Food Part One

The food is good here and rich in the healthy traditions of the Mediterranean diet.  Humus everywhere.  I like hummus.  I used to make it myself back in Seattle, but there’s certainly no need to do that here.  Traditionally eaten with pita bread, but it’s good with potato chips, too.

Henry Rollins likes hummus, too.  I saw his little spoken word tour thing he did in Israel on DVD, and he was gushing over hummus.  Gushing.  He called it “sex in a bowl.”  His words.  Oh, Henry.  Thou need to get laid more.

But I’ve eaten a lot of hummus here, although I stopped eating it for a while after I saw Don’t Mess With the Zohan.  Horrible, horrible movie.  One of the running jokes in it was about how much hummus is eaten in here.  I got it.  Everybody eats hummus in Israel.  I was even eating it as I was watching the movie.  Hummus on everything,  hummus in everything.  Then I saw the Zohan himself brush his teeth with it.

He was actually brushing his teeth with hummus.  Ewww.  Yes.  Ewww.

I couldn’t eat it again for six months.  I couldn’t even look at it.  But I’m better now.  Even though Adam Sandler almost killed me hummus for me.  But here you go.  Have some sex in a bowl. 

Then there is falafel.  I could eat falafel every day.

Falafel b’pita, b’vakasha.

Im salat?

Betach.

Chips?

Betach.

Tehina?

Betach.

Kharif?  Pelpel?

Oh, you better believe it, boyo.

All for fifteen shekels or less.  I hold it in my hands.  This fat pita stuffed with stuff.  True manna, my friends.  And wherever you eat it, the falafel never quite looks or tastes the same.  It’s like a new culinary experience every time.  The same goes with the hummus.  Always a little different.

Then we have the salad.  Or salat, as it is called.  Mostly chopped cucumber, chopped tomato.  Sometimes some parsley and onion.  All chopped.  I think we used to call this back in the States a chop salad.  Anyhow, it’s eaten at virtually every meal.  Including breakfast.  I first heard that and said, “Salad?  For breakfast???  You gotta be kidding me!”  But it’s good.  I didn’t even have to get used to it.  When we were here on our pilot trip—oh, that seems so long ago—and staying in hotels, we had a full Israeli breakfast every day.  Eggs, cheese, rolls, fish, and salat.  And I ate it and ate it and ate it.  No problem.  All that cucumber.  I ate more cucumber in the ten days of that pilot trip than I had eaten in my entire life.  That’s no exaggeration.  And Israelis love cucumber.  I’ve watched more than Israeli on the street munching on whole cucumber.  Here, have a snack.  Cucumber.

More to come.

T-shirts in Israel

I was on the 26 bus going down Ibn Gvirol one day—or Ibn Gabirol or Eben Gabirol, depending on the myriad of ways it is spelled in English on street signs here in Tel Aviv—and at this one stop was a girl.  She was fairly attractive as most young people in Israel are—let’s hear it for intermarriages!—but it was what she was wearing that attracted my attention most.  Tight fitting jeans and a tight fitting t-shirt.  What’s so remarkable about that, you ask?  Well, I will tell you.

On her t-shirt was an arrow that pointed down towards her crotch with the words INSERT HERE printed above the arrow in big black letters.

Yes, that’s what I saw.  I even read it twice to make sure.

INSERT HERE.

Now, mind you, this was at about eight-thirty in the morning.  The girl could have been going to work or school with that t-shirt on.  Now I knew nothing about this girl.  I didn’t know if she were as loose as her t-shirt implied, but I have a feeling that she knew what was to be inserted and where.

Here is another one.  Again, on the 26 bus.  Now I don’t know if the 26 has a reputation for being the bus of choice for sex maniacs or not—I just take it because it’s the one I usually have to—but on a Friday morning back on Ibn Gvirol, a guy got on.  He had to stand because the bus was full, and he stood perhaps six feet away from where I was sitting.  He was a muscular, weight-lifting sort of bloke, and he wore tight beige shorts and a tight t-shirt.  I could tell he wasn’t wearing any underwear, because I could see he had an erection the size of something a lumberjack could cut down.  As impressive as that was, what “sealed the deal” for him, so to speak, was what was on his t-shirt.  It had a photograph large enough to cover most of the front of it of what looked like an orgy scene.  Various nude couples in various sexual positions and in various throes of ecstacy.  Put two and two together, my English speaking friends, and draw your own conclusions.  Massive, whopping erection and orgy t-shirt.

I realize that Tel Aviv is probably the most liberal city in the entire Middle East, but Jaysus Mary, Jumpin Jiminey, what the hell is up with some of these people?  If either of these people wore these aforementioned articles of clothing anywhere back in the States, they would surely attract some unwanted attention.  On the back of INSERT HERE girl’s t-shirt it might as well have said I ENJOY BEING RAPED.  If she were raped, the defense attorney could say, “But she was wearing that shirt, your honor.”

I have seen others, too.  BLOW JOB IS BETTER THAN NO JOB.  With silhouettes illustrating the appropriate act.

BORN TO FXXXCK.  Spelled that way, at least.  But more about that Israelis and their use of that heavy duty word later.  This t-shirt was worn by a guy wearing a kippah, too.

And it’s not limited to English either.  I saw what looked like a fourteen or fifteen year-old boy wearing a t-shirt that said in Spanish TU MADRE ES UNA PUTA.  Which roughly translates to YOUR MOTHER IS A WHORE.  I used to live in Dallas.  If that kid wore that shirt in Dallas, well, let me just say, he’d have to learn to box pretty quickly.  Or run when the bullets start flying at him.

Seriously.  What are these people THINKING?  I have to assume that the language implications of these words just aren’t registering.  After all I haven’t seen any dirty t-shirts written in Hebrew, but then again, I’m not sure I’d be able to tell if they were dirty or not.

More later.