A Woman's Place Is in Jihad

Love how the Jihadi gender politics debate is being scrutinized as an academically fascinating event. A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. That women have succumbed to this evil is a saddening perversion.

She Has a BF

The British are leading a new invasion. In video comedy.

She Has A Boyfriend - Watch more free videos

Stinksox

Ok, Boston has sold it's soul to the Devil. After 80 years of futility all of a sudden they win two world series and have back to back NO HITTERS? How else can you explain this? Like Hank says, we must restore the universe to order. Hopefully by playoff time the Yankees will bounce back. Hughes makes his comeback and has a good second half. Pap-smear has his arm fall off. Papi is caught with a hooker and Manny high fives a mack truck. All this redsox success is making me angry, I MUST RE-WATCH THE GIANTS SUPERBOWL.

If the Yankees don't win the world series, they should shell out the 100 mill for Yu Darvish.

Putin the Cryptofascist

Sounds kinky, don't it?

the force is strong in this one.

Han Solo might not have the force, but his reflexes are second to none.  

and the Yankees should get this guy 

Acta Es Fabula

Hard as it was to identify any of our kith and kin under the best of circumstances, my aunt’s estranged second husband was beyond recognition with Ki-Adi-Mundi’s gigantic egg-cone head, canvas robe, brown vest, and Jedi Council-issue collared tunic. A onetime star engineer in Sevastopol, Stepan failed to sell any patents in the U.S. Finding his life’s work obsolete, he’d traded in his Ph.D. for a barber license and opened a buzz cut salon in Forest Hills. His horn-rimmed glasses, slanted over the bridge of his bumpy resident alien nose, optically camouflaged near-empty, half-foot-long eye sockets. Stepa assumed an intellectual stance, hands behind back, looking toward the empty hupah amid set pieces resembling the idyllic lake retreat on Naboo.

It was a sight to behold. Weeks of incessant planning, checklists, research, fighting with relatives, recriminations, and political triangulation, all culminating in this very ordinary Sunday. Collateral damage sullied both sides. My maternal grandparents vowed never to speak to Marisa’s. Marisa’s catechism-trained stepdad reneged on his share of our condo down payment. The wedding party pairings had to be revised several times due to mismatched personalities. Marisa’s aquamarine-clad bohemian Jedi friends couldn’t get behind the aisle walk with my high school friends (whose gold Magen Davids were as thick as their necks), all clad in the scarlet robes and helmets reserved for the Emperor’s Royal Guard.

Rabbi Yoni, one of those ultra-reform guitar-wielding kibbutzniks fresh out of seminary, proved accommodating of our special requests, but stood his ground on the central issue: there was no way in hell he was sporting a full-body Yoda outfit. “No f’n way,” as he put it. He was 6’5” and not terribly found of jumbo ears. “Besides, someone has to be the center of gravity…I can’t do it looking like a huge green troll.” But, he’d go as far as wearing an olive-toned rustic robe of fine linen, and did make one important concession —the Seven Blessings in Yodish rearranged sentences —a Hebraic challenge Jonah embraced with heroic zeal.

The service began. After the wedding procession, the room, now heaving with extraterrestrial family, friends, and business associates, settled in —some wiping tears, others puckering brows in lingering disapproval, many curiously observing these heretical proceedings, everyone passively enduring the discomfort of their costumes. I looked over at my wing of the three-ring circus, where Marisa’s older brother, Vincent, was fingering his light saber. In comparison, my best man Sergey’s thoroughly wrought Obi Wan was an afterthought. Yeah, that Afro-hipster hair really brings out the force in Luke, I imagined him scoffing.

We said our betrothals and sipped from the special bottle of Mouton Rothschild Marisa’s oenophilic parents generously provided from their personal hallowed cellar. I placed a ring around Marisa’s slender finger and advised her that it betrothed her to me by no lesser law authority than Moses and Israel (“law of the Jedi” was stricken from an early draft over my bride’s muffled objection). Her impish eyes shifted upward slightly at the mention of these patriarchal relics of antiquity (as she once called them). And here, before our closest —and most alien —witnesses, we were prepared to embark upon the great mystery of marriage.

I turned back and swept my side of the aisle, evident emotion stronger up front and receding toward the back with each successive row of relatives. My own tearing eyes stopped on Grandma Ida. Her laser-beam glower was apparent even through the furry Chewbacca head, slightly modified to accommodate her asthma. My loving Grandma, who survived starvation in a ghetto when the Germans invaded and cursed Marisa in Yiddish every day until the wedding. We looked at each other a moment longer than the situation required, and I thought I finally saw consent in her eyes. Maybe not absolute approbation, but the unavoidable nod to the inevitable was there. Encouraged, I blew Grandma a kiss and imagined she caught it. We turned back for the last blessing.

“Blessed are you, sovereign of the world are you, Lord our God, the fruit of the wine created you have.” Marisa and I swapped a brief glance. By God, he did it! Yoni went Yodish, croaky voice and all. We smiled affectionately. It was real, then—we did it—we really were husband and wife, lord and lady, goose and gander!

Suddenly we started back as a spastic shriek filled the pews. Grandma Ida’s furry mask was off. She spat with a younger woman’s vigor, right into the aisle, the hallowed ground my sweetheart’s feet had touched just moments ago. Arms hoisted in the air like a manic music conductor set to bring down his baton, Grandma was raring to perform an exorcism. In the blink of an eye, Jango Fett and a coterie of Trade Federation viceroys surrounded Chewbacca and conveyed the churlish creature to the side exit.

Heaving a sigh of relief, I crushed the chalice beneath my shiny A. Testoni (a humble gift from my beloved well-heeled uncle), mashing the chards into the carpet fibers with heavy heels. After all, this could be the only chance I’d ever get.

Duuuuuude...

Don't ever call potheads uncreative. If you smoke weed out of a man's corpse, does his soul get high???...duuuuuuuuuuuuude.

Scared Vows, Part IV

Dad lifted off his hulking plastic helmet to adjust my Corellian bow tie. After months of tensions, squabbles, and threats (mainly from his side of the family) to defect back to Ukraine, I needed an anchor just now. However temporarily, I had to pick a side. “Papa, thank you for putting up with this. But you know these American girls. Hopefully this will quiet her silly Western temperament,” I grinned, rubbing my dad’s gray mane the way Marisa did her family’s mare. She’d have eviscerated me slowly with a hot serrated rake for this betrayal, but it came easy now. It felt good on this side, simple and right.

“Don’t worry son,” Dad said, hugging me. He pushed me away slightly for a better look and fixed his squarely eyes on mine. “This is the way with women.” No doubt about it —he was sending me a grave message, a warning more profound than the simple words couching it. And all I could do was nod back with practiced solemnity. But he was back on my team. Back where we had started. My father placed his right hand, calloused from a lifetime of grinding factory work and unmentionable side employment, on my back, as if to support me in case I fainted. “I wasn’t going to do this, Vitka…but my friend Edik said he did this for his son Misha —you know, the doctor?” I ignored the immaterial implication. “Anyway, he says this is an American tradition, so, here, I want you to have the American wedding.” Dad produced a tiny box and for a moment I thought he was proposing to me.

“Papa, I’m afraid I’m already spoken for. Maybe Mom can use a second ring.”

“Smartass, ey?” He took his hand off my back and gave me a quick shaloban —a mild act expressing both affection and aggression as a middle finger, pulled back like a slingshot by the big finger, lands on your forehead with considerable impact. Dad opened the box with some embarrassment, the way he’d always opened costly, elaborate gifts for us. Producing a clear zip-locked bag, I saw the contents immediately, incredulously. “Look, even has initials.”

Rapt with gratitude for this unlikely present, I felt a tremor only experienced during stirring old movies and the night Marisa smiled at my first profession of love (naively surrendered in appreciation for her sleeping with me). Suddenly the lids around my eyes swelled and filled with that familiar but —in my family — forbidden substance. My fingers numb with stupid happiness, I pinned my dad’s nuptial gift onto my shirt sleeves and jacket: pair of 24-karat gold Millennium Falcon cufflinks.