The Eight Days of Pesach Redux

Now that Passover has officially passed over, I would like to once again share with you the re-tweeting I’ve just completed of the lovely and traditional The Eight Days of Pesach.

Also, following the holiday, I’m too lazy to write a new post.

This legendary prayer represents the spiritual and emotional yearnings of the Jewish people in the same vein and best traditions of the Avinu Malkeinu, Ose Shalom, and the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The Eight Days of Pesach has been so popular throughout the ages that gentiles have even developed their own version known as The Twelve Days of Christmas, although it has yet to catch on. The gentiles have even gone the Jews one better and padded it out an extra four days to a total of twelve, although many feel this has accomplished scant more than to amply illustrate the significant influence in modern liturgical musicology of the concept of “pushing it.”

I mean, “lords a-leaping?” Come on!

The Eight Days as presented here is the version originated in the Havertown PA Talmud as opposed to the Babylonian Talmud, which has fewer pictures and no forward by comedian Richard Lewis. Unlike the Bablylonian Talmud which emphasizes strict moral law and “an eye for an eye,” the Havertown PA Talmud espouses “do it when the Big Guy’s back is turned” and “got your nose!”  

This explains why the Havertown PA Talmud is a much better beach read. Which is a good thing because anyone who puts much stock in its teachings had better start getting used to extremely hot temperatures right now! 

The version of The Eight Days of Pesach presented herein is also the one chanted earlier this year by comedian/actor Ricky Gervais when he followed up his controversial insult-laden hosting of the Golden Globe Awards with a controversial insult-laden hosting of a Passover Seder which, incidentally, was attended by the Legendary Jewish vampire, Vlad the Retailer  and the mythical Jewish creature known as the LOJM.

It is also the favorite version of The Eight Days of Pesach of the vainglorious Mottel the Itinerant Rabbi, Ma Nistanah and Pa Rumpumpum, the two halves of the happiest mixed marriage in Show Business, and Al Rothman, President of the Men’s Club of Temple Boray Perry Hagolfen.

Gee, I sure have written a heck of a lot about the Jews.

I ought to pick on somebody else for a change!

The Eight Days of Pesach

 On the first day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
An Afikomen hidden stealthily!

On the second day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
Two hands-washed-in-Dove,*
and an Afikomen hidden stealthily!

On the third day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
Three dipped karpas-ends,
Two hands-washed-in-Dove,
and an Afikomen hidden stealthily!

On the fourth day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
Four sons (one’s a turd),**
Three dipped karpas-ends,
Two hands-washed-in-Dove,
and an Afikomen hidden stealthily!

On the fifth day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
(a) five year-old the Four Questions sings!!!,
Four sons (one’s a turd),
Three dipped karpas-ends,
Two hands-washed-in-Dove,
and an Afikomen hidden stealthily!

On the sixth day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
Six charoses bricks a-laying,
(a) five year-old the Four Questions sings!!!,
Four sons (one’s a turd),
Three dipped karpas-ends,
Two hands-washed-in-Dove,
and an Afikomen hidden stealthily!

On the seventh day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
Seven wine cups; head’s-spinning,
Six charoses bricks a-laying,
(a) five year-old the Four Questions sings!!!,
Four sons (one’s a turd),
Three dipped karpas-ends,
Two hands-washed-in-Dove,
and an Afikomen hidden stealthily!

On the eighth day of Pesach, Elijah gave to me:
Eight lame jokes a-milking,***
Seven wine cups; head’s spinning,
Six charoses bricks a-laying,
(a) five year-old the Four Questions sings!!!,
Four sons (one’s a turd),
Three dipped karpas-ends,
Two hands-washed-in-Dove,
and an Afikomen hidden
stealth--i--lyyy!


****************

Thank you, everyone.

Okay, Big Guy?

Big Guy? 

Big Guy???

ULLLPPPP!!!!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* soap is not actually used in the washing.  Whaddya want, I'm winging this!
** "one's a turd" --- i.e. the Wicked Son
*** "Eight lame jokes a milking" --- or however many you have around your Seder table.     Hopefully fewer, but probably not.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia .... with Cecily

 Oh, yeah! Barometric pressure's rising again!

When it comes to the latest news, I’m not the sharpest tool in the non-Jewish man’s tool shed.

I think the President’s Energy Plan concerns the number of push-ups Obama plans to do each morning, a birther's a guy sleeping overnight on the Broadway Limited from New York to Chicago in 1937, and Ghaddafi is the latest cartoon duck from the folks at Looney Tunes.

But when it comes to the weather in Philadelphia’s Delaware Valley, from the spritzing we’ll be getting tomorrow about noon to the cumulonimbus clouds overhead Sunday at 3:00, I can cite you chapter and verse.

 But it ain’t the Doppler that grabs my attention. It’s the dame!

Cecily Tynan has been the reigning queen of Philadelphia weather almost since the day she arrived at WPVI Channel 6 in 1995. Easily as knocked out as the hottest Hollywood super babe, Cecily surpasses each and every one of them in her ability to dress you right for the weather tomorrow and up to 5 days thereafter. Along with Tastykake, Cecily Tynan is the very best reason for any male from the age of puberty on up to move to Philadelphia.  

(And frankly since I'll bet CecilyTynan has a "creamy filling" to beat anything the venerable Philly cake and pie baker has to offer, Cecily is the very best reason for any male from the age of puberty on up to move to Philadelphia.)

How to describe to you Philly’s meteorological hot mama?

The picture above does her no justice, at least from points on the human weather map north of the neck. With near flawless features and a dazzling smile, strawberry blondish Ms. Tynan is nothing less than the physical embodiment of that perfect day in late spring where your children are happily frolicking with their friends, you’re playing Frisbee in the park with your dog, and yesterday

 You Won the PA Lottery!

 Nightly, about 11:15, Cecily invades my TV screen.

“Jim, it’s going to be hot,” she pronounces, following the lead-in from venerable Philadelphia Action News anchorperson Jim Gardner.

“Sweltering …. broiling …. steaming hot!”

With Cecily, my temperature and barometric pressure are always rising.

Were I not this age, they’d have company!

Ironically women love Cecily almost as much as we guys do. Possessed of a face and form that synchronizes magically with any old thing she might throw on, producers at Channel 6 have wisely dressed Cecily in a daily variety of designer duds that sends women desperately seeking Cecily right along with their men:

 She: Oh, my God! Doesn’t Cecily just look stunning in that smart burgundy blouse accentuated by the paisley Hermes scarf and matching opal jewelry and earrings?!!

He: Yeah. I guess. I just wanna see her naked.

But the unintended benefit of regularly tuning in to Tynan is that it tends to keep you abreast (tee-hee) of the weather.

If it’s going to rain, umbrella in hand I’m singing in the stuff. 

Gonna be cold? My woolliest winter sweater all’s a'washed and a’waitin'.

Ninety Degrees?  Surf City, here I come!  But not without sunglasses, lotion, and the number of the nearest Emergency Room.

 Because of Cecily, I take better care of myself. Were the avuncular Philly forecasters of my youth --- Dr. Francis Davis and Wally Kinnan the Weatherman --- yet on the tube, long ago I’ve have died of pneumonia.

But this all begs the $950, 000* Question: Is Cecily meteorologically on the money? Does the Blizzard of the Century ever turn out to be drizzling, partly cloudy, and high in the 50’s? Has her five day forecast ever failed to correctly predict the name of the day after tomorrow?

Frankly, if Cecily Tynan calls for 80 degree temperatures and a balmy breeze and what we get is a plague of locusts, think anybody cares?

It’s always sunny in Philadelphia …. with Cecily.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*or whatever Cecily may be pulling down, and whatever it is, she deserves every penny of it!

The Born Klutz

Is there hope for the sorry individual known as The Born Klutz?

No. There is none.

None whatsoever.

As one of that number, I view life as a continuous obstacle course of cracked sidewalks, low hanging branches, and precariously placed cups of steaming hot coffee at the end of which if I die from natural causes,  it will be amazing!

Life as a Born Klutz is anything but a stumble in the park.

It’s said that in attempting to slap back at the doctor when he slapped me at birth, I knocked over the instrument table and became unduly familiar with the delivery nurse.

Family lore is that I did not discover the physical coordination to climb out of the crib until a relatively late age, at which time I managed to knock over both a bottle of formula and my date’s drink.

And there are several 60 year old women around today who claim that their hip replacement surgeries would have been wholly unnecessary if not for having endeavored to dance with me at my Bar Mitzvah party in 1963.

As a Born Klutz, I have never met a drink that my Inner Klutz didn’t recognize as a piñata.  Seated at a table at a business function or social gathering, it is inevitable that a glass of some kind of beverage, preferably piping hot, will go sailing all over the table cloth and onto to the lap of the person at the table I am most trying to impress.

Usually it happens while reaching for salad dressing fated to adorn my shirt cuff til evening's end,  getting a paper cut while handing out my business card to someone who will never utilize my services, or poking a passerby waitress in the ribs simultaneously with trying to wave to some guy at another table it turns out I don’t even know.

If not in these manners, the drink will be rent asunder while I’m making a grand hand gesture to accompany a conversational point that doesn’t warrant a grand hand gesture, such as:

“Oh yes, I have always been religious about flossing with the un-waxed, not the waxed!”

As a Born Klutz, I do not have the physical coordination and spatial sense to parallel park a motor vehicle. I am fortunate that parking lots were invented, because otherwise I would be powerless to terminate any motor vehicle excursion that ends anywhere other than in my own driveway.

Once it took me 27 back and forth moves to secure my car safely in a parking space on Lombard Street in Philadelphia.  Had not the cars in front of and behind me pulled out during this manuever,  I’d probably yet be on Lombard Street, banging their front and rear bumpers to this day and unto eternity.

No Born Klutz needs a test to determine if he or she is a Born Klutz.

Consequently, you know you’re a Born Klutz if:

1) At a dinner party, you are routinely seated at the children’s table.
2) You open the same kitchen cabinet door into your forehead 3-4 times per month.

3) At least once in life in attempting to shake hands, you’ve tripped, fallen forward, and goosed the intended hand-shaker.

4) You have walked directly into a solid object such as a tree, a lamp post, or a family member.

5) You even saw the tree, lamppost, or family member looming in front of you and still walked directly into it.

6) You’ve gone to the Emergency Room and lied about the manner in which you received your injury because it’s just too embarrassing.

7) You have déjà vu every time you say the words “OMG, I’ll pay for that!”

8) You have glanced at your watch while holding a beverage in the hand attached to the very wrist upon which you wear your watch.

9) And did so this week.

10) You are saying to yourself, “I have known I am a Born Klutz since I was 5. Who the hell needs this quiz?”

Can gene therapy help The Born Klutz?

It ought not to be difficult to locate the dreaded Klutz Gene. It’s bouncing around erratically on its home chromosome,  jarring, interrupting, and disturbing the operation of the genes adjacent to it. This is most likely the reason most Born Klutzes, among other things, daily change their minds whether they like or find incredibly annoying actor Owen Wilson.

So, is there hope for the sorry individual known as The Born Klutz?

Well, maybe.

In the meantime,  my friend,  I’m coming over to say hello and shake your hand!  

Would you like a cup of hot coff ....

OOOOOOOPPPSSS!!!!!

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.