Paisley is sort of my signature. Whenever I’m going to a special event at work or elsewhere I like to wear a paisley shirt. Once when I was going out with some friends they were waiting in their car and I came out wearing a paisley shirt and one of my friends said, “Where does he find those wonderful shirts?” If I remember correctly that particular one was from a secondhand store because a lot of paisley gets thrown away, and I’m okay with that because if paisley isn’t popular then I don’t have to worry about anyone stealing my style. I didn’t even tell my friend my secret, although if he reads this he’ll probably figure it out, but that’s another story.
For my birthday and Christmas, which come close together, my wife bought me a bunch of paisley shirts and she said the store had so many of them she had to limit herself to just the ones she really liked which was good news because it meant I now have several new shirts and possibly bad news is paisley is becoming so popular everyone’s going to start wearing it. And I beg you: please don’t.
Anyway it got me wondering about the pattern’s origins; it turns out paisley has a pretty colorful history. In India the pattern was called boteh, a word meaning “flower”, where it was used in ceremonial robes given as rewards for various favors. In the 18th century it was imported to Europe, specifically to the town of Paisley, Scotland, hence the name, and the difficulty of producing a paisley pattern prompted the adoption of the Jacquard loom. The town of Paisley became an important manufacturing area and paisley shawls took off in popularity. There were even legal battles over copyrighted paisley patterns although the Persian and Indian weavers who produced many of the designs that Europeans copied never got a cut.
Paisley wearing paisley. Source: IMDB
In the early 20th century cheap cotton bandanas with paisley prints made their way across the American west, but the pattern fell out of vogue until the psychedelic Sixties. John Lennon had his Rolls Royce painted with paisley designs, a bit of a callback to its regal history, and it’s probably not a coincidence that the antihero of Roger Corman’s A Bucket Of Blood, in a not-so-subtle jab at coffee shop culture, is named Walter Paisley.
And that’s a brief history of the paisley pattern and why it’s one that I’ve picked.
One of the benefits of where I work is that I can audit university classes, which is a very groovy thing because lifelong learning is important. And when I saw there was a class on Jewish humor being offered of course I signed up and didn’t hear anything until last week when I got an email that said, “Class starts today!” So I went and, because I was really just sitting in and not a formal student, I took a desk in the very back and tried to look as unobtrusive as possible and the professor started to take attendance and pointed to me and said, “Hey, you’re the one auditing, right?” Suddenly there was a bright spotlight on me that made me painfully aware that I’m half a century older than everyone else in the class. And after class she told me, “Don’t worry about doing any of the homework,” but I’d already done the first assignment.
The assignment was “Write two pages analyzing a joke.” It was a fun idea, and I was going to go with, “How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” but then a friend suggested another joke with a lot more potential. And things got even funnier when the professor said, “This is not a formal assignment. Just tell me a joke, or a bunch of jokes, or about your favorite comedian,” and as you can see what I’d written was already pretty formal.
So anyway this is a long introduction to an assignment that I didn’t need to do and now I’m in so much trouble because I’m pretty sure I can only go downhill from here.
And if you’re wondering how many Jewish mothers it takes to screw in a lightbulb, don’t worry about it, she’ll just sit here quietly in the dark, but it would be nice if you’d call once in a while…
Intersections
Mrs. Cohen and Mrs. Levinson meet on the street. Mrs. Cohen asks, “How’s your son?” Mrs. Levinson replies, “I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is he tells me he’s gay. The good news is he’s seeing a nice doctor.”
Analyzing any joke requires context, so to start I’ll look at some of the intersections of the Jewish and LGBT communities throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. While Jews were the primary target of and bore the brunt of the Holocaust homosexuals were targeted as well. Homophobia and anti-Semitism were also widespread in the United States. In 1945 the writer, director, and film producer Richard Brooks, who was born Ruben Sax to Russian Jewish parents and served in the Marines in Virginia during the war, published his first novel The Brick Foxhole. The novel is about a young Marine who is murdered when his fellow Marines discover he’s homosexual. The book was adapted in 1947 as the film Crossfire but because the Hayes Code, which set standards for Hollywood movies, labeled any discussion of homosexuality unacceptable, the plot was changed to be about anti-Semitism with a Jewish murder victim. Crossfire was nominated for best picture at the 1948 Academy Awards but lost to Gentlemen’s Agreement, which also dealt with anti-Semitism.
In 1969 the Stonewall riots took place, marking the beginning of the modern LGBT-rights movement, and in 1973 the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Yet homosexuality remained explicitly condemned by many Jewish thinkers. Writing in The Journal Of Homosexuality Rabbi Yoel H. Kahn cites two “widely read and frequently quoted articles”1: a 1973 responsum by Solomon Freehof published as the lead article of the 1973 CCAR Journal symposium and Norman Lamm’s 1974 “Judaism And The Modern Attitude Toward Homosexuality.” However, Kahn later adds, in 1973 Arthur Green “became the first Jewish leader to affirm publicly the desirability and sanctity of homosexual partnerships”2.
Another major, and more public, intersection was the 1983 Broadway premiere of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy. The play centers on Arnold Beckoff, a Jewish drag queen living and performing in New York. Part of the “trilogy” is his relationship with his mother. Arnold alternately rejects and clings to his mother. He doesn’t tell her he’s adopted a son with his partner David, or that David is murdered in a neighborhood attack on homosexuals. She is bothered by his homosexuality and feels Arnold is rejecting his religion and by extension her. He tells her, “if you can’t respect me…then you’ve got no business being here.”3 She in turn admits, “Some of it was my fault, but not all.”4
Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s the AIDS crisis, dealt with in Tony Kushner’s 1993 play Angels In America, intensified the struggle for LGBT rights and brought the issue to the mainstream. The Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision decriminalized homosexuality nationwide in the United States. That same year in Britain Liberal Judaism became the first denomination to offer synagogue blessings to same-sex couples; the Reform movement formally endorsed the ceremonies in 20115, four years before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision provided legal recognition of same-sex marriage in the United States.
The historic context is important but there’s a specifically Jewish context to the joke as well. In What Is A Jewish Joke? Henry Eilbirt says the Jewish mother “has a multiple image: suffering, overprotecting, displaying motherly pride, nurturing.”6 Mrs. Levinson hits at least three of these. She suffers because her son is gay and there are unlikely to be any grandchildren, biological anyway, who will call her bubbe, and she may be concerned about her son’s safety in a world that is still often hostile to LGBT people. The nurturing aspect is complicated. Jewish mothers are often portrayed as expecting their sons to go into lucrative professions; specifically to become doctors, while expecting their daughter to marry a successful man. Wendy Liebman jokes, “Is there a doctor in the house? My mother wants me to marry you.” She also says, “My grandmother always said, ‘Don’t marry for money…divorce for money.’”7 In this the joke reflects an unfortunate and outdated gender stereotype that doctors must also be men. There is also a stereotype that both Jews and LGBT people either have innate talent or a strong drive to succeed. Vladimir Horowitz joked, “There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists.”8 Lawrence Epstein considers the Jewish aspect in greater detail in The Haunted Smile, discussing how Eastern European Jews, shut out from most professions, saw themselves as “losers” and built up a strong desire to succeed. By the time they emigrated to the United States that “psychological reservoir of such needs” was “unleashed with ferocity when they found a place that welcomed, nourished, and psychologically and financially rewarded that need to succeed.”9 For LGBT people there is also a perception of success fostered by popular portrayals of “White, wealthy women who host talk shows or affluent men doting on their kids – like Mitchell and Cameron from ‘Modern Family’”10 although LGBT people are not necessarily more likely to be financially successful than their straight peers.
However the joke’s upshot is ultimately positive: Mrs. Levinson accepts, or is working toward accepting, her gay son. She finds both bad and good in the fact that he’s gay, and, poignantly, in this telling, it’s a conversation that happens on the street, perhaps near an intersection.
1-Judaism and Homosexuality: The Traditionalist/Progressive Debate by Rabbi Yoel H. Kahn MAHL, The Journal of Homosexuality, pg.48, v.18 no.3/4 (1989)
2-Ibid, pg.74
3-Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein, pg.153 (Villard Books, 1983)
4-Ibid, pg.173
5- Jewish branches embrace rise of same-sex union by Simon Rocker, Times Of London, Jan.17, 2015
6-What Is a Jewish Joke?: An Excursion Into Jewish Humor by Henry Eilbirt, pg.116 (Jason Aronson Inc., 1993)
7-You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother by Joyce Antler, pg.440 (Oxford University Press, 2007)
So I’m pickled tink to have been tagged for a Christmas post by Bryce Warden of the amazing, hilarious, and sometimes heart-rending Was That My Out Loud Voice? Thank you. This is not my first rodeo, and it’s not my first experience being tagged either, although I am having trouble concentrating what with all the bull riding and calf-roping going on, but that’s another story.
I love being tagged but always violate one rule: I never tag anyone else. Some bloggers I really enjoy have blogs devoted to specific subjects and I don’t want them to feel pressured to go off-topic, and while there are others whose blogs are more general, well, I don’t want them to feel pressured either. If you feel like playing along, though, feel free to jump in! With that bit of housecleaning aside here’s my response.
The Rules You must thank the person who nominated you. Link back to the original post (the one on this blog) and use the graphic provided. Answer the questions given. Nominate at least 3 people. (or more if your feeling like a nice person) Give the nominees 10 questions to answer (or use the ones previously given)
Questions
Do you celebrate Christmas?
Yes, although I also enjoy and have celebrated Hanukkah and Solstice.
Which one of Santa’s Reindeer is your favorite?
Donner. Like the party. (I can’t help it, that’s funny to me. Also spooky stories at Christmas are a British tradition, so it kind of fits even though I’m not British.)
Do you like snow?
Yes! Where I live we get, at most, one major snowfall per season, and it causes complete city-wide chaos. It’s hilarious.
Do you have a favorite Christmas tradition?
Every year I make eggs benedict and my wife and I watch movies. A more personal tradition is that I take a little time and read Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas In Wales back to back. A little laughter, a little sadness, not necessarily in that order.
Least favorite part of Christmas?
Certain memories. I seem to have something in my eye. Let’s move along, shall we?
What is your favorite Christmas memory?
Not exactly Christmas but one year I went out caroling with a group in a small English village. We went to one home that had a pond with approximately three thousand ducks. Every day after lunch I’d walk up to this pond and feed the ducks. Maybe they recognized my voice because as we were singing the ducks came waddling out of the darkness quacking at us. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket so I went and sang with the ducks.
If you could take a paid two-week break for Christmas this year, what would you do, and why?
I’m lucky enough to work at a place that gives me a substantial holiday break, but if I could do anything I’d travel someplace unusual. How do they celebrate Christmas in Montevideo? Let’s find out!
Elf on the Shelf
The Elf is in no position to judge. I have proof:
Source: Imgur
Favorite thing about Christmas when you were a kid?
The anticipation. The decorations. And my mother always made an amazing bunch of sweets: fudge and cookies and candied pecans and kolache.
Do you have a favorite Christmas special?
A Christmas Story. True story: an uncle who rarely smiled and who never laughed was staying with us one Christmas. He sat down and started watching A Christmas Story with me and started chuckling. When Ralphie goes blind from soap poisoning my uncle laughed so hard he fell over. Then during the commercials he got up, glared at me and said, “That’s exactly how it was, too!”
The 2018 Mosconi Cup is now underway in London, pitting US players against European players, and the question is, will this be the year the US breaks their seven-year losing streak? Actually the question I’m asking is, since the Mosconi Cup, now in its twenty-fifth year, is one of pool’s biggest events, why is it only US and European players?
A little background: the cup is named for Willie Mosconi who was, if not the greatest pool player ever, then certainly the greatest American player. The son of Irish and Italian immigrants whose parents objected to him playing pool—even though his father owned a pool room, or maybe because his father owned a pool room—Mosconi was also an ambassador for the game. He hated hustlers and cheaters. Willie Mosconi wanted to raise pool above its association with smoky back rooms and shady characters. When he played Rudolph Wanderone, better known as Minnesota Fats, in a 1978 televised match for ABC’s Wide Wide World Of Sports Mosconi insisted on wearing a tuxedo, and focused on the match, unlike his opponent who wore short sleeves and played to the crowd as much as the table.
It’s not just a matter of who Mosconi was, though. Thumb through any issue of Billiards Digest and you’ll find that there are great players from all over the world—not just the United States and Europe. In 2016 five of the top twenty players in the world were from the Philippines, which ain’t bad for a country with a population of a little more than a hundred million. Shutting out that level of talent just because of geography isn’t just unfair. It’s disrespectful to the memory of the man for whom the Mosconi Cup is named. It seems like cheating.
Even though it would make it even harder for the US players to gain and hold onto the cup winning isn’t everything. At least it isn’t if it’s not a fair win.
When I was about eight years old, watching the sunset, I asked Dad, “What’s that bright star over there?” He said that it wasn’t a star. It was a whole planet called Venus…He said, “You know why they called it Venus? Because they thought it was so beautiful and glowing. But they didn’t know that it’s filled with deadly gases and sulfuric acid rain.” Wow, I thought, “This is it! I’m hooked!”
-Jodie Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway, in the film Contact, based on Carl Sagan’s novel. This scene, unfortunately, isn’t in the novel. The young Arroway instead looks at Venus and dreams of creatures like us who build crystal cities there.
My wife and I live in a pretty heavily wooded neighborhood which means a lot of my stargazing is limited to what’s straight up, or at least well above the horizon. Venus, though, can be spotted even through the trees in the mornings right now. Our closest neighbor–closer than Mars, where a mole will land on November 26th, 2018–it burns brightly, sunlight reflected off its dense clouds. Maybe it’s because it’s closer to the sun, and therefore represents moving inward, that Venus doesn’t seem to exert as much pull on the human imagination as the outer planets, although Galileo did turn his telescope toward Venus, and the planet provided him the first clues that the Earth moves around the sun, rather than the other way around. Venus goes through phases like the Moon, and this is only possible if it’s between us and the sun.
Venus also intrigued the young Carl Sagan. At a time when other scientists seriously thought Venus might harbor life Sagan concluded that its dense clouds would trap heat, creating a nightmarish landscape where the surface temperature is higher than the melting point of lead. Ray Bradbury’s stories All Summer In A Day and The Long Rain imagined Venus as a jungle world of almost perpetual rain–although as the cinematic Dr. Arroway notes, it’s sulfuric acid, not water, that rains on Venus, and sometimes even forms flakes–sulfuric acid snow. It’s probably quite beautiful, although the spacecraft that have landed on Venus have only lasted a short time, destroyed by pressure and heat. It’s no wonder that in Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama all the planets of the solar system–including Mercury–are colonized, with Venus the lone holdout, resisting human intrusion.
And Venus, overheated by greenhouse gases, could very well be our future. There’s something worth looking at.
It’s almost Thanksgiving in the United States, the holiday when people celebrate early European settlers nearly starving to death by gathering together and stuffing ourselves until we’re sick. And you probably have that one guy—it’s always a guy—in your family who tries to impress everyone by bringing and eating some ridiculously hot peppers. So here’s something for him to try: the euphorbia resinifera plant, while technically not a pepper, produces a resin that’s four and a half million times hotter than the jalapeno. That should shut him up for a while. In fact it may even do more than that. It destroys nerve endings and may be a non-addictive alternative to opioids for those in need of pain relief. So the heat may actually do some good.
Skipping over to the subject of hot foods in general, though, I don’t mind some heat in my food but it should bring some flavor with it. One of the best things my hometown of Nashville has contributed to the world is hot chicken, which was then stolen by Kentucky Fried Chicken which hoped people wouldn’t know that Nashville is in a different state, slightly to the south of Kentucky, which brings up the question I raised in a previous post: should some things be kept strictly local? Maybe not–I’m thrilled that I can pretty much circle the globe, in a culinary sense, just by venturing a few miles from home, and KFC’s real sin wasn’t stealing Nashville hot chicken but ruining it with a terrible recipe, but that’s another story.
Also there used to be a small store near where I work that sold almost exclusively hot foods: salsas, chili mixes, hot peppers, hot sauces, hot chocolate—with levels of spiciness ranging from mildly hot to inedible. When all it tastes like is burning is when I bow out. That level of spiciness is only good for keeping squirrels out of your bird feeder, since squirrels get the same heat sensation as humans but birds don’t, although putting euphorbia resinifera in your bird feeder would probably still be a bad idea.
That place that sold hot foods is no longer there, by the way. It burned down.
“There will be school tomorrow!” yelled Mrs. Treadwater, my third-grade teacher. And I should probably explain that I was still in third grade. This didn’t happen recently. It would be pretty weird if at my age I were still hanging around my third-grade classroom which is why I stopped doing it a few years ago, but that’s another story.
Mrs. Treadway was letting us know that even though Halloween fell on a Wednesday that year it was still a school day. I’m not sure why she sounded angry about it. Maybe she was tired of kids asking her if it was a holiday. Maybe she was annoyed she didn’t get the day off either. Maybe it was both.
Last year Arionis over at Just A Small Cog lamented the fact that Halloween 2017 fell on a Tuesday and offered up a petition to have Halloween officially moved to the last Saturday in October. It made sense then. It makes even more sense now. Halloween should be a moveable feast, even if those are usually reserved for saints, since it’s a time when the spirits are on the move.
In some areas, such as here in Tennessee, Halloween on a Wednesday can be, or at least once was, problematic. Wednesday was, and still is for some, traditionally a church night—it’s a night when those of certain faiths gather for a mid-week dose of preachin’ to get them over hump day, which reminds me of the old joke: why is Wednesday called “Hump Day” when most people get laid on the weekend?
Anyway the number of people who have Wednesday worship has fallen off so much that it’s no longer a problem but I distinctly remember the city council devoting whole sessions to whether Halloween on a Wednesday should be moved to another night, and getting into lengthy fights over whether it should be moved and which night would be more appropriate. There were even a few years that some of us kids were lucky enough to get a double dose of Halloween as the compromise was to spread it over two nights.
We still had to go to school, though.
And that concludes the 2018 Halloween Parade, but, whenever it is, it’s Lou Reed who gets the last word.
When I was a kid I was terrible about biting my nails. Maybe it had something to do with anxiety although I can’t remember what I had to be anxious about and now that I’m an adult and in a constant state of panic I never chew my nails. I do remember the endorphin rush that came when I ripped off a hangnail so hard with my teeth I drew blood around the edge of the cuticle and I should probably stop thinking about it or I’m liable to start again. What I also remember is that I wanted to stop chewing my nails. I wanted to let my nails grow long just to see how long they’d get. This may have been inspired by a woman I saw in a department store who had freakishly long talons that made it hard for her to use a cash register, but she was clearly proud of them and had painted them a nice shiny aubergine.
My real inspiration, though, was Shridhar Chillal, listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records for having the world’s longest fingernails. His level of dedication is staggering: he kept growing his fingernails for sixty-six years and they eventually reached a length of 29 feet, ten inches. He recently decided to cut them after, among other things, not getting a good night’s sleep for years. The other things are probably best left to the imagination. Or not imagined at all.
He was inspired by a teacher who accused him of never being committed to anything and I doubt that’s what his teacher had in mind but, hey, good for him. He’s really an inspiration to all of us: find one thing and stick with it.
Actually he also worked as a photographer and had a family which I guess proves it’s possible to multitask.
Amazingly I remember there were a few challengers, but when it came to holding the record Chillal always nailed it. Let’s give him a hand.
The upcoming TV adaptation of Good Omens, the hilarious book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, looks pretty fantastic, and seemed like a good excuse for a repost of this from a few years ago.
This is some party, isn’t it? The Thorns really don’t spare any expense. I’ve been to some of the other events they’ve put on and they always go big, but this is pretty huge even for them. I guess since the kid’s adopted they want to make a big deal out of his first birthday. They’re trying to make him feel welcome and all. I wonder if he’ll even notice it or remember any of it.
I noticed that weird birthmark too! It’s kind of hard to miss. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Thorn keeps putting his little cap back on. Isn’t that cute? You’re right, it does look kind of like a cluster of 9’s. At least it did earlier. Maybe it’ll change as he gets older. His hair will cover it up anyway. You want to hear something weird? That priest thought it looked like something completely different. You know, the priest who was harassing the family a while back. He kept saying it looked like the Roman numerals DCLXVI. He said that even stood for something from Revelations. What a crackpot. That was right before he was killed in that freak accident when a gargoyle fell off his church right on top of him.
Is it just me or do a lot of crazy accidents seem to happen around this kid? No, really, I mean it. Did you hear about his pediatrician? Oh, this is too weird. His pediatrician said the kid had jackal blood. I know, right? I didn’t even know they tested for that sort of thing. I asked my kid’s pediatrician and she thought I was insane. I guess doctors all have different opinions. Anyway right after the pediatrician said that he was killed in that freak elevator accident. The investigators said it was really a million to one chance something like that would happen. Well, I guess that was the millionth chance. Maybe it’s not that weird. People win the lottery too every day, right? I guess it was just bad luck.
The accident the maid had isn’t nearly as weird. I know she yelled at him the same day it happened but what was she thinking? Who in their right mind cleans a chandelier from the second floor landing on a rickety old ladder? Really. It’s like she was just asking for a fall. Lucky for the Thorns that new maid was available to start right away. Well Mr. Thorn said it was lucky. Between you and me Mrs. Thorn—you know, Rosemary—she doesn’t like the new nanny one bit. She especially doesn’t like that big dog that came with her, but the dog is very protective of the kid. I told her they should consider obedience classes. She said she’ll look into that but it’s like the dog is very well trained already and will do anything the kid or the nanny wants. I guess that’s a good thing.
There really is something weird about him. The kid, I mean. Have you noticed he never cries? He just seems, I don’t know, really intense. And what’s the deal with the choir that follows him around? It seems like they always start chanting right when somebody’s about to die. The priest, the pediatrician, the maid, that private investigator who was looking into the orphanage, the photographer who said there were strange shadows in the pictures, the kooky archaeologist with the daggers, the nurse that drew his blood, the cousin who was afraid of the kid. I’m not saying the choir had anything to do with all those deaths. I mean, those were all accidents, right? There goes the choir starting up again.
Have you noticed the kid’s been staring at us this whole time?
And then there’s the “science experiment” that supposedly teachers all over the United States, and perhaps even all over the world, have performed where they put a nail, penny, or human tooth (where they get one is never explained) in a bottle of Coke and it dissolves overnight. I’m convinced this one’s an urban legend for three reasons: first, I’ve never met anyone who had a teacher who actually performed this experiment, second, kids can wisely assume that the teacher fished out the foreign item overnight, and, third, I can think of at least three kids I went to school with who, even if they believed a nail, penny, or human tooth was dissolved in a Coke would still drink it, but that’s another story.
Anyway there’s this new gaffe which is absolutely true: trying to sell Coca-Cola in New Zealand the company has said to the Maori, “Hello, Death”. This is from The Guardian:
Coca-Cola’s attempts to combine te reo Māori and English has backfired badly, with the company inadvertently writing “Hello, Death” on a vending machine in New Zealand stocked full of the drink.
If you recognized the Rocky Horror Picture Show reference hidden in this post give yourself five bonus points. If you didn’t recognize the Rocky Horror Picture Show reference hidden in this post give yourself ten bonus points.