Thursday night, 7:30: at the very moment I write this, the curtain is rising on a performance of a play called Picasso at the Lapin Agile. It's supposed to be a very good and funny play, written by Steve Martin. I have a little blurb here describing it as, "Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso meet at a French bistro at the turn of the century. Who knows what might happen when two great minds get together over wine?"

Who indeed? I really want to see this play. I have two tickets for tonight! They're sitting right next to me. I won't be using them. Why? Because I am a moron. I sent away for tickets through this great service called "half price tickets" which is exactly what it sounds like. They offer tickets to all kinds of performing arts stuff throughout the Bay area. I ordered tickets to three events by mail, but neglected to check exactly where each event took place. Two of them are nearby. This morning, I checked where the Picasso play was happening: Carmel. Where's that? I'm still new to this state. I went to Mapquest for driving directions and found out something I should have known: Carmel is 120 miles south of here. That means, during rush hour through the South Bay, at least a three hour drive.

I'm sure the play is good, but it's not worth six hours of driving. Oh well.

At least I got an amusing anecdote out of it: When I first mentioned the play to Pär, his eyes got very big and he stared past my right ear as if distracted by some personal terror. Then he blinked and started to breathe again, saying, "Oh, wait, Picasso, he's the painter guy."

"Yes," I said. "Who did you think it was?"

"I thought you said Pinnochio," he said. "I hate Pinnochio!"

I had not known this. Later that week, Pär and I went out to see a movie (Pitch Black, which incidentally gets my thumbs up as a fine action flick, gorgeously filmed, with aspects of originality within a basically formulaic plot). The movie was shown at a United Artists theater, which always runs this little cartoony thing before the movie, with a dancing top hat or something telling us to be quiet and not smoke during the movie and to buy things from the concession stand. It's a very annoying top hat, and every single time he sees it, Pär puts his hands together, aims the forefingers at the screen, and vigorously pantomimes shooting it.

As he was shooting the top hat dead this time, I stroked his arm soothingly. "Yes, dear, you got it. Good aim."

He hunched down in his seat and muttered. "I hate that thing worse than Pinnochio."

"How is the top hat like Pinnochio?"

"It's not, really," he said. "I just really hate Pinnochio."

"What is this thing you've got against Pinnochio?" I asked.

"It's a puppet! It's wood! Why is it dancing around by itself? It's like that hideous Microsoft Word paperclip. Anthropomorphic crap!"

So after all these years, I can still learn something new about Pär. No Pinnochio. I suspect that what triggered this attack of anti-puppet fervor was that we recently watched an old episode of Buffy (I know, I said I wasn't going to go on about the tv show, but I'm just mentioning it for god's sake!) where a ventriloquist's dummy came to life. It must have triggered some old Pinnochio trauma in Pär.

But that goddamn Microsoft Word paperclip could drive anyone over the edge.