Trak All The Way (FF)

© Kent Bonham

Trak leaned back in the limo and savored the sweet satisfaction of the moment. He was on his way to the world premiere of his new motion picture, Trak All The Way, his first ever starring effort.  He wondered what that bastard Shrek must be thinking.

Trak and Shrek had gone to drama school together, but while Shrek found fame in a series of Disney pictures, Trak had struggled. Years of undistinguished bit parts had finally led to the second banana role in a series of Mel Gibson movies, but all of them had been stinkeroos, especially Lethal Ogre 3. 

Unfortunately the critics were not kind to Trak All The Way. "Trak carries a movie like other actors would carry a ten ton weight,” mocked Variety.  Next day the phone rang. "It's Shrek,” said Trak's mom. “Says he can’t wait for Lethal Ogre 4."

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I don't know about you, but I've never seen any of the Lethal Ogre movies.  I hear the fading Gibson pretty much sleepwalks through each one of them and Trak delivers lines like Comcast delivers services.  Anyway, this tale of Trak represents my take on the picture prompt above for this week's Friday Fictioneers.

The other Friday Fictioneers will give you no Shrek (in Yiddish, it means "fright") and keep you on Trak with their takes on the picture prompt if you grab a big club (optional) and click right here.

Shrek may gloat, but Trak All The Way actually wasn't that bad a movie. I just didn't find the love scenes between Trak and Scarlett Johansson all that convincing.

Purim: You Are Who You Eat

YUMMY!

Thanks, Haman.

It’s oft been said that most Jewish holidays have but three basic components.

They are:

    1) Our enemies came to destroy us.
    2) We prevailed.
    3) We ate.

       There's one Jewish holiday, however, that adds the following additional point of order to our primary list of three:

          4) We ate them!

       That holiday, of course, is the upcoming spring festival of Purim, in which we celebrate the 400 B.C. victory of the Jewish people over the evil Royal Vizier Haman in Persia by feasting on his tri-cornered hat.  But as delicious as hamantashen (the pastry shaped like Haman's hat) are, it seems kind of a curious custom to celebrate triumph over one’s enemy by scarfing down an article of his clothing, no matter how mouth-watering yummy the clothing may be with a cherry filling.

Is it simply a way of “rubbing it in;” that is, consuming Haman’s hat after first stretching his neck?   In that case, why just his hat?  If we really want to show we’ve kicked the imperial keyster, why not chow down on his raincoat, briefcase, and car keys as well?  

Perhaps we eat Haman’s hat so heat will escape from the top of his head and  reduce his resistance to germs.  Then he’ll wind up in bed with the flu suffering as badly as the guy  at a Purim party seated next to an overactive 5-year-old with a grogger.  But Haman is already dead!  Wouldn’t it make better sense to eat the hat off of one of our enemies who’s still alive and kicking, like Almadinejad?

According to some sources, we’re actually not eating Haman’s hat at all --- we’re eating the ears off the side of his head!  That’s even less appealing, considering they had no Q-tips back in Persia circa 400 B.C. Interestingly enough, the custom of Eating our Enemy is spreading and soon even more body parts, personal effects, and memorabilia of other foes of the Jewish people may be finding their way onto your table:

Garden of Eden Gummy Serpents --- Yes, we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden to vanquish and ingest the original villain who did dirt unto the early folk who were to become the Hebrews.  Gummy Serpents come in two varieties --- with legs and legs free.

Garden of Eden Gummy Serpents are mostly a sugary treat for children, but if pounding down a few of the squiggly things helps return us all to the Serpent-less State of Nature with The Lady Eve sans vêtements as she’s depicted in the Holy Scriptures, what’s an extra 500 grams of sugar among Jews?

The Yul Brynner/Pharaoh Cheese Basket ---  Pharaoh is the quintessential villain of the Holy Scriptures, and to most of us  actor Yul Brynner is the physical embodiment of that villain. With no disrespect to the late legendary actor,  the mouthwatering Yul Brynner/Pharaoh Cheese and Crackers Basket has arrived!

The basket is graced with sculpted cheese figures of Yul as Pharaoh in his most memorable action poses from the movie “The Ten Commandments,”  including  the “Sound the Pursuit” Parmigiana, “God of Moses is a Poor General” Gorgonzola, and “His God is God” Gouda.  A plague on all ten of your houses if you don’t enjoy!

Grand Mufti Marshmallows --- The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem did his utmost to keep Jews from immigrating to Palestine, all the time sporting a headdress that rose so high above his head it looked like it was doing push-ups. So what could be more appropriate for your snacking pleasure than super fluffy Grand Mufti Marshmallows?

Just imagine your satisfaction watching Grand Mufti Marshmallows roasting and crackling over an open campfire!  That is, assuming there are any Jews around who know how to make a campfire.

Henry Ford Crankshaft Cookies --- Though times have certainly changed at the company he founded, Henry Ford was a cantankerous old coot who was no friend of the Jews.  Now eat the cranky crackpot’s crankcase with new Henry Ford Crankcase Cookies, each one shaped in the form of that aforementioned engine component as manufactured for the least successful car ever built by Ford Motor Company, the Edsel. Sure to sell lots better than the Edsel itself!

Mel Gibson Pound Cake --- The newest Jewish confection is a large pound cake with reviews of Mel Gibson’s most recent movies chiseled into the top.   The New York Times review of the motion picture The Beaver is highlighted at center.

Sadly I’ve heard that Mel Gibson Pound Cake is rather dry and tasteless.  That’s a shame, but it’s still worse for Mel than for us.

He’s got to eat his actual reviews.

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Grand Mufti Marshmallows 

You Can Eat Him, 

But You Can't Beat Them!
_______________

Not a Member of the Tribe?

Grogger - noisemaker used to drown out the name of Haman 

Lick the Living, from the Postal Service

Honest Abe:

 Dead, So You Can Count on Him!  

In order to combat seas of red ink, the U. S. Postal Service this week announced it will begin issuing stamps featuring likenesses of  people who are still alive, which will hopefully appeal to collectors and thus spark badly needed sales.  Until now it’s been necessary to be stone cold, six feet under, and as far from your “Happy Place” as it’s possible to be in order to have a postage stamp issued adorned with your kisser.

Frankly, I’m not sure this change is such a good idea.  The great benefit in being someone who’s dead is that the book on you is closed!

Abraham Lincoln, for example, is highly unlikely at this point in time to begin tweeting visual images of his ding-dong to the national membership of the Daughters of the American Revolution.  Were he somehow to begin doing so, the cachet of affixing a stamp featuring his profile upon an envelope addressed to the attorney suing your company for sexual harassment would be greatly diminished.

Once the Postal Service institutes Lick the Living, the viability of our entire postal system becomes at the mercy of the latest celebrity melt-down. Were it already in effect ...

Your son or daughter could kiss presents of any consequence goodbye when the only book of stamps available for sending out over 230 Bar or Bat Mitzvah invitations is a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Mel Gibson, circa 1985.

Sending a condolence card? Best not to dispatch it with a stamp bearing the likeness of America’s Numero Uno Executioner, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, circa 2010.

And if you send a billing to anyone in 2011 with a Kevin James stamp, why would he or she even bother to open it, let alone pay it? 

Instead of issuing this new series of stamps, I propose the U. S. Postal Service implement a slogan to promote the strengths it already possesses:

For all  your postal and mailing needs, a dead guy gets you there with all godspeed! 

With a slick tag line like that, the Postal Service could be back in the black in no time!

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100

The Happiest Mixed Marriage in Show Business

                   

By Courtesy of Parade Magazine

Rose “Ma” Nishtanah turns from the stove, having tossed the last sprig of dill into her bubbling and internationally famous Matzoh Ball Soup.

“You know,” she says, “he’s never eaten so much as a spoonful of it, and yet I still love the guy anyway!”

At the kitchen table, Eustace “Pa” Rumpumpumpum smiles. “I know she and some of the children love it, but frankly it can’t hold spit to my delicious Safeway Cream of Mayonnaise soup!”

It’s like that a lot in the home of show business’ happiest mixed marriage, that of the iconic Ma Nishtanah and Pa Rumpumpumpum. Married for almost 35 years, the two of them keep their relationship flowering despite differences that’d make Sarah Palin and film maker Michael Moore seem like bunkmates!

Pa explains as he gives me a tour of the elaborate wood and metal working shop in the basement of their home.

“It’s the respect we have for each other’s traditions,” he says, “that keeps us going strong. She doesn’t bug me when I’m watching NASCAR, and I don’t bother her when she’s busy looking at Jon Stewart or some other Jewish-dominated mainstream media crap!”

This idyllic relationship didn’t happen overnight.

Eustace Rumpumpum (as he was then known; he added the third ‘pum’ later when he was able to afford it) came out of a dirt-poor Arkansas town so poor it didn’t even have dirt to score a number of gospel based hits, including “Jesus Loves Me, But I Just Wanna Be Friends, ” ”Amazing Nancy Grace,” and the cross-over album that forever associated him with the holidays “A Glenn Beck Christmas.”

Subsequently acquiring the nickname Pa for no discernable reason whatsoever, Eustace’s shaky first marriage to cocktail waitress/roller derby queen/ Associate Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Southern California Tammy Lynette Hairnette ended tragically when he audited her course on Tolstoy and still managed to flunk.

Rose Nishtanah's journey to fame began when her parents fled the Russian shtetl of Anapaquin to escape marauding bands of Cossacks which chased them all the way to 57th street before deciding to give up and sail back home. With a talent for song and dance, Rose became the toast of Broadway performing with her sisters as “Ma and the Joongs,” earning herself a nickname that would forever ensure her tons of free press every Passover.

Like Pa, Ma suffered a failed first marriage to the charming Irwin “Buddy” Berenson, a dapper Broadway ne’er do well who wore a pencil thin mustache because he had gambled away all the hairs in a regular size one. Smitten hard, Rose stood by Buddy as he systematically went through her Fortune, her Time, and her entire collection of National Geographics before dying penniless and mustache-less at age 43.

Both unlucky in love, Ma and Pa met each other on the set of the old “Hollywood Palace” TV program.

“I never realized how attractive a Jewess could be,” says Pa, “before she’d yet fallen under the sway of the Devil’s dominion.” For her part, Rose adds “I’d hadn’t ever dated a man who wasn’t a doctor, lawyer, or someone who’d inherited his father’s auto parts store.”

Within a week, the two were married and disowned by both sets of parents. Nonetheless, both credit their personal happiness as sparking the separate phenomenal success each has since enjoyed in motion pictures, television, concerts, Hadassah fundraisers, and “I Love the Second Amendment” bake sales.

Rejoining Ma in the kitchen, the couple affectionately speak about their large family of six children, three of which are Jewish and three of which are Southern Gentile What's-a-Who-Sis.

“I have three wonderful children,” kvells Ma, “and three more too.” 

“I dearly love all my children," Pa adds, "the Jewish ones almost as much as the real ones.”

With both still highly active in show business, we asked Ma and Pa what performers they each personally enjoy today.

“That Mel Gibson,” says Ma, “he’s quite an exciting action hero, and still such a dreamboat!”

“And I have always loved Ms. Barbra Streisand,” chimes in Pa. “She was so very affecting in Yentl.”

For a moment, each stares at the other.

Suddenly a steaming hot plate of Matzoh Ball Soup comes sailing on a direct course toward the venerable country star’s ever greasy head. It narrowly misses his pompadour and splatters off the wall behind the kitchen table. Pa swiftly sends his half-opened Budweiser in the direction of the sink, missing Ma but scoring a frothy hit on a nearby jar of herring.

All at once both of them break out laughing hysterically.

Sometimes our differences,” Ma Nishtanah and Pa Rumpumpumpum --- two halves of the happiest mixed marriage in show business --- say almost in unison, “are less than they seem.”

That should be true for us all.

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Not a Member of the Tribe? 

    Ma Nishtahah  -  name for the traditional "Four Questions" asked every Passover by the youngest child at the Seder. The questions ask "Why is this Night different from all other nights?" and go on to confound and perplex from there.

    kvell - to express delight and pride.  I know, I know --- doesn't happen much with you and me.

Hail to the Tag Team!

Seal of the Plural Presidents of the United States of America

We now enter into what is known in American politics as a “lame duck” session of Congress.

Perhaps never in history have those two words more appropriately defined our elected leaders: “lame” as in their general abilities for governing and “duck” as in how most of them act when it comes to discussing anything beyond the audible stench their opponent leaves when entering or exiting a room.

Our system is fatally flawed, folks, and the only good thing about that is how handsomely it showcases my talent for alliteration. Most often the kind of person who runs for political office is a charming but unctuous, none-too-bright butt-face. You know --- just like your cousin Harry, except with much better hair. The kind of person who should run for office is an intelligent, thoughtful, conscientious nerd-face. You know --- just like you and me, except also intelligent, thoughtful, and conscientious.

I hereby present my idea for improving the governance of our nation: the Plural Presidency and the Conjoined Congress of the United States!

 Effective immediately every position in American Government will be filled by a tag team. America will finally get both the Quality Governing and the Artificial Surface Charm we so crave, all while simultaneously reducing the national unemployment rate by 537 additional persons!

In the new American Political System, the Front will make the speeches, attend the dinners, kiss the babies, and kiss you and/or me in the pale moonlight as applicable. The Front must be beautiful, poised, and energetic but may be every bit as dumb as a fencepost which insists on lying horizontally, or as Levi Johnston.

The Wonk will study and reflect upon the issues and tell the Front in clear non-compound sentences exactly what to say and do about them. Although the Wonk must be brilliant, perceptive, and innovative, he or she may be as photogenic as a Mel Gibson mug shot and possess charisma such as to make a Securities and Exchange Commission Filing look like a Kim Kardashian photo-shoot.

We could keep some of our same politicians. Sarah Palin would be the perfect Front for a Presidential ticket, but who the hell would ever be stupid enough to consider her for the Wonk? And virtually every unemployed actor in Hollywood would be lining up to audition as the Front for Democratic seats in Congress.  Assuming, that is, there are any left.

All right now, folks we give you the Dream Team:

Ladies and Gentleman,

• Presenting the Wonk President of the United States, Dr. Melvin Sniggledorf, Professor of Governmental Affairs International, Domestic, and Local Down to the Guy Who Fines You if You Put a Deck On Your House Without Shtupping Him First of the University of Havertown PA.

• A man whose Grand Canyon's Got Nothing on Me-Style acne and Kilimanjaro-Besting dandruff are guaranteed to induce ralphing if you're so appallingly ill-advised as to attend one of his classes on a full stomach,

• And a man whose shell-shocked students have year after year failed each and every one of his Might as Well Be Taught in Coptic Greek courses while simultaneously voting him "Professor Most Likely to Outsell Ambien if You Could Just Bottle Him," and

• the Front President of the United States --- awww, so cute you just want to eat him up! --- Mr. Justin Bieber,

• the two - count 'em - two Plural Presidents of the United States of America!

Just try to take them on, Mr. Ahmadinejah!

Will tag-team government work ….. or is it the worst Idea I’ve had since I recommended Charlie Rangel be put in charge of the House Christmas Fund?

Please let me know what you think.

Or better yet, what your Wonk thinks!

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