When you're right, you're . . . what?

I'm shifting my work location, and the boys made their first visit to my new place today, although they'd already seen photographs of the interior. In the minivan on the way -- it's only a five-minute drive -- Tertius announces, with flawless seven-year-old logic: "I think it's going to be different from the way from the way I imagine it. But if it isn't, then I'm wrong."

But you can probably scrape it off.

Interesting choice of phrase in a Reuters headline: "Director John Chu steps into Justin Bieber movie."

Didn't get the memo.

It's a good thing when your son remembers to tell you that the current gallon of milk is the last one on the premises. You just wish he'd mention it when he first collects it from the basement refrigerator and not when he pours out the last drop for his dinner drink. So while the chicken flautas are warming in the oven, I make the half-mile straight dash along Forest Avenue to the Playland Market, the nearest deli, noted for its coffee. (A smidgen of hazelnut . . . aaah!)

On the way there, in the gathering twilight, I pass two people, a man and woman, walking swiftly along the opposite sidewalk, each carrying a well-upholstered formal dining chair.

Odd. Have they been scavenging among the items left out for the weekly bulk garbage pick-up? But that took place this morning. And the chairs look too good for trash. Ah well . . .

Five minutes later, now equipped with milk, I drive back, and in exactly the same spot, I pass a man and two women hurrying in the opposite direction from before, also carrying fancy dining chairs. Not sure if any of the people were the same, but the chairs were certainly different.

Not something you see every day. Is this some fad or fashion I'm unaware of? When I trot out Leila on the leash tomorrow, will I be committing a stylistic faux pas if I'm not clutching a Hepplewhite side chair in my spare hand? Is this a new trend in flash mobs, involving impromptu banqueting? Does swinging now embrace furniture, because traditional human wife-swapping was condemned by liberal Rye as glaringly animatist? And why does it bother me so much that I can't think of any rational explanation for this behavior?

Recycled humor.

The brilliant satirical comedy program "The Now Show" has just finished its 31st series on BBC Radio.

(How brilliant, you ask? Well, you should have done. Where else could you hear the words "vaginas" and "Thomas Aquinas" rhymed completely in context, as they were in a satirical song by Mitch Benn about the Catholic church's attempts to recruit disaffected Anglican clergy, pissed over the Church of England's ordination of women? And you have to love a program that makes a catchphrase out of an obscure line spoken by Donald Pleasance in The Great Escape.)

A feature of the show is to ask the audience a question -- now extended to the listening audience by Twitter -- and then bask in the substantial wit of the answers. In the penultimate episode, prompted by the UK government's scandalous axing of the British Film Council (which provided sponsorship for cinematic projects), suggestions were invited for low-budget film titles. Here's what they got (with American notes), which gave me a few laughs while listening to the podcast, and God knows I could use some:

The Devil Wears Primark*
Walking Miss Daisy
Free Willy -- with Every Packet of Cornflakes
The Discount of Monte Cristo
Star Wars: The Empire Cuts Back
The Bridge on the River Wye**
Murder on the National Express***
The Burger King and I
A Couple of Things I Hate About You
The Tramp and the Tramp (my favorite)
Schindler's Post-It Note
The Bargain Hunt for Red October
The Six Million Zimbabwean Dollar Man
Honey, I Sold the Kids
The Bournemouth Ultimatum****
The Mancunian Candidate*****
Seven Brides for Seven Pounds Fifty
Breakfast at Ratners******
Scratch-Card Royale
Slumdog.

*Brand name for a chain of low-cost clothing stores.

**Welsh River. I once visited the location in Sri Lanka where The Bridge on the River Kwai was made. By which I mean my driver assured me it was just round the bend of the river we had stopped at. The real bridge is in Thailand.

***British transportation company. Think Greyhound Bus.

****Dull but worthy resort town on the English South Coast, noted as a retirement destination, like parts of Florida. Not to be compared to the cachet of St. Tropez or Cannes on the French South Coast, dammit. (See previous entry). Does have some very good orchestras, though.

*****Adjective meaning "of Manchester."

******Former name of a notoriously cheap chain of jewelers. Change of name and ownership followed a marketing debacle when founder and then-CEO Gerald Ratner admitted in public that his prices were so low because his products were "total crap." He then compared some of the company's ear-rings (unfavorably) to "a 99p prawn sandwich." Making the error of criticizing a product made by your own company -- or the taste of your target clientele -- is now called "doing a Ratner."

Master of disguise strikes again.

This morning, Tertius appears in the doorway to my office with a white sun visor pulled down under his chin and holding the blue plastic nib of giant-sized crayon on his head. He's a gnome.

A couple of days ago, he came in swathed entirely in black from head to foot, a niqab made from various ninja outfits and Batman capes. His eyes were hidden behind opaque sunglasses and, oddly, the ensemble was topped off with a light-hued fedora. He looked like Indiana Jones performed by Mummenschanz. This time he claimed to be his brother.

He honored me yesterday with two new stickers on the outside of his bedroom door. One is of Great Britain, because that's where I come from, and the other is of France, with a big red 'x' drawn over it, because apparently I'm always being rude about the French. (It may be genetic, but I have got to watch what I say in front of these kids.)

How to communicate more gooder.

In my twenties, I cut my teeth on corporate communications (and therefore fiction-writing) as the editor of Citibank's bi-monthly, 24-page color magazine for its staff in the UK, Ireland, and Scandinavia. (Ah yes, dear reader, I have lived!) Every two months, I had that uplifting moment when the new edition arrived from the printer, smelling deliciously of fresh ink -- better than a new car, in my opinion -- and I would grab an armful and gleefully scatter them around the desks on my floor.

"What's in it?" someone would ask inevitably ask. "Look," I'd reply, "I edit it, I write virtually every word, I take a lot of the photographs, I lay out some of the spreads, and I even draw pictures. I'm not bloody reading it to you as well."

But it demonstrates -- as every communicator, in every field, ought to know -- that people are different. (They're idiots too, but that's another story.) Some want their words written on paper, some want them on a screen with pictures, and some won't believe anything unless it goes into their ears. You want to get a key message across? Give the audience a choice of how to get it.

I got a stark lesson in this during the first days of my very first assignment out of university. We'd spent an afternoon clearing some old junk out of a couple of cabinets -- I knew that freshly-minted degree from Oxford would come in handy -- which resulted in a large pile of trash for the evening cleaning staff. Just to make absolutely certain they'd know what it was, we made up a big cardboard sign with the word "RUBBISH" in huge red letters and lodged it conspicuously on top.

The next morning, the pile was still there, including the sign, on which someone had written: "Is this rubbish?"

A follow up, dear reader.

I checked the Levi's website. There's no jeans category called "guys." It was probably a misprint for "gays."

Oh, while I'm expressing my irritation with stores, remember how Staples used to have that slogan: "Yeah, we got that"? And then they changed it. You discover why they changed it when your printer runs out of toner unexpectedly.

Which reminds me of a time a few years back when I'd gone to my local Staples for something, and I remembered while I was there that I needed some other office supply, only I couldn't recall what it was. I wandered around, staring blankly at all the signs, racking my brains, hoping that something in the store would jog my memory. But nothing.

It was a good ten minutes before it came to me. I'd run out of staples.

The daily insult. Possibly.

Tertius, the Seven-Year-Old With a Thousand Faces, does it again. He materializes with the waistband of his shorts yanked up to his sternum, a cardigan drooping off his shoulders, and a pair of round-framed, pink-lensed hippie glasses on his nose. He adopts a slumping, shuffling gait, and an odd voice.

"I'm Urkel," he claims, plausibly.

Ah, TeenNick, you scamp. Were it not for your feast of reruns, an entire generation of America's youth could grow up without ever knowing the blessing of Jaleel White.

* * *

But I digress. So all four male Beecheys are in a Rye Rec playground, and I'm explaining to Secundus, with diagrams, that the trip home on his bicycle will be easier if he traverses the long, steep hill behind his quiescent school rather than attempting a head-on attack.

"Dad, you have a new nickname," he says, unwrapping a peppermint. "'The Living Lecture.'"

The candy drops onto the sand, but he snatches it up in less than a second, and I refrain from comment. "Well," he continues, sucking the mint, "you're the Living Lecture who also cooks, drives us, writes . . ."

"Yeah, and none of those things make any money," I reply. "Ask your mother."

He looks thoughtful. Then brightens up. "I'll give you a mint," he offers.

All the news that's fit to ignore.

AP headlines we didn't need: "16-year-old Justin Bieber writing a memoir"

Guy liberation.

Kohl's department store had an advertising supplement in yesterday's New York Times, boasting that all Levi's jeans are on sale. Well, it actually says ALL LEVI'S JEANS ON SALE.

So you don't immediately notice the small print that follows: "for men, guys, juniors and kids."

I suppose that means the ladies don't get a look in. Or a leg in, rather, ho, ho, ho, ho, ah me. Which is . . . . Hang on! Go back a bit. No, before the "leg in" joke.* "For men, guys . . ."

When did the fashion industry start distinguishing between "men" and "guys"? And more to the point, which am I? I still wear Levi's jeans.** My size hasn't changed for 35 years, still a 31 waist (30 in Dockers, ahem), 32 leg. Well, left leg. So why could I suddenly be in a subgroup that may brand me a second-class citizen on the be-denimed hipness*** scale? I don't want to be a man. I want to be a guy!

Unless "guy" is that peculiar style of jeans that have their crotch floating at shin-level and expose enough butt-crack to inspire Spackle. I can get that effect if the phone rings when I'm on the toilet.****

I suppose this could lead me to develop some kind of Jeff Foxworthy-like material on the lines of "When you something something something, you're a man. But when you something something something else, you're a GUY!" (Pause for audience hilarity.) And the fact that I can't come up with anything makes me think that I'm probably not a guy. I've never said "wassup!" in my life.

Well, I clearly need to investigate. And if I don't qualify as a guy, at least I can take consolation that I haven't drifted into some new Levi's category called "coot." ("Sits at the nipple, ultra-wide belt-loops, extra roomy in the seat, just in case.")

But if I discover that men and guys are indeed two separate cuts of jean, one being cooler and trendier than the other, it does lead to another question: If you find yourself in a subset that is at least one step up the rickety ladder of contemporary fashion, why would you be buying jeans at Kohl's?

*That was a joke?

**Well, Lee's fit me better, less inclined to sag under the gluteal crease after a few washings, but . . .

***Yes, I know "hip" is an old-fashioned expression - I believe the term is "sick" these days - but I was going for the lower-body metaphor.

 ****Also called a "penguin," cf. Ally McBeal 1998.