I’m the Intolerator

Dear President Bush,

Now that you’ve declared to the world that you’re The Decider, why don’t you stop being such a stubborn schmendrick and decide to learn to speak proper English?

We all know that you’re as dumb as a box of hair, but since you’re the guy leading the free world, and we have almost three more years of living under your Deciderism regime, it would be great if just once you could decide to pronounce the word “nuclear” correctly.

NOO-klee-er. See, that wasn’t so hard was it?

Sincerely,

The Mispronunciation Intolerator

P.S.
That Rumsfeld decision? Not such a good one.

The Geezer Pleasers

Okay, will someone please explain to me what’s so hot about shtupping an 80-year-old guy who’s hard of hearing and hangs out in his jammies all day? Apparently Hugh Hefner’s personal bevy of blonde bunnies has been reduced from six to three because there was just too much jealousy and competition.

You’re kidding me, right?

I get that being one of Hef’s hand-picked shtuppettes gives a girl a little more, um, exposure but it’s hard for me to believe that these women are actually fighting with each other for the privilege of a few wheezy moments of Viagra induced boning with a guy who's old enough to be their grandfather.

I guess they’re just a bunch of Electra-lites. Great taste. Less Filling.

Happy Tax Day

For all of you in the eleventh hour of finishing your taxes, I wish you unlimited mental clarity followed by a really good bottle of pinot noir.

In the meantime, I recently got my tax refund check from the State of California. A whopping $2.00. When I was nine, my parents gave me a $2.00 weekly allowance for cleaning the kitchen after meals and making the perfect vodka tonic. In 1965, $2.00 was a big deal to a nine year old (as were good bartending skills).

But today I have to admit I’m a little disappointed. My bartending skills are still pretty good, and my kitchen is spotless. You’d think that Conan the GirlyMan, famous for his Neanderthal forehead, wandering hands, and lack of fiscal fitness would have found it in his heart to send me a bigger refund check. After all, I think I grossly overpaid this guy.

Time for the Terminator Tea Party.

Let My People Kvetch

Oy. Uncle Saul and Aunt Rose have been reincarnated as Easter candy.

Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Buy Gefilte Fish

“Have you accepted Moses as your personal savior?” Okay, maybe that’s not how we Heebs approach the unaffiliated (Jews who don’t belong to a synagogue), but after reading an article in today’s New York Times about “temple recruiters” hanging out by Passover food displays in supermarkets, I’m trying to imagine what the Jewish version of Jehovah’s Witnesses would look like.

A group of Hadassah bubbes is camped out by the matzo display at Ralph’s. With laser-like accuracy, they spot you, the twice-a-year-plus-Passover-Jew, at a hundred paces. You’re the one reaching for the egg matzos.

Bubbe #1 hands you a temple pamphlet touting Shabbat Yoga, comedy shows, and Torah cocktail parties while Bubbe #2 replaces the ’97 Bordeaux in your shopping cart with a bottle of Mogen David Concord Grape.

Next year in Riverdale.

No Bogus Apostrophes, Dude

Apostrophe. It sounds like the title of a Greek tragedy. Apostrophe was Antigone’s sister; you know, the possessive one.

But what’s really tragic is that so many people treat apostrophes like maraschino cherries, adding them to words whether they’re needed or not.

I see examples like this all the time:

• Back in the 60’s
• Apple’s - 3 for a dollar
• Womens’ restroom

Here’s how they should be spelled:

• Back in the ‘60s
• Apples – 3 for a dollar
• Women’s restroom

I know, I sound like an anal retentive, nitpicky cuckoo clock, but bad punctuation makes me all fatootzed. Sure, I have my own love-hate relationship with commas, but that’s another story.

And when I master the comma sutra, I’ll be sure to let you know.

When Do We Eat?

“When Do We Eat?” is new film about a Jewish family coming together for Passover. What’s the premise? Angst, dysfunctional family dynamics, and food. Like you had to ask.

Why is this film different from all other films? Because in this film, just prior to the beginning of the Seder, the family patriarch is slipped a tab of Ecstasy. Dude, this horseradish is so intense.

It opens on April 7th in LA, Orange and Riverside counties. Looks like we San Diegans got passed over.

And Your Little Dog, Too

My plumber recently told me that the guts of my office toilet are held together with Elmer’s glue and dental floss. He suggested replacing it with a Toto. Huh? The only Toto I’d heard of was a small, yippy dog that helped turn Judy Garland into the patron saint of gay men.

After a little research, I learned that Toto is the largest manufacturer of toilets in the world, producing more than seven million toilets annually.

But it gets better. I took a look at their products and nearly plotzed. They don’t just make toilets; they also make washlets. Who knew relieving oneself had become so evolved?

A washlet is sort of like a combination toilet, bidet, and sprinkler system. The Toto Washlet S300 features a heated seat, an automated lid, an aerated rinsing system with temperature control, a warm air dryer, and a self-cleaning system. And it comes with its own wall-mounted control panel and remote, so you can alert your commode to your arrival, and have the seat and spritzer set to your preferred temperatures.

Save me a prune Danish.

Just a Little Off the Top, Please

Here in SoCa, getting a nip here and a tuck there seems almost as common as getting an oil change. I see evidence of boob jobs and facelifts almost every time I leave the house. But a recent article in the LA Times described a disturbing trend in the quest for The Perfect Body – labiaplasty.

That’s right; women are going under the knife to create the perfect Porn Star Vagina.

Look, I’m all for making the land down under more attractive. And I’m totally down with the whole pubic hair as topiary idea. You wanna turn your unruly Bermuda Triangle into the gardens at Versailles? Grab a beard trimmer and have at it. But slicing up your labia, that’s another story.

It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “tight-lipped.”

Passover Candy Update

So I searched for Passover candy and found one resource. The Source for Everything Jewish offers a dark chocolate Seder plate and a box of chocolate plagues.

The Gentiles get jellybeans, chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, and those ubiquitous pink and yellow marshmallow Peeps. We get plagues.

We escaped slavery in Egypt, parted the Red Sea, spent 40 years in the desert, and we get rewarded with what? A box of chocolates depicting locusts, boils, lice, flies, bovine disease, frogs, hail, darkness, dead babies, and a river of blood.

Better get an extra box for Elijah.

Which Came First, the Schnecken or the Egg?

I grew up in the Land of the Mixed Message, so when I was very young I got an Easter basket every spring. I had no idea Easter wasn’t a Jewish holiday. I thought it was an addendum to Passover. After sitting through two very long dinners and eating matzo for a week, it made sense to be rewarded with jellybeans and chocolate eggs.

And then I went to Hebrew school and the Easter baskets stopped. But every March I still have a Pavlovian reaction to pastel colored foil. Don’t get me wrong; I love Jewish sweets. I mean, who can resist gooey schnecken or chewy rugelach or Zabar’s chocolate Dalancey Swirl Cake?

But there’s no actual Passover candy. (And those squishy kosher gum droppish things don’t count. My grandparents ate them year round.) I want something that says “Passover.” Something I can find at any supermarket or drugstore.

Let my Peeps go.

Your Windsong Stays on My Mind

German fragrance manufacturer Vivaeros has decided that the scent of a woman’s vagina belongs in a bottle. Their latest offering, Vulva, is supposed to remind you of “an authentically natural vaginal flavour.”

Since when has all womankind been reduced to one scent? And if my vagina has a “flavour," it’s most likely Cherry Garcia.

So, girls, if those personal ads aren’t working out, simply spritz yourself a few times with Vulva, and jump on a crowded subway.

Sigalert Stigmata

If you’ve ever spent any time in SoCA and listened to a traffic report, you’ve probably heard the term “Sigalert” once or twice. The official California Highway Patrol definition of a Sigalert is "any unplanned event that causes the closing of one lane of traffic for 30 minutes or more."

It turns out that Sigalert was named for Loyd C. Sigmon, a broadcast engineer and co-owner of KMPC-AM radio in Los Angeles. Sigmon developed a shortwave receiver and tape-recording device that would activate when it received a special tone sent out by the police dispatcher. When major accidents occurred, radio stations could record the information and then relay the news to their listeners. The first "Sigmon traffic alert" was broadcast over Labor Day weekend, on September 5, 1955.

But what really fascinated me about Sigmon is that he's a native of Stigler, Oklahoma, and in World War II was assigned to the Army Signal Corps. Coincidence? I don’t think so. In fact, I think Sigmon, originator of the Sigalert, was phonetically stigmatized.

Why We Neuter Our Pets

This is what happens when we don’t snip our male dogs. Especially if they can hold their breath, swim underwater for long periods of time, and are attracted to shellfish.

Actually, this cuddly little creature is a recently discovered species of crustacean called the Kiwa hirsuta. The name comes from Kiwa, the goddess of crustaceans in Polynesian mythology.

Who knew treyf had its own deity?

Follow the Bouncing, er...

Leave it to the Brits to create a sports bra advertisement that doubles as soft-core porn.

And after being mesmerized by the demo, my “girls” were thinking the same sorts of thoughts that regular dogs think when they watch the Iditarod.

By the Baitzim

While driving to yoga this morning, I was subjected to another sort of enlightenment. Red, plastic pendulous baitzim hanging from the back of a truck in the next lane. Before you run off to FreeTranslation.com, baitzim is Yiddish for balls, nuts, scrotum. You get the idea.

This I didn’t need at 6:00 a.m.

Buddy - FYI - even without the added baitzim, your huge, black, jacked up Ford F-250 with those three foot tall tires and tacky silhouettes of busty women on your back windows already screams, “Big schmendrick. Keep back 300 feet.”

There's really no need to advertise your shortcomings.

Much Ado About Drizzle

Note to all SoCa meteorologists: Lighten up! Just because a drop or two of rain is in the forecast, don’t go all Chicken Little on us by screaming “Storm Watch!” every minute.

We had a lousy 12 hours of light rain. Not a downpour, not an El Nino, not a monsoon.

Granted, there hasn’t been much precipitation around here since last August, but that doesn’t mean you need to get us all fatootzed with your meshuggeneh predictions. And what the heck am I gonna do with a bunch of sandbags, duct tape and plastic sheeting? Build a sukkah?

Stick to what you know: partly cloudy with a high of 72, surf 2 to 4 feet.

Some Like it Hot

I used to spend three hours a day at the gym sloshing through puddles of nasty sweat left by big, hairy guys who thought carrying a towel around was for sissies. My trainer kept me on a diet so Spartan, that if I even thought about olive oil I’d get zapped with a Taser. On top of all that, I ran four miles a day.

And then I found nirvana.

We Heebs spent 40 years wandering the desert so it made perfect sense to me to start practicing Bikram yoga. Each class is 90 minutes long and conducted in a room heated to 115 degrees. The first half-hour is a series of heart-pounding standing poses during which you’re not allowed to drink anything. What’s not to like?

And four days a week you’ll find me at the 6:30 a.m. class shvitzing my kishkas out and reliving the exodus from Egypt. I think they should call it Stretch and Kvetch.

From Bad to Worser

I was listening to “These Days” on KPBS this morning and heard Tom Fudge use the word “worser.” My immediate and visceral reaction was, “Dude, that’s so not a word.”

But I was wrong.

Hearing “worser” makes my ears roll up but - get this - it’s listed in three dictionaries! How can that be, and why didn’t someone tell me? And what the heck is happening to "good English"?

The whole experience makes me feel, well, worser than I thought.

Back in the Stirrups Again

Just had my annual pap schmear (for Jews, it’s always a schmear). Of all the services I willingly pay for, this has got to be the most humiliating.

I strip down to everything except socks and then put on a pink (oy, it’s always pink) two-piece tissue paper outfit that shreds the moment I touch it.

So, there I am, sitting on the table covered in shredded pink tissue paper feeling like a badly wrapped gift, with one foot in New York and the other in LA.

My doctor breezes in, inserts the Jaws of Life into my woo-woo, giving all my internal organs an opportunity to squint from the light. Then, from that vantage point, tells me it looks like I may have a sore throat.

And my insurance company has the nerve to ask for a co-pay.