Magic Jewball

Well, that was fun. I’m not sure I’ll ever have that many comments again, but that’s OK. It was good while it lasted! And it came at the perfect time because I’ve been quite busy lately, coming off vacation, and it gave me an excuse not to write anything. And this week I’ve basically had a free dinner out each night and you know I can’t turn those down. Luckily for me, Okies seem to make the best ROTM’s.

But that gives me a moment to meditate on the fact that I really haven’t cooked anything at all in the last four months. The nadir is probably this evening, where my cousin and loyal reader Pious B is coming to dinner and I ran out this morning in a panic to Kosher Marketplace (one of the five cramped local kosher shops near me) to buy apricot chicken for $10 that I could have cooked myself for $3. But the sabbath starts at 6, I’m leaving work at 5, it takes me 25 minutes to get home, chicken takes an hour to cook, etc. You do the math!

I feel like a failure. I like to cook. I’m OK at it. It’s healthier. But I get home late, I’m surrounded by excellent food of every variety and I am, as always, truly lazyass. And this week I calculated that it’s actually cheaper to buy prepared food than cook my own! Except for that chicken. Whoops.

I think what I really hate is conforming to the idea that most of you already have from Sex & the City that New Yorkers use their kitchens merely to open Chinese food containers. OK, I do this. But not all the time, I swear. It’s just that in order to afford my teeny-tiny kitchen I have to work 12 hours a day and then there’s all that nightlife. Who has time to cook? Isn’t that what people come to America for? To open delightful ethnic restaurants and bring me dinner on a bicycle?

No, no, I kid. I know the American dream is to actually receive dinner on a bicycle. But not me, I actually walked two blocks and bought mine. See? I’m not as lazyass as I thought.

Title comes from:
Crowded House – Weather With You

Since this is my birthday month, I had to make my ROTM extra-spectacular. Who could I pick that would rock the J-Ball world enough to receive this incredible honor? Let’s see, it has to be someone who reads and comments a lot (naturally) but also someone who breaks the ROTM mold in some way. Even better is someone who tells me all the time that I’m prejudiced against an entire geographic region because I haven’t yet chosen her. And that could only be RN! Yes, it’s our resident Okie, RN, the Sooner fan. I don’t really know what a Sooner is but I understand the universal phenomenon of sports fanaticism.

Here’s RN with a permanent tattoo she got of her favorite team. Observant Jews think OU stands for Orthodox Union, but apparently things are different out there.

I’m also informed that RN’s daughter’s name has a Sooners connection but to protect the innocent (daughter, not Sooner) we’ll just leave that oblique.

When not attending all Sooners games (no really, there is an off-season, isn’t there?), RN is a …..wait for it….nurse. She doesn’t actually nurse anymore, but instead sells drugs. So if you see a nurse on your block pushing pills, make sure to congratulate her on this whole ROTM thing, OK?

Back home in Tulsa (the city, not the movie), RN has two and a half kids. The half is an exchange student but RN was coy on the subject of what exactly was exchanged for her. RN’s son plays in a rock band and her daughter doesn’t. Three cats who are part of no bands also help make up the RN household.

But it’s OK…is this not the glammest rock action shot ever? Yeah, I’d sign that guy. Sadly, I have no signing privileges. But I’d make him an awesome spreadsheet of his sales!

Speaking of bands, RN seems to really like them and their members, especially Gene Simmons of Kiss, pictured here getting up close with RN and some friend who doesn’t read J-Ball and therefore merits no mention. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, Gene Simmons doesn’t read me either, sue me

Hey, this is kind of a kinky picture, isn’t it? Gene would be so proud.

RN sent me like 20 photos, so I apologize for not including the kids and cats but this one had to make the cut. See, during football season, RN’s crew tailgates in the Hillel parking lot at U of OK. Hillel is the Jewish students organization, and, um, we’re not exactly known for our tailgating habits. The juxtaposition of two cultures in this photo made me laugh and laugh. Thanks, RN! (click to enlarge)

One of these people is RN’s husband but she’ll have to identify which one. That’s my way of ensuring she’ll comment. Pretty sneaky, huh?

Anyhoo, I did just want to say that the most important thing to know about RN, besides the fact that her comments are always smart and funny, is that she was extraordinarily nice about my delays in posting this. See, I told her two weeks ago that she was getting the crown and then I was all, “well, I’m going on vacation” and “maybe tomorrow” and “could be Sunday” and yet she was totally cool about it. That kind of understanding and patience and nicerosity totally rocks my world and made me want to make her Reader of Two Months. Then I could use some of her other wacky pictures (her daughter is adorable, so her pic would probably go first). But since she’s actually coming to New York next month and can claim her meal, I think that’s reward enough. Especially for me since I won’t be paying for said meal.

I had hoped to link to “Oh What A Beautiful Morning,” Oklahoma being one of my favorite musicals (shut up, I like Rodgers & Hammerstein), but, would you believe it? RN’s son’s band doesn’t just look good, they actually sound good. Who knew?

River City Ransom on MySpace

I know I said I was going to Paris for vacation but actually, I’m sort of on vacation now. It’s hard to explain and thus I won’t. Because I’m lazy! And private! But let’s go back to that first lazy one. Since you’ve all been leaving such fabulous sukkah comments and Celia was right that you need a new topic, here’s one for you so you can all be my guest bloggers. Please tell me a humorous vacation story. Non-humorous vacation stories are not encouraged, but since I don’t know where you live I can hardly track you down and reprimand you personally.

Also, should you have no vacation stories at all, just tell me anything. Remember, J-Ball readers are counting on you for new content. OK, they should have been counting on me, but I’m just going out and admitting right now I’m letting you down. Yes, yes, I suck. Be sure to tell me so humorously in a comment.

No song today due to laziness and/or vacation. Instead, please enjoy this adorable yet non-topical photo of a baby holding onto a subway pole which I’ve dug out of the archives.

Since I’m out of commission, and KP is the only one who even reads this thing, I let her choose. Here goes:

“Since Becca ruined my life by introducing me to the song Blue by the Jayhawks, I must return the favor by hopefully ruining someone else’s life with my song choice. It is called Can I Stay by Ray Lamontagne. I heard about 5 seconds of Ray one day and immediately searched for his new CD. I was not disappointed. Every song is amazing, but this one…this one is simple yet heart wrenching. You can hear the aching and longing in his almost whispered vocals, making you wish someone was singing this to you. Someday perhaps.

Now go download it before Ray gets too popular and we can’t like him anymore.”

Ray LaMontagne – Can I Stay (KP guest pick)

Tonight begins yet another exciting holiday, Sukkot (soo-COAT), or the Feast of Tabernacles. It lasts 7 days and has another fun holiday tacked on at the end (more on this next week), so it’s kind of like eight. My friends used to be able to keep track of this because my answering machine would have the message, “Hi, you’ve reached Becca. I can’t answer the phone right now because I’m out in my tabernacle.” Yes, we Jews build little structures outside where we eat, drink, and make merry. Some people even sleep in them but I was never much into camping. The sukkah, or booth, is made of wood or canvas or whatever but the roof has to be made of something that grows, like branches or bamboo and you have to be have more shade than sun. Most people make all sorts of fun decorations and hang things from the s’chach (that’s the roof material).

Having a sukkah in the chilly Northeast is somewhat of a challenge. Plus you have raccoons and bees to enliven your meals. When I was growing up we used to hang fruit from the s’chach and the raccoons used to pull up the string, eat the fruit, then leave the core hanging there. Good times, good times. Nowadays, I live the city life so I usually go away for at least part of the holiday so I can eat in a sukkah. This weekend I’ll be in fabulous New Jersey where the forecast is for rain. But hey, at least that will chase away the bees.

So why do we do all that, you may wonder. Because we’re crazy! But aside from that, it’s to commemorate the time when upon our exodus from Egypt (see Exodus, the book or Bob Marley song, for more) we lived in temporary dwellings in the desert, where presumably there were no raccoons and hanging apple cores.

The picture at the top is of my sukkah. Well, no, it’s just a cute cartoon I found on the Internets. But let’s pretend. Here’s a picture of former ROTMs’ Celia & Alex’s sukkah. Lovely!

This is also a great day for the Jewish people because it’s my birthday but, well, I still haven’t been able to find that anywhere in the Torah. I’ll keep looking.

This one goes out to, um, me.

Altered Images – Happy Birthday