Backstage practice

She prides herself on her ability to watch movies with the sound off and to provide the dialog or, if not the dialog, the plot, which nine times out of ten matches the story being told or is surprisingly close to the actual movie had she watched it with the sound on, as most of us watch movies.

He was a poet in Venice and, since only bad poetry is made in Venice, decided to go one better and become a really bad poet, and then to take that even a step further and write the worst poetry, not only in Venice but in the whole world.

Strangely enough they met at a poetry reading. By this time they were no longer the spring chickens they'd once been, but neither were they out to pasture.

He was one of two featured bad poets of Venice reading that night. The poetry was so bad she couldn't listen, making up her own poems instead, though she was charmed by the titles he'd created for his poems, such as "Why Don't We Just Eat Apples."

After the reading she went backstage.

He was sharing a joint with the other bad poet, a woman with enough mascara around her eyes to frighten a raccoon, and eating pita bread with babaganoosh.

Because she's an honest person, she said she really liked his titles, citing the poem that had apples in the title. They then discovered they shared a mutual detestation of Led Zeppelin and a fondness for day-old marble rye bread dipped in warm milk.

When they moved in together, she insisted on wearing 3-D glasses when making love. He thought he was doing something revolutionary by continuing to smoke pot, which wasn't the case, as everyone was smoking pot in those days, but it did improve his poetry to the point he was asked to leave Venice.