Magic Jewball

Sorry, the run-up to Passover is long and arduous and has not allowed me much blogging time. I am aware of the dearth of iPod Songs of the Week lately, especially.

All Apologies is, coincidentally, not the iPod Song of the Week.

Rock on!
Becca

How many times have you seen someone crawling on the ground looking for their contact lens? Now you can help them with this handy widget!

Widgets: what can’t they do?

The Police - Contact

Guess what arrived yesterday! My Philly Race For the Cure shirt! It is really, really pink. Ostensibly, it is white; however, it’s filled with so much hot-pink lettering that it’s hard to tell. There’s also some Spring green, These are two colors that you will rarely see me wear and never together. But I don’t mind! I was so happy to see it that I hung it up on a hanger, which isn’t really something I tend to do with t-shirts. I may never have seen it at all because I used a fake name over there and the postal carrier decided to deliver it to one of my neighbors. I’m not sure which one because all I heard last night were footsteps and a soft thud in front of my door. By the time I got to it, said neighbor was gone. I kind of wonder how long this neighbor had it because it was postmarked 3/29 and it isn’t such a long way from Philadelphia. I know this because I’ve taken that trip 400 times in my lifespan. Eight hundred if you remember that it’s on the way from Baltimore as well.

Along with the t-shirt I also received my bib number. I’ve never been so excited to be a number! I put that in the big pile of Important Stuff on my dresser where it can keep company with Cure tickets I’ve had for a year and the $5 off Zyrtec coupon. They also sent a Phillies schedule - awesome, just what I needed. No, really, I needed it so I could have a good segue into my next story.

This week I attended my first game of the last season at Yankee Stadium. It’s hard to remember it’s the last season because my father tends to talk a lot about the previous Yankee Stadium and the way you could see the 9th Avenue El converge with several other lines that may or may not still exist because there wasn’t so much advertising. That is, you could see them because of the not-yet-created advertising, that’s not why they converged.

Anyway, I went to get me a hot dog at the Kosher stand (we have one too!) which is someplace different than last year. Behind the booth were two young guys and one immediately got me a frankfurter (as my father calls it) and the other was supposed to ring me up. Except he didn’t see the already put together dog and started to get another one set up. The following conversation ensued.

Kosher Guy1: I already got her the hot dog
Kosher Guy2: You did? But I got a big one.
KG1: So did I! They’re all big.

You don’t even have to have as dirty a mind as Becca to know what I was thinking.

Me: Ummm…
KG2: Yes?
Me: Please don’t make me say what I’m thinking.
KG1, looking baffled: Go ahead!
Me: Whoever has the biggest hot dog, I’ll take that. Thanks!
Kosher guys: Bwahahahahahaha!

Yankees win… thaaaaaa Yankees win!

Title will be understood by precisely one reader but is one of the double entendres I have known and loved in my lifetime.

Martini Ranch - Hot Dog

I don’t know what Kosher sports are but I’m intrigued. Not enough to go see the Nationals, however. This is my friend, IrishCardinal and her sister, IrishCardinal’s sister. They took this just for me in appreciation of the Hamantaschen sent with the return address of D. Jeter/A. Rodriguez. And the post-it note saying hi from Mr. Steinbrenner. Who knew those guys had time to bake Hamantaschen as well?

Anyway, this is all to say that I am beyond thrilled that baseball season has finally begun and even without Uncle Joe on the bench, I did cry on Opening Day. The second, less rainy Opening Day. Well, I cried on the first one but it was for other reasons.

Happy baseball season, everyone!

Frank Sinatra - New York, New York (Live)

The fool is me, as you recall. I forgot my Blogoversary. But as promised, here’s the celebratory post. Play along with me and pretend it’s the 19th, okely dokely?

Calculating the stats from my second year was tougher than my first. That’s because I had to subtract last year’s from this year’s. Math is hard! And why didn’t I have enough foresight to start my blog on a January 1st? But no matter, I still have my calculator out from doing my taxes (bake sale ingredients are tax-deductible, right?), I might as well get some more use out of it.

So! Let’s get to it.
Posts: 386 total/233 this year
Comments: 3,845 total/1,744 this year
Post with the most comments: And It Makes Me Wonder. And I’m so proud of that one because it was a discussion rather than just a bunch of comments. I love you people!
Top 5 Countries: US, Canada, Great Britain, France, Australia
Top 5 US States: New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Florida
Most popular search term: “roger federer jewish” - same as last year. (And he still isn’t.)
Most hotlinked picture: Bleeding Gums Murphy

As I said, this isn’t as exciting as my first blogoversary but I like to think I’ve matured. And by matured I mean that I don’t tinker with my design every weekend. The first year of the blog was really eventful, this year was more settled which I think led to more interesting posts. This is kind of like the way artists always say in interviews, “this is our best album ever! Our entire careers have led up to this point.” Yes, right. But I do actually think that not leading a wild and crazy life facilitated more thoughtful posts. Also, I think there was more “me” in the blog than before. That can’t be good.

Changes in my own life have caused the blog to be less religiously oriented but it still, I hope, has that Jewish inflection. But to bring some more of that back, and because I learned how to use the forms application, I’ve put in place a means to submit Jew & A questions without having to e-mail me (it’s in the sidebar under Pages in case you forget where this link is). People don’t like to e-mail. I understand this. You can be totally anonymous via form and submit questions whenever the thought occurs to you. Unless you’re not near a computer and then you’re just stuck. If it’s something private, I can even just e-mail you back. But then you actually have to send me your e-mail address. Sucks, I know.

I think one of the primary reasons this blog exists is that I’m the only Jew a lot of people know. That’s weird in New York but I have a lot of friends in those other states. Wisconsin even, did you see? They have more Wal-Marts in some places than Jewish people and those folks still watch Seinfeld and Sex and the City and they want to know what a bris is or why matzah tastes so stale even when it’s fresh.

If you don’t remember Jew & A, and it’s been a while, there’s a new category for it so you can just have a look at the old ones by clicking on that in the sidebar. Oh, and I’ve tweaked my sidebar to mostly make one blogroll and streamline some things. And I’ve updated David Nalbandian but that’s just because I knew guests were coming so I thought I’d clean up. Because a blogoversary isn’t just a time of reflection, it’s a time to look forward. I read that on a greeting card, I feel sure.

Lastly but not leastly, I want to thank all of you, for reading, for commenting, for e-mailing things you didn’t want to comment on publicly, for linking, for being Facebook fans, for giving to my charities, and for being pretty much the best readers in the whole world. Yes, I have scientific proof of that, I just choose not to display it. Just know that J-Ball would be nothing without you!

By the way, I lied. I downloaded a Firefox plug-in and spent two hours to get my new form just right. You knew I’d never change, didn’t you?

Like most white people, I can rap this entire song. I learned it from my Filipino suitemate in college.
Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock - It Takes Two