I'm a Soul Man

This whole Judaism thing, I'm really in it for the food and the comedy. So for me, going home for the holidays is amazing because, well, it's going home, meaning there will be a feast for the eyes and the mouth. In fact, the only way I distinguish one holiday from the next is when there's an additional item at the table (i.e. melt-in-your-mouth latkes), or when the whole meal is all kinds of screwed up (i.e. the spectacle that is the seder plate). But whatever the holiday may be, it's an excuse to trek from near or far back to Aunt Sue's dinner table for some Jewish soul food.

If you haven't tried noodle kugel, you're wrong. There's really no excuse, unless you're not Jewish and do not have any Jewish friends, which I guess is actually a rather sizable portion of the population. But you're wrong anyway. And not just any crude kugel will do. This 'aint amateur hour. I'm talking slightly crisped and crunchy on the top, warm and gooey on the bottom kugel. The kind where the sweet chunks of apple and raisins compliment the soft cottage cheese (I think?) that melts on your tongue and forces your plate back into the center of the table for thirds and fourths. Yeah, that kind of kugel.

Or what about my Nanny's (that's grandma to you) brisket? Succulent slices of beef that taste like the cow was raised in a rich gravy marinade for its entire tragic but delicious life? What do you know about homemade gravy seasoned with the grease of a hard day's work in the kitchen? Come bathe some brisket in the good stuff at our dinner table, then come talk to me. Nothing maddens me more than generic, store-bought gravy.

Except store-bought blintzes. No other frozen food product has so consistently disappointed like those little sacks of artificial cheese or fruit. Please. My Grandma Claire spends all day peeling and pounding pounds of raw potatoes before even beginning to put her blintzes together. Want cheese blintzes? Don't go to her table unless you want them the right way, with a blend of farmer's and other sweet cheeses that perfectly compliments the fried exterior. And don't go to her table if you plan on putting ketchup on your blintzes; she has ejected many an unwise patron for less. Be smart, add a hearty dollop of sour cream to a plate full of cheese and potato blintzes and you'll swear your taste buds are lying to you 'cause anything that good can't be legal.

As for the other incentive to join the clan, the comedy: Larry David, Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, sarcasm, Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, John Stewart, kvetching, late night show writers, Jewish grandmothers. That was not a complete sentence, nor was it a complete list of funny aspects and people that make me laugh when I think of my conspicuously-Jewish last name. But that's a whole different topic for a different day when it's not 12:30 AM and I don't have to wake up earlier than I'd like to.

Relinquished Lust

Alas, my lust for lox was satisfied this weekend by a platter of fresh lox still on the wax paper. Said lox was generously nestled in a bed of Philadelphia creaminess atop a well-done everything bagel, and upon the glistening fish I placed juicy chunks of fresh tomatoes wrapped in red onions. A cold tall glass of Tropicana extra pulp, the good stuff. Repeat the whole process again. Add two parts delicious homemade fruit tart (without the gelatinous goo that ruins store-bought tarts). That was how I broke my four-hour fast. It was a struggle, but I managed to make it from brunch to dinner without eating. I'm also going to heaven for sure.

Insurance, anyone?

Heaven is passing both tests by 9:30AM (I started at 8) and strolling into work in jeans with two certificates and a shit-eating grin.

Somehow I'm now legally allowed to sell property and casualty insurance (i.e. homeowners, auto, commercial, sailboats greater than 26 feet in length with outboard motors not to exceed 50 Hp, etc). I don't feel any more prepared than before I took the test, but a fancy piece of paper is a fancy piece of paper... I'm not asking questions.

Good Times

Hell is a 500-page Property and Casualty Licensing study book. I'm almost halfway done and I still have no idea what property and casualty mean. I thought I was just going to have to learn about auto insurance, but that would be too easy and would make too much sense, now wouldn't it? Instead, I've spent the last ten hours trying to cram my tired brain with volumes of absolutely useless information about fire damage, homeowners insurance, and boatowners insurance. That's right. Instead of jamming with my musician housemates (who have been rocking out all day and into the night in our basement), or getting drunk, or both (like I truly should be doing), I've been struggling to digest the driest minutia about the insurance you need to get for small watercraft and sailboats of up to 26 feet in length.

If I have to read one more 'whereby,' 'aforementioned,' or 'Covered losses payable under Coverages A or B will be paid without a deduction for depreciation subject to the following policy language," I'm going to start punching babies. And seeing as I still have more than half of this riveting bestseller left to tackle, I'd recommend you keep your newborns in sight.

Best weekend ever.

Sunset Longing

a martini glass sits empty
on a coffee table in Cape Cod
even the olive has been eaten
though he never cared much for olives
he usually garnished his life with useless glam
disguised as rustic beauty, a fully furnished bar
for no one, a coffee table straight out of a Hemmingway novel
that he never will read but nonetheless collects dust
in his library that doubles as the smoking room;
he hates smoke but chews cigars, twirls martini glasses
in the awkward silence of a desperate woman as she
crosses and uncrosses her legs, and this one is a brunette
and this one will be special, and this one stares blankly
out into his country promenade but will never stroll there
and her cosmopolitan is sipped for sipping sake but not drank,
he notices nothing and stares past her breasts, lost in loneliness
and liquor from his third martini of the night and man how he once
could drink a man under the table, but time has left him with nothing
more than a coffee table and an empty martini glass and a woman’s indentation on the couch.

------

That was a random poem I wrote based on that photo years ago that I just stumbled upon. To the photographer whose website I yanked the amazing photo from to fuel my creativity one night, I apologize for not asking your permission or giving you proper credit by name. If I remembered where the hell I got it from, I would have pursued the proper channels. Not that you will ever probably read this. I'm fully aware that this is blog number 1,562,987.

Empathy For the Devil

I'm a nice guy. I try to be friendly to all that I pass on the street. I even go so far as to (usually) be nice to people trying to 'sell' me something. Now, I used quotation marks because I mean sell in the general sense of trying to convince someone to do something (which doesn't always include buying something!). We've all been approached by countless 'sellers' in the streets, from the guy wearing headphones and a big cardboard sign on his front and his back advertising a blowout sale at Filene's Basement, to the bleeding-hearted, well-intentioned-but-really-annoying young people wearing a colored t-shirt with the logo of some environmental/public interest/animal welfare/obscure interest group. I have never been rude to these people; I'll always at least be respectful and give some half-assed blatant lie about why I can't possibly spare three minutes of my time.

Even though I'd always been respectful to these people, I had developed a disliking for them. Who were they to barge into my 'me time' while I'm strolling down the street and push some product or cause that has nothing to do with me? Man, I'd think, these people must be miserable getting rejected all day and having to set aside their shame to talk to anyone who dares pass. Then I had to hand out fliers on the street and try to talk to people for my job. And I discovered that it was indeed as miserable and shameless as I had expected, at least at first.

The first shot at being in a street team had me posted in the financial district of Boston. I figured that the business people there couldn't be as miserable and rushed and rude as they are in New York. I also had once figured that driving in Boston couldn't be worse than the stop-and-go nightmare that driving in New York can be. Apparently I'm wrong from time to time. Despite my shit-eating grin, professional attire, and riveting good looks, suit after miserable suit shot me down rudely. Whether it was being ignored, a cold glare, or a snide remark, the businesspeople of Boston were just not having it. As my colleagues came to me with empty hands, my two-inch thick stack of fliers seemed impossibly large.

It was during that confidence-shattering ordeal that I suddenly developed sympathy, or rather, empathy for all those annoying sellers I had kindly brushed off in the past. It’s fucking hard to do that stuff! I was just doing this as a small part of my job, but I knew there were people out there who did this full-time! How could they fall asleep at night with any amount of self-confidence? How could they wake up every morning to go face the brutal firing squad that is the general public? I couldn’t even begin to think of the answers to those questions.

That is, until I gave it another shot the next day. With the advice of a slightly older, wiser, and much-better-at-talking-to-girls-at-a-bar colleague, I switched to a quicker, less informative tactic. Instead of trying to tell people what I was giving them, I simply said, “Hey, check us out.” Much to my amazement, it actually worked! Gradually more and more people began to take the fliers. And even when people declined, the approach was so much quicker that I would be asking the next person two seconds later, making the whole operation more efficient and minimizing the pain of rejection. Now I actually enjoy handing out fliers, making the instantaneous judgment call in my head about which passers by would be receptive and which are too old, too young, too homeless, too rich, or too foreign to give a shit about what I was offering. Being a critical asshole is fun when no one else knows you’re being one.

So the lesson I learned is this: don’t hate on people trying to sell stuff on the street. If you’re not interested or are busy, it doesn’t take much effort to say no thanks with a smile. I can tell you from experience that those kind souls make the job much easier, and I actually feel good after someone rejects me with a smile, because I know it’s not personal. So street teams of the world, I am your friend.

Just don’t try to get me to donate $50 to save the fucking endangered pigtoe clams* or some other stupid crap. Cure cancer and AIDS, and eradicate poverty and violence, then come talk to me about helping some stupid animal that probably deserves to die anyways. Stupid clams.


* an actual endangered clam species Pleurobema georgianum

See "Lackluster Lox'

Yeah... so when this city can make that happen on my plate, get back to me.

Common Courtesy

Is it just me, or is everybody fucking inconsiderate and oblivious? It seems that when people are at work or in small social settings, they’re pretty tolerable. But as soon as they step out into the public realm, their thin façade of common courtesy vanishes, revealing the thoughtless brutes they truly are.

Escalators are a prime example. Especially during morning and evening rush hours, when escalators in train stations are packed with frantic suits running up and down. Well, I’m one of those suits, and I’m running because I’ve calculated my morning commute precisely in order to maximize sleep while leaving a few precious minutes to grab an ice coffee and a muffin before hitting the workday. So it is with great dismay that I observe, almost daily, some oblivious buffoon parked obnoxiously on the left side of the escalator, a long line of late but too-polite businesspeople crammed behind him (though women are just as guilty), making faces of disgust and theatrically checking their watches. Is it not a well-understood rule of common courtesy—no, common decency—that the right side of an escalator is for lazy loafers, while the left side is for people in a rush? Most people seem to have gotten this routine down pat, but all it takes is one asshole to rebel against the system and clog the whole escalator!

While we’re on the topic of train stations, subways are another breeding ground of good manners. Whereas I’m generally a rusher on escalators and use the appropriate left lane to scamper up, when it comes to getting onto a subway car during rush hour, I’m more reserved. Why? Because the system does not work when everyone immediately bum rushes the doors like a rabid pack of tweens at some shitty MySpace emo band concert. There is a simple but time-tested logic that must be observed when it comes to busy subways. When the train comes to a stop and the doors open, THERE ARE PEOPLE INSIDE THE TRAIN THAT HAVE TO GET OUT BEFORE YOU CAN GET IN! As soon as the first shithead starts getting pushy at the front, everyone behind him starts pushing in too in lemming-like fashion, making it increasingly difficult for the people inside the train to get out and delaying the process for everyone involved. What has the world come to when subway operators actually have to get on the intercom to say, “Let the passengers exit the train before entering”? You’d expect a second grade teacher to tell that to her class of booger-eaters on their first class trip into adult, common sense society. Instead, a miserable train operator has to repeatedly tell that to grown adults. I love people.

Movin' On Up

As I sit contemplative at the computer, I am serenaded by the soundtrack of the night, the low roar of over-intoxicated, under-worked, horny-as-hell college folk gallivanting around the block and drinking themselves into youthful oblivion… those lucky bastards. I wish I could afford to be so carefree and stupid now. There’s no time for that after college. I’m tired right now. From working in an office all day. In college I’d take naps after I woke up in the afternoon. Now the idea of naptime is like a dirty thought I have to suppress when I’m at work, a forbidden fantasy ne’er to be mentioned in the office. I miss naps.

I also miss completing a ‘major’ assignment and knowing right after that I had literally no work to do for the next few days. That would be like you handing in a major report to your boss, and him saying “ya know what, Josh? I’m gonna’ let you do whatever the hell you want for the next two days. Sure, you should come to work, but relax, maybe wear some pajamas or something.” That’s exactly what if would be like.

But there definitely is something nice about getting dressed up early in the morning and heading off to work. Makes me feel less like a societal leech and more like a productive member of society. When I’m decked out in my dress shirt, slacks, and black dress shoes, people see me and think, “there’s a kid who works at an office gets coffee and filing papers, practically for free. He’s going places.” I must note that that’s not an accurate description of my job. I also answer phones. Check me out.

Lackluster Lox

How can it be that in a major port city that prides itself increasingly on being forward-thinking and gastronomically advanced, I can't find a goddamn piece of lox or nova that was fresh and sliced before my eyes (I'll get to the local bagels some other time)? Seafood restaurants abound, the ocean is literally right there...it's clearly not a location issue. They're already catching the salmon. Would it kill them to take a few out of the tons of salmon they bring in, smoke them up, and deliver them whole to one of the many Jewish delis in the area? I said a couple of salmon because I could count the number of Jewish delis in Boston on one hand.

One of the best parts of going to the bagel store when I was growing up was watching them take out the huge plate that proudly displayed the whole fish in all it's salty glory, and then gazing on as they prepared the feast. Every stroke of the knife was a daring exercise in hand control that brought me closer to putting the succulent slices of the sea into my salivating mouth. Or you could just rip open a vacuum-sealed pack and slap the over-preserved, rubbery, something's-not-quite-right-here chunks of smoked salmon onto your small, bland bagel. That's cool too.

It absolutely amazes me that everyone in the state puts up with this lackluster lox in a sea of fresh salmon. I don’t care what religion you are. If that religion lets you eat lox on a well done everything bagel with Philadelphia cream cheese, red onion, and a thin slice of tomato, you should try it, and you should like it. I guess it’s just what you get used to if you’re from here. I wonder if I grew up in Boston if I’d know that something was a bit off with my bagel and lox. Man, that’s some deep stuff.

Is it really that there aren’t enough Jews, ex-New-York-area residents, or Jewish ex-New-York-area residents to cause the Boston lox industry to grow ? Cause I can work on that. But I get the feeling that even if there were to be an influx of Manhattanites of the Hebrew persuasion, things would still be slow to change. Like pretty much everything that goes on in this state.

Alright, enough Boston bashing for me for one night. There will be plenty of time for that. But seriously man, get some fresh f*ing lox. You’re a real city.

Keep the Balls On the Court

I am not a homophobe. Nor am I a never-nude, that strange group whose intense fear of being naked was finally brought to our attention by the jean short-wearing Tobias. I just think that the male form is not all that pleasing to look at. In fact, sometimes it can be rather unsettling. I speak not of statuesque statues in art museums nor fine-tuned athletes, but of the fine specimens in health club locker rooms everywhere.

In every gym and health club I have been in, there is without fail a bustling locker room complete with steam rooms to relax in, open showers to rinse off in, and long benches on which to prop one leg up while drying off your hairy balls…all while discussing the vigorous handball game with your equally naked companions. It is truly a sight to see.

I simply don’t understand why so many gym-goers are so averse to using the towels provided by the facilities. Most times after I return to the locker room after a good swim or lifting session, I’m greeted by the rippling ass of an octogenarian sauntering obliviously across the locker room with his towel strung over his shoulder as if in some rebellious scoff at the oppressive restraints of towels (the fact that many of these streakers are also barefoot in a public shower facility is a whole different story altogether). This David-esque senior will usually strike up a conversation with another athletic grandfather whose fingertips are not the only body parts to have become shriveled by swimming and being alive most of the last century. Hairy prunes, anyone?

Now, I don’t have anything against nudity in general. When it involves women, I say go for it (although I have heard similar tales of saggy horror about women’s locker rooms too). When it comes to guys, I say do it within reason. In my book, any unsheathing of your sword other than while showering or changing is just gratuitous. And even while changing, a conversation should not stop you from putting on some goddamn underwear. It really seems that some of these guys engrossed in in-depth discussions about their exploits on the basketball court simply forget that their junk is just flopping around for the whole locker room to see.

So guys, especially really really old guys, keep the balls on the court. At least there, it would be funny to watch your gross display of athleticism. There’s nothing funny, however, about an 85-year-old dude’s balls.*



* Actually, an 85-year-old dude’s balls are very funny, but not when you’re confronted with them in person. It’s the idea of them, even the sound of that phrase, that is humorous.