On the First Night of Hanukkah, My Chicken Gave to Me...

Before you go and start cutting up that Kosher chicken you got from Trader Joe's to make your chicken soup for the first night of Hanukkah, you better check those gizzards. You never know what you'll find. 655Jack

Bracelet Lost 28 Years Ago Found In Chicken
(WBZ) FAIRMONT, Minn It won't fit him anymore, but a Gloucester, Massachusetts man has his metal identity bracelet back after it was found inside a chicken gizzard in Fairmont, Minnesota.Aaron Giles, who is now 32, lost the bracelet in his grandfather's barn 28 years ago.Giles lived in Fairmont as a child and played hide-and-seek and other games with his brothers in the barn.He told the Fairmont Sentinel he thinks he lost the bracelet when he was 4 or 5 years old.The barn was dismantled a few years ago, and the materials were used to construct another barn in a town about 45 miles away. Giles thinks his bracelet was imbedded in the barn materials when they were moved.Workers at a meat store were cutting up chickens when they spotted the bracelet in a chicken gizzard recently. Giles told the paper the bracelet pieces are intact and the clasp still works.It had the street address and phone number of his childhood home engraved on the steel, along with his father’s name, Doug Giles. That allowed a worker to track him down.Giles says he expects the bracelet to stay in his family for many years to come."It's the strangest story that I have ever heard in the meat locker business," store owner Mark Olson told the Sentinel. "I've heard of livestock swallowing unusual objects, but this situation stands out."

Four Crazy Brits to Celebrate 8 Crazy Nights

It's that time of year again. Time to light the candles! It's also time to have a latke (kudos if you know how to work with hot oil; I find it scary), have some gelt (if anyone has the inside track on where to get some 75% cacao dark chocolate gelt, you could make a killing in the 18-49 demo!), have a dreidel (please, if Jews can write great Christmas songs like "White Christmas," why can't they write a decent song about something made out of clay?!). Or Hava Nagila! Let's all chant "OY!"

Happy Hanukkah to all!!
655 Jack

Is that you, Hanukkah Claus??

Turkey Day is just 3 days away and that means
the holidays will soon be upon us (they actually
started at the stroke of midnight after Labor Day)
Whether you worship the Western Wall, Jesus, Allah or the Almighty Dollah, it's time to celebrate! I'll try my best to post more often. Look for holiday musings, both past and present and some of my favorite links in the next few weeks.

Only 16 shopping days to Hannukkah and 35 shopping days to Christmas! Don't ask me when Kwanzaa is...

655Jack

Here's a great article from http://www.gadling.com/ as all of you contemplate your holiday travels. Make sure to think of the TSA this year in your holiday stocking; just make sure it's 3oz. or less.

JJ

Love the snow globe, but don't hand carry it on an airplane
by Jamie Rhein

While perusing the list of things not allowed as carry ons on airplanes, snow globes caught my eye. These are those items I usually associate with Christmas. Remember the one in "It's a Wonderful Life" -- the Jimmy Stewart classic holiday movie? The snow globe represented the main character's idlylic town--all cozy and snowy in winter. Even if you had that snow globe-- calling it an antique--a movie classic piece of memorabilia, TSA wouldn't blink and eye before snatching it up and selling it on Ebay.

Okay, I remember a snow globe at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life," but maybe I'm making this up and I just think I saw it. But, there was also a snow globe in "Citizen Kane" that crashed to the ground and broke at the end of the movie when the main character dies, right as he whispered, "Rosebud." Either one, doesn't matter. You can't take it on the plane.
See, the water in the snow globe might not be water at all--and heaven knows what those white flakes or glitter that swirls about when you shake the globes might be made of. Plastic, sure. How about EXPLOSIVE plastic? Just kidding, I have no idea.

I'm actually not faulting TSA for putting snow globes on the list. I never would have thought of their possible use as a terrorist weapon. Seems mean to me. Clever, sure, but definitely mean. Snow globes are magic. They are where you hold a world in your hand that you can alter by turning it upside down or shaking it. They are like the best memories of childhood--like pudding. You can take pudding on the plane, but just 3 ounces or less.
So if you happen to be traveling for the holidays and pick up a snow globe in some gift shop, just remember, wrap it in a towel or something, and put it in the middle of your suitcase--otherwise, maybe you can buy it back on Ebay like Neil suggests.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Dance

These guys have the right idea. So what if they're monkeys; sometimes you just have to dance.

Hurts So Bad

A slow Sunday, but meanwhile...

This was an article that came up in my Yahoo! News. What was interesting was the picture that Reuters used to accompany it.

No lie.
655

What? Did I say something wrong?

Tue Sep 25, 11:34 AM ET

Malaysian doctors have reattached a man's nearly severed penis after his first wife, enraged by his comparison of her sex skills with those of his younger second wife, decided to chop it off with a kitchen knife.
The man, a 43-year-old Indonesian worker in southern Johor state, was lying in bed with his 48-year-old wife talking about his newly wed second wife, who is in her 30s, when the incident happened, the New Straits Times newspaper reported.
Despite his shock and pain, the man managed to pull on his trousers and ride his motorcycle to a nearby hospital, where doctors had to put in 11 stitches to reattach the organ.
The man later complained to police, who arrested the woman and plan to charge her with voluntarily causing grievous hurt with a dangerous weapon, which carries the penalty of a three-year jail term and a fine, the newspaper reported.

Reuters - Tue Sep 25, 2:26 PM ET A knife is used to cut gammon in Stuttgart May 15, 2006 in this file photo. (Michaela Rehle/Reuters)

We are Connected to Victory and Happiness

This is freakish on so many levels...

But I have just one question -- when buying shoes for dogs, do you buy women's shoes or men's shoes?

YouTube - Mariko Takahashi's Fitness Video

655Jack

Jack's Happy New Year wish: More information than you need to know

I cannot take Sudafed.

I came back from China with the weirdest cold but then, I wasn't surprsied considering all the spitting and sneezing that took place in every public place. Combine it with the most killer jet lag I've ever experienced (15 hours of time difference makes for big jet lag) and I was ripe for one of the nastiest head colds I'd ever had.

It began on the flight home and went into full throttle the first night back. No need to go into detail here but suffice to say, there I was trying to sleep with every box of Kleenex I could find in the house. Normally, I would've slept it off but before I knew it, I had only 3 hours of sleep and it was time to get up and go to Temple for the Jewish New Year.

No sniffling and davening allowed there so I decided maybe I should take Sudafed.

Big mistake.

It made my head feel like it was a balloon detached from my head. My sinuses dried out but my eyes were constantly tearing and it gave me a killer sinus headache.

To top it all off, the Temple I'd been going to for the last 15 years changed Rabbis and the new Rabbi was "different," to put it nicely. He was a diminutive Argentinean man who came to Los Angeles via Sweden (he was THE Rabbi of Sweden for several years) whose accent made Charro sound like a Rhodes Scholar. It was as if Ricky Ricardo went Jewish and was conducting the service with malapropisms everywhere. "Hocus Pocus" became "focus pocus," and so on. The service was supposed to start at 10 but we didn't get to the first prayer until 10:50 because he was too busy entertaining us with his rearragned English while regaling the congregation with stories of his multicultrual life, his Yiddishe mother in Israel, etc. etc. OY!

Then the unspeakable happened. He introduced Happy, an African man in a dishiki. (Is that what you call those African shirts with wild prints that look like short Mumus?) Happy, we were told, would accompany us during morning prayers with drumming and African tambourine. ??!!?? If had selzter in my mouth, I would've done a spit take. I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears. I kid you not that when it came to the Amidah prayers, he began drumming and asked the congregation to chant along with him, African style! Where was I? Zimbabwe Beth Sholom? After an hour an a half of this strange cultural mash-up, I'd had a splitting headache. For the first time ever, I slinked out of a High Holiday service. I just wasn't man enough to take the multi-culturalism any longer. I felt like I was in a bizarre episode of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm and with the Sudafed swirling in my head, the drum beat drumming, I was sure I was on Jewish acid.

It was time to go.

Iit only got worse.

When I arrived home, I was immediately shuttled to my landlady's house for New Year's lunch. Initially, I was looking forward to an enjoyable break from the mystery meat Chinese food and veggies I had been eating for the last two weeks. But I was wrong, wasn't I?

Just some background, my landlady is as sweet as can be. God Bless her, she's a Holocaust survivor and with her husband (Russian, who's always insisting that visitors should drink) and her daughter and son-in-law, they couldn't make a more nice family. But I forgot about what can happen when it comes to food and people come from deprived backgrounds. They eat when given the opportunity to make up for what they didn't have back then. For me it was a disaster. Whatever effort I had spent the last 5 months eating clean went out the door (I was good about not eating white flour, avoiding processed sugar, etc..even in China where I just went veggie when the mystery meat appeared). It was time to suffer.

First, I was pried with wine (hey, goes well with Sudafed, right?). Then I was offered (read "force fed") home made gefilte fish, (unusually sweet for some reason). Then the rest came down for me like plagues on the Egyptian Pharoh. Matzoh balls (the biggest I'd ever seen), noodle kugel (Manhattan city block sized portion), chicken (half) and stuffing (oh Hell, if you're going to go all carb, do it right) and lemon honey cake (two servings, at my landlady's insistence). Let my stomach go!

In the end, I just couldn't refuse. Each time I protested that it was too much, I imagined my landlady gaving me a look as if all her days at Auschwitz were in vain -- maybe because I wasn't appreciating the food which she slaved so hard to make and which she was serving us to make up for the food she was denied there? A shonda that I should waste a morsel. As I rolled myself out of her apartment, I was convinced that I was going Jewish hell for even thinking that. BTW, do you do know what Jewish hell is? Eternal guilt.

I came in after lunch feeling as if I had a nuclear reactor fuel rod burning in my stomach. Suddenly, all those carbs in me made it difficult to even keep my eyes open. (Pile some jet lag on that plate, won't you?). I just had to lay down. An hour later, I woke up sweating like Wayne Newton on "Dancing With the Stars" and my heart racing a mile a minute. And for a moment I wasn't sure if I was going to puke or poop. (Thanks for sharing, Jack). I finally did the latter, (thanks for sharing again, Jack) but that did the trick. It felt as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders (or belly, as it were). Good boy, Jack!

That night, I followed my other neighbos' advice and took good old dependable Alka Seltzer - Nightime Cold Medicine. This time there was no dealing with the acid flashback nightmare that was Sudafed. (In fact, my neighbor said 10 mg of Sudafed was way too much for my delicate little system). And you know what? All went well and I slept like a baby. This morning I woke up with barely a sniffle and my cold nearly gone. Now all I had to deal with was the big bowl of jet lag that I had on top of my head.

Here's wishing you a Happy New Year.

By the way, for those of you looking for a Temple to go to in the L.A. area but want to know how they each rate, check out this link:


Los Angeles Synagogue Review

The Jasons in China: I've Been Shanghai'ed

Shanghai, China

September 10, 2007


Ni hao

The trip is nearing an end and I've found myself in what is probably the city of the future - Shanghai. The best way to describe it is take New York City, add a few cups of chopped up Las Vegas, throw in a pinch of Vancouver and a dusting of San Francisco and wok fry the whole concoction with a heavy dose of spicy Chinese peppers. The architecture is fantastic here. They've taken the skyscraper and created a whole new urban art form, breaking free of conventional straight lines and corners. And they've taken the traditional skyline one step further and have learned to make it work as visual entertainment at night by covering buildings with the most spectacular lights. Fifty story buildings appear to pulsate and move to the city beat and in the end, creates a city that literally feels like it never sleeps. For a city that has 22 million inhabitants (and growing), it does fairly well, with cleaner than average streets and orderly foot traffic. There are signs of a very different culture however; people sneeze openly without covering their mouths, spitting on sidewalks is very common and personal space and orderly line formation do not exist. But that's their culture so you learn to live with it!

The trip reached its zenith yesterday with a marathon 12 hour tour that left even me exhausted. Note that the picture below says it all. I needed a break so I gave in and had a good old cup of Seattle's best brew!




Somewhere in there, we had a free day, and we visited the site of the tallest building in the world and had lunch in the tallest hotel in the world next door. The lobby of the hotel began at the 56th floor and it soared up to the 85th floor! When you looked up, you actually got dizzy. It looked like the scene out of The Empire Strikes Back where Darth Vader intoned: "Luke, I am your father! NOOOOOOOOOO!"

Later, as we drove around town, I caught a glimpse of this sign that was advertising a new kind of nightclub. I wonder if this was something that would fly here in the US? Not a place if you're waiting for a hot cup of coffee from a waiter or waitress, eh?



Our last day we visited a small river town that was described as the Venice of China. It was China of decades ago. The town begged to be photographed in sepia tones so I flipped a switch on the camera and this is what I got. By the way, the town had it's own gondoliers, just like the ones in Venice but instead of men, the gondoliers here were women. And each one had their own song which they serenaded boat guests with!


Except for lunch where we were served spicy shrimp, heads, legs and all (they were so small that to eat them you had to pop the whole shrimps in your mouth, heads and all, and use your teeth to bite off the heads and remove the shells), it was a great way to end the trip. By the way, I passed on the shrimp. Surprised?

China is a great place to visit; we'll all certainly get a look next year when images will be beamed into our households as we watch the Summer Olympics. But try and visit in person. If you can overlook the spitting, sneezing and crazy crowds, you'll see some of the most spectacular sights in your life and experience a trip unlike any other.

Xie xie,

Jackie Chan

and The Jasons

The Jasons in China: If This is Thursday, This Must be Xian

Somewhere in China

September 6, 2007

You know you're on vacation when you actually lose track of what day of the week it is. It doesn't help that my day here is one day ahead of yours and my day is your night, etc., etc...But I'm having a hell of a good time.

Where am I? Oh yea, I'm in Xian. Today we flew into the city from Beijing and found a very different landscape. Instead of endless city scapes we found farm lands. We ventured into the city of Xian and did some shopping. Imagine my surprise when I bought a deck of cards for my mom and got this shopping bag.

Now it's evening in Xian and I've just returned from a dumpling dinner. And when I say dumplings, I mean lots and lots of dumplings at Xian's premiere dumpling house. Sixteen courses worth of dumplings. Dumplings of all kinds, in all shapes and sizes. Pork. Pork and vegetable. Pork and pumpkin. Chicken and vegetable. Shrimp and vegetable. Vegetable. And walnut! (shaped like little walnuts and VERY tasty). Stacks and stacks of bamboo steamers filled with dumplings. It was like a Chinese dumpling version of Willy Wonka. By the end you were wondering who would've thought those little doughy delights would make you feel so full?

After dinner we took a walk and drive around town where the light mist made the entire downtown area of Xian glow like a Chinese lantern.

Earlier today we also had a chance to visit the Eighth Wonder of the Word - the Terra Cotta Warriors of Xian. Truly spectacular and overwhelming.

It was amazing to find out that this vast collection of archeological gems was discovered while a farmer was digging for a water well -- and that he is still around, 30 years later, working as a guide at the museum. There are estimated to be over 8,000 figures out there but only 2000 have been unearthed and restored. It was wild.Ever feel like you're being followed by a man of stone?

Meanwhile, on our last last day in Beijing (whenever that was..oh yea, yesterday) we visted the Hutongs, the old sections of homes where people live as they did over 70 years ago. We rode pedicabs which were a hoot. We also had a chance to visit a Kindergarten class and chat with kids who were happy to greet us with a big "Hello" in English.Our final lunch in Beijing gave us a glimpse into real Chinese life. We were invited into a local resident's home and get a home cooked meal. W all agreed it was the best meal of our entire trip. "Ding Ding Hao!" which means very good was the most appropriate phrase.


Man, do they love their multi course meals here. The meal went on forever!

Onto Shanghai tomorrow.

Ding Ding Hao!
Jackie Chan