What's In a Name?

Psychology, Judiasm, Numerology, Runic systems, the Harmonic Vibrations peeps, a kerjillion cultures across the world who give divergent private and public names to their wee ones all agree.... that your name? It is your destiny.

My brother the mohel

My dad, who is very generous with everything, including the term “favorites,” has many favorite jokes. One that always makes him laugh (this is in his accent, not mine) is:

A guy walks by a shop with watches hanging in the window. The guy walks in to havehis watch repaired. The man behind the counter waves him away.
“We have no dealings in vhatches,” he says.
“You’re not a watchmaker? So what are you?” asks the customer.
“I’m a mohel,” replies the man.
Customer: “So why should you advertise with all these watches in the window?”
Mohel (pronounced 'moyle'basically): “Nu? Vhat would you think I should hang instead?”

My brother was for a long time trying to become a mohel. Turns out that mohalim need to be trained by… mohalim. My mom got annoyed because a potential Mohel Master would not take on my brother, who is a completely anal, OCD (i.e. excellent) student, and not just in my mother’s eyes. (Of course he is also, in her eyes, the perfect son, but that is an entirely different post.) The mohel’s apparent concern? My brother is not religious enough.

My mother’s reaction (she really should have donned her Christmas sweater ensemble for this statement): I mean, he is a Reformed Jew! Of course he is religious! He just doesn’t necessarily go to shul (temple) or believe in God. So nu? (A.k.a. So what?!)

But it turns out that actually, she was half right, in that (even though my brother swears he is now - away from our very religiously confused household and alongside his newly converted, very sincere wife - is quite religious and does believe in God), a lack of god-believing cred turned out to matter to no one. Much in the spirit of a terrible ethnic stereotype, the fellow wouldn’t take him on because they could not settle on a price, since my brother refused to shell out the exhorbitant per day fees of this mohel's training. Sigh. And my mother was very disappointed. Turns out she was eager to have a t-shirt made about the whole thing.

Luckily, several thousands of my brother's dollars later, my mom's dream was realized. The mohel flew out to my brother's place, intensively trained my brother for some probably reassuring amount of hours. [On a side note: The mohel even brought my brother a gift, a Shabbos bread board with an embedded 9" serrated knife. The mohel took this on the PLANE. As a CARRY ON. No problem. God love the no-we-don't-profile ways of airport security, eh?]
And my brother performed his first brit (religious circumcision) as a mohel at 8,000 feet, at his own kitchen table, in front of their rabbi, Elijah, my parents and I, the kvatter and kvatterin (kinda like godparents), and several of their friends, in August … on his OWN son.
In the words of my friend Mister Hogan (cue visual of depressing finger on imaginary intercom system button),“Paging Doctor Freud. Dr. Freud? Paging Dr. Freud.”

Baby Max, my sister-in-law, her friends? All wept with various volumes of accompanying noise. My mother took off her glasses to remain near-sighted, stood in the back and stared at the ground. My dad, who got to play the Sandek, put on his hearing aids for the occasion, concentrated on minimizing his flappiness as he soothed the squirming infant, and declared the cranberry juice to be the most tasty wine he’d had in a while.

I took commemorative pictures - only above the waist, of course. The dog, Jezzie the Hooch, remained locked outside. After the snip-snip and the naming ceremony, everyone did what we Jews do, whether an occasion is sad, stressful, or cautiously joyous.... we all ate.


Meanwhile, my brother left the foreskin in a clamp on the kitchen table for the next five days of our visit so the dog couldn’t eat it before they got around to burying it. After all, he’s a very traditional guy, my brother. Oh and my parents? They got to wear the t-shirts my mom had made:

Our Son the Mohel.

The Talent of Manifesting Material Goods

Everyone can manifest something – and my friend A of A’n’Aa? She is no exception. I can weirdly manifest musical instruments and really almost anything else I truly consider wanting. But A? That girl can manifest kick-ass furnishings like there is no tomorrow. And then convince neighbors she doesn't even know to lend her dollies to stroll down the street with said furniture to her house. She rocks!

Another Reason to Love Craig's List MCs

But first, this year's CLMC Best Title as Visual Award goes to:

N Judah This Afternoon Holding Starbucks with Right Nose Ring

Huh?

So what was the left nose ring doing?

And now, my-nother reason for loving this section (dedicated this week to T and P):

In M4W, titled: Guy in swing downstairs at Power Exchange

MC: Hi, I was the naked guy in the swing downstairs, you were the pretty woman with someone else. You said hi. Send me an email or be sure and come by Friday nite between 10PM and 2AM to say Hi!

Hope to see you again!

LOL. God bless the lovers, the dreamers, and Kermit the Frog.

Despite the G.reat W.eenie, DC Teems With Activist Spirit

But they are a little clumpy in the summer.

So I was informed by reliable PD sources that for ten hours a day, seven days a week, any sick person can experience the true blue jubilation of being subjected to the workings of a full-scale police station without actually getting beat down and then booked for (blink) “resisting arrest.” Yep, DC’s got a Museum of Crime and Punishment, which apparently includes all sundry items from a lie detector you can try to pass to the “artifacts" of "criminal consequences": guillotine, gas chamber, electric chair, lethal injection machine, self-created devices for injury and escape [eh? now that is a criminal consequence? you have to fashion your own weapons? nice], and Al Capone’s jail cell.” Wait a sec – aren’t some of these things certain states still like to use at 12:01 a.m? And are things “artifacts” if they are still in use? I know, details, details.

The museum, it turns out, belongs to the school of Realism. You pay hella dough to get into and out of the system, and, with seemingly no irony, the museum charges 12-59 year olds as adults. Huh. Couldn’t have predicted that. It is almost like this museum is guiding national policy.

Getting ready to move to (or from) DC yet? If that doesn’t get you to turn on your printing press and crack open your Realities of the Prison Industrialist Complex Statistics Manual, it turns out the museum employs (?) black men in orange jumpsuits to desiccate as they pound the muggy summer sidewalk, "inviting" folks in. Now, that shit is just plain ol' FUCKED UP. Unbelievably, no locals are becoming summer sweat puddles next to these fellas fliering AGAINST the museum or contents thereof – or at least handing out accurate pro-dignified-life literature. I mean, where the hell ARE the skinny white anarchist crews when ya need ‘em? Is there a Franti show somewhere I don’t know about? Shit, if folks were down to organize I’d crank out the fliers. Shit, I’ll make the MyFace group. Send me word.

However, lest you believe that G. Whiz’s DC has become apolitical cesspool waiting for salvation from the beautiful Obama, right close to this museic atrocity, I caught up with the sign waving “Stop Bird Pornography: Save Our Feathered Friends” contingent. This is one passionate group who are probably perfectly normal pervy folks and perhaps not even vegetarians. But they are definitely down to yuck the yum of Birdy Porn watchers everywhere. Feel free to read more here:



I, for one, ask: Wait, are these people for or against it? Let the elderly and binocular-toting have some fun! And, fer realz, the problem is that there are sexy birds to be peered at everywhere. I, for one, have a lifetime goal of trying to avoid too much eye-feather contact, especially after one pooped on my head and then another (one minute later) pooped on my self-righteously-upturned-in-horrified-mid-gesticulation palm (ruuuuuuuuuude) on 16th Street back in the day.

But in DC, Bird Blindness simply wasn't possible. Birds are EVERYWHERE. Some are quite fetching, too. There, I admit it. Now, I am no virgin bird watcher but I am a fully awful bird identifier, and even as I type here in DCA's airport boarding area, there are chickadees of some sort looking at me cock headed and flying around the room. Seriously. In the airport. Now, I don’t wanna sound like a victim blamer, but these DC birds? Believe me, they WANT to be looked at. I'm just sayin'.

Mordechai the Jew

August 5th. Well, it's official. I am now a real live auntie (I know - it seems against nature, but too friggin bad) to a real live left-in-the-tub-too-long-looking pink wrinkly old man baby.

I keep getting congratulated, which I appreciate, since of course I didn't do squat. This is a great position.

So here's what I know. He, the stubborn uteral bump he was, refused to be forcibly induced last week, causing his frustrated mother to endure 24 hours of labor, only to go home empty handed (shaaaaaaady). Of course, he didn't seem to realize that causing such mama drama would affect him -- he too got hard-core pulsed for 24 hours, which I am sure could not have been pleasant.

This week he refused induction again, though he moved enough that his mama's water broke. One c-section later, he arrived, still a week ahead of predictions, weighing in at (let's just quote my brother here) "37 weeks, 5lbs 10oz of pure He-flesh" pounds, most of which could be credited to his Yoda-chihuahua eyes (see below).

So his punishment is that he is being named for some long gone old school Jews: my mom's paternal grandfather (Morde(c)hai), followed by her dad (Osc(k)ar). Yes, two very modern and therefore not at all torture-me-on-the-playground-screaming names, right? So don't worry -- the first one got anglicized to the Russian

Maxim (pronounced MaXEHM, sorta)

which results in his final monograms for all future preppy sweaters and luggage being: M.O.B. Now, discounting (1) Tupac's use to mean "$$ of b*%&#es" and (2) the previous "$$ over b%$#*es" and more classic (3) "Member of Bloods" and the more related (4) Medical Office Building and the unfortunate (5) Mail-Order Bride, M.O.B. could be really a great help to his rep as a tough guy or for cute phrases when he is in trouble, like:

"Listen, MOB Boss, you are gonna have a time out if you keep putting marbles in the dog's ear."

And somehow this all passed the kindergarten playground test. How that is possible, I don't know. I tried to warn them. I already cannot help calling him The Max-i-pad. I don't know why, apart from my emotional maturity apparently being stuck at 6 years old. But since it is all relative, I am seen as comparatively staid once you know that the local Hogan left me a message asking after little "Gluteus," which (un)fortunately might stick.

And while I appreciate for my new nephew's sake that Mordechai was l'chaimed right out of the running, isn't everyone gonna say, "Um, isn't Maxim a men's "fashion" magazine?" or "Hey, you know that is the name of a condom, right?" like I did when I first got wind of such ideas.

And now let's envision this name-as-destiny superimposed over the picture that my brother sent me on my phone. Aaaaw, the first view of the baby post those airbrushed black and whites they take with that darned ultrasound. And just to make sure you understand how not "every baby = automatically cute" I am, here's a transcript from the conversation with my parents.

Me: Hey, Will sent a picture to my phone.

Mom: Why did you get a picture and I didn't?!!

Me: Let's ignore the 'all about you' aspect for one minute, shall we?

Dad: I wanna see. What does he look like?

Me: He looks like a pink squishy gelatinous eggplant. Ya know, like a litter of mice, or a newborn white baby. Oh, but he does have serious marbles for eyes. That makes him look especially alien and creepy.

Mom and dad (collective moan, which is weird because it indicates that they both 1. are shocked I would say such a thing about a baby AND 2. actually heard anything I said -- despite being deaf in one ear and super hard of hearing in both ears respectively)

Dad: Will says he looks a lot like me. Jamie calls him 'a baby L' [that's Flappy to you].

Me: I would say that really sells you short. You are definitely pink and squishy, but you are much cuter. And you are a little taller.

Me: (internally) Weirdly, I DO see the resemblance, especially in their hands, which makes me think differently about my dad's features. And not in a good way, though I still think of Flappy is cute as a button.

Me (show them the picture)


Dad: Oh he is so beautiful! He is so cute! (Background noise ratchets up as my mom, between her puh-puh-puh spitting into the Evil EYE so it cannot HEAR my dad's comments, is yelling at my dad to quit cursing the kid.)

Mom: Look how alert he is! He DOES look like dad! (Somehow, that is apparently not seen as a compliment, because she doesn't puh-puh her own words. And on a side-note, I would like to point out that my dad, while many things, would never be accurately described as 'alert' looking.)

Mom (again): He is clearly a genius, a scholar, a thinker, a puzzler; look at that wrist pose (her own puh-puh-puh round ensues... in a frenzy, she has cursed her own grandchild and tempted the Evil Eye to come down on wee Mordechai the Jew and take him because he sounds so appealing. Greeeaaat. I am just glad we are not repeatedly spitting on any upholstery of mine.)

Mom and Dad (collective sighs, a tear slides down my dad's cheek - literally - because, it turns out, my dad starts to cry every time he even THINKS about this little ball of squish, which is of course every third second.)

Dad: I get get teary even thinking of him (cue quiver lip). Every time. It is just such an emotional thing for me. He does look like me, does he? (Flappy smile and flapping)

Me: Again, alien gelatinous old-man blob versus cute squishy dad who just got his haircut short enough that he can see through it. Yes, he is your spittin image, sweetie. Now give it a rest or I will send the M.O.B. after ya.

(NOTE: OK, I admit that, despite 2/3rds of his weight coming from his eyeballs, I understand that I am gonna inevitably love every ounce of him nonetheless. Sigh.)

And lest you indiscriminate baby lovers out there think my assessment of this nephew of mine is unkind, allow me to leave you with his visage.... bemoaning the historic persecution of our tribe? Trying out for The Sopranos? Proving that he is reincarnated from the model for David Alfaro Siqueiros' 1937 "Echo of a Scream"? Practicing his first cuss words? You decide.