We Are Not Pregnant

By Mink

As my fellow Jewish people approach Yom Kippur, the most reflective day of the year, I have been doing a lot of reflecting and soul searching. But recently, in these precious meditative sessions (which usually occur on my throne with a flusher), my brain has been clogged up (no pun intended) trying to make sense of an annoying phrase that I have heard way too frequently of late.

Several of my more mature friends have begun conceiving children. And for some reason when the husband decides to interrupt my reruns of Scrubs to bring me the grand news he will say something like this "Just wanted to let you know that we are pregnant." Am I the only one that thinks this is outlandish? Yes this is wonderful news and I am excited for your new cheese drooling addition but unless you are now the governor of California, (see the legendary Junior) it is never acceptable for a male to utter this phrase.

Your involvement in the pregnancy starts and ends with the magical night that you slipped one past the goalie (if you are looking for a full birds and bees explanation send an email over to SingerZ). The statement "We are pregnant" suggests that you are the one with the weird hormone changes, vomiting, and maternity clothes. Despite the fact, that during a brief stretch in law school I had these symptoms and wore overgrown sweatshirts, I am pretty sure the only thing I will ever be able to deliver is a bad joke.


So please, if you are going to announce that your wife is pregnant. Firstly, don't interrupt my TV time and second don't give me that "we are pregnant" garbage. If you insist on including yourself in the statement try something such as "I knocked my wife up." Or best of all you could say nothing at all, invite all your friends to a barbecue and let a cake with a sonogram covered in frosting do the talking (see picture below---Nate you are a genious).

Have a happy new year .

Random Thoughts from my (big) Head

by singerz

I didn’t have the patience to write a full-fledged, beautifully interconnected, articulate, introspective, deep post. So I just threw some random goofy shit together and hope you enjoy what goes on in my head. And my head happens to be big. Literally, not figuratively.

Big news. I have a new favorite snack. That’s right. I do. I’m not lying. After years of sitting on my Twizzler Nibs throne, I have now switched to…wait for it…CREAMSICLES. I spent two and a half months of the summer searching for these snacks, and I finally found them and ate 16 of them within 4 days. That’s quite a lot of Cream and Popsicle. Cream-sicle. Popsi-cream. I’m changing the name- POPSICREAMS. Delicious, really delicious.

Know what annoys me? Leftovers. Growing up, every Monday night in my house involved reheated items from the weekend food. My mom is a great cook, but somehow between Friday night and Monday everything melds together into a mush of leftovers that is indiscernible. Cannot be discerned. A mush of chicken, meat, soup, salad, potatoes, grape juice, bread, gefilte fish fat juice, and cookies. Indiscernible.

Speaking of my Mom and Food. When my mom is serving food onto everyone’s plates, and I have put my rice or potatoes ALL THE WAY to one corner of the plate with clear intentions that I do not want any of the juices from other food items touching my rice or potatoes, my mom has DEAD ON ACCURACY. Without fail, the food she is serving will end up directly on top of the food that I was trying to protect in the corner of the plate. With that aim, my mom should take up archery

Last Wednesday. Last Wednesday night, I found myself at home. Which is awesome, because I had been looking for myself for like 3 days and home was the last place I thought to look. If you did not get this joke, read it again. Still no? Once more. Get it but don’t particularly like it? Suck it.

Toys ‘R’ Us. Why is the ‘R’ in the Toys R Us logo, backwards and in quotes? Are they mocking dyslexic people? Do the quotation marks around the backwards ‘R’ emphasize it, as if to say- “Look, only dyslexic people see this as a proper ‘R,’ isn’t that funny?” Well I have news for you Geoffrey you little awkward son-of-a-bitch giraffe, ITS NOT FUNNY.

ANOTHER GUEST: Levi's Mom is Funny

by Levi

It was one week ago that my parents and I flew down to Florida. It was on this flight that a somewhat innocent and mild incident turned publicly embarrassing and somewhat comical. And I begin.

My parents are not young. They are not old, but they are definitely not young. So when we travel together I usually step up and "assist" to the best of my ability- carrying bags, dealing with the airline staff, collecting the luggage from the baggage claim... you get the point. Our flight was scheduled for 6:00am, and at that time we were smoothly departing- Go Blue! (jetblue, that is). Seated side by side were me and parents- I had the window, my mother the middle and my father the aisle. Aww, family flights. Soon after being airborne we all religiously break out our headphones to watch tv. After some channel surfing (which btw, should be called channel 'scrolling' b/c on jetblue you can only go up or down, so when you have two channels that you'd want to watch, say ESPN and Animal Planet, but they are separated by 14 other channels, it gets very painful on the fingertips).

I started to recline my seat and try to get comfortable. In doing so, I noticed that the row behind me was completely vacant. SCORE! Not even relating this goldmine to my parents, I selfishly and quickly unbuckle, and like the gazelle that I am jump from armrest to armrest until the aisle. I excitedly take my seats and contort into my new found leather bed. (not one to break the rules, I tried tri-buckling. Not gonna happen- it felt like I was on a leather bound stretcher- all that was lacking was the neck brace.

This is the part of the story that the age of my parents comes into play. You see, in normal settings they can hear just fine. However, as anyone who flies knows, there are other elements that exist on a plane- there's the cabin pressure which pops your ears, there's the silent hum of the engines outside, and of course there's the HEADPHONES that have the live tv pumping into your ear canals- that can decrease the hearing ability of anyone. These elements are just that much more potent when one factors near-retirement-age into the mix. One also may overlook the fact that just because you can't hear does not mean that everyone else cannot as well.
After about 10 and a half minutes of hearing my mother SHOUTING to my father about Rachel Ray's approach to salting pork ribs on The Food Network, (keep in mind, I too had headphones on, and even one row away I heard her loud and clear so) I decided to "assist" the situation, by getting her attention to make her aware of her very-loud-talking.

I sat up and gracefully reached my hand above the seat in front of me and gently tapped my mothers head. {Now, for those of you who do not know me and/or my mother, I get much of my satirical and comical genes from her. She's a lovey-dovey cutesy type who likes to joke around, at home.} Immediately after my hand completes the second tap, my mother SCREAMS "SOMEBODY IS TOUCHING ME".

My hand is still red (from being caught red-handed, dahh) and my body instantaneously freezes. My eyelids open like a dear in headlights not wearing any underwear. And as the sound waves from my mother's rape-like bellow reach the front of the plane and cause the entire plane to turn and look, I slowly tip toe my hand back to my lap and elegantly slide my entire body through my seat belt onto the floor.

Sure, her intentions were clear- she didn't realize the booming volume of her voice, and she was just being her lovey-dovey-joking-self. She continues to be unaware of the whole state of affairs and goes on talking uber-loudly to my father. Out of pure, raw embarrassment I smack the back of her chair with my elbow, from my new seat on the plane- the floor under my lone row.
I managed to make the best of the situation- the other passengers were calmed when they saw that there was clearly nothing awry; but in this day and age- when a bottle of water is considered a threat and everyone is aware of everything it definitely makes my top 10 list of embarrassing-situations-on-a-plane-with-my-parents-from-last-week.

After I got our bags from the baggage claim carousel, my face finally returned to the post-birth paleness I was born with and I was able to recount the story to my parents. And yes, on our way out of the terminal, I know I noticed some undercover security officials slyly following me....

Tour de Court and the Fantasy Life

By Mink

I recently attended a lecture where a well known litigator explained how he was so prepared for his oral argument that he actually became relaxed when the judge started asking him questions. He was so comfortable and well versed in the subject matter because he knew he could answer any question and could on for hours about every nuance of the case.

I was thinking to myself “wow that is really impressive I never could imagine being so knowledgeable about any subject.” (do you use quotes when you think to yourself?) But then I smiled as I remembered last weekend and the absurd little neighborhood basketball tournament that we ran for the 12th straight year (or the bat mitzvah as we disturbingly have labeled it). I realized that I had reached a level of expertise that is probably Supreme Court level. I honestly would be unfazed by any question that could come my way.

To give you a little background, eleven years ago, back in the summer of 95 (in the days of VCR's , and the O.J. trial) a couple of bored and competitive teenagers (including yours truly) decided to bike around to different basketball courts around the Baltimore area where they would play until there was a champion. The obvious nickname choice for the biking and basketball combo was Tour de Court (Get it? you see the most famous bike race in the world is known as the tour de France and we replaced the evil French part of the name with "Court" to reference the basketball component.....genius I know).

Anyway, Tour de Court became an annual tradition with as many as 32 participants in a given year. The winners earn the prize of the gold helmet----an old ratty bicycle helmet that was spray painted gold and with the winners names inscribed each year. Like the Stanley Cup, the helmet is on loan to the winning team for the year and has become a prominent part of weddings and bar mitzvahs to the extended TDC family. (you can read all about this madness on our soon to be updated website http://www.angelfire.com/folk/TDC/tourdecourt.htm)

This summer, over a decade after its inception, the tournament’s proud executive committee members argued the same exact points regarding tournament rules and organization as we have for years. However, now instead of yelling at each other in backyards (and beating each other with sticks and assorted other sharp devices) we would just send nasty emails (with much bigger vocabulary words) from graduate schools or the workplace.

You see for a tournament like this to continue, there is a requirement that you do not grow up. It is a forum for a preservation of boyhood immaturity and a simulation of a professional athletic career that we will never have. You could say that I have Peter pan syndrome or live in a fantasy world but to some degree don’t we all?

I could spend hours boring you with the rich history of our absurd tradition with tidbits such as: that there is a player named Yoni Rosenblatt is the winningest player in our history with 7 gold helmets (by the way he won again this year)…… or that the 1998 tournament is forever known as the overpious debacle because it was postponed after several over-pious participants, led by Dr, Joshua Wolf, pulled out of the tournament in solidarity of a player falling off his bike and breaking a limb…….or that there is an asterisk in our record books because one of the infamous players in the tournament shamed Tour de Court by refusing to ride his bike (the gold helmet reads "*drove car" to commemorate this atrocity)

I will stop now because you have all just been exposed to enough sickness. I just am still dumbfounded that I am actually an expert in something. To be honest though, after an annoying couple weeks of planning and organizing, I am even sick of this tournament. So for the next 11 months or so it is time to get back to reality. The problem is I don’t think I have a reality. When my Dad called and asked how I would spend all my free time now my response was “Sorry Dad, I can’t talk now, I have to prepare for my fantasy football draft”








The Gold Helmet at a wedding