Okay, so…

Umm…

See, umm… There seems to be this website somewhere called “glmux.com”…

I mean, I guess that’s their name, because I see it a lot in e-mail addresses…

Because a lot of different people with that mail server post a lot of comments on the blog posts on my website…

And the comments are really nice…

Very nice…very enthusiastic and very complimentary…

Here are just a few recent ones:

“Thanks for a really fantastic blog. It was very helpful. I am just so glad I found this.”

“This is an excellent site! A lot of useful information and handy tips, thank you =)”

“Wonderful website, how do you get all this information? I’ve read a couple of posts on your site and I love your writing style. Thanks a million, keep up the good work.”

“I browsed through this amazing site and there’s so much handy information; saved to my bookmarks.”

“I’m fascinated. I do not think I know anyone who understands just as much about the topic. You need to make a career of it, honestly; awesome blog.”

Seriously, those are all lovely, aren’t they? And I get messages like that just about every day from a wide range of people from glmux.com…

Of course, you don’t need to look for those comments on the blog posts in my website. Because they’re not there. Because you know how this story plays out…

When I saw the first of these lovely compliments, shortly after my website first launched, I was so thrilled! I either Skyped with or phoned my fabulous website designer, who is my forever web master/guru, and I probably said words to the effect of “They like me! They really like me!”

And there was a pause. In hindsight, I recognize it as a sad pause. And I heard my brilliant web master say, “Oh, honey, that’s spam.”

And I was, like, What?

“It’s spam.”

And I was, like, You mean they say that to everyone? And she was, like, Yeah, because it’s spam.

So now I go through the e-mail notifications I receive every day announcing that comments have been made on my blog posts, and I mark the ones that are spam as “Spam.”

And I do read them. Unless, of course, they’re in the Cyrillic alphabet. And there’s a little voice inside me that says, and probably always will say, “Gosh, maybe these are real people and not machines, and even though it’s their job to send out spam messages, maybe they did take a moment to read my blog post and maybe they really did find it charming or inspiring or funny…”

Well, I imagine I’ll get a lot of comments from glmux.com about this particular post, huh! Some may not convey great enthusiasm about what I’ve written this time, huh!

And some, I can promise you, will have absolutely atrocious grammar and syntax. Seriously, the ones I quoted above? I got so tired of typing “[sic],” I just went ahead and corrected them all; gmlux.com, you really should consider hiring a proofreader.

Because you know those silly spammers seriously have no sense of the significance of the superb semicolon…

And absolutely no appreciation of alliteration, apparently…

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I saw a headline on some website, and I did a massive double-take. In hindsight, I wonder if maybe the writer meant for the words to be sarcastic. Maybe. I’ll never know for sure, because I immediately closed the link in audible disgust, and now I can’t find the article again.

The headline that inspired such instant and unforgiving outrage in me read:

Horrible Things No One Tells You About What Happens To Your Body As It Ages

Are you kidding? Are you fucking kidding me with that crap?

Okay, maybe the writer really was being sarcastic. Maybe the article went on to say that a premise that dreadful stuff happens to your body as it ages and it is absolutely essential to share that depressing information far and wide is really quite unpleasant and probably the basis for many a self-fulfilling prophecy among hapless readers.

But maybe not. And that’s why I feel compelled to go on record with a rejoinder. What I’m about to share is entirely from my point of view. I duly recognize that my truths are not now and will not in the future be true for everyone as they age. But maybe they’ll spark recognition and maybe they’ll inspire some optimism. Because, if we’re lucky enough, we’re all going to get to a certain age at some point. And I honestly think that should be embraced.

I turned 60 last year. I know far too many people who didn’t make it to that age, so I will be utterly damned if I’m not going to enjoy as many of the moments of my years as much as I possibly can.

Herewith my top three favorite things about aging. I’m not going to limit it to what happens to our bodies, because I really do believe that all the details in our lives are profoundly related.

1. You really do have license to not give a classic fuck what anyone else thinks.

   

   And, seriously, you’ve earned it. Now, I don’t say this by way of giving anyone my blessing to be a self-serving, selfish shithead and to not give a fuck if other people think it’s not right to be a self-serving, selfish shithead. I’m directing this at people who behave with grace and kindness. I’m giving them license to not spend time with people who don’t appreciate their grace and kindness. I’m giving them license to avoid self-serving, selfish shitheads.

   I just think that at a certain age (I’m not 100% sure what that age is, but I do know for sure that I’ve been there for several good years by now…) you’ve lived long enough to not have to worry if anyone else approves of you as long as you approve of yourself, as long as you can honestly say that you are living according to your values. I think the assurance that the people whose opinions matter will respect you is a valid one.

   If you’re kind and caring, anyone who doesn’t appreciate you, who belittles or undermines you, shouldn’t be in your world. In fact, they should just go fuck themselves, don’t you think?

2. It really is possible to love your body more and more as it ages.

   

   I have a few friends who have medical conditions that keep them in near-constant pain. My heart aches for them. This is a cruel and unfair twist of fate. It can happen at any age. I suppose the argument can be made that it’s more possible to have medical issues as you age. Maybe. But why focus on that unless you have to?

   I want to enjoy being in my body for as long as I can. I want to feel comfortable in my skin until the day I die. This is a conscious and constant goal, and I do whatever I can to make it my ongoing reality. And it turns out that there’s a lot that I can do. I believe in taking positive action at any age, and I also believe that it’s never too late to start making your health and your mental and physical wellbeing a priority.

   I don’t want to start every new year that a birthday brings assuming that I’m going to feel less energetic, less inspired, less comfortable, less cozy. I want to feel as fabulous as I possibly can. And I honestly can say that I’ve never felt better than I do now. That’s something I wish for everyone as they age.

3. Time is precious, and that’s a really liberating thing to know.

   

   This is a bit of a corollary to the first item on my list. Living long enough to have seen that we are not guaranteed any specific number of days has made me guard my time with miserliness that Scrooge would admire.

   I don’t want to spend time doing things I don’t want to do. Maybe there are people who got that message earlier in life than I did. It took me several decades to get to the point where I wasn’t going to do something just because other people wanted me to. I do slip on occasion, and I end up doing something I don’t want to do because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When that happens, I swear, I get a visceral reaction of discomfort that makes it almost impossible for me to sit still until I’m back to doing what I want to do. It’s my psyche’s way of reminding me what’s important in my life.

   I often do things for other people. When I want to. When doing so makes me happy. That’s my well-earned, time-tested litmus test for mapping out my schedule for every precious day of every precious year.

As a postscript, I do want to add that ageism can kiss my 60-year-old ass, especially ageism that is directed toward women. Several years ago, the New York Post ran a gossip column with a snarky comment about a movie star who was dating a younger man. She was in her early fifties. He was in his late forties.

I immediately fired off an irate e-mail to the columnist, calling him out on his specifically sexist ageism. He wrote back to say that they were not sexist at the Post, because they had also written about the age gap between Bruce Willis and his most recent girlfriend.

“So, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, and why don’t you calm down, sweetie,” was what I read as the subtext in the columnist’s words. Of course I could not let that stand without a response.

I wrote back to say that, given that the age gap between the movie star and her boyfriend was three years, and the age gap between Bruce Willis and his girlfriend was twenty-three years, I thought the columnist’s equating of the two as being equally newsworthy was at best patronizing and at worst massively fucked up.

I didn’t hear back from him. He is to this day welcome to jump up and kiss my ass.

The post Okay, Now It’s MY Turn To Tell You A Few Things About Aging #BOAW2018 appeared first on Heidi Mastrogiovanni.

My huge thanks to Cynthia, and to Laurie Kenney, Wesleyan’s books editor, and my classmate Gary Breitbord, one of our two excellent Class Secretaries!

You can read the interview, here.

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http://www.augustmclaughlin.com/sexy-movies/

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Okay, so I have to own up to something of which I am not proud…

Let me tell you a little story…about me…being insufferable.

The scene of my epic breakdown of grace and decorum was one of the meetings of the fabulous book club to which I belong.

It’s called the Roaring Laughter Ladies Book Club. The women in it are among the most wonderful people in my world and in the world. Kind, smart, caring, hilarious, delightful, loyal…you get the idea; you can pretty much fill in any laudatory adjective here and it will apply to them. This is not hyperbole. They rock.

And I was being insufferable in their company…

So this post is, in addition to being a confession, an apology to my lovely friends, who deserve much better than they got from me on that terrible day.

Please imagine that the voice saying these words is using a tone that is smug, sneering, and singsong… In short, all the things you don’t want a voice you are hearing to be.

Needless to say, this is me, gassing on and on at the book club meeting…

“I just hate when people use the word ‘read’ as a noun. I hear it all the time. It was a good read. What is that all about? It’s a verb! To read! I hate when people make verbs into nouns! Why does our beautiful language have to change? That’s called evolving? I call it DE-volving!”

And then I sat back with a self-righteous, tight little smile, and continued to chug the delicious wine/champagne/vodka (I think it was champagne for me on that particular day) that we always have at our gatherings.

There were a few moments of silence, during which my dear friends were, I suspect and fear, thinking “Jeez, is she a pill, or what?”

And then there was a response, and please forgive me, because I don’t remember who said this… Whichever Roaring Laughter Lady said it, please jump right in and claim your due applause in the Comments section of this post.

“But that happens with ‘walk’ all the time…”

And I froze as soon as I heard that sentence being completed.

Because I immediately realized that I had nothing to say in return…

No possible response…

Because one of the things I love most in the world is walking. I just love taking a walk. It’s one of the great pleasures of my life. I love the joy and relaxation and re-energizing that the word “walk” conveys. As a verb. And as a noun. And I have used it both ways. For decades. Without giving it a second thought.

And so I would just like to apologize for being such a pill. I’m duly humbled and truly sorry.

I sincerely hope this post has been a good read for you. And, I swear, I didn’t even wince while I typed that…

But I still think that saying/writing/thinking “try and [do something]” instead of “try to [do something]” is clumsy and lazy and just plain wrong, and always will be…

But…

I think I may be forced to realize that I will be reading and hearing “try and” far more than I will be reading and hearing “try to” and maybe I’m fighting a losing battle here and maybe I should just get over myself with that one, too…

I think I even saw “try and” in The New Yorker, a.k.a. my standard reference on all things bright and gorgeous about our fabulous language, but I’m not 100% sure…

Maybe our beautiful language has evolved to the point where “try and” is not only correct, it’s more correct…

Maybe…

I’ll try to keep you posted on my evolving thoughts about that subject…

The post A Blog Post Wherein I Get Over Myself appeared first on Heidi Mastrogiovanni.

We drove to Beagles and Buddies at their new location in Apple Valley.  It’s a big and cheerful place.  Connie, the director of Beagles and Buddies and our friend since we first adopted from them in 2008, was there.  We sat in the sunny courtyard.  There were sofas and comfy chairs and lots of dog beds.  And lots of dogs.

Chester was so funny and cute during our visit.  He didn’t seem to want to interact with any of the dogs.  He just patrolled the periphery of the area, his hound nose to the ground, with a look of tremendous seriousness.

Tom and I just adore Chester.

Driving to Apple Valley on that particular afternoon was more of an excuse to take a lovely trip than an actual mission to bring a dog home with us that day.  Connie had received an application from people who were looking to surrender their dog to the rescue group, and she had a feeling that the dog would be perfect for us.

Connie was absolutely right. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

I have a tendency to do that…

We visited with Connie and the other wonderful people of the Beagles and Buddies team for a bit, and of course we also petted as many of the wonderful rescued dogs there as we could, and we agreed that we would come see Maggie the Lemon Beagle as soon as she was brought to Beagles and Buddies.

I don’t think I had known that there are lemon beagles before we heard of Maggie.  She’s not a tricolor, as you can see.  She’s mostly white with patches of beige.  And like all beagles, regardless of shading, she is absolutely adorable.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

On the way home, we walked around beautiful Big Bear Lake.  People strolling on the shore paused to admire Chester as he toddled along on his jaunty, little legs, and of course it always makes me smile when he is fussed over.   We stopped at a Mexican restaurant near the lake that had an outdoor patio.  A woman and her dachshund puppy were on the patio when we arrived.  Of course I went nuts when I saw the puppy.

“Chester!  Chester, look at the adorable puppy!  He’s a dachshund, and you’re part dachshund, Chester!”

The puppy desperately wanted to play with Chester.  Chester stood, unmoving, and looked quite miserable while the little dog leapt and frolicked around him.  I think our boy was overwhelmed from having spent so much time around so many dogs at Beagles and Buddies.  When we got in the car, Chester immediately fell asleep on my lap and didn’t stir until we got back to our house.

A few weeks later we took the shorter drive to the Beagles and Buddies location in El Monte, where we had originally met Chester and Geneva.  The group was transitioning from their old space to their new space, and Maggie was at the old space, along with several other dogs.

Connie led us to the courtyard outside the house where Maggie was being kept.  Connie opened the door, and this wriggling bundle of fur with her tail wagging non-stop came running outside.

And I have to shout this, because it merits shouting…

SHE WAS SO ADORABLE, I COULD BARELY STAND IT!

One of the first things Maggie did was put her front paws up on Tom’s knee and beg to sit on his lap.  Tom picked her up and cradled her like an infant and she melted and he melted and that was it.  We were now a family of four.  And we didn’t consider changing her name for several reasons:  She was used to being called Maggie, and Maggie is a human name, and one of our favorite people in the world is our friends’ daughter Maggie, so our new pup being named after her seemed perfect.

Chester and Maggie got along right away.  They are both such sweet, agreeable dogs.  No jealousy.  Just lots of affection.

Have I mentioned lately that we absolutely adore them both?

The first week we had Maggie with us, she did two things that absolutely broke my heart.

She is such a cheerful girl. She’s always wagging her tail, and it looks like she’s always smiling. She was like that from the first moment we saw her.  On her first day with us, I took Maggie and Chester on a walk around our neighborhood. Shortly after we started out from our house, Maggie began trying to pull me up one driveway after another so she could get to the front door of the houses we were passing.

I could feel her thinking, “Is my family in there?  Is that where my family is?”

A few days later, we were out walking and we saw our lovely friends who live three houses down from us in their front yard.  At that point, their twin girls were just starting to toddle around.  I walked toward the parents and their daughters to introduce them to our new dog.  As we got closer, Maggie’s personality seemed to change.  Her tail stopped wagging.  She seemed very serious to me.

Maggie walked right up to the girls’ mom, Louise, who was kneeling down to pet her and Chester, and she leaned against Louise’s leg.  I could see Maggie looking from Louise to the girls.  I could feel her thinking, “Are those my babies?”

When we had visited Beagles and Buddies, Connie had told us that Maggie’s family gave her up because they had twin babies.  It wasn’t that Maggie wasn’t doing well with the babies.  It was just that having babies and a dog was “too much for them.”

Don’t get me started.

Seriously, do not get me started.  The best thing I can say about Maggie’s former family is that they got her to a no-kill shelter.  A nine-year-old dog at a public shelter would have had very little chance of not being euthanized there.

We have now had our precious Maggie (a.k.a. Magpie, a.k.a. Moo-pie, a.k.a. MooMoo) for almost five years.  She knows where her family is.  We are her family.  Forever.  And, once again, we are the lucky ones, because we get much more than we give.

The post OUR MAGGIE – THE LEMONY-EST OF LEMON BEAGLES! appeared first on Heidi Mastrogiovanni.

Our beloved beagle Eunice Petunia (she’ll be the subject of a future blog post) had passed away the week before Christmas in 2008. We had had two precious cats pass in the time that Eunice was with us, so for half a year she was the sole pet in our family. Her loss, while not unexpected because of her advanced age, was heartbreaking.

My lovely husband Tom will tell you that I basically spent the entire week after Eunice’s passing taking sporadic breaks from constant low-level whimpering and crying. The house was so empty without an animal’s presence, specifically without her presence.

I don’t remember where I heard of or read about Beagles and Buddies, a no-kill shelter near us in Southern California. But their name was in my head. Christmas was just so freakin’ sad that year. We sent our regrets to the gracious invitations we had received to spend the holiday with friends. I couldn’t be around people other than my dear Tom. We went to the movies (“Role Models,” a highly underrated comedy that I have watched over and over again because it is adorable) and then we went to one of our favorite hip diners in West Hollywood and ate vegetarian comfort food (starch…lots and lots of starch). And then we went home so I could cry some more in private.

I woke up the next day with a profound sense that I had had enough of this empty house we were in. I checked the Beagles and Buddies website. They were open on the day after Christmas. A sign from the Universe. I know that a lot of people can’t get another pet right after one of theirs dies. I’m sometimes like that. This was not going to be one of those times.

I woke Tom. It is not easy to wake Tom. Tom is not a morning person. That’s an observation, not a criticism (okay, maybe a brief, tiny moment of criticism… I wake up in full-on energy mode — which, I have to admit, can be very irritating to someone who spends the first conscious hour of his day grunting monosyllables with his eyes half closed).

I knew I needed to get Tom up and out as quickly as possible. So I opted for the invigorating qualities of screeching.

“WAKE UP! BEAGLES AND BUDDIES IS OPEN! WAKE UP!”

We stopped to get my beloved husband coffee on the way to the shelter. I was basically pulsating with nervous excitement all the way to El Monte. I can’t imagine that being in the car with me was an especially convivial experience that morning. Poor Tom. He’s a saint, as any friend of ours will tell you.

We parked a few spaces down the street from the shelter. The moment I got out of the car, I noticed an unusual kind of energy vibrating in the air.

“Beagles,” I gasped. Their baying was shaking the ground as I ran to get to the gate of the shelter.

Connie is the founder and director of Beagles and Buddies. She’s just great. We all love her. It was a busy day there because it was a holiday, but Connie gave us her full attention. I told her all about Eunice. While I was crying.

I imagine she gets a lot of that.

We explained that I had in mind adopting two bonded female beagles. And they had to be seniors. I feel that adopting senior animals is my special calling in life. There’s nothing better than giving a gray-faced animal a second (or third or fourth) chance at a happy life.

I know that makes me sound like I think I’m an especially wonderful person…but I do it for entirely selfish reasons. The first one being that I absolutely don’t have the patience for all that puppy energy; I really like sitting on the couch with my seniors napping next to me, and they do a lot of napping. The second reason being that you get much more than you give when you rescue a senior. Trust me on this.

We had adopted Eunice when she was 12 years old. Tom’s only request of our new pets was that they maybe be a little younger than Eunice was when we got her. Connie led us to one of the sections of the shelter. It was a lovely place (they have since relocated to Apple Valley and are in a much bigger sanctuary space) and was built around a house. They had beagles and they had buddies. There were big dogs and little dogs running around. The section Connie brought us to had a concentration of beagles. As soon as we entered the space, the lovely hounds ran up to us and demanded our attention. There were probably at least 40 dogs surrounding us.

I don’t do well when I’m overwhelmed. I was nervously smiling at all the baying and jumping and tail-wagging dogs. And I thought I was going to pass out.

“Tom, Connie, I need to not be here. Pick two beagles. Whichever ones you want. I need to sit down.”

I ran back to the cute, comfortable courtyard (Do you love alliteration as much as I do?). I sat on a bench next to a patio table and put my head against the side of the table. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. In just a few moments, I felt the table jolt as a weight dropped on it. I still had my exhausted eyes shut when I felt a presence near my ear and a snort of breath. I opened my eyes and turned them toward the exhalation.

And saw him. Staring at me. He had legs like drumsticks. And I saw something amazing on his face.

“CONNIE! TOM!”

I think the two of them may have feared that I was having a breakdown. They came running out of the beagle enclosure.

“He’s got an underbite! For the love of GOD, he’s got an underbite!”

“That’s Musketeer!” Connie said.

“What he is, dear Connie, is ours,” I said.

Connie told us that Musketeer had been with them for only a few days. He had been rescued from a substandard city shelter in Fresno (Tom’s hometown).

To this day, we still can’t believe that he wasn’t snapped up in the first fifteen minutes he was at Beagles and Buddies. We still can’t believe how lucky we are that we got him.

Connie told us that Musketeer was around five years old.

“That’s really young,” I momentarily fretted.

“Honey, it’s not like he’s a puppy,” Tom said.

It was a classic done deal. I asked Connie to please just pick out a senior female beagle for us to adopt along with Musketeer (yeah, that name was going to be history, pronto). She came out with a lovely tricolor girl named Jasmine.

“Wow, that is one meaty beagle,” I said to Tom when we first saw her. Eunice had been very petite. Jasmine was a sturdy girl. A very sturdy girl.

Musketeer and Jasmine had not been together at Beagles and Buddies, having been kept in different parts of the sanctuary. They rode the half hour to our home together in the back seat. They behaved as though they had known and liked each other forever. Such lovely, sweet little souls.

We always give our pets human names. We considered Jerry for our new boy. And Oscar. Chester was the name that stuck. Jasmine is indeed a human name, but we didn’t feel she looked like a Jasmine, so we named her after Tom’s grandmother, Geneva.

You know how all pets have a piece of your heart? And how some are just connected with you in a way that is unique and intense? Chester is that one for us. We had a special bond from the first moment; that was true for me and for Tom.

My dear late mother never met Chester. She was on the east coast and was no longer up for traveling, so we always went to visit her and my dad, and the kids stayed in Los Angeles with their wonderful pet sitter. But my parents got tons of photos of him and of Geneva (and Maggie and Squeaks and Mr. Joe and Sam and Gus and Faithie and…and…and…). My mother had a heavy German accent. Her assessment of Chester was: “Oh. That little one. He looks sad sometimes.”

An entirely accurate and lyrical description.

Over the years, Chester has been given the nicknames Chessie, Chessie Badoo, Westchester County, Manchego, and Yootza. Yootza is a character in my two Lala Pettibone novels. I don’t know where that name came from. One day, I just felt that he was telling me his nickname was Yootza. It suits him.

Chester is around 13 years old now. His face is gray. He’s doing well and has a lot of joyous energy, especially for a senior. We love him more than ever, if that’s even possible, which it apparently is. I now help with the Beagles and Buddies Facebook page. We are part of the Beagles and Buddies Family. We always will be. And while we are indeed giving a lot of love and care to Chester, we get much more in return. Trust me on this.

The post Stuff That’s Important to Me ‘n’ Stuff – Chester appeared first on Heidi Mastrogiovanni.

I am such a Christopher Guest Groupie. You will be seeing a lot of his name in my entries here. I’ve read that he’s rather standoffish in person. He wouldn’t have that option with me. If I ever met him, I would do the same thing I would do if I ever met Barack Obama, which is to say I would embarrass myself something fierce. I would blather “Ohhhhhhh, Mr. Guest/President, I LOVE you! Ohhhhhhh! I LOVE you SO much!”

This claim of self-confident abandon in the presence of fame is all bravado on my part, because I also adore Michael McKean, and my husband and I recently saw him at a Neil Finn concert and my husband wanted to go over and tell him what fans we are and I panicked and ran off to the bathroom whining, “Leave him alone! Don’t interrupt his evening!” I don’t think my husband will ever forgive me for this.

When I met my husband, I owned a VHS copy of “This is Spinal Tap” that I had recorded off the t.v. years before (great, now the FBI will be breaking down my door; I’m such a blabbermouth). Tom had a DVD copy he bought. That, and the fact that my cat Faith loved him immediately, was what clued me in to what a great catch Tom is. Something there is that loves a man who owns a DVD copy of “This is Spinal Tap.”

I’ve spoken to one or two people who said they just didn’t get this movie and that they don’t much like it. Any disagreement about the merits of “This is Spinal Tap” does not raise an issue of “different strokes for different folks” or “to each his own” or “one man’s meat is another man’s poison” or any other “live and let live” claptrap. It raises an issue of mental health. Anyone who doesn’t like “This is Spinal Tap” is insane.

Let me get my one quarrel with this perfect movie out of the way immediately so we can forge ahead and pretend it never happened. Where is Eugene Levy? What was he doing when this film was being shot that was so important he couldn’t join in? Maybe he hadn’t yet met Christopher Guest and begun their collaboration, but I feel an excuse like that is just mincing words. I’m sure there’s a valid explanation, but I am curious. So if anyone knows, please advise. An e-mail on this subject from either Eugene Levy or Christopher Guest would really brighten my day; thanks, Gentlemen.

In writing an homage to “This is Spinal Tap,” I’m sure I’m not the only person who would be tempted to just type the entire script word-for-word. There are so many absolutely perfect and hilarious moments, I really don’t know where to begin gushing. Did you notice that the mime waiter being supervised by Billy Crystal is Dana Carvey? Billy tells Dana not to talk back (which Dana is doing using his hands and without speaking, being a mime ‘n stuff) because “Mime is money.” Brilliant! Who writes this stuff? Or, who improvises it? Either way, it’s priceless.

The characters, the characters, the characters. Their names. Nigel Tufnel. David St. Hubbins. Ed Begley Jr. in a cameo as one of the deceased former drummers of the band, is John “Stumpy” Pepys, or, as Nigel fondly recalls, “The Peeper!” Patrick MacNee, a.k.a. John Steed of “The Avengers,” is Sir Denis Eton-Hogg, head of the band’s record company and founder of Hoggwood, a “summer camp for pale young boys.” And Fran Drescher is “Bobbi Flekman, the hostess with the mostess.” Sublime.

Paul Benedict, though we don’t discover his name in the movie but a trip to imdb.com reveals, is Tucker “Smitty” Brown, the clerk at the hotel who informs the band’s manager that their reservation has been screwed up and instead of getting seven rooms, they’ve been reserved one room on the seventh floor. The manager, Ian Faith, named after my girl cat Faith, complains to another employee about the mix up and, referring to Paul Benedict’s character says, “…and this twisted old fruit…,” to which Paul Benedict responds, archly and with wounded dignity, “I’m just as God made me.” A paean to understanding and, we can only hope, a righteous rebuke that Ian will one day come to acknowledge and absorb.

Rob Reiner’s character is named Marty DiBergi. There’s something about that name that cracks me up, though I’m at a loss to articulate what exactly it is.

The lines, the lines, the lines. Bobbi Flekman marvels at the cover of the band’s latest album, “Smell the Glove” and chastises the boys about it. Stores won’t sell it because it shows a naked, greased woman on all fours wearing a dog collar, with a man’s arm holding a glove thrust in her face for her to smell. Ian, the manager, comments, “You should have seen what they wanted her to smell. It wasn’t a glove, let me tell you.” When Bobbi demands, “You don’t think that’s sexist?,” Nigel responds, “What’s wrong with being sexy?”

Marti DiBergi comments to the boys that their album “Shark Sandwich” garnered a two-word review, “Shit Sandwich.” “Shit,” is, I think, a funny word in general, and it does not disappoint in this context.

David’s girlfriend takes over as manager of the group when Ian quits. Nigel hates her, so he quits too. She gets the remaining band members a gig at an amusement park. They head for the theatre. She sees the marquee, and so do we. “Oh, no,” she wails, and so do we. “If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a thousand times. First ‘Spinal Tap,’ then ‘Puppet Show.’”

The situations, the situations, the situations. The band wants to recreate its Stonehenge set because their song about Stonehenge used to be a huge hit for them. So they give Anjelica Huston a paper napkin with the design sketched on it so she can build a set piece of the massive British treasure. Except the sketch indicates inches instead of feet, so she creates scenery that wouldn’t come up to my knees and I’m quite short.

The band gets lost in the tunnels underneath the theatre on the way to a performance. The food in the green room is wrong. Some of the olives have pimentos inside, others are empty. “Look in here,” Nigel complains, thrusting an olive in Ian’s face. “There’s no one home.” Harry Shearer gets stuck inside a pod during a performance and has to be freed with a torch. Fred Willard (a.k.a. god – okay, okay with a lower case “g”) leads them to a gig at an Air Force base for the Friday night social and the performance is ruined when broadcasts from the flight tower interrupt the songs over the P.A. system.

Things get worse before they get better, but they do get better and that’s what matters because we love these musicians and we want them to tour Japan and we want Nigel and David to be friends again and we want David’s stupid girlfriend to be fired as manager. Oh, yeah, I could have lived without the cold sore that migrates from band member to band member, but I’m more than a little squeamish, so others may have found this hilarious. I’m just saying.

The songs are absolutely brilliant. “Big Bottom.” What more can be said? We even get to see vintage black and white footage of bands the two founding members were in before Spinal Tap. One of their songs, performed on the British 1960s television hit “Pop, Look, and Listen” has lyrics which include “Quit wasting my time; You know what I want; You know what I need; Or maybe you don’t; Do I have to come right flat out and tell you everything?; Give me some money.” Tom and I often walk around the house singing this. It’s not because we’re freakish or obsessive or lacking cash; the melody happens to be quite hummable, thank you very much.

This movie can be watched again and again. It should and must be. Watching this movie repeatedly is the opposite of that oft-quoted, much-floated definition of insanity, i.e., that insanity constitutes doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In the case of “This is Spinal Tap,” we expect and receive the same result over and over again – knee-slapping, gut-aching comedy – and that’s just fine with us and it should be fine with Tom Cruise and The National Institute of Mental Health as well. Really, watching “This is Spinal Tap” vivifies (forgive the play on words based on the upcoming name) the essence of keyboard player Viv Savage’s response when he’s asked by Marti DiBergi what his life’s philosophy is. “Have a good time all the time. That’s my philosophy, Marti.”

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