Purim and Patty's

Last week was Purim, which for you Goyim is the holiday in which we Jews celebrate the time we were saved from being killed en masse in Babylon by Queen Esther. This holiday is traditionally celebrated by dressing up in costumes, hearing the reading of the book of Esther in Synagogue and getting toe up...that is drunk. I'm not sure why you're supposed to get drunk, but there it is.
so I had to go to class on Purim, and in Union square I saw the Lubavitcher Hasidim in their Mitzvah tank( which is a van with pictures of the Rebbe and shit on it). Well they were WAY drunk by the time I got there. They were dressed up like clowns and cowboys but mixed together with their traditional garb, like some rodeo clown extra from Fiddler on the Roof. They had put a flat party hat on a picture of the Rebbe on the Mitzvah tank. They were offering free drinks to Jewish passersby if they'd don teffilin (phylacteries used in morning prayers) or light candles if you're a chick. If I wasn't running late for class I would have gotten some booze from my jiggas, the lubavitchers.

Then Franz hill came to visit. We went around the city having a grand old time. The day we did alot of our grand tour of the city was on St. Patrick's day. This of course is a HUGE deal here in New York. They have a big parade that starts at St. Patrick's cathedral and winds its way down 5Th avenue. We found ourselves in central park, right along the parade route. There were thousands of people dressed in various green or shamrock themed outfits drunk off their ass at 2:30 pm. The women were scantily clad (even though it was 40 degrees and there was a strong wind) and the men clad in many "blow me I'm Irish" t-shirts and the like. We were serenaded by many groups,gaggles,troupes,business's of bagpipers. Bagpipes are from Scotland...so I don't get it.
Franz and I decided that we should go out to some of the many Irish pubs here in Brooklyn and that's what we did. First we went to the Wicked Monk, a converted church, were we heard a crappy band called the Dirty Stayouts that played bad music from the mid nineties. Franz said he thought Dirty Stayout was a new name for dingleberries. I agree. We went to another place and accidentally used some money that wasn't ours to but drinks...whoops. Then we came back and drank and watched Ali G. good times.

I find it interesting that Jews and Christians both use the celebration of on the one hand the survival of the Jewish people from annihilation and on the other a celebration of the saint that brought Christianity to Ireland as an excuse to get really really drunk. I saw Jewish kids stumbling out of bars out into the street and redheaded ruddy faced laddies puking green beer into a trash can both as a show of both faith and national pride. I don't know that I find the whole thing sad of fascinating.

The day after Franz and I saw a group of guys in Coney Island who ran into the freezing cold Atlantic for a swim. They are part of the Polar bear club and they go swimming every Sunday. This guy went into water that was 35 degrees wearing only his swim trunks. There was a weird Russian guy filming a documentary about them. He interviewed us about it. I said watching him made my balls go up in my body in fright. Another guy who had gone in said that doing so, "really made him feel like he's alive".

Maybe that's the whole point of it all. Purim, St. patty's, or swimming in freaking cold ass water. maybe what is important is stopping to push our bodies for a while into a state where we understand things more clearly. Maybe in the altered states provided by booze/hypothermia we pierce the veil of our everyday existence and reach out or trembling drunken hands skyward to touch the face of God.

Or maybe it's just an excuse to get totally drunk and feel up a stranger and or be a freak and swim in water fit only for a penguin. I don't know.