Why is This Passover Different From All Other Passovers?
I have not collapsed into some deep mire of self pity or anything, I was cocooning at the folks' house for Passover, which is usually my favorite holiday in the world. Every year we celebrate Passover with 2 other crazy artsy freaky families, and we tend to get a little wild and crazy; we have props for the 10 plagues which we throw at eachother, we sing songs at the top of our tuneless lungs (the tuneless part being exclusive to my father and I), drink a lot of wine, and just act like a bunch of really silly kids. Its not quite your traditional seder, but its great fun! Every year the "kids" (an innaplicable moniker as the youngest of the "kids" is My Little Vidipookikins, who's almost 29) come up with some kind of additional creative Passover surprise. Last year it was a 10 Plagues of Passover song (to the not-so-kosher tune of the 12 days of Christmas) replete with hand gestures...and believe me, we ROCKED Passover that year! This year was not quite so successful. We fell flatter than a piece of matzah.
The troubles all began when the film fest powers that be insensitively decided to schedule their film fests in Boston and New York on a collision course with a major Jewish Holiday - in New York and Boston for fuck's sake! My Little Vidipookikins was thus forced to hover up north and for the first time in 6 years miss our communal Passover festivities. This left just me and her brother, the Space Pirate and I to handle Passover ourselves.
no problem. We actually came up with a concept that would allow Vidipookikins to participate, as we were going to have a video component in this year's seder. We decided to interview people on the streets of New York, asking them variations of the four questions and then compiling the answers into a hysterical funny and entertaining video, which would be interactive with everyone at the table taking turns asking the questions, and we would play the video of the answers - a call and response video segment that we would engineer to be very comical. it was a brilliant idea that could have been very funny.
Unfortunately Vidipookikins and I were never able to hit the streets, camera in hand and trick questions that would ellicit interesting and wacky responses.
The Space Pirate and I were still going to overcome this little hiccup in plans, as we arranged to meet downtown in my hometown, and interview people there the day of the seder. I brought my computer with me and we were going to then run to his parents' house, where the seder was being held, and edit the footage there on my computer.
Unfortunately Elijah was not happy with this plan, evidently, and things began quickly unravelling. First, my i-movie program suddenly went berserk and just stopped working. We imported the video clips and opened i-movie, which proceeded to work for approximately 2.5 seconds before shouting "fuck you!" at the top of its lungs and slamming its door shut like a overly hormonal teenager. That was it, no matter how we coddled and cajoled, it refused to open its door, refused to come down to dinner.
Plan B was quickly put into action and we ran like superheros, computer in tow, to the Jew-mobile which we drove at warp speed to his lair where we were going to connect the 2 computers and import the clips into his computer and edit there, then re-deposit the finished product into my computer and somehow get back for seder in negative time passage.
First we were unable to connect the 2 computers, but were able to overcome this little hurdle. We began to edit faster than imaginable, dodging angry phone calls from parents believing us to be overly irresponsible because we were already late to seder, when suddenly and inexplicably, the sound cuts out of his i-movie program and is irretrievable. I was impossible to continue the editing process with no sound, for my lip reading skills are not that developed, so we ended up with nothing but the original clips we had 2 hours ago, which when played all the way through with the questions being asked consecutively for each interviewee just weren't all that funny anymore.
When it came time for our great creative outburst in the seder, I went and got the computer, and we haltingly began. The "crowd" was silent, you could barely hear the clips, and frankly they all looked quite bored and angry that seder was held up for this crap. Only my wonderful little mother was laughing just a bit too loudly and the Space Pirate's mother was repeating the answers in an exaggeratedly interested way in a joint effort to be beautifully supportive. Our mothers are great like that. My father seemed bored as hell, but then again he's generally bored and makes no effort to hide it.
To make matters worse, we didn't even get to throw the props this year, we just merely held them up and looked at them in a very clinical and disspirited way. It was just not the fun and raucous good time it usually is; Passover was a bust this year and was finally saved at the end of the evening by the traditional Passover drunken dancing to cuban music, this year accompanied by wonderful drumming of Space Pirate's father and a 5 year old guest with better rhythm then I can ever hope to have.
Now I am back in New York, the long weekend having passed even more quickly than usual somehow, and struggling to stay awake with only the 3 hours sleep of last night to prop me up. I hate early morning flights. Its a wonder I can even type a sentence; I certainly can't seem to utter one coherently today.
My return is accompanied by the oh-so-lovely feeling of rushed scrambling chaos in which I tend to unhealthily exist; luckily I will be going to meet my parents for a week long vacation in Utah in 3 weeks, provided I can make it that far.
Anyone want any delicious matzah, nector of certain species of pigeons and city squirrels? Tastes just like an exodus through a hot and endless desert! Yummy!
The troubles all began when the film fest powers that be insensitively decided to schedule their film fests in Boston and New York on a collision course with a major Jewish Holiday - in New York and Boston for fuck's sake! My Little Vidipookikins was thus forced to hover up north and for the first time in 6 years miss our communal Passover festivities. This left just me and her brother, the Space Pirate and I to handle Passover ourselves.
no problem. We actually came up with a concept that would allow Vidipookikins to participate, as we were going to have a video component in this year's seder. We decided to interview people on the streets of New York, asking them variations of the four questions and then compiling the answers into a hysterical funny and entertaining video, which would be interactive with everyone at the table taking turns asking the questions, and we would play the video of the answers - a call and response video segment that we would engineer to be very comical. it was a brilliant idea that could have been very funny.
Unfortunately Vidipookikins and I were never able to hit the streets, camera in hand and trick questions that would ellicit interesting and wacky responses.
The Space Pirate and I were still going to overcome this little hiccup in plans, as we arranged to meet downtown in my hometown, and interview people there the day of the seder. I brought my computer with me and we were going to then run to his parents' house, where the seder was being held, and edit the footage there on my computer.
Unfortunately Elijah was not happy with this plan, evidently, and things began quickly unravelling. First, my i-movie program suddenly went berserk and just stopped working. We imported the video clips and opened i-movie, which proceeded to work for approximately 2.5 seconds before shouting "fuck you!" at the top of its lungs and slamming its door shut like a overly hormonal teenager. That was it, no matter how we coddled and cajoled, it refused to open its door, refused to come down to dinner.
Plan B was quickly put into action and we ran like superheros, computer in tow, to the Jew-mobile which we drove at warp speed to his lair where we were going to connect the 2 computers and import the clips into his computer and edit there, then re-deposit the finished product into my computer and somehow get back for seder in negative time passage.
First we were unable to connect the 2 computers, but were able to overcome this little hurdle. We began to edit faster than imaginable, dodging angry phone calls from parents believing us to be overly irresponsible because we were already late to seder, when suddenly and inexplicably, the sound cuts out of his i-movie program and is irretrievable. I was impossible to continue the editing process with no sound, for my lip reading skills are not that developed, so we ended up with nothing but the original clips we had 2 hours ago, which when played all the way through with the questions being asked consecutively for each interviewee just weren't all that funny anymore.
When it came time for our great creative outburst in the seder, I went and got the computer, and we haltingly began. The "crowd" was silent, you could barely hear the clips, and frankly they all looked quite bored and angry that seder was held up for this crap. Only my wonderful little mother was laughing just a bit too loudly and the Space Pirate's mother was repeating the answers in an exaggeratedly interested way in a joint effort to be beautifully supportive. Our mothers are great like that. My father seemed bored as hell, but then again he's generally bored and makes no effort to hide it.
To make matters worse, we didn't even get to throw the props this year, we just merely held them up and looked at them in a very clinical and disspirited way. It was just not the fun and raucous good time it usually is; Passover was a bust this year and was finally saved at the end of the evening by the traditional Passover drunken dancing to cuban music, this year accompanied by wonderful drumming of Space Pirate's father and a 5 year old guest with better rhythm then I can ever hope to have.
Now I am back in New York, the long weekend having passed even more quickly than usual somehow, and struggling to stay awake with only the 3 hours sleep of last night to prop me up. I hate early morning flights. Its a wonder I can even type a sentence; I certainly can't seem to utter one coherently today.
My return is accompanied by the oh-so-lovely feeling of rushed scrambling chaos in which I tend to unhealthily exist; luckily I will be going to meet my parents for a week long vacation in Utah in 3 weeks, provided I can make it that far.
Anyone want any delicious matzah, nector of certain species of pigeons and city squirrels? Tastes just like an exodus through a hot and endless desert! Yummy!
posted by Le Synge Bleu at 10:22 AM
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