came to Beit Shemesh today, and I attended with my mom. It's organized by Avi Liberman, the same guy in charge of the hilarious Crossroads tour. This time he brought with him Mark Schiff, Butch Bradley, and Steve White. Here are some of their most memorable lines.

AL: I was in Modi'in yesterday. Now in Hebrew, modi'in means "intelligence", right? That's kind of arrogant. "I'm from Modi'in! Where are you from? Beit Stupid?" But how intelligent can they be if they built their city 15 minutes away from Ramallah? Now if it was 15 minutes away from a beach, they might have something...

MS: You know you're really overweight when people whistle after you tell them how much you weigh. If they flinch, you've got two weeks to live.

BB: You're always hearing about groups of men going missing. Never women. The only time women go missing, one of us is involved.

SW: I grew up in Long Island, so I'm like a Black Jew. A Bew. Or maybe a Sephari.

MS: My grandmother would soak her undergarments in the sink. Leave 'em in there for a week. Every half hour bubbles would come up. "Grandma, run, it's alive!"

BB: We stayed in a hotel here... The only time in my life I called a hotel switchboard, asked for Avi Liberman, and got five different rooms.

SW: I voted for Barack Obama, but not for the reasons you may thing. I voted for him because he's black.

AL: The Hareidim may have made Ushpizin, but they wouldn't be able to make movies in every film genre. (Besides the most obvious one.) Science fiction. Guy goes into the time machine, comes back out--everybody's still dressed the same, everybody's still speaking Yiddish. Horror: instead of Friday the 13th, we'd have Thursday the 12th. Comedies! Instead of 9 to 5, we'd have--well, nothing.

MS: I've noticed that if a restaurant forgets to charge you for something--"Everybody, let's walk out nice and slowly." An' it's like you're robbing a bank. You get outside, "Get in the car! Get in the car!" Someone falls and twists their ankle: "Go on without me!"

SW: You've mostly got two types of blacks in America. There's the ones who go to Harvard, graduate top of their class, and become leader of the free world, like Obama. And there's the ones who become Flava Flav and OJ.

BB: Oxygen masks on airplanes. What kind of evil genius thought those up? We're in a steep dive, the last thing I want to do is remain conscious! If anything, they should pump nitrous oxide! That way we'd go out happy at least. "Faster! Faster!"

SW: Fooled ya! I'm a Negro. No refunds!! People hear "Steve White", they get all fooled.

AL: I was in Maryland one Shabbat and was given hagbah. Now, the Torah scroll was a bit large, and I was straining to lift it I blurted out, "Jesus, this is heavy." Yeah, great timing. Just then the rabbi leaned over and whispered, "For Chrissakes don't drop it!"

MS: Medical marijuana--my grandmother, 89 years old, has glaucoma. And she smokes 10-12 joints a day. I told her to stop, she said, "Don't hassle me, man. ...I'm gonna put on some Led Zeppelin and have a lie-down."

BB: Israeli drivers. You people are all so nice and easygoing and relaxed--until you get behind the wheel. Then you're like: "I'm gonna win." Our Israeli chauffeur was taking us around at high speed. "That's a police car over there!" "Well, he'd better be fast!"

MS: I met the cast of Seinfeld. There's Rich, Richer, Even Richer, and Extremely Wealthy.

SW: You know what a Shabbat elevator should be? THE STAIRS!!!

AL: Jewish holiday analogies for the goyim. Rosh HaShanah: New Year's but without the fun. Yom Kippur: Confession... all day long.

MS: My mother always had splitting headaches. Never ordinary headaches. Splitting headaches. "I've got a splitting headache!" Maybe that's because you've been yelling for the past 11 hours. Or drinking a cup of coffee every half hour.

BB: I was watching The Ring and the girl started to crawl out of my TV. Click--turned it off. And unplugged it. And turned it around so that it faced the wall. Maybe if she bumped her head she'd turn around and go back.

SW: There have been, like, two Black Jews in History. Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jesus. Oh, you don't believe me? It says in the Bible Jesus had "skin of bronze and hair like sheep's wool". That's either a black man, or Alex Trebek.

MS: The 99 cent store. You go in there and you see a box of 40 underpants. For 99 cents. And you buy it, even though the small voice is telling you you shouldn't. And then you open it up and all the underpants have the fly on the side.

SW: People acted like it was a big thing when they found out that Andrew Jackson slept with one of his slaves. But what was so unusual about it? Slavery was legal back then! Imagine you're the president of the United States, rich, powerful, and out back you have Beyonce, Halle Berry and Rihanna.

BB: My mom had a station wagon. Lime green. That way nobody's steal it.

AL: The Sephardim probably couldn't believe it when they saw what the Askenazim were doing to the chametz laws. "What're you gonna do next, get rid of rice? ...Wait a second!!"

MS: I put my exercise bike on my treadmill. I do 500 miles a day.

BB: Monkey bars in playgrounds--plumbing 40 feet in the air. So dangerous even the monkeys don't use them.

SW: What would a black production of Fiddler on the Roof sound like? "Who day and night must scramble for a living, feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers, and who has the right, as master of the house, to have the final word at home? The brotheeeeeeers, the brothers!"

MS: Tiger Woods on the Letterman show. "What's been going on by you?" "Nothin'. How about you?" "Same as you..."

BB: And those playground metal animals with springs on the bottom! You never see these kinds of springs anywhere else! Their purpose is to launch children.

SW: My wife made me watch three movies back to back with her. We saw The Bridges of Madison County, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Steel Magnolias. Then I had my period.

AL: The demographic that has the most people training as Jerusalem tour guides nowadays is the Arabs. No joke. I can see it now: "And here we have de Western Wall." "What happened here?" "Absolutely nussing. Nussing to see here, moving right along!"

MS: I had a friend who was obese, I told him, "You've gotta exercise!" Know what he told me? "Can't. I've got to get into shape first."

BB: You know how on airplane flights the pilot periodically tells you how high the plane is? Do I really want to know that?? They should lie, tell us the plane's six feet off the ground. Then I'd think, Good, if we crash I can jump and roll.

SW: O.J. Simpson broke the cardinal rule of crime: if you got away with it, shut your damn mouth! I mean, you don't see Woody Allen hanging around Asian daycare centers, do you?

AL: Purim is great. It's the only holiday of the year where you're supposed to get plastered. Your gentile neighbor sees you coming out of the house with a Jack Daniels in one hand and a vodka in another-- "Where are you going?" "Synagogue. Have fun at church!"

MS: They asked me at the hospital for my emergency number. I put down 911.

BB: Our son was born, 6 pounds, 12 ounces, 0.08 blood alcohol.

SW: John McCain would have made a great president. In 1871. When he was 60. Why he probably would have owned Barack Obama. ...Hey, if I can't make a slavery joke, who can??

AL: Subways in New York--they change the schedule on you arbitrarily. And if you're from out of town it can be quite disconcerting. The announcement comes over the loudspeaker: "This train is now the 2:00 G train." And those announcements get weirder and weirder the later it gets. 1 AM: "Now holding a cockfight in the last car." And by 2 AM you're in the Twilight Zone. "Next stop: St. Louis."

MS: I can never ever find anybody in a supermarket who actually works there. I was in the meat department, came across a guy in a white shirt with blood all over it. "Pardon me, do you work here?" "No."

BB: I've got an East Coast mentality, so there's certain things I say--but I can't say them here, because in Israel I can sense G-d's presence. I can say them in New Jersey. I don't sense it there at all.

SW: When I first heard of Kwanzaa, I wondered what is was--an Australian airline? Actually, it's the black version of Christmas. Santa Claus comes down the chimney and steals your watch.

AL: When you try to describe Sukkot to a non-Jew, it makes you sound completely deranged. My friend Russell asked me about it. I told him: "Well, we build these huts, and then we sleep in them for seven days. (Only we don't really.) And we take a palm branch, a willow, a myrtle, and a really expensive kind of lemon... and then we shake them." "What do you do with them after the holiday?" "We throw 'em away. ...Sometimes we make a jam out of the lemon." "Is it any good?" "...No."

MS: An earthquake in Los Angeles wrecked a trailer park. 200 trailers destroyed--over $60 in damages. Now, I just don't get why trailers are so popular. Why would I want to live somwhere, if some guy want to sit on my couch, the house tips over? And if I'm in the bathroom and I'm thirsty, I can just reach over to the kitchen sink?

BB: I was raised by a single mom. She'd hear something in middle of the night, she run into my room and shake me. "Can you go see what that noise is?" "Mom, I'm nine years old!"

SW: Some people are obsessed with Splenda. "Gotta have Splenda. Gotta have Splenda." "Why?" "It's got half the sugar." You know what else has got half the sugar? HALF THE SUGAR!!!!

AL: Some Christians, monks, take vows of silence. That's another difference between them and us. How many of you can keep from talking between netilat yadayim and hamotzi?

MS: My mother was always telling me, "I'm not your maid!" And on the inside I was thinking, "Oh yes you are."

SW: Women think "compromise" means "do it my way".

MS: When the doctor asks you how you're doing, just make up something. "I'm fine. Haven't gone to the bathroom in a year."

AL: You can never get a direct flight out of LaGuardia. Last time I took a flight out of LaGuardia, the plane landed at Kennedy.

MS: I don't usually wear a yarmulke when I perform. Then they start pigeonholing you. Then I get booked less, then I get less pay, then my wife divorces me.

BB: You Jews, you're lucky--you always know what's going on during prayers. Catholics have no idea what's going on in Mass. Priest up front, mumbling in Latin, we have no idea what to say... We cheat, we copy what everyone else is doing. One of you could walk into a church, improvise something, and mess everybody up.

MS: Everything in Las Vegas is open 24 hours. Supermarkets. Jewelry stores. Family restaurants. What kind of psycho takes his family to a restaurant at three in the morning??

BB: The worst part about sitting in our station wagon were the vinyl seats. Those things heated up to the temperature of the surface of the sun.

SW: I don't get the big fuss over Michelle Obama. "Ooh, she's so gorgeous!" Just because she's the First Lady doesn't mean you have to fawn over her. She's okay looking, I guess. Actually, I think she kinda looks like Chewbacca, but that's just me.

MS: The definition of shalom bayit: my wife sees something she wants, I buy it, and we have shalom.

BB: You Israelis are all so peaceful, sittin' around relaxed, sippin' coffee. Then you get behind the wheel of a car and it's all like: "I'm gonna win!!!"

SW: I'm not black. It's a birthmark. I just scratched it a bit too much.

MS: You can't threaten your kids these days. They'll sue you.

AL: Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving too. They're thankful that they border us. ...But they get mad at me when I call them "America, Jr.".

SW: I went to the Dome of the Rock. You know what's inside? A Starbucks.

MS: There's a law that if you snore, you must be woken up and told about this. I don't need this information!

BB: I got so intimidated by the El Al security personnel in the airport. They told me "Drop your pants", I complied immediately. "If you find anything, let me know!"

SW: I know what you're thinking. "Damn, he's got a lot of teeth!" Well, I can use 'em for other things than show business. For instance, I go jogging at night.

MS: No hareidi asks his wife for fashion advice. What would she tell him? "Wear the black jacket... and the black pants... and the black loafers... and the black yarmulke... and the white shirt... and the tie with a soup stain on it."

BB: Girl Scouts are really good at selling those cookies. One troop I knew used their money, instead of camping out in woods somewhere, they rented a condo overlooking Central Park. And even if they had gone camping, they wouldn't have gotten lost. Because they would leave a cookie trail. ...Unless they brought Boy Scouts along, in which case they would be eaten.

MS: If your wife hears a noise outside--she wakes you up: "Honey, there's someone outside." "Good. That's where they belong." But she makes you go and check anyway in case it's a murderer or something. And as you leave, she says, "Don't forget to put a sweater on, dear." And when you go outside--she locks the door.

SW: I've got ADHD. That's Attention Deficit in Hi-Definition.


TODAY'S BOOK: "The Hangman's Ghost Trick", by Scott Corbett ((c) 1977)

Labels: biographical