look it up!

I had called my father because I was going to brag that I knew of a half-Jewish guy who he didn't know of -- Paul Desmond, aka Paul Breitenfeld, the alto sax player famous for writing and playing "Take Five" with the Dave Brubeck Quartet -- but my dad, never batting an eyelash, threw Gene Wilder at me, and he's a real Jew, through and through, and I hadn't seen that coming. "How many times do I gotta tell ya, it's a stage name!!!" thundered my father, who, apparently, keeps a few such names in his back pocket, and takes them out when he needs to. It's a brass knuckles version of Who's A Jew that he plays, and if you want to play, yourself, you have to wake up pretty early in the morning. I called up Rod to complain, but he threw Jerry Garcia at me, and I was still reeling from Gene Wilder, and I didn't have writer's block, exactly, but "Jew's block" and I blurted out, instead, "god damn it," which is not a smart thing to say, in the grand scheme of Who's A Jew. Finally, I said, "Paula, Straight up Now Tell Me, Abdul," but it was too late, I'd already hung up the phone. I used to imagine certain people marrying certain people, and if she had married Kareem Abdul Jabbar, she would've been Paula Abdul Abdul Jabbar. How cool would that've been?

Want to share, with us, your favorite half-Jew? If so, then join us for another round of Drink & Walk, the happy hours where you can be a Jew, a half-Jew, a non-Jew, or someone who just likes to salt the meat. Ahem. Next week, Dad holds forth on the D.C. "tagger" Borf, thinking that, instead, the confused young man meant to say Barf, each time, but made a typo with the spray paint.