1. We've come to realize that our last kiss ...was shared with someone we have completely forgotten
2. We are listening to ...the knockabout comedy of Odillio and his work crew painting our house
3. We talk ...to the trees, but they never listen to us.
4. We love ... iTouch apps. To a really frightening degree.
5. Our best friend ...is La Skolnique. Although it's okay if we are not hers.
6. Our first real kiss ...was extraordinarily hot.
7. Love is ...on the whole, a positive thing.
8. Marriage is .... a socio-economic construct for which there is (just briefly, right now) no real reason.
9. Somewhere, someone is thinking..."will this pain ever end?"
10. We'll always...eat m&ms.
11. The last time we really cried was because....We were feeling emotional.
12. My cell phone ...plan has really good coverage.
13. When we wake up in the morning ...we'd really rather not.
14. Before we go to bed... We kick the cat out of our room.
15. Right now we are thinking about... errands.
16. Babies are... so fragile
17. We get on Myspace... never.
18. Today we...feel about as lonely as usual.
19. Tomorrow we will be... Just about as lonely. But we will not be with in-laws, which reminds us that there are worse things than loneliness.
20. We really want to be... financially solvent, and of some help to people.
21. We are allergic to...penicillin
22. We are annoyed by... humorless people
23. One food we refuse to eat is...snail caviar
24. The most recent thing we've learned is... even when it hurts like a sonofabitch, it's not personal.
25. The number one thing on our bucket list is... stay the hell away from the bucket
26. Something we've always wanted to learn to do is... speak Spanish
27. We have a high tolerance for... children
28. We have a low tolerance for... narrow mindedness
29. My wish... for my daughter to be safe and happy after her father and I are gone.
La Skolnique
04/15/2009
04/11/2009
Schleppin' 'Cross the Wilderness
"Wait. Is there gonna be a test on this?"
We don't like to make comments about our friend JC, who is a very smart man and much larger than ourself. But the man complains a lot. He truly does.
Last night, f'r'instance, he was Twittering from his seder. which already is going to get on God's nerves. But it might have been okay if his tweets has consisted of comments like : "This haroseth is incredibly yummy" or "Memo to self-do not actually eat bitter herbs".
Instead, we heard nothing but complaints.
"Let my people go...out for a sandwich!"
"My stomach is rumbling so loud it drowned out two choruses of 'Dayanu'!"
"I swear to God that hard-boiled egg is a gonner if I don't get some brisket within the next five minutes!"
The fact is...and anyone who has seen The Ten Commandments can bear me out on this...the Exodus was not a journey for sissies.
First of all, we (not just ourself this time, we mean all the Jewish people) had to leave the house without packing. Our own mother, never a vain woman, couldn't leave the house without fifteen minutes of makeup and hairdressing, and, as to some of our more princessy friends, we think they would rather be caught by Pharoah's henchmen than be seen in their gear from spinning class. So already the complaints would start.
Our bff La Skolnique ("Chava the Peacemaker") would have to run back twice to see she had turned off the stove (had the camel pee on the fire) underneath the tzimmes. Which no one would eat anyway, because it looked like mortar and reminded them too much of work.
JC (or, as he would have been known in Biblical times, "Joshua the Fresser") would have demanded to be carried aloft by his handmaidens, claiming some old stonelaying injury; his comments ("So who told you to bring the half-baked bread? Half-baked gefilte fish would have been okay but why the bread? Did anyone remember the half-fermented wine?") would make his wife and child beg for Egyptian citizenship.
You see how tiresome this would get? And he wouldn't be the only one.
Our brother, Pesche With the Open Mouth, would be lecturing his adorable two sons (Sholem the Pure and Mordecai the Yeller) about the true meaning of the holiday, whilst his wife, Judith the Balabusta, would illustrate with healer-approved tub toys.
"Did anyone bring noseplugs? I've got a deviated septum!"
Over at our part of the caravan, we ("Hannah the Unpaid") would be trying to comfort our Beautiful Daughter ("Tauba the Annoying"...once you start these things it's really difficult to stop)...while we searched high and low for her father, "Baruch the Messy", who, we hoped, brought her prescription manna.
Our only point here is that Passover could be a lot worse, so everyone pipe down and pass the affikomen. And if you don't know what that is, you weren't on the Exodus anyway. You get to tell the jokes on Sunday.
01/17/2009
After Inauguration, No More Laffs? A Re-Mix
After we posted this a few days ago, we realized that it could have been improved in so many ways, from using the correct font, to cleaning up the spelling errors, to uh, actually being funny. So we mixed it up a bit and this entry is now something like a whole new entry. Really.
Some people--the New York Times in particular--are a little concerned about what happens after George W. Bush goes home.
No, not the eternal question of Will he really leave the White House? What guarantee do we have? Or even Has anyone even told Dick Cheney about this?
The big worry is, what will we laugh at now?
For as many years as anyone's been counting, Presidents have been funny.
Maybe it started with Vaughn Meader and the JFK comedy album. Lots of people don't remember this deeply funny tribute to a man who was inaugurated with, if possible, even more idealistic hope than President Obama, but it rocks. Check it out at YouTube. 
We have to thank our friend La Skolnique for this reference. And also for the joke, made when she was 3 years old, that goes like this:
La Skolnique's Dad, Le Pere Skolnique: What little girl has the best Daddy in the whole world?
La S.: Caroline Kennedy!
LBJ was funny because he came from Texas. 
And his wife was named Lady Bird.
And he showed his appendectomy scar to reporters. So that might have been more "horrifying" than "funny", but at least it brought the man down to earth. Did it ever.
Richard Nixon was funny for the same reason that watching a cat trap a mouse is funny.
The cat takes itself so damn seriously. The mouse is blithe, unconcerned. Okay, the "kill" is not so funny, and neither was Watergate. But everything before and after was pretty cool.
Gerald Ford? We're still collapsing in mirth. The falling down. The dumbness. The pardon.
And Jimmy Carter was from the south. Always funny. He also had extremely humorous teeth. We'll see how funny teeth can be if Joe Biden does anything to attract attention to himself.
Reagan...even his best pals made fun of Reagan, and he joined in, because he was a sociable and humorous man. (You pretty much had to be, to get along with Jack Warner back in the day). Of course the opposition made fun of him too. Everyone was pretty happy, except the people who were dying of AIDS.
Poppy Bush was preppy and his wife looked like a human with Mad Cow disease. 
Now, with the Clintons you also got a two for one. Because even if you saw Hilary as an important trailblazer, there were still her hairstyles. And Bubba? Unlike FDR and JFK, WJC was dumb enough to to get involved with the girl under the desk. FDR just flirted with them. JFK didn't know their last names.
And then there was W. Don't make us talk about that.
Now we have Barack Obama, about whom no one can speak without getting a little verklempt. And even when those lumps in the throat go away...which they have to, someday, right?...he's just cool and competent and intelligent and strong and sweet and wonderful and has a terrifically good build.
So, no, not much funny. Not even from the Chicago in-laws who, back in the seventies, probably would have had a Norman Lear sitcom of their own.
But here's something I figured out. And JC, if you're reading this, you can have it free for nuthin'.
We're not saying the resemblance is a bad thing. But it certainly does exist.
