Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Pesach Recap


I have been dying to blog since the seder, but have been wildly tired and going to bed at 9pm. It is now one minute to nine so I have to write fast.

The seder was a success (see lovely comments from Dee on previous post; thanks, Dee!). We read a bit from the Italian Haggadah, we drank (some of us too much...hope you're feeling better...you know who you are!), and I observed five people polish off a vat of chicken soup.

When I went to pick up the meat from the butcher, he was out from behind the counter, madly cleaving some part of some animal, shaving off its fat. He turned to me with doleful eyes and said, "Mi dispiace, signora." I thought he was going to tell me he sold my brisket to some other Jew or that he couldn't sell it to me because he went home after putting it aside for me and realized he was an anti-Semite. Silly me. He was only apologizing because he failed to procure the chicken livers. He was visibly pained over it. I told him not to worry, The Husband would be relieved.

The butcher went into the big fridge and brought out my hunk of mooing love and my chicken (I took the smallest one he had...two kilos...and the seder group still ate it all!). On my previous visit I had forgotten to ask about the lamb shank, so I did so then, all apologetically for not having advised him sooner, telling him it was for the seder plate, that it represented the sacrifice, jewda jewda jewda. He looked at me quizically, so I continued explaining, zampetto di capretta, cosce di agnello, non lo so, and he said, "No, no, I understand," went back into the fridge, and came out carrying half of an entire lamb. He pointed to foot of the skinned beast and said, "Va bene questo?," this okay?, and after I nodded because what else was I supposed to do, he simply hacked off the foot and wrapped it up with my chicken.

This was my first seder with a lamb foot that I saw come fresh off a lamb. It had toenails. I should have taken a picture. Next year...in Naples!

As for the chicken, it still had a couple of feathers on it, so I had to pluck them like a babushka in the shtetl. I felt so old country! It's harder to forget your chicken was a chicken when it still has feathers. Store-bought chickens look more like headless babies. I am now going to try my best not to think about headless babies.

The only other Jew at the seder table was the aforementioned Dee. She brought Rakusens' matzoh sponsored by the Jewish Chronicle. It had the letters JC in the corner, so I naturally thought it was sponsored by Jesus Christ.

My most recent ex is a carpenter and my father or my mother, I can't remember who now, said to me as a warning (?), "You know, Jesus was a carpenter." I told my ex that and he said, "Well he was a Jew first." Good one. He's still a dick, my ex, but that was a good one.

That felt good, calling my ex a dick on my blog. I might have to do that more often. No hard feelings!

So, the seder group sang a chorus of Dayenu (Ci sarebbe bastato!), dubbed the brisket "la genovese ebrea," recited the 10 plagues while dipping their pinkies in wine, reclined, and made it through a meal without bread. I am so proud. Even La Bimba sat through the narration. La Bimba loves Zio Sal, Zio Mimmo, and especially Aunt Catrin for whom she did her gorilla scream and imaginary bicycle dance.

I taught my first yoga class at the Mudra space today. Only one person came (thanks, H!), but it was great. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that no one from Mudra will ever read this blog, so let me tell you how fucking annoying they are about money. H. wanted to know how much a gym membership costs, how much a yoga series costs, etc., and the woman was all, "Diciamo...tipo...va beh...potrebbe essere." What is with these people? Print a flaming price list and hand it to people.

Neapolitans HATE to put prices on things. I once had a rude awakening when I went to a dance studio here (I will refrain from mentioning their name as much to avoid trouble as to avoid giving them any publicity, positive or negative) to attend a lecture they sponsored. The invite said nothing about price. As I was walking out the door, the bitchface secretary (and I mean BITCHFACE; she is awful, and no, having a baby has not softened her at all), said, "Oh, you have to pay 30 euro." Thirty euro to listen to someone talk about how to do dance PR in Italy? You know I would never have gone if I had known it cost 30 euro. I told her I'd pay her next time because I only had 10 euro on me. When I returned to the studio to take class a couple of weeks later, the woman actually stopped me on my way out, again, to ask for the money. I told her, "Non si fa così," and she couldn't look me in the eye when I handed her the cash. Stronza!

They really know how to make you feel cheap here.

On a lighter note, The Husband informed me today that he would like to roast a baby pig at La Bimba's birthday party. Will La Bimba ever be able to enjoy "This Little Piggy" without having flashbacks to her first birthday when she saw a little piggy spinning on a spit, engulfed in flames? My dad is looking forward to tasting it.

That reminds me of a story the late Olympic champion wrestler David Schultz told me when I was hanging out with him on John Dupont's Foxcatcher Farm in Pennsylvania (I was there with another ex, long long ago, too long to remember if he had been a dick or not; but not that long before Dupont shot and killed Schultz...horrible story). Schultz and his family -- wife, very young son and infant daugher -- were about to eat some venison when Schultz said to his son, "Son, tonight we are having Bambi for dinner." Poor boy dissolved in tears. Schultz also told his son when his wife got pregnant the second time, "Son, we are having another baby. So, we are going to have to give you away." By then the son was used to these taunts and just rolled his eyes.

Sometimes I write things about people that I regard as amusing, as something to smile about, and, if they're no longer with us, to remember them by, fondly. Sometimes I'm not sure they would see it that way.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

your font is sooooo small, why not make it normal size?