Remarks at Rhonda's Life Celebration
Rhonda and I had many conversations about this moment over the last several months.
And she made me promise that I would provide the comic relief and concentrate not on her accomplishments, but on her foible.
And so, only because I promised her I would do it. I have come here today to ridicule Copelon not to praise her.
As awed as I was by her brilliance, I was appalled and amused by her ignorance of popular culture.
For example… Once, when we witnessed a bizarre incident on the street, I remarked that it was a Seinfeld moment to which she replied “What? Who? Seinfeld? Who’s that?
On another occasion, we went to see Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, a Carl Reiner film noir spoof from the mid eighties, which included sequences for the original films from the forties and fifties. Rhonda was totally lost from the get go; so desperate was she to figure it out that she even stayed awake. Finally, during one of the old sequences she turned to me and said (she always talked during movies) how young Humphrey Bogart looked – she thought he was older than that. She was really confused when I told her he’d been dead for 25 years.
And then there was the time, about ten years ago, when the stock market suffered a precipitous drop in a single day, that Rhonda observed with some satisfaction that the rich where getting bad news for a change. I cautioned her not to celebrate too much but to think of her 90+ year old father who probably depended on the stock market for his sustenance... You’re right, she said, my father’s in blue chops.
I love her so and will miss laughing with and at her as much as being inspired was her.
