PMSimon.com

Ladies and gentlemen, pmsimon.com is pleased to present for your viewing pleasure...

Ella the World's Most Famous Cat's very first motion picture!

Click here for Windows Media Player viewing.
Click here for RealPlayer viewing.

Enjoy.

And, yes, it IS stupid, but I hadda try the new camera out SOMEhow.

(Thanks, too, to Larry Wachs, whose Short Film Theater is on its second presentation at regularguys.com.

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I keep doing it.

It happened again today. We were at dinner, eating some Greek food, and I thought, you know, next time Dad comes out here, we should take him to this place, he'd like it. And then I catch myself- he won't be out here anymore.

And I do the same thing with my mom. It's been ten years- ten! since Mom's been gone, yet there are times I forget that. Today was one of those days. There was an article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the new Yad Vashem website that allows you to enter the name of a Holocaust victim and get whatever information's left about him or her. I wanted to look up my grandparents, but all I know is their last name, my mother's birth surname. That's not enough- there were a lot of victims in their city with their surname. I reached for the phone, and then I remembered that I can't quite recall the phone number, and then I realized that even if I could, it wouldn't ring in our old home, and Mom isn't there to pick up anymore. And I wept a little, and I gathered my thoughts, and I shook it off and moved on.

That, after all, is what we have to do as humans- shake it off and move on. But then, at dinner, I ate a chicken pita and thought my Dad would like the food there and I slipped again, another rough spot in a really rough year. Fran's used to this by now- I tell her I almost called Dad again, she smiles and comforts me, we shake it off.

But that's oversimplification. We never really shake it off. Ten years since Mom passed away, I'm still hearing her voice, asking how I'm doing, jokingly mangling the pronunciation of words I know she knows, her accent embedded in my mind to the point that when I'm really tired, my "th"s come out like "t"s, just like hers. My dad's voice is still here, too, shouting "Perry Michael!" when I walk into a room, asking me if I saw the Pacers-Pistons fight, telling me about the Heat game he saw and how Shaq is doing. It's an illusion, I know.

I think.

I'm never quite sure.

Dad was always fairly irreligious. He often told me that he expected that when we die, that's it- no nothing, dust to dust, the end. Maybe that's true. Or maybe he was wrong, and that voice I hear is really there. Hey, Dad, if it IS you, I got a couple of good places to eat next time you visit. You can stay with us. But you may already be doing that.

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The sweet potato pie's all baked. So is the caramel apple pie, although we let Costco bake that one. The turkey's thawing, the day is done. I'm gonna go relax and enjoy while I can. That means no politics, no serious stuff, no aggravation. Maybe you should do that, too.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the holiday. (That means turn this thing off and go do something fun. Meet me back here when it's over.)

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I spent the whole day today under the delusion that this was Saturday. We did Saturday things- slept (a little) later, took an extra-long run, saw a movie ("Sideways"- good one), ran errands, had a nice dinner, bought a computer- OK, we don't normally do that every Saturday, but you get the idea. Not Friday-like at all.

And now, we get another Saturday. I'm very pleased. In fact, I'm going to go prepare for it right now. Maybe there's a "late game from the coast" on the dish. Work can wait.

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