Had a pretty good birthday.  Kind of quiet with Cody having to work that night therefore having to sleep all day but we went out for sushi (twice in one week be still my heart!) thursday night so it was ok.  We also went to the dog park but there’s more to that story later. 
 
I mostly sat around and watched really silly shows on tv.  Including some show on VH1 about the 40 weirdest reality tv moments or something which was interesting because I finally found out about several things I’d heard for a while but had no idea what people were talking about.  
 
My Dad (my DAD knew about a reality tv thing LOLOL) told me a few weeks ago that apparently this Reuben guy was from Birmingham so there had been a lot of stuff about him at City Stages.  And Brody’s, the foo foo deli in my old (also foofoo) neighborhood, changed the name of their Reuben to the American Idol Reuben or some nonsense.  So now I have finally seen what that was about too although I think he’d been on Ellen once and I fast-forwarded it.  I rarely like the musical guests on Ellen so I’m in the habit of just skipping them.
 
Enough about my practiced naivete regarding reality tv shows.  I also watched a great documentary on either IFC or Sundance about a Chinese Vaudevillian named “Long Tack Sam”.  It was a very unique story directed by his great-granddaughter.  Born in 1885 in China he ran away to join the Circus then stowed away to the US, then Europe where he met and married an Austrian woman and had two daughters, who joined his act when they were old enough, and a son later on.  He toured extensively all over the world - with his family in tow and wife as his manager most of the time.

You can actually trace the effects of historic events in the earliest twentieth century on this extraordinary man and his family.  He had left his family in Europe to tour the US and was unable to leave for Europe between the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 until the end of World War One in 1918. After being reunited with his family they toured all over the world, providing great entertainment during the depression. Almost thirty years after being stuck in the US war was about to affect their lives again. They escaped to Italy after Germany invaded Poland then had to sail for the US when Mussolini joined ranks with Hitler but they couldn’t stay because of his wife’s nationality so they traveled to Shanghai - then the Japanese invaded.  Quite a story huh?
 
There were some wonderful vintage photographs and posters - and the director animated them to almost make the people come alive. A slight head-tilt or blinking eyes. It sounds hokey but I think it enhanced the life of the story. It was a nice surprise to find this interesting movie just flipping around one afternoon.