Quote of the Day: Anton Chehkov

Los Angeles Theatre Works (LATW) is releasing an audio production of Anton Chehkov's very famous play "The Three Sisters" this week. The cast includes Jon Hamm from AMC's "Mad Men."

Here is the quote from the Russian legend:

"One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions."

THE DON"T TRY THIS AT HOME DEPT: As someone who got into the bad habit of 'spying on the enemy' a few years ago, I actually get emails from right wing groups I hate and despise. One of these groups is the pompously-named Campaign for Liberty, based in Bristow, Va., outside Washington, DC. I got a chain email from the group leader John Tate, and I simply responded (and, I am not going to retract it!) by saying: "You bozos have moved so far right that Barry Goldwater would be a hippy now."

This actually made me realize that I wasn't sure how to spell hippy. The Urban Dictionary spells the term which is in reference to '60s era pot-smoking beatnicks 'hippie,' but both spellings exist at various places on the net.

SIDEBAR: I've definitely lived in a unique life as a human secularist with Muslim heritage (I am a Turkish-American) living in a very Christian fundamentalist part of North Carolina. But, during Ramadan, when Muslims have to go without food and water until sundown, I both appreciate what Muslim endure and I take delight in the fact that as a human secularist I am not subjected to their religious rituals. Of course, people like the Rev. Terry Jones, the Koran-burning minister in Gainesville, Fla., hates people like me just as much!

Last week, NPR's signature show "All Things Considered," reported that Omar Shahin, an imam (Muslim cleric) in Phoenix said that many people from his mosque were asking him if they could drink water given that it was 105 degrees outside. Shahin told NPR that if one was feeling sick from the dehydration, that it was indeed acceptable to go for the Dasani bottle.

In the same report, Johar Abdul-Malik, who is the director of an Islamic center in Falls Church, Va., near Washington, DC, said that he missed his soy tea green lattes at Starbucks.