Today’s talk over lunch at Barbara’s was a wild one indeed. Barbara’s—known for elegant greasy American food—was particularly slow today, which fueled the fervor of our lunchtime conversation. Our first topic was Armand Hammer and whether or not the guy that owns that museum on Wilshire Blvd. had anything to do with Arm and Hammer Baking Soda. One luncher argued it was just a coincidence, that there was no relation between the man and the purveyor of sodium bicarbonate, although his assertion had no factual base. The mystery was eventually settled (or not) by the proud owner of an Iphone, via an online question and answer service. 10 minutes later (sorry, Apple), we learned that Armand Hammer once was a partial owner of Arm and Hammer Baking Soda company, but whether the company’s namesake preceded the partnership and was just eerily similar to Armand’s, still remains a mystery to jungle[8], and likely will remain that way, unless someone out there wants to wiki this topic and spoil all our fun.

Our next subject was romantic skywriting, and whether or not proposing to a future wife via airplane exhaust is corny. It was suggested that the practice is wouldn’t woo environmentalist babes too well, and ideas were thrown around for greener alternatives to the cliché’ courting ritual, like yellow snow writing. Naturally, one would hire an outside service to write words like “I love you” in a field of fresh, white snow, because a single human’s bladder capacity wouldn’t suffice. Duh! Also, the act of writing yellow snow letters might offend a potential mate, and eliminates the necessary surprise element.

We also discussed imaginary friends, imaginary friend orphanages, and whether or not ad-wiz Alex Bogusky is a Russian jew. The Iphone told us that he is, in fact, of Russian descent, but whether he was catholic, jewish or other, remained up for debate. One jungler suggested that all folks, with s-k-y’s at the end of their family names were semites, and that all Russians with last names ending with o-v are gentiles. It was quickly realized this assumption was wrong, and beside the point—Alex Bogusky, ironically, is gearing up to destroy the company responsible for the super-phone-gadget-thingy that was musing our misinformed, misdirected conversation (sorry again, apple).

Henry the jungle-mutt didn’t care one way or the other because he was fed cutlets of undercooked ribeye steak. His apathy wasn’t swayed by the end of our conversation, in which misconceptions about China’s Tiananmen Square protest were exposed by a jungle[8]-er of Chinese persuasion.

Next week’s lunch discussion topic: Is Rambo: The Director’s Cut any different than the original version in theaters a few months ago? Wait,…woops, the “Director’s Cut” isn’t out yet. Dammit.