Blog-Stalk Confessions: Florida part 1- of sunshine and circumcisions...
Wed Jan 4, 2012 6:42:05 am

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My Sunday started at 3am. I woke up, showered, had a light breakfast and got going to the airport. Check-in was a breeze and I passed through the new back-scatter x-ray machine at the airport without developing any instantly noticeable tumors. The flight was uneventful and over quickly. I snatched my luggage and went to find my friend, who was picking me up.

The first thing I noticed about my friend is that he had lost weight. Then he made fun of me for having gained weight since I last visited, so I made fun of him for being a married man with three kids. Yaknow, best friend stuff.

It was interesting seeing him. I have mentioned in passing on here about how we both bonded in our teen years over the fact that our lives were heading in opposite directions, and we kind of joked about how the process had continued. Once upon a time, he was the non-religious kid who was not motivated by money at all and only wanted to enjoy life and I was the god-fearing boy who was going to be a < insert prestigious profession here > and who was completely obsessed with material things. Now we are both over 25 and the role reversal is complete. Having met us twelve years ago, there is no way you would have picked him as the rabbi with three kids and one on the way who works fifty to sixty hours a week in search of financial freedom and me as the happy-go-lucky single layabout who ate some delicious bacon today.

After the airport we stopped for a quick breakfast, then went on to his home, where a neighbor was watching his son. My friend married a woman who already had two daughters. That is quite an interesting story in itself, but if I digress to it this post will be even more 'too long' than it already will be. Their first child together, his son, is just shy of two years old. He is movie-star cute. I'm not a fan of lying about ugly kids, trust me when I say, this kid makes Shirley Temple look like Gary Busey. It took him a while to warm up to me, which I can honestly say is pretty common with me and both children and puppies. I tend to frighten them at first. Dunno why. But this kid, who has a Hebrew name that is spelled exactly like a certain disney princess and whom I always refer to as 'the little mermaid', he and I bonded quickly over an incident of hilarity. His dad was playing with him while we were both watching football, letting him climb around on him, and then as kids will sometimes do, he bit down on his dad. More specifically, he bit down on his dad's penis as he crawled over his dad's stomach. Daddy yelped, I laughed and so did the kid. We were instant best buds.

The rest of the day went by nicely. Eventually the mom and the other two kids came home. They are an awesome family. After dinner and bedtime, my friend and I took our laptops downstairs to his building's common area, where we ended up playing Madden for several hours and losing track of time. When we finally realized how late it had gotten, we made haste and he drove me to my Aunt and Uncle's home, which is where I was going to spend the next two nights. I got to them at 1am. Fortunately for me, they are night owls. My Uncle gets up twice a night to pray and my aunt worked a night shift for 30+ years and just can't get to sleep before 3am. The upside of arriving that late was that I was able to play the 'i'm tired' card and avoid my uncle's immediate attempt at starting a conversation about religion with me. I went to the room that I slept in so many times as a child, laid down in 'my' old bed and dicked around on the internet for a while before falling asleep.

Day two started with a covert operation. A couple of blocks away from my Aunt and Uncle's place there is a small cuban market that makes the awesomest guava pastries ever. It's sort of a square turnover that is served warm, and it was the first non-kosher thing I ever ate. Since then, I have made it my business to go back there and have one whenever I've visited Miami. I was almost unable to do so this time because my cousin (the dorky one who likes to follow me around ) is also staying at my aunt and uncle right now and he wanted to go with me when I said I was going for a walk. Still, I managed to impress upon him that I wanted some alone time and he didn't force the issue. I went, got my yummy pastry (diet to be continued after this weekend...) and enjoyed it while strolling around the neighborhood. Right after I had finished my last bite, I turned the corner to head back to the house and I ran into my uncle. We talked for a few moments, and trying to pick the most innocuous topic I could so as to avoid discussing the religion thing I mentioned the unseasonably warm weather we'd been having in NY, which was of course a mistake as he informed me that it was obviously a sign of the messiah's nearing presence. So yeah, global warming's just the messiah. Tell your friends.

Got back to the house, learned that the whole family was going to the synagogue for a bris (ritual circumcision of baby boy), decided to go along for the free food. I was the only person there who was not wearing a traditional suit or gabardine, but let me tell you, that did not make the lox and bagels and less tasty. The kid was nicked, then named. He was named after this sect's former grand rabbi, a guy who has been dead for 16 years but their community has thoroughly deified at this point. Every family has a kid named after him. Between the name and the long letters they were reading from him I just wanted to get up and shout "He's dead, let it go!" very loud, but I didn't. Because my mouth was full of bagel.

Oh, I also was sadly amused by one little thing that is indicative of the overall attitude that I hate about most orthodox sects. After the prayers and before they started reading that letter crap, the whole synagogue started talking. Just one of those things where all the people in a quiet room suddenly think it's okay to talk. So the guy making the announcements yells "Ladies, please be quiet!". Get it? Cuz it couldn't have been the men causing a gabby disturbance. Jackasses.

The rest of my day was a walk around the neighborhood. I was disappointed to see that the area had become even more touristy than it already had been, which is quite an achievement in South Beach. My favorite thrift shops were pretty much all gone, having been replaced by scooter rental stores, 'authentic' mexican places and crappy burger chains. The worst thing about those scooters is that these lazy tourists get to ride them on the sidewalks. Sidewalks should be for pedestrians only, dammit.

My one favorite thrift shop was still there, thankfully. I picked up a handful of books for .50 and $1, including a science fiction book which I'm sure is going to be terrible called "Grimspace."

The rest of the day included a covert trip to whole foods for dinner and a hour-and-a-half one-on-one conversation with my uncle that I absolutely refuse to recap because it would give me a headache. We'll just leave it at the fact that he's very convinced that I will be religious again someday.

And that brings us to today. On the way to Prinny's I saw the following things.

- A BJ'S Department Store and a Dick's Sporting goods in the same shopping plaza.

- A man talking to himself on a public transit bus. It made me feel like I was home.

- 8 Asian girls trying to use expired transfers on a public bus, and holding up the whole bus for five minutes while it all got sorted out.

Then after getting to Prinny's I saw-

- Prinny.

-Prinny's friend, who is also cool.

- An IHop.

-Gratuitous violence in a cartoon.

And that's my trip so far.