Saturday, December 22, 2007

And Though it's Late, A Happy Hanukkah too

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Friday, December 21, 2007

Happy Festivus from 655Jack & JibJab

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Saturday, December 15, 2007

I'll be Home for Christmas...


This joke came from presurfer.blogspot.com They, in turn, credited it J-Walkblog.com. Very funny.

Pass it along.
655Jack

A man in Chicago calls his son in New York the day before Christmas and says, 'I hate to ruin Christmas this year, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough.'

'Pop, what are you talking about?' the son screams. 'We can't stand the sight of each other any longer,' the father says. 'We're sick of each other, and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Atlanta and tell her.'

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. 'Like hell they're getting divorced,' she shouts, 'I'll take care of this.' She calls Chicago immediately, and screams at her father, 'You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?' and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. 'Okay,' he says, 'they're coming for Christmas and paying their own way

Monday, December 10, 2007

On Another Night of Hanukkah: Who Knows What Night It Is? I'm Plastered.


From my pal Taya, who I assume is still working off her hangover, somewhere in Margaritaville.

Enjoy.
655 Jack

Tequila Christmas Cake
Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 stick butter
1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
Lemon juice
4 large eggs Nuts
1 bottle tequila
2 cups of dried fruit


Sample the tequila to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the tequila again. To be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the tequila is still OK. Try another cup... Just in case. Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.

Pick the frigging fruit up off floor. Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the tequila to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt. Or someth ing. Check the tequila. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window. Finish the tequila and wipe counter with the cat.

Bingle Jells!

Thursday, December 6, 2007

On the Fourth Day of Hanukkah, We Did it in the Road


The image to the right is an actual screen shot from KABC-TV's coverage of the recent Malibu fires. And this is what the viewer who took the picture wrote:

As we sat glued to television news coveage of the recent Malibu fire on the morning of Saturday, 24 November, 2007 to see if our area was in danger (fortuantely, winds blew the conflagration away from us and towards the ocean), one or more of thse factors produced some rather amusing (and risque) captioning. As a reporter from Los Angeles' KABC-TV was explaining how important it is for residents to evacuate fire areas when asked to do so because such prompt compliance allows firefighters to deal with just the fire and not also with "people in the road evacuating," the captioning (as shown in the still frame displayed above) reflected a distinctly different climax to that statement.

Source: Snopes.com

Happy Fourth Day of Hanukkah.

655 Jack

On The Third Night Of Hannukkah We Say: Happy Han-oo-kah! Happy Eas-tah!

San Leandro is a small suburb of about 70,00 people, outside of San Francisco, right next to Oakland in Northern California. It lays claim to a few distinctions. It is the Sausage Capitol of California. It is the home of Rice-A-Roni – even though Rice-A-Roni is advertised as "The San Francisco Treat.”

And it was profiled by a piece on CBS in the late 60's as being one of America's most racist cities.

San Leandro was (is?) my home town.

Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, being a minority wasn't too much fun for most minorities in San Leandro. One African American family had a cross burned on their lawn. When a family that was not Caucasian was planning to move into another part of town, neighbors would conspire to buy the home themselves. Others were looked down upon simply because they were working class and people called them "Oakies." Though San Leandro was “The Cherry City” and prided itself on being friendly and welcoming, it wasn’t as friendly when it came to its residents who were different.

As for our family, we were definitely different and certainly part of a minority - but not like any of the other minorities in town. Our parents were deaf. We didn't "speak" another language so people could identify us by the sounds of Spanish or Tagolog. When we walked into stores, we “spoke” in American Sign Language. Sometimes our parents, in an attempt to be like hearing people, tried to speak, but most times, we all conversed quietly, with only the small grunts that my parents occasionally made and swish of the hands in the air to break the silence. It was all very fast and stealthy. And it was great when you wanted to talk about someone who was standing right there who didn’t understand sign. But more of that in another posting. In any case, there were definitely not like very many people like our parents in San Leandro. People didn't quite know what to make of us.

We were also Jews. Because San Leandro was primarily Catholic and Protestant, being Jewish meant you got of anti-Semitic remarks. My PE teacher often called me "the roly- poly Matzah Ball." And there were definitely weird looks when I took out Matzah for lunch when it was Passover time. But there was sanctuary (pun intended) from the remarks I got and stares. It was in Temple Beth Sholom. It was San Leandro's only Jewish synagogue. It stood right in the center of town and was rather modest and respectable, as conservative congregations went. It was where every Jewish kid in San Leandro and Hayward went to get Bar Mitzvahed or to attend Sunday school in the 1960’s. Though Jews were definitely a minority in San Leandro, Temple Beth Shalom allowed them to feel as if they belonged someplace. That worked for most members of Temple Beth Sholom, but again, we just had to be different from everyone else!

We were also Sephardic Jews- Jews who hailed from Southern Europe. We didn't speak Yiddish like everyone at Temple; we spoke Ladino, a form of ancient Spanish. Jews who spoke Spanish? My friends assumed we were Mexican. We didn't eat brisket, bagels or Kugel either. We ate baklava and fassoulia. Someone once asked me if we were Greeks. And I wasn’t fair skinned like temple members that came from Eastern Europe. I was dark and swarthy. If you look at my baby pictures, you’d actually think I born a black child. Well, at least I didn't burn quickly in the summertime.

We were just very different. And being different, we attracted other temple members who were really different.

One Jewish couple in particular -- I can't quite remember their name -- lived on Oakie Hill. Oakie Hill was the unincorporated part of San Leandro just above our house. The place probably got its name from the people who moved there from Oklahoma during the Depression (thus the name, "Oakies"). But more than likely the name came from the fact that most people who lived on Oakie Hill were just poorer than everyone else in San Leandro. And being that San Leandro was a racist town that it was, the term was likely applied as a means to stereotype anyone who lived there. We didn't think much of it but we never really saw any other members of the temple hanging out with them. But we continued to say hello to them when we saw them at the grocery store and we didn’t even mind sitting next to them in the back of the temple when no one else would.

The most distinctive thing about the couple was that they drove the biggest, oldest Lincoln Continental - black. People probably thought they were undertakers. Many years later when I moved to New York, I also realized they reminded me of a couple I might have seen living on Chrystie Street or Hester Street on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. They were older, probably in their seventies and they always wore black clothes. The husband was portly and was never without his hat. The wife was usually nicely coiffed but wore clothes that were definitely from another era. The wife also wore the thickest glasses I had ever seen. They were tinted blue - not like sunglasses - but as somehow prescription glasses because she might have had a problem with sunlight. And they both spoke with heavy accents. It sounded as if they were Eastern European but their speech was delivered in a cheery, high pitched fashion. It was as if Borat married Minnie Mouse and they had kids. Different indeed. But we liked them.

One day around Passover, we were riding with our parents in our Sky Blue Chevrolet Biscayne, my brother was probably playing on the dashboard beneath the back window waving to people behind us and I was playing with the hole in the floor that allowed me to see the pavement whizzing past below. I remembered we pulled up to a light and waited for it to change when suddenly, my brother and I heard a horn honk. Right next to us was the black Lincoln Continental, idling noisily. And inside were our friends in black from temple and they were waving hello to us. My brother and I got our parents’ attention and excitedly waved back.

Then our friends in the Continental motioned for our parents to roll down the window so they could talk to them. (They never seemed to get it that our parents were deaf). Instead, I rolled down the back window and shouted hello. With a cheery smile as she pushed up her dark glasses closer to her eyes as if she wanted to see us more clearly, the wife leaned around her portly husband and shouted out in her loudest Eastern European accented voice, "Happy Happy Han-oo-kah! Happy Eas-tah!" He husband nodded in agreement.

It was neither holiday.

Hanukkah was months away and Easter wasn’t a Jewish holiday. But we didn't really mind. They were being friendly to us swarthy deaf types and we were happy to talk to anyone who wanted to talk to us. Birds of a feather, you know.

They remained there smiling and waving, even when the light changed to green and we drove away. That was the last time I remember seeing them, but from that point on, no matter what holiday it was - Jewish, Christian or secular – my brother and I would intone "Happy Han-oo-kah! Hapy Eas-tah!" We’d do it on Yom Kippur. We’d do it on Passover. We even do it on Christmas. And we definitely did it on Easter and Hanukkah.

And we do it to this day. I'd like to think that we do it because it was part of our interesting childhood, of growing up Jewish and Sephardic with deaf parents in San Leandro. If kids made faces at us because our parents talked differently or laughed because we ate Matzahs or that our friends were different, our parents taught us that it didn't matter; though we were minority, within a minority, within a minority, we were definitely not minor - by any means. At least that's what they implied with their cheery smiles when we lamented that people were staring at us in the grocery store. With their carefree attitude, they wanted us to understand that we were unique. And because we were unique, we were cool. It's an attitude my brother and I carry around to this day and one which for which I am forever thankful. How else could we have dealt with living in such a strange land of white skies and rock gardens that was San Leandro?

So if you see me on the street this holiday season, you could say "Happy Holidays" or "Peace" or "Happy New Year." But I'd love it if you'd say "Happy Han-oo-kah! Happy Eas-tah!" instead. Just to be unique. Just to be cool. Just to be different.

Happy Hanukkah, day three.

655Jack

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

On the Second Night of Hanukkah, Balducci's Gave to Me

Hanukkah, 2007: Day 2

Ah, what would Hanukkah be without the Hanukkah ham? This picture came courtesy of my good pal Lisa Cahan of Chicago. Being the ex-New Yorker like myself, she knew I would get a kick out of this reminder of how Jews in New York City live with feelings of inauthenticity; that their Jewish inner selves are at odds with the city that spawned a Miracle on 34th Street.

Here's how it went for me living in New York City back in the 80's. For the first time in my life, I'm living in a city where I'm not the only Jew. In fact, I'm living in one of the most Jewish cities in America. There's a deli practically on every corner. Everyone says "oy" this and "shonda" that. Even the Mayor is Jewish. For a kid who grew up in the Catholic/Protestant Portuguese immigrant community of San Leandro, California and who never saw a bagel until I was 18, this was practically like living the Holy Land itself! And yet, when it came to Christmas-time, the whole city became Christian, Jew and Gentile. It was inescapable.

Christmas was everywhere. It was at Macy's in the store windows; in Rockefeller Center with the ice skaters and ginormous Christmas tree; and it was on every corner with the fat men in a red suits, ringing their bells, Salvation Army buckets in hand and ho ho ho-ing you into giving a little to those who didn't have a lot. Who would want to celebrate Hanukkah, particularly when the only things one had to counter the whole Yule time madness were lame little dreidels made out of clay and dime store blue and white paper garlands that said "Happy Hanukkah," that was never spelled the same way twice? Come on, I often said to my troubled inner self. Can't I be both Jewish and Christian just once? Just this year? Can I just dabble in some festive Christmas cheer?

Yes, I wanted to celebrate Christmas. But only the commercial parts. I had no desire to put up a manger or go to Midnight Mass. All I coveted was my neighbor's tree and lights, and to warm up that lonely corner in my studio apartment with a pine scented tree. In the end, who would know? Mom and Dad were 3000 miles away and here I was, a graduate student living in a city of millions. I was an adult and could make adult decisions, presumably free from guilt. Most of all, I could finally indulge in my childhood fantasy of having a REAL Christmas tree. No more humiliating Hanukkah Bush or blue and white lights on the outside of the house that usually invited more stares and snickers than anything else.

But each time I thought I would venture down the street to the neighborhood empty lot, filled with crack addicts and rats, now turned into the garishly lit Christmas Tree farm and buy my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree, I found I just coudln't go through with it. The consequences were just too horrific to imagine.

Because actually getting one would've meant living with the distinct possibility of my long passed away Grandma Flor coming back to life to screech loudly at the sight of the little tree just as she did when I was six years old and I brought home a small tree from school. It was pretty traumatic then and it must have scarred me for life. Here I was at 26 years old, and I couldn't buy myself a damn tree because way back when I was but a wee kid, my grandmother threw out the small tree I brought home. And here I was 20 years later, treeless. I couldn't even sing "Away in A Manger" when it was on the radio. When it came to the line "The Little Lord Jesus" all could I muster up was "The Little Lord Mm-mm." Man, Grandma. I love you but you messed me up!

In the end never got that Christmas tree.

But this story doesn't have a sad ending. I've found a most perfect way around my guilt. These days, I don't covet that tree or sparkly lights to satisfy my itch to celebrate like my Gentile brothers and sisters. Instead, all I have to say is "I'm going to Disney World" -- just like those Super Bowl players say after winning the big game.

What am I doing in Disney World, you may ask? Well, if you happen to be in Florida this year around December 28th, you can find out. Come on down to EPCOT Center to see Marlee and me reading the story of Jesus and singing along to traditional Christmas tunes as part of the Candlelight Processional. Yes, you heard it right. The story of Jesus!

For the last 7 years, Marlee has been invited along with a host of other celebrities, to participate in a program of scripture and song as a means to entertain the thousands of holiday visitors to Disney World. She signs the story of Jesus and I narrate it. In between passages, a choir of 350 singers and an orchestra of 85 perform wonderful Chirstmas songs. I admit that the first year though I was eager to indulge in my Christmas fantasy, I was initially concerned because I didn't know the names in the Jesus story, let alone the story itself. And Marlee was no help. She laughed to herself at my dilemma. And as she said, she had no guilt; it didn't bother her because she said she could be reading the phone book in sign language for all the hearing audience knew. I was the one who had to SAY the story right. Even the producers of the event knew this Jewish kid was venturing in to Virgin Mary territory when, after the first performance, they handed me the CD of the show that they sold in the park to visitors and asked me to "enjoy" how Phylicia Rashad narrated it. From the first track on the CD, I got the hint. Too much Jew and not enough Christian here. Eventually I figured out that if Danny Kaye could sing "Snow" and Babra Streisand could sing "I'll Be Home for Christmas," then I could certainly muster up a decent narration of the story of the Little Lord "hmm-mm" that would make Marlee proud.

Well, eventually, I got it right. And they've been asking Marlee (and me) back ever since. She and I perform three times a day and we shout out one hell of a hallelujah chorus. And we must be doing something right because there's a standing ovation each time. So, come on down. If you do, you'll see Marlee signing the story BEAUTIFULLY and me, off to the side, microphone in hand, satisfing my annual need to celebrate some Christmas cheer. I like to call it "Two Jews Reading the Story of Jesus."

And if the ghost of Grandma Flor should decide to visit me in the Florida night, I'll ask her for the same special dispensation that I'm sure the great Irving Berlin, who was probably a very nice Jewish boy, asked of the ghost of his Grandmother when she found out that he wrote the most famous Christmas song of all time, "White Christmas"...

"Grandma! A guy's gotta make a living!"


Say Hallelujah and pass the Hanukkah Ham. And have a Happy second Day of Hanukkah.

655Jack