Vacay

Vacay Day has arrived folks which means I will be leaving you my loyal readers to fend for yourselves over the next couple weeks. If you are desperately bored without me feel free to visit www.weffriddles.com but once you're hooked, I don't want you to come complaining to me (Blog post about that site is coming as soon as I'm back from trip). As you know, I am going on a cruise tomorrow with my mom and dad. They've been in town since Friday night and so far so good. We had a lovely Shabbos lunch today with a ridiculously amazing chulent made by yours truly, although my parent's won't stop talking about ZK's amazing salad or RS's kugel. Thanks Mom and Dad. We saw a cute Off-Broadway show tonight called A Jew Grows in Brooklyn. Very cute one man show with very few dried eyes when the lights came up. Then we headed to J2 (I know RS, I tried to talk them out of it, yech!) where it seemed every Jew from Brooklyn was in attendance. So far my fam hasn't made me too nuts but being on a ship for 11 days with them is another story. Our itinerary is as follows:

Sun New York City
Mon At Sea
Tue Great Stirrup Cay (Private island baby! Sweet!)
Wed At Sea
Thu Cozumel, Mexico
Fri Belize City, Belize
Sat Roatan, Honduras
Sun Grand Cayman Islands
Mon Ocho Rios, Jamaica
Tue At Sea
Wed At Sea
Thu New York City

I will most likely have little or no access to a computer until I return so be sure to comment a lot to show me your love. I'll be thinking of y'all as I lay in a hammock sipping pina colada from a coconut. Oh wait, no I won't I'll be thinking about... nothing. Peace!

Two weddings in one day...? Priceless

Boy am I tired. I haven't had a wedding to go to in 6 months, then yesterday I had two. Its not the most unusual thing. I am a social butterfly and associate with many different groups of people. So I got invites a couple months ago from two peeps from my hood.

One was Chulent Champion Emily and her fiance Aviel the Aussie.


The other was my friend from the hood and college basketball teammate Jenny and her dude David.


What would have helped the situation would have been for the wedding start times to be a little further apart. Unfortunately, one was called for 1 the other for 2. And the weddings were in two separate states. So me and the 2 other overlapping guests decided last month to look for a car (we are all non-New Yorkers) to speedily transport us from one chuppah to the next. A fortunate mistake found us a car. I emailed my two companions Sho D and Josh G about the car dilemma and mistakenly sent the email to the wrong Josh G. Wrong Josh G offered his car for our mitzvah doing adventure. He's a true Mitzvah Boy!

My crazy Sunday began Saturday night when Sho D and Lans and I attended a stand-up show from one of our fave Frat Boy comedians Aaron Karo!



Since we were all looking hot they put us at the table directly in front of the mic. It was awesome! Got home at 2:30 was supposed to drive the Wrong Josh G to the airport at 5 in exchange for use of the car but miraculously RS offered to awaken before dawn to drive him herself. God Bless her!

The first wedding we attended was Emily's in West Orange, NJ. It took a while to get there since the Jets were playing at home and the highway was backed up with tailgaters. We made it there in time to sample the mashed potato bar that Emily had been raving about at her shower. The chuppah was awesome and the happy couple looked very happy. Something I loved was that Emily was praying throughout the chuppah. Shes a very spiritual girl and its known that the bride and groom at their wedding have an almost unmatchable connection to Hashem. She was taking advantage of every second. Hopefully she put in a good word for me!

We rushed after the chuppah to the second wedding in Queens, NY. Susan, our GPS Chinese lady, kept trying to give us the wrong directions, but we could not be swayed. We got to the second wedding in record time and even made it for the chuppah! Another beautiful chuppah and it was time to get down! We danced like a bunch of nuts, pulled off some crazy shtick, and organized dances, which as always, I took no part in. I'm not an organized dance person. I just like to jump around like a crazy person. I brought our old basketball jerseys and a ball and our third teammate in attendance, the crazy Stoner SW, and I threw the ball around and Jenny spun it on her finger like a pro. Quite the feat in a wedding gown. I overheard some of the other ladies saying how amazed they were by Jenny's spinning skills.

As a special performance at Jenny's wedding, David's friends put together a very elaborate shtick dance to the song Jenny/867-5309. Considering white men can't dance, and Jewish white men are hopeless, they did a pretty great job. Hell, lets let you be the judge!




And the ultimate:


Anyhoo, all in all it was a tiring, yet extremely fulfilling weekend! I wouldn't recommend trying to attend two in a day, but it certainly is a lot of segulah wine and brachos from kallahs! Good times. With all this going for me, I just might be off the market soon! ;)

Former Headline #3, Current Headline #4

I decided its funner to let you all know when I add a new MySpace headline to my site. That way the story behing it is fresh in my head.

Former Headline #3
Spatula! I've got two words for you: BE HAVE!

Tamar's buddy Leila was recently on the subway and she encountered two African American ladies surrounded by many little children. One of the kids began to act up and one of the ladies screamed, "Spatula! I've got two words for you: BE HAVE!" Apparently, Spatula was the child's name. I wonder how Spatula's parents came to their decision to name him (or her, who knows?) that? Maybe he (or she) was conceived following a morning of delicious pancakes. Who am I to make judgements? I know a girl named Chaya Mushka, and until she was 16 (and a foot taller than me) we called her the affectionate nickname Mushy Tushy. Now that kid's gonna have problems. And apparently, I've been spelling behave as one word for all these years. I really should have paid more attention in 3rd grade English. Oh well.

Current Headline #4

This is like a party game....for mean people.

I went to an incredible play last night on Broadway with my friend ER. Its called Little Dog Laughed and stars Tom Everett Scott (from That Thing You Do! and Abby's brother on ER), Karen White (some TV and bit roles), Johnny Galecki (David on "Roseanne") and Ari Graynor (supporting rold on "The Sopranos"). Tom plays an in the closet movie star who starts a relationship with Johnny's bi call boy character. Karen is his manager who I swear is channeling Karen Walker from Will & Grace. Ari is Johnny's party girl girlfriend. I was blown away by the amazing acting. Brief male nudity which we weren't expecting, but all in all a high quality theater going experience. This comment was made while Karen was in one of her high energy monologues explaining to the other characters exactly how they were going to handle a certain predicamant and someone interjected "This is like a party game....for mean people." I was cracking up. Another wonderful line was when Ari was explaining to Johnny how her day went, stopped herself and said "Wait a second, why and I telling this story in chronological order instead of in order of importance". I am so going to use that line. Go see this play! I can get you $30 tickets if you'd like. Let me know!

Only you can prevent forest fires

My office is predominately female. There are approximately 16 women, and 5 men. So our ladie's room gets pretty disgusting. Someone had the idea to leave a box of matches in the bathroom. Instead of spraying air freshener, some people prefer lighting a match. Why does lighting a match get rid of "bathroom odors" you may ask? According to the AskYahoo site "When a match is struck, it produces sulfur dioxide, a "very pungent substance, to which the smell receptors are extremely sensitive." MadSci explains, "You can smell a minute amount of sulfur dioxide, but when you have done so, you will not smell anything else for a while." Interesting. But in a bathroom where some people are lighting matches and some are spraying air freshener....all I smell is a forest fire. And I just know, I'll be the one sitting there when the fire sprinkler gets fed up and decides to turn on. Lucky me.

Finally, credit where its deserved

Luke Johnson's Phone Experiment

This story was sent to me by my friend Drew who I've known since I was little and who's a buddy of Lukes (Luke is actually wearing the shirt of my friend Drew's band). This dude posted his phone number on the internet and asked people to call as soon as they saw his video. He's already gotten thousands of calls. Give him a ring: (602)435-3694.

Iron Chef Party

My buddies Miriam, Anna, and Arona invited me to their apartment last night for an Iron Chef party. Iron Chef is an awesome show! Without cable in Manhattan you do not have television reception. But luckily, many buildings in New York have access to free basic cable (i.e. a cable cord sticking out of the wall that you affix to your TV and voila!). Basically, when you have basic cable service in the city, you get like 3 bonus channels to the normal ABC, CBS, NBC options. You get TBS, TNT, and the Food Network. That basically translates to mean that at any time of day you can choose to watch a Jim Carrey movie on TBS, a Law & Order rerun on TNT, or Iron Chef on the Food Network. To be perfectly honest with you, what more in life do you need?

Iron Chef originated in Japan which was the best best show. Reason being: subtitles. Subtitles in kung-fu? Awesome! Subtitles on chef competition? Priceless!

The premise of the show is that it begins with the "Chairman" who comes out and announces the contest's main ingredient. It is then the competitors' job to make several different dishes containing that key ingredient, from appetizers, salads, entrees, desserts, and more. Then the Iron Chef competes against one of their challengers to see who can prepare the best meal and are judged in terms of creativity, plating (display), and taste. The best contest I ever saw was the eel episode. One of the chef's even made eel ice cream! Yum! The evening's winner takes home all the glory!

So my friends love the show. They decided to have an Iron Chef party making several dishes from one key ingredient. Last night they chose mushrooms! I couldn't have been more happy! They made for the guests mushroom barley soup, mushroom pizza, mushroom spinach pasta, mushroom pizza, mushroom onion phylo thingys, and baked portobello mushroom tomato pizzas. Everything was bellisimo! Arona doesn't eat mushrooms. She must not have been part of the ingredient discussion. We didn't have any mushroom dessert ideas unfortunately. I suggested shroom brownies, but alas, the idea was nixed. :)

The hosts also wore hats (made for the occasion by YI) that noted which was the "Iron Chef" and which were the sous (not soux or sioux) chefs for the evening. Everything was delicious and I'm hoping we can repeat the festive evening!

We followed the meal with a special episode of "Iron Chef America" featuring Giada De Laurentiis paired up with Iron Chef Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray with Iron Chef Mario Battali. Usually its just one Iron Chef versus one challenger. The main ingredient was cranberries and surprisingly, no one chose to make cranberry crunch, a staple in the Jewish community. That and the cranberry jelly from a can dish. Yum all the way. The yummiest looking this was the cranberry glazed shrimp wrapped in thinly sliced porcetta (pig). Why are all the best things treif? God is always testing us! Oy. The winners were Rachael Ray and Mario. Although, the real winners were those who got to sample the delicacies. Luucckkkyy...

Props for Martha

I just want to send props to Martha Stewart for being a good sport with Borat on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. This scene is hysterical!



More on Borat once I've seen the movie!

16 days and counting...

16 days until my vacation. I'm going on a cruise with my mom and dad. Sounds lame I know. Not to be morbid or anything, but my parents aren't spring chickens anymore, and who knows how many opportunities like this we'll have to spend time together. We already live 3,000 miles apart (a safe distance for my sanity) so whats the harm in spending a couple weeks getting hugs and having them buy me stuff? I challenge all of you to call your parents and/or someone you love today and tell them how much they mean to you. Do it. It'll make you feel really good. Shabbat Shalom!

Also, 8 days til Karo!

Read this

My brother Alan sent the following bulletin to all of his MySpace friends:

Read this...
My sisters blog, she may be one of the funniest blog writers about everyday life bullshit of our time...... I never knew she was funny when we were growing up. Read her rants on fruit venders, politics, country music and being a jew....

Alan

http://www.susqhb.blogspot.com/

Ohhhhh Alan. How sweet of you. And for all these years you led me to believe you didn't read anything at all. Except for Cliff Notes. And the Playboys that you and Scott used to make me steal from Dad. You claimed at the time that those were for the articles, right? At the time, I never understood why a 13 year old boy was interested in reading 20 Questions with Abe Vigoda. Now I understand.

Midterm Midtacular!

Since everyones been waiting with baited breathe for my post-election post I thought I'd get to it. Actually no one has inquired about the post, probably because all my peeps are conservatives and they know I'm intelligent, therefore, I am a liberal. You couldn't ask for a more exiting election night. Unless you count 2004 when the major networks awarded John Kerry the victory before changing their minds and turning the landslide victory over to President Bush. Oh, right, and then there was that time in 2000 when the networks awarded the state of Florida (and the Presidency) to Vice President Gore, but then reworked the data and found Mr. Bush to be the victor. In 2000 and 2004 I couldn't tear myself away from NBC, which featured Tim Russert and his whiteboard, earlier than 3 AM. Last night the best coverage belonged to CNN. Anderson Cooper is sooo dreamy. He kept me up until 1:30.

Last night I also campaigned for Civil Court nominee Shari Michels. Shari grew up in Washington Heights, and actually made an effort to reach out to the Jewish community in the neighborhood. She even stopped by a Saturday night event at Mt. Sinai and danced with us on Simchas Torah. What I liked best about her was when I invited her to dance with us, she just said "Hi, I'm Shari", not "I'm Shari, running for Civil Court Judge". I thought that was cool and knew that was somebody I'd vote for. Turns out she had a long history in the Jewish community and my friend Rochie's family was close with the Michels. So Rochie and I volunteered to help distribute flyers and stuff at a polling station in the neighborhood. The highlight of my evening was when a big, burly guy in his twenties was walking by and I asked if he'd voted yet. He said no. So I reminded him that polls closed in under an hour and he turned right around and walked across the street to the polling station, after of course I handed him information about my candidate. He came walking out 10 minutes later and when I thanked him for voting he had a big smile of his face. Might have been his first time to vote.

So we all know by now that the Democratic party has (finally) reclaimed the House and needed to win 3 of 4 close Senate races to steal the Senate as well. So far it looks like the Dems have safely taken 2 seats in Missouri (yay, stem cell research!) and Montana (yay, dude from Mr. Tester's campaign who followed around Senator Burns, and caught him sounding like an idiot on camera and then posting the videos on YouTube for me to laugh and laugh) with the race in Virginia too close to call. Come on people! In 2000 you called the race in Florida for Gore at like 10 pm. Now we've got a candidate like 7,000 votes ahead and we are going to wait it out? Seriously?! As my friend AG just asked, "do you think we'll ever again have another election without a formal recount?"

Virginia is an interesting race. George Allen has big-mouth syndrome. Here's a dude who could have sat on his couch watching Family Guy reruns and eating Cheetos for the past sixth months and would have cruised to victory. Instead, he has insulted Indian Americans, African Americans, and Jews. When he discoved his geneology includes a long line of successful Jews, he boasted about the ham sandwich he had for lunch and how great his mom's pork chops are. What a schmuck!. A friend I knew in high school sent out an email saying his father went to high school and was a football teammate of Senator Allen and he used racial epiphets (including the N word) often and without hesitation. He opened his big mouth and now may very well have lost his job and it seems handed the Senate to the Democrats on a silver platter. For that, George, I thank you.

President Bush today had a press conference at 1 pm to discuss the election aftermath and commented on his disappointment. The reporters did not let him off easy. My favorite part was this exchange between the reporter Rutenberg and the Prez:

Q I wanted to ask you about the thumpin' you took at yesterday's rodeo. You said you were disappointed, you were surprised --

THE PRESIDENT: There you go. Rutenberg, you notice that? Taking one --

Q And that was thumpin' without a "g," correct? I just want to make sure we have it right for the transcript. (Laughter.) You said you were surprised, you didn't see it coming, you were disappointed in the outcome. Does that indicate that after six years in the Oval Office, you're out of touch with America for something like this kind of wave to come and you not expect it? And on a somewhat related note, does Nancy Pelosi look much like Bob Bullock to you?

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughter.) That's an inside joke, I'm not commenting on it.

Secondly, I'm an optimistic person, is what I am. And I knew we were going to lose seats, I just didn't know how many.

Q How could you not know that and not be out of touch?

THE PRESIDENT: You didn't know it, either.

Q A lot of polls showed it.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, there was a -- I read those same polls, and I believe that -- I thought when it was all said and done, the American people would understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security. But the people have spoken, and now it's time for us to move on.
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Aaahhh, Rutenberg, now you sir deserve a Metal of Honor.

By the way, Shari won.

You gotta have Faith

You gotta have Faith. But not all the time. Last night was the 40th Annual CMA awards on ABC. I saw Faith Hill in concert. But only because she "opened" for my favorite singer, her husband, Tim McGraw. She was nominated for best female vocalist last night against Sara Evans (who recently quit Dancing with the Stars after discovering her husband's infidelities), Martina McBride, Gretchen Wilson, and Carrie Underwood. Faith was backstage at the time of the award, having just finished her performance at the show. I don't know what happened, maybe she was unable to hear the announcement from the presenters, but when Carrie Underwood's name was announced for the win, you could see Faith Hill throw up her arms in triumph, and then, her face contorts into an angry expression screaming "WHAT!" into the camera. Listen, Faith, let me give you a tip. When you left the country genre to pursue pop you lost your ability to win this award. Country fan are pissed off at you. Ever since illegal downloading became so readily available I stopped buying CDs. That is with the exception of anything your husband puts out, Kenny Chesney, and you. But then I bought your "Cry" album and raced through it to find a song that sounded even remotely like anything off of your "Take Me As I Am" album. There was nothing but pop music. I didn't buy your next album. To add insult to embarrassment, your exclamation last night is not going to help you reclaim your old fans. And as if you had a chance in that category. Gretchen Wilson is the best country singer in my mind right now. And Carrie Underwood is the hottest. So Carrie took home the prize. But not before this Good Samaritan who TiVoed the event put Faith's outburst in Slo-Mo. Check it out:




UPDATEUPDATEUPDATEUPDATEUPDATEUPDATEUPDATEUPDATE

CNN finally got wind of this story and Faith and her publicist are both denying that she was angry when her name wasn't announced. She's trying to say it was all in good fun. She's gone kooky.