Category Archives: Traditions

Sawadee Adolf

October 1, 2011 – 3:58 am

Mel Brooks 1968 comedy THE PRODUCERS centers its plot of two crooked theater impresarios attempting to bilk investors by staging a musical called SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden. The play opens with a dance number complete with goose-stepping Nazis. The audience reacts with jaw-dropping shock, but to their […]

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How to Swear in Thailand

July 12, 2011 – 8:12 pm

Like most farangs I had a hard time learning Thai and only those Thais close to me can decipher what I’m trying to say with a Bostonian accent. Conversely most of what is said to me is too fast for my ears to catch the meaning, but one day I was arguing with a woman […]

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Spam Yummy

July 8, 2011 – 9:28 pm

Hormel Foods Corporation is enjoying an upsurge in sales of SPAM, that timeless mystery meat consisting of chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite. Tough times are breeding new Spam fans, although nowhere is Spam deemed more eatable than Hawaii and the South Pacific, where even McDonald’s offer […]

By Peter | Also posted in Food | Tagged | Comments (0)

Modern Tref / BET ON CRAZY

July 7, 2011 – 2:25 pm

The other day in the diamond exchange I spotted a young rotund Hassid eating potato chips. Manny, my boss, hates Raffa, since the two of us constantly discuss religious matters based on Talmudic laws. I called to him and asked, “What are you eating that tref for?” “Tref? Potato chips aren’t tref.” The 25 year-old […]

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Still Good To Be The King

April 3, 2011 – 12:28 pm

The 1961 movie ZULU opens up with a pagan fertility dance in which naked girls dance before Zulu warriors. I saw the movie five times for that scene alone. I was 12. This tribal tradition flourishes to this day in Swaziland, where tens of thousands of bare-breasted virgins shake their booty in the annual Reed […]

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