No, I’m talking about the love between Rob and Laura. It radiated from them and filled the room, infusing all of us with joy. It was a feeling that lingered even after the reception ended and we rode back to the hotel in a taxi driven by a man who spent the whole trip carrying on a loud cell-phone conversation in what I believe was Martian; I even felt a certain affection toward
him
.
OK, that was the champagne.
2
Fortunately she did not explode.
4
It goes “Beep! Beep! Beep!”
6
Because that is her name.
9
I mean this literally. Medical researchers at UCLA recently fitted a fifty-seven-year-old man with a working artificial wazoo.
10
This week: David Hasselhoff.
11
Motto: “Gateway to Whatever Is on the Other Side of Grand Forks, N.D.”
12
Paris and Nicole both have fragrance lines.
13
I don’t want to toot my own horn, but in 1997, when I was in Los Angeles on a book tour, I was on a show called
Home & Family
during which I spent several minutes sitting on a couch with Bruce Jenner, as well as an Italian cookbook author and a complete set of quintuplets. I don’t know if any of them has a fragrance line, but I would not rule it out.
14
Maybe he had it in one of those clear plastic bags.
17
This is the actual plot of
Howard the Duck
, a 1986 movie made with a budget of $37 million.
18
And people wonder why the newspaper industry is in the toilet.
19
I am not making any of these notes up.
21
Or, in modern parlance, “chiropractors.”
22
That’s right: Before the Romans,
water stood still
.
23
Also: “Eel-toe union? Wank Heaven!”
25
This actually
is
the name of a Star Wars planet; it’s the one with the Ewoks, the creatures that look like spear-carrying Yorkshire terriers. Endor should not be taken by pregnant women, or women who know any other women who might be, or might someday become, pregnant.
26
As featured in
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
.
27
When I wrote that column, I received hate mail
written in Elvish
.
28
Yes! North Dakota is a state! Although it shares its capital (Montpelier) with Wyoming.
29
It turned out there were several.
30
Or the United States Congress.
31
There actually is no such thing as fwirping, but if there were, and it was something that people were doing on the Internet, editors would order reporters to do it.
32
That’s right: If I were God, lightning would go
FWOOM
.
35
What happens is, they get
even more hideous
.
36
No, I don’t know why it would require two workers. Maybe there’s a screen union, and a projector union. Or maybe there are different unions for plugging and unplugging.