This is my daughter’s cat Bandit. He is two years old. She and her sorority sisters found this little guy on the streets of Manhattan when he was only a few months old! He was cold and wet and my daughter scooped him up adopted him. Don’t worry, this kitty does not want for anything! He now lives on the posh Upper West Side of NYC where he enjoys looking out the window, playing with his toys, purposefully knocking things off of shelves without consequence, and yes, getting lots of tummy rubs! FYI: this guy is great at catching mice!!! He must have learned that while living on the streets.
My friend and I wanted to take a trip to New York City to visit our longtime childhood friend Bernice Hedenmeyer. Well that was the plan anyway. We decided to do this trip on a budget since prices for hotels in Manhattan were so high. We went on a vacation rental App and we found a cute little apartment in the “trendy” gentrified neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant for a steal! Instantly, we got a message from the owner of the place. She introduced herself via the online messaging system and sounded really nice. Her name was Crystal and she said she wouldn’t be in town during our stay, but if we needed anything we could call her brother Matt who lived in the building. We flew into JFK on a warm sunny June afternoon, and as we entered the cab, the driver asked us “where to?” We gave him the address and he said, “Oh, you want to go to Bed-Stuy?” as he looked at us with confusion. We replied, “Yes, of course!” So on he drove. He pulled up to a old brownstone and we instantly noticed the homeless man standing outside the building holding Bloomingdales shopping bags. He was actually watching a young couple walk by. The young man was wearing jeans that fell below his tush and the girl was wearing a faux fur coat, (in June!) an extremely short skirt and ripped fishnet stockings. We weren’t completely taken aback because it was New York City after all! But that should have been our first clue. Also, we thought it odd that our cab driver threw our bags on the sidewalk and drove off yelling, “Good luck, you’re gonna need it!”
Upon entering the apartment, we were hit with a very strange smell that neither one of us could identify. We opened windows and it did not help, it was as if the smell was in the entire building! I called Crystal’s brother Matt and we asked him, “Not to complain, but there is an awful toxic smell in the apartment!” He quickly answered, “Oh, that’s nothing! The last people who stayed here burned popcorn in the microwave.” But to us, it did not smell that familiar. And furthermore, there was no microwave in sight! We figured that the smell would wear off and the apartment was quite lovely, so why complain? As a matter of fact, it was extremely clean. After we hung up the phone with Matt, we decided to unpack, and that’s when we noticed odd items in the closets. There were yellow coveralls, several pairs of knee high green rubber boots, several surgical typed masks, and a box of gloves. My friend turned to me and said, “What an odd choice of clothing.” But, we thought it was so kind of Crystal to have moved all these items to one side of the closet so as to allow room for our belongings. It got stranger as we unpacked our toiletries. Under the sink, we noticed several bottles of Drano, acetone and empty plastic soda bottles. In the medicine cabinet we found 11 boxes of Sudafed and in the drawers there were cases and cases of alkaline batteries! Now we started wondering… and the smell wasn’t going away. I was very thirsty so I opened the kitchen cabinets and there weren’t any drinking glasses, only beakers and test tubes like in high school chemistry lab. I did only what any thirsty person would do, I drank from the glass beaker. We thought how quaint and quirky was it to have beakers instead of glassware? At that moment, I received a message on my phone via the vacation rental app from Crystal. Her message read: “Hi! the wifi code is IcefactoryredP, you may have to jiggle the toilet handle after flushing, and let the hot water run for 10 minutes in the shower, and by the way, there will be some packages coming tomorrow between 3pm and 5pm that must be signed for, will you be in at that time?” Her message continued, ” I’ll give you 30% discount on the agreed upon price of the stay if you could do me one more favor. Find the boxes of Sudafed in the medicine cabinet, pour out the contents from each capsule into a saucepan and take 4 bottles of Drano under the sink and filter them through a coffee filter while adding to the saucepan. Get 19 AAA batteries out of the bathroom drawer and throw them in the pan as well. Oh and by the way, there are some items in the bedroom closet you may want to put on while doing this.” The message had further directions, but you get the idea! We began to wonder what all this meant, we were two middle aged ladies from Florida after all, what did we know from this, and besides, who doesn’t like a good discount? We began to follow her instructions and started “cooking.”
Soon after we started we heard a knock on the door. We thought the packages had arrived early. We opened the door and a man, possibly in his mid thirties, very scrawny with uncombed hair, missing a few teeth, with sunken eyes said, “Give me some crystal, man.” My friend replied, “Oh, Crystal, she’s not here right now, we are renting her lovely apartment.” He seemed agitated and kept shifting from one foot to the other. He went on, “No man, the ice!” So I went to the freezer to get ice. When I handed it to him he threw it down and said, ” Meth, man, the meth!” At that moment, which seemed like eternity, we stood motionless and looked at each other. My pulse started racing as I thought, The batteries, the Drano, the Sudafed, the coveralls and beakers….. without even speaking to each other I knew we had both come to the realization that we were in a meth lab! (which was convincingly disguised as a lovely newly furnished vacation rental). We slammed the door, turned off the stove, packed our bags, called an Uber that was brave enough to come to that area of town and ran pell mell out of there and never looked back!
Hi all. Our team is brainstorming ideas for new posts. We think human beings are extremely funny and most of the time we can see humor in everyday situations. As people, we all have quirks and habits and sometimes as a result of genetic makeup, ethnicity, life experiences or upbringing we can be downright hilarious! We strongly believe that we all must laugh at ourselves and our foibles and not be too sensitive; we should be able to make fun of ourselves from time to time! So that’s what we do. We don’t always write about truthful events; some are true and some are not. And some even have truth and fiction mixed together. But, they are all meant to entertain!
Hola Amigos, when we last met the Russian illegal high stakes mah jongg game was taken care of. As soon as Avi left for his mission, The Jewish Godmother bellowed, “Francine, get my accountant!” Francine got up from her seat and walked over to a table nearby where a man was eating an onion bagel. His name was Al Goldstein. She said to him, “Al! Godmother needs you!” At that moment, Al immediately dropped his bagel, grabbed his attache case and stumbled over to the back of the deli. As he sat down, the Godmother said, “Alan, we will be shaking down some Russians which will result in a surplus of funds. I will need your creative accounting skills.” While the Godmother was speaking, Al seemed to be preoccupied with his cell phone. The Godmother noticed, and yelled, “Alan, what are you doing with that fakakta device?” He replied, “I’m sorry Godmother, I was texting my new girlfriend.” Francine, who was a ‘Yachna Yentila’ asked, “Is it anyone I know?” The Godmother piped in, “Is it the Rabbi’s oldest daughter Fruma, she’s such a catch, I’ve been telling you about her for years, she makes a brisket like no one else!” At this Al replied, “No, no, you wouldn’t know her, I met her on a dating site.” Francine said, “Oh, J-date?” Al fumbled, “Uh, no, not J-date, it’s one of those other ones.” The Godmother wrinkled her brow, “What other ones are there for a nice Jewish boy?” Al started sweating profusely and answered, ” Well this one is not necessarily for Jewish boys.” Al’s phone rang and Godmother grabbed the phone from his hands and looked at it. “Call from Mary Margaret?” Al quickly took the phone back as she continued, “Who names their daughter Mary Margaret? Unless she’s not Jewish.” The Godmother stood up and shook her finger at Al and said, “Does your mother know about this?” Sheepishly he replied, “No, I haven’t spoken to my mother in over a week!” At that moment the entire deli fell silent. It was almost as though time had stood still. For everyone knew that there is a special place in Gehennom for Jewish boys who don’t call their mothers! Francine ran away in fear of what would happen next. The workers, overhearing the conversation, closed the blinds, locked the front door and patrons crawled under the tables. The room darkened and I swear I heard lightening strike as the Godmother beat Al with her pocketbook. “Whaddayamean? In over a week? She could have fallen and broken her hip two feet away from the phone. Or she could be lying in a gutter outside of D’agostino’s with a loaf of marble rye in her hand! Or God forbid, she could be stuck in a broken elevator with only a tuna fish sandwich in her pocketbook to keep her alive! What’s the matta with you? If you hadn’t been so preoccupied with your ‘Mary Magdalene’ your mother would be alive today! And, if by some miracle she is still alive you’re going to kill her anyway when she finds out you’ve been seeing a shiksa!!!! How could you do this, and during the Holiday season?” Al started to plead for mercy, “Please Godmother I’ll take any punishment, but please not The Guilt!” Godmother stopped beating Al and answered, “The Guilt? What about the GELT?” And with that the Godmother reached behind the screen from Chinatown and grabbed a 10 pound bag of chocolate Chanukah coins. She proceeded to pummel Al in the gut with it and He doubled over in pain. She then handed him a business card and said, “Here! I know a good gastroenterologist for your stomach pain… this is her card, she’s Jewish and she’s single! Now, Call your mother!” And as far as I know, Al never saw Mary Margaret again and he lived happily ever after with his gastroenterologist!
Until next time this is this is Jose Flores de las Gutierrez Perez de Fernandez de Leon de Jesus.
Two kids are in a hospital each lying on a stretcher next to each other outside the operating room. The first kid leans over and asks, “what are you in here for?”
The second kid says, “I’m getting my tonsils out. I’m a little nervous.”
The first kid says, “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I had that done when I was four. They put you to sleep and when you wake up, they give you lots of jello and ice cream. It’s a breeze.”
The second kid then asked, “What are you in here for?”
The first kids says, “a circumcision.”
The second kid replies, “Whoa, good luck buddy. I had that done when I was born and I couldn’t walk for a year.”
In New York City, located in the meatpacking district lies the McKittrick Hotel, an entertainment and dining venue. One day, my friend and I decided to go to see the highly acclaimed and much talked about interactive theater piece by Punchdrunk Theater Company called Sleep No More. We knew we were headed into a macabre experience, one like we’ve never had before when they took our cell phones away, made sure we were wearing closed toe shoes and they required each spectator to wear a venetian masquerade mask.
As we entered, an unusually tall woman dressed in a ball gown said in an uncharacteristically low voice, ‘Welcome my darlings, come with me.” She then proceeded to tell us that there was no talking permitted during the “performance.” This was like daggers to two Jewish middle aged women. We were given a brief description of how to maneuver through the production. There were multiple levels with a series of intricate sets and we would be walking through each scene, up and down stairs, into different rooms and corridors. All without any direction. If a room was empty, we could wait for actors to appear, or we could find an actor and follow him or her throughout the venue. The scenery was highly detailed and we were encouraged to rifle through props, drawers, cabinets and so on. They guaranteed that groups would be not be able to stay together, but we vowed that we would. Well we lost each other within 5 minutes! As I was wandering in a very dark space completely alone, I wondered, where was everyone? Suddenly a barrage of spectators who were following an actor came into the space and a scene was played before our eyes. The production was based on Macbeth; however, very little of what we saw that night was recognizable as such. During some scenes they actually took audience members into rooms and closed the door. No one knows what happened to these people. I was trying to find my friend, but to no avail. I remembered they told us that if we needed a break we could go to the bar. But if at any point a spectator asked the attendants where they were, the attendants would hold a finger to their lips and say, “shhhh.” That wasn’t helpful at all. Every scene was a myriad of gyrations, orgies with strobe lights and dance scenes that reminded us of something out of a satanic ritual. We finally found each other in the bar during one of our “breaks” and we couldn’t find the words. My friend was sitting in the back of the bar drinking heavily with her mask pulled up on the top of her head and when she greeted me she was unintelligible. I held my hand up and said,” Let’s take a moment to wrap our brains around this and then decide if we need to go back in and continue.” We drank in silence for 15 minutes and then finally we proceeded to share stories of what we experienced. Then, believe it or not, we went back in for more! It was similar to knowing you should look away from a train wreck, but you just can’t. In the next few minutes we were standing 10 feet away from a naked Lady Macbeth in a bathtub filled with bloody water. That was bit uncomfortable, but with that being said, it was the only glimmer of Shakespeare’s famous play that was recognizable. At that moment, we looked to our left and saw a 60 something tourist from Dayton, Ohio ( we asked her later because you know, the whole no talking rule). She was visiting her children who lived in Chelsea. It was her first day ever in New York City. I thought, Why did her children bring her here? Did they dislike her or did she lose a bet? The poor woman from Ohio who rarely left her front porch was watching a woman strip down to nothing and bleed to death in a bathtub in front of her. To this day, we have heard rumors that she never went back to Ohio. She now lives under the Brooklyn Bridge and sings show tunes to herself all day long! When we finally took the train home, we both agreed that we felt like we were dragged through the seventh layer of hell backwards by our toenails and yet we vowed to see it again one day. We heard that every time one sees it, the experience improves even more, and as much as we Jewish ladies like to complain, we have to admit it was quite a captivating experience!
There was a synagogue that had a mouse problem. They tried everything to get rid of them. They used traps. They used chemicals. They called several exterminators. Nothing worked. Finally, in exasperation, the congregation turned to the rabbi for any advice he could give.
“I’ll take care of the shul’s mice problem,” the rabbi said. “I will arrange for all of the mice to have a bar mitzvah, after that you’ll never see the mice again!
I don’t know where this joke originated, but it’s worth sharing!
Team Follow Through 
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