The other night, I watched Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, that 1989 classic comedy about two grifters who charm heiresses out of their fortunes. Although I'd (somehow) never seen it, the casino and train scenes seemed familiar. But it wasn't until Michael Caine led his wealthy, would-be wife to meet Steve Martin masquerading as his two-fries-short-of-a-Happy Meal brother that I realized it was almost exactly the same as 2019's The Hustle with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson. It was weird to stumble upon the original of a movie that I didn't even know was a remake. Even stranger, I'd watched The Hustle last spring, around the beginning of the quarantine. And that made me wonder: why was the universe sending me its funhouse mirror image three hundred and sixty-five days later? To tell me that 1) the secret to life is scamming people, 2) Michael Caine is more than Batman's butler, or 3) Steve Martin and Rebel Wilson are just a wig away from being the same person?
Or, the more things change, the more they stay the same?
Yeah, it's probably that one.
Another thing that won't change this spring (or ever) is my disdain, not for trains, but tram cars. It all goes back to the time I was six and was abandoned on a tram with a mime. No, that's not true. But this is the second consecutive post in which I've mentioned mimes. I just don't like them (tram cars, not mimes. Wait, no, it's tram cars and mimes). It haunts/amuses me that trams are probably still running all over the East Coast and beyond, their tinny warning ("Watch the tram car, please!" "Watch the tram car, please!") as unwelcome as a parole officer at a pig roast.
That said, this pic of regular cars on a regular road instead of a tram car parting a sea of sunburned suckers on the boardwalk will have to do.
Because diamonds to doughnuts, if it's a scam -- I mean tram -- car, then it's got its share of scoundrels onboard. And I don't want to be tricked into a game of eat or be eaten; I want to live and let live. Like in The Lion King.
But while we're on the subject of eating -- and doughnuts -- I wouldn't say no to a glazed Krispy Kreme.
