kimya to have a world- class bat mitzvah, except for one tiny detail:

Kimya isn’t Jewish.

Welcome to the strange new world of faux mitzvahs, where non-Jewish teens like Kimya Zahedi—whose parents are Iranian-born Muslims—and Taylor Lasley, African-American and Presbyterian, get to party like it’s 5764 (that’s 2004 on the Hebrew calendar). A centuries-old Jewish tradition, bar mitzvahs (for boys) and bat mitzvahs (for girls) mark the passage from childhood to adulthood with rituals like candlelighting and slicing braided bread called challah, as well as with elaborate and often expensive celebrations. Now more and more non-Jewish kids areinsisting on their own bar or bat mitzvah-style parties—without the religious rites and months of studious preparation—when they turn 13. “You see how you can have so much fun with so many people,” says Kimya, who attends one or two bar or bat mitzvahs every weekend in and around her wealthy neighborhood in Alpine, N.J.