Happy Cinco De Mayo

What a great idea to celebrate the number five. I will admit that I’ve never had a true love for five, but all things considered it really is a swell number, and it doesn’t get the credit it deserves. I mean here it is giving of its self, three times on every monthly calendar without being given a single ten series. Whenever we look at unusual births, who gets the notoriety? Not Five, nope today six or even eight gets all the press. Fifty years ago five children born at the same time was all the rage. Quintuplets were as rare as hen’s teeth. (Side Note #1: Hens really don’t have teeth. The rumor was started back around 1900, when Diamond Jim Brady was down at Coney Island trying to break the whole chicken eating record. The previous record of seven chickens at one sitting in less than an hour had held for over twenty years. Brady was already past eight when he noticed the time was almost up. He stuffed two chicken legs and half a breast in his mouth at the same time and started to choke. He coughed up the mess just as the clock expired. When he was told that he wouldn’t get credit for the last chicken, he looked down at the plate in front of him and saw that there was a tooth on the plate. He claimed that it wasn’t a fair contest since someone had given him a chicken hen with teeth, and everyone knew that they were very rare and very tough. He got a do-over the next week and broke the record with nine chickens.) (Side Note #2: If you don’t believe the Jim Brady story, look up the “History of Gluttony on the Beach.” There they talk about the original eating contests that were sponsored by Clucky the Chicken. Their catch phrase “Clucky’s chicken, you’ll gobble it up,” was on all of the billboards at the beach before 1916. Yes I know some of you who are not city folk realize that it’s turkeys that go gobble, gobble, not chickens. However, down at the shore they didn’t know about turkeys or chickens that didn’t come fried or baked. The hot dog folks came in afterwards and had better publicity, so Coney Island went off chickens and embraced hot dogs.)

Today we have moms who give birth to eight at a time. I mean really, who would want to celebrate Ocho De Mayo. Well any rate we celebrated Cinco by going out to a movie. We went to see “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” I know you’re asking why did we go to see an English movie about a place in India? To be fair it was the fifth movie listed in the paper. Yeah I know, if I’d read a little farther down the page I might have looked at “The Five-year Engagement,” but is that really any more in keeping with the day? Besides “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” had Judy Dench and she’s a Dame. And we all remember that “there’s nothing like a dame.”

I know that I started this blog to talk about writing, but someone had to write the screen play for the Marigold Hotel movie. They even give out an Oscar for writing the best one each year. You remember the Oscars don’t you? That’s the show that we all watch to see who is wearing the most revealing gown of the night. (Side Note #3:  Did you see how I said “Gown” instead of “Dress?” That proves that I watch it for the fashion and not the amount of skin. Yeah, and if you believe that then I read “Playboy” for the articles. Well actually I do red the “New Yorker” for the cartoons.)

Seriously folks it’s a great movie. A group of people decide to move to a retirement home in India for various reasons. As they say in the TV promo for the movie, “It’s like the coast of Florida, but with more elephants.”  The visuals are worth the price of admission. Now I’ve never been to India, but after seeing the movie I might be tempted to go for a visit. I should warn you that there’s no sex, well not much and it’s not on screen. Also no robots, vampires, or werewolves. It will not win the picture of the year, but sometimes you go to the flicks just to see a good story. And I’m all about good stories.

(Side Note #4: My apologies to my friends who celebrate the Mexican holiday of Cinco De Mayo. The Mexican victory over the invading French in 1862 is every bit as good as our celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.)