Hebe on the Range

Dateline, 5770

Shanah Tovah I said to my friend Elon.

Not exactly big news (though perhaps big nose), one Jew wishing another a Happy New Year.

Except that it was happening in the VIP room at the Pendleton Round-Up.

Elon expressed some concern that I was going to get us killed, revealing our shared tribal identity.

I tried to reassure him that with any luck, our furrin jibberish would be mistaken for another tribal language entirely.

Not the kind of Princess who attended High Holiday Services at the Dix Hills Jewish Center, back on Long Island

Apparently, in Eastern Oregon, tribal dancing does not refer to the Hora.

Still and all, if you want a reason to say the Shehecheyanu (i.e., the blessing for new experiences) you really can't do better than Jew at a rodeo.

The entire weekend was very educational.

This is not a slick lick banker from the city, come to talk simple farm folk out of their land

This is the Cheez, in his homemade string tie (Recipe: buy string. tie string. good to go.), sitting with Young Joey Smallwood and not-s0-Millie Vannelli, in the lobby of the Balch Hotel in scenic Dufur, Oregon, where our party spent Erev RoundUp.

Half our party had rooms with a Mount Hood view. The other half had rooms with a private bath. Suffice it to say, Mount Hood is breathtaking, but a bit far to hike when you need to take a leak at 2 am.

Nevertheless, I do recommend the Balch Hotel. Especially over the alternative.

Alleyway "Suite," The Dalles, Oregon
No Mount Hood view, but you can pee just about anywhere,
including on the mattress. You probably wouldn't be the first.

I realize rodeo is not without controversy. I mean, just because I'm pro-seal hunt, doesn't mean I can condone a "sport" that involves animals being prodded and herded through a chute.

Oh, wait, those are the patrons.

So if you're wondering how a nice bleeding heart Jewish pescetarian like Macaronimaniac ended up Rounding Up: it was really an act of international diplomacy. Because Little Joey Smallwood had arranged for us to share the event with Hannu Penttila.

Hannu Penttila being not a pineapple-glazed Hawaiian pork dish (so not Rosh Hashana), but rather the Deputy Mayor of Helsinki.

Of course, the Finns being known for their wild and crazy ways, Hannu really taught the otherwise dour and sedate Pendletonians how to cut loose.

When Ken Isley, aka the Rodeo Clown, announced to the thousands of gathered fans that the crowd included a couple who had come all the way from Finland, someone in the stands greeted them with the welcoming shout, "At least they're not from France!"

I am not making that up.

The Finns were not the only ones having trouble crossing the cultural divide. When Cheez went off to the Little Cowpokes room, I asked him to pick me up a vegetarian snack on the way back. Alas, he spent twenty minutes waiting in the Beer Chips line.

Still, plastic beer tokens might have had more culinary appeal than some of the weekend's other offerings.
Of course, any event whose tagline is Let 'Er Buck offers fascinating gender politics as well.




I hadn't seen anything quite so manly since . . .
hmm, well . . . I guess that would have to be, since I lived in West Hollywood.








Seriously, I had no idea that when they announced which bareback rider had won the purse, they would mean it so literally.
Yes, men compete in grueling physical activity, and then the winner rides around the arena with his new handbag and new blanket. How butch is that?

Okay, not very. But I wouldn't mention that in Pendleton, any more than I'd wish them a great big L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu, and a rousing Vive La France.

Southern Culture. A Term I Use Loosely.

This week's episode of How Weird is the Life of Macaronimaniac features someone named Sister. 

Who is not my sibling. 

Nor is she a nun.

She's from that kind of Southern family a mutual friend explained to me in which the eldest daughter is called "Sister" and the eldest son is called "Brother."

Is that the same kind of Southern family I asked in which Sister and Brother end up marrying each other?

I know that's a tasteless joke. Nothing but a narrow-minded, carpet-bagging, Northern aggressioning stereotype of fine Southern culture.

Except that Sister did marry a brother.

Although not her own.  

Nor a monk.

She married the brother of my friends Little Joey Smallwood and Susie Sustainability.  In other words, Sister is their sister-in-law.

In addition to not being from the type of Southern family in which siblings marry, Sister is apparently not from the kind of Southern family in which every knows how to line dance.  And lucky for me she isn't, because that's how I met Sister . . . when Sister and her sister-in-law Susan decided to invite several dozen of their closest lady friends, including Sister's mother-in-law, over to learn line dancing.

Among other things.

Where can we go line dancing? one of the ladies excitedly asked, as we threw back some lemonade mojitos in between Boot Scootin' Boogies.

Michelle, our fearless teacher of all things line danceable, quickly gave us a rundown of local venues, clueing us in on which had the best dance floor, and which is better known for a certain mating ritual called . . . well, let's just say it shares the second two initials of certain Southern president, although it references an activity more recently associated with a different Southern president.

And here I do not mean Jimmy Carter and the WB.

 

Suffice it to say, it is the sort of alcohol-fueled activity you don't want to have to hear described in mixed company.  

And by mixed I mean, in the presence of Sister's seventy-something mother-in-law.

This is not one of my usual photoshop mash-ups.

It happens that the only picture of have of Sister's mother-in-law is one in which she is wearing a clown nose.

Needless to say, given the clown nose, this picture was not taken while we were line dancing.  

It was taken while we were at a Korean banquet in Elmhurst, New York.  But surely you could have guess that, right?

Anyway, we did learn some line dancing.  I can now Electric Slide.  And Cotton-Eyed Joe. Not to mention Watermelon Slide.  And of course, as aforementioned, Boot Scootin' Boogie. 

Or at least I could, as of last Tuesday.  I think I might have forgotten entirely by now.  Good thing I have this footage.  Or bootage, I guess it is.

Tthat was so much fun, let's see another!

Who gets to make up the moves for each song-dance combination? I wondered.

It's done by a committee of Southern ladies my friend Rachel surmised when they aren't otherwise occupied planning toddler pageants.

It's a weird way to spend your time.  But I guess it beats marrying your own brother.

Eat Your I ♥ NY Out

You know how sometimes, though you've eaten enough, and maybe more than enough, you just can't help but go back for more?   Even though you are already really, really, really full, and whatever else you intake is just going to make you feel sick? 

(If you have no idea what I am talking about, you clearly are not Jewish.  Not even a little bit,  three generations back, on your father's side)

Well, that going back for more even though you have clearly already had too much—that's what I did last week.

With the whole city of New York.  

Yes, I (swine) flew back from the Big Apple in May, then turned right around in June and took another bite.

And lest you think gluttony was my only indiscretion, I also am guilty of balling students. Plural, I know, how bad is that?  Older.  Younger.  Male.  Female.  How can MacaroniManiac do such things?

I'd like to blame it on the Martinis, and the Mets.

The Martinis being the Pink Martinis, who were playing Carnegie Hall.  And the Mets being the baseball team that even though I grew up thirty miles from Shea stadium, I'd only gone to see twice in my entire life, until a certain Joey Smallwood-wannabe convinced half of Portland to trek across the continent to celebrate his birthday.  

And while we were in the neighborhood, I figured we might as well have a knish.

(for those of you who do not order your meals with a side of Maalox, let me just explain that knish is a two-syllable word, beginning with a hard "k" and ending with the most nostalgic case of heartburn)

So between attending the swanky concert and the soggy ball game, I took a passel of Portlanders and their stray pals on a nosh n shlep of ethnic eats across lower Manhattan.  

It was a light midday grazing, at least by Jewish standards:

• three flavors of falafel    
• north Asian dumplings  
• arepas (for the Maalox-swillers in the audience, arepas are like an Andean hamantaschen.  Except they're made with corn meal instead of white flour.  And savory rather than sweet filling.  And not meant to be reminiscent of chewing anyone's body parts.  In other words, nothing like hamantaschen)
• kasha knish 
• the world's greatest doughnuts (listen, when you live with a Canadian, doughnuts count as ethnic food)
• and the piece de resistance: takoyaki, just like Mama used to make.  

Provided you had the kind of Mama who'd whip up octopus balls whenever you needed a nosh.

Perfesser, will this be on the test?

Only on the taste test, Joey, only on the taste test.

I did enjoy the food.  And the concert (despite lack of martinis in liquid form).  And the fact that the baseball game ended early due to rain.  

Still, I was glad to get back to Portland.  Where, while you can't just walk from arepas to octopus balls, you can bike to almost anything, (including to the annoyance of snobby New Yorkers, who can damn well kiss my hot knish).  

And so, home from having octopus ball-ed Joey Smallwood,

 I proceeded to hop on my favorite two-wheeled conveyance to seedball the city.

Seedballing being not, as the picture on the right might suggest, a chocolatey snack,  albeit still a quintessentially Portland pursuit.

in which a woman who proudly boasts of wearing vegan shoes (you can always tell a Reed graduate) instructs a gaggle of do-gooders in the ins-and-outs of guerilla gardening.

Because while we may not have anything as fancy shmancy as New York's new High Line way out here in provinces, we do have a bunch of high on life along with, well, let's just say that what that vegan shoe trods upon is not the only grass to be found in Colonel Summers Park young persons, willing to flout the law just to make the flowers bloom.

So yes, I've been balling my students.  

And spreading my seed.  

But still, there are worse crimes to commit.

Like having that second donut.  

Forget the Martinis and the Mets.  I'm going to blame it on the Canadian version of the Twinkie defense.