Friday, January 11, 2008

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?


It's a sad, sad fact that tone is lost on the Internet, readers. Or, at the very least, tone is greatly diminished. You can't use irony and expect that everyone is going to get that you're just kidding when you advocate, say, grinding up kittens and passing them off as Boca burgers to your vegetarian friends.


Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop.
Does a business, but I notice something weird.
Lately, all her neighbors cats have disappeared.
Have to hand it to her!
What I calls,
enterprise!
Poppin' pussies into pies!
Wouldn't do in my shop!
Just the thought of it's enough to make you sick!
And I'm telling you them pussycats is quick.



Anyway, where was I? Irony, right? I was going to complain about how I had to stay up late on Wednesday night to watch the 11 pm second broadcast of Project Runway because b&c was hogging the television when the 10 pm original broadcast came on.


B&c, you must understand, looks down his nose at television. His TV set is maybe fifteen years old, and he mostly only uses it to watch the occasional Redskins game so that he can say, "I can't be a show queen! See! I'm watching football on TV," which is a completely unpersuasive argument because he doesn't sit in a recliner to watch football, even though there's a recliner in the den. And he wants masculinity cred? Please. He might just as well dress up as a Dallas cheerleader. On the other hand, around here, someone might shoot you if you did that. Not for the drag part, but for the Dallas part. People in suburban Maryland are very accepting, but there are limits.


Did I have a point here or was this yet another pathetic excuse to spend half an hour looking at pictures of attractive men on the Internet so I could post them? Well, yes and yes, really.


Anyway, b&c very rarely watches the glass teat, but lately he has twice insisted that he NEEDED to see shows on PBS on Wednesday nights. The last one (I think) was a profile of Tony Kushner. Last night's selection was The Jewish Americans. I was, reluctantly, prepared to accept a second week of having my Project Runway pleasure deferred, but then I thought to myself, "Wait a second. They're covering the entire American Jewish experience in two hours? I don't think so. You would need two hours just to explain gefilte fish." (I am actually quite fond of gefilte fish, but I won't buy it at the store because it comes packed in a jar with this sort of jellied fish stock that totally skeeves me out, especially when you refrigerate after opening.) So I went to the PBS site, and, sure enough, The Jewish Americans is a series. A series of two-hour episodes. A series of two-hour episodes that air on Wednesday nights from 9 to 11.


So I was going to post about that, and I was going to say something like "Why do the Jews hate me? First they kill Jesus, and now this."


Because, see, to me, that would be funny. But then it occurred to me that someone, somewhere might not have gotten that I was joking. I know, readers, I know: you would have known that I was joking, and you think that everyone else would have, too. To which I reply: do you read Internet comments? There are some seriously humor-impaired jackasses out there.


And, naturally, the fear of such misinterpretation would have led me to overcompensate by loudly proclaiming my deep and continuing relationship with latkes and Jewish music. (Unitarian Universalists try to celebrate the holidays of all major religions, so the choir always sings some Hebrew music on the Sunday that falls between the major Jewish holidays in September. I generally get the solo in some sort of call and response song because I have a good voice for it. Invariably, some of the older Jewish women in the church tell me that I sound just like a cantor. I am always very pleased with this compliment, but, at the same time, I always have to resist the urge to quip back that I am, indeed, circumcised. I don't have to explain the appeal of latkes, do I?)


Anyway, you can see how tedious all of that would have been. So I skipped it and just posted some more NSFW pictures instead. I hope you're as relieved as I am.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, Lord knows, waiting for the 11 p.m. replay of RUNWAY can involve more than just inconvenience. I tuned in to that airing this week just in time to see the loser get aufed, *before* I had seen the rest of the episode. The 10 p.m. airing had run long. Aaaaaaugh!

TED said...

Too true, John. I was watching the clock and other channels to avoid tuning in too soon, and when I switched over to Bravo, the final two were standing together on the runway, and I barely changed the channel in time.

Do we live in a dangerous world, or what?

Monty said...

Yes, I agree...there are some people here on the net who just take themselves (and everyone else) waaaaay to seriously and get offended at the slightest remark!

Thanks for your comment on my blog by the way! And thanks for all these lovely lovely pictures!! sigh!

Will said...

Please don't apologize, picture #6 in particular requires no excuses of any kind.

This is perhaps all to obvious, but wouldn't a second television solve a lot of problems? Fortunately, both Fritz and I were interested in the series on the Jews in America. For old theater men like ourselves, the section on the Yiddish theater in NYC, introduced to America by Boris and Bessie Tomashevsky and narrated by their [gay] grandson, San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, was THE highlight of the whole story.

D-Man said...

Ah yes, our lesbian, Jewish, Unitarian minister who married us peppered the ceremony with Hebrew - AND we stepped on the glass in the end. Since it WAS Idaho, my east coast, WASP mother was the only one who yelled "Mazal Tov!"

Kudos for trying the gefilte fish, as I haven't yet...

And, I sooooo like the amateur pics over the professional poses...

TED said...

We do have several television sets, but we only have one cable connection. Since b&c almost never watches, he probably deserves priority on those rare occasions. He's very snobbish about television, and when I'm watching trash tv, he has no compunctions whatsoever about coming in to the den, sitting on the sofa, and trying to start a conversation with me, when he should be able to see that I'm concentrating very intently on the pecs on those guys on The Next Super Model.

I have no doubt that The Jewish Americans is an extremely worthwhile series, but no show will ever supplant Project Runway in my affections. I'm supposed to watch Sid Caesar talk about how his mother worked in sweatshops when she was eight when I can see Christian almost get taken out by a high school girl? I don't think so!