The Lactose Intolerance

The following story is completely true, only the details have been changed dramatically for comedic effect:

About 2 weeks ago I was on a "date" and I was starving so I decided that we should go out and eat dinner. Notice that I made a unilateral decision here, and it didn't matter to me what the female's opinion was. The bottom line is that I was starving and so therefore we would be eating a meal of some sort. This shows that I am a selfish person who fails to take account of other people's wants, needs, and feelings. Maybe I am being too hard on myself, but I like to pretend that I am a therapist sometimes, and that I am also my own patient. So therefore, if I was acting as "Fades the therapist", I would tell "fades the mental patient" that maybe he is too selfish sometimes. Anyway, we went to look for dinner...

My first choice was Sushi Mitzuyan, but of course I didn't make a reservation or anything. We got there and it was a 45 minute wait, which is longer than I will wait for a meal when I am starving. Compare this , if you will, to the lines you would be willing to wait on at amusement parks. I have definetly waited over an hour for some roller-coasters and water rides, especially the ones where you get to go in a tube with lots of people together; the best is when you are in camp and you go with girls and guys together, and then the tube bounces around and then maybe you can make some incidental contact. Anyway, I think a new rule can be stated here: A reasonable person will wait up to twice the amount of time for a 30 second amusement park ride than he/she will wait for a decent meal. This rule makes sense only if you are starving, but if ure not so hungry maybe you will wait longer for food. Also if you are starving while waiting on the amusement park line you might be forced to leave the line and go get one of those non-kosher turkey legs that everyone walks around eating like sick animals. Or you can just take a bite out of a fat lady's thigh if she is online, but that is only if you are a cannibal.

So getting back to this whole "date", we decided to go to Central perk and eat dairy, which I wasn't too excited about, b/c I love eating meat, and I was looking forward to "sushi mitzuyan" in particular. By the way- does this place get too much credit? I went there two nights ago with a male companion of mine, and this time we made reservations, yet we still had to wait for 20 minutes. As Seinfeld would say "they know how to take the reservations, but not how to hold the reservations" or something like that. Some other problems with sushi mitzuyan include the fact that my male companion ordered some type of weird sushi that had peanuts AND mangos in it! Ok that is maybe the grossest thing I have ever seen. Apparently, we can now pick any 2 or 3 foods and wrap them in seaweed and rice and its gourmet and we'll pay 10 bucks for it. Makes a lot of sense. Umm..what kinda sushi you got there, sir? Oh- this is the pear and jelly and mock-crab roll! (Is it right that there are these fish going around mocking crabs!!) What a true delight! I am a psycho path. So to summarize my criticisms of sushi-mitzuyan : 1) they don't treat the reservations with respect 2) they make gross sushi with peanuts in it. Oh, and 3) they have tables right on top of each other so that you can be sitting next to 2 complete strangers and if they sneeze it can even hit your food. But this can also be good, b/c you can have fake conversations about homosexualityt and heroine with your friend, and watch as the people next to you give you horrified glances. (hey people, you shouldn't be eavsdropping)

Anyway, we ended up eating dairy at Central Perk, and the food there is pretty good. I got mozzeralla stix (same spelling as everyone's favorite pesach treat "potatoe stix") and a tuna melt which was impossible to eat without looking like a gross animal. I gotta say this place makes excellent mozzeralla stix, and the cheese was melted completely in the middle, whereas most other places screw this part up. All in all, it was a pretty pretty pretty good meal.

But almost immedietly after reciting "grace after meals", I regreted my decision to order not 1, but 2 cheese-oriented items. I felt my the angry wrath of my bowels and started walking in a weird manner and making some strange faces. The bottom line is that I really had to go to the bathroom and there was no stopping the ultra-quick fades metabolism. I tried to stop the process but it kept coming back, so I told the dame i was with that "I wasn't feeling too well, and had to go home". The truth is I never even made it home. I made in my pants. No- that is not true, but I did have to go to some fans of the fades rant to use their restroom. I almost did lose control, however, when I got to the house and the dog charged me to smell me for 5 minutes. I was scared and it was a very close call, my friends...verrrrrrry close.

So whats the moral of the story? There obviously is none, b/c this is really just a "mashal". What is the "nimshal"? I represent "am yisroel", and the king in the story represents "Hashem", and the tuna melt is Yerushalyim.

In all seriousness, I am left asking myself "AM I LACTOSE INTOLERANT"? I don't think I am, I think I just ate too much cheese in too fast a time span. I can tolerate lactose, just like America tolerates the Jews. But too much lactose and I will be forced to expunge it. Ok so maybe there is a "nimshal" to this whole thing after all, but I'll let you all figure that out.

the open house

Is it weird that I still get excited about having an open house? Soon, I am going to drive my parents to the airport, b/c they are going to Israel for a week. I will then have the house to myself for about 24 hours, at which point I will drive back to philly for law school. In my head, I envision a large President's day/weekend bash taking place tonight, with lots of females and booz and people swinging from chandeliers and sliding down banisters and throwing vases and things just getting really out of control. I even have this amazing idea that everyone will wear masks of their favorite presidents, but I'm not sure if you can get a william taft mask, and he is my favorite president b/c he was a fatso. I also enivisioned many people coming over and playing like a president triva game. But Alas...these are mere fantasies- a far cry from reality. How will I really utilize the amazing oppurtunity that is the "open house"? I will most likely watch the NBA all star game, and play video games while eating shabbos leftovers. My biggest form of "open house rebellion" will probably be drinking liquid in a glass without using a coaster! Ahh it feels good justing thinking about this type of sinister behavior.

Does it make any sense that I still look forward to an "open house"? Not really. If I think about it, I have an open house/apartment every day of my life in Philadelphia. So what is it about having an "open house" that still gets me "stoked"? Lets take a trip into my mind and find out...

1) house vs. apartment: it isnt the same at all. Having an open apartment where I can do whatever I want is not nearly as exciting as having a whole house to do what I want in. Lets say i want to run around and scream and bang on a pot with a spatula while wearing underwear on my head, while singing "Chazak" by Avraham Fried. (this is my normal open-house ritual) So if I am in my apt. there are only a very limited of rooms I can run into and do this; basically only the kitchen, den, and my bedroom. I am excluding my roomate's bedroom b/c I don't think he would like it if i ran into his room doing this. But, in my house, I have 3 whole Floors to run around doing this. It makes all the difference.
2) Not mine. what I mean is that the apt is mine, so there is nothing exciting about using it. The house belongs to my parents, so there is some type of intrinsic thrill to getting full possession of it, even if only for a very limited amount of time. Maybe this is what they mean when they talk about the "American dream" and having your own house and all that crap.
3) Living in the past; When I harken back to the days of old and think about the fun times I had, a good number of them occured at an open house. I recall being thrown in a pool with all my clothes on and pretending to laugh about it, when I was really thinking...I am very upset right now. I also recall that I was holding a bottle of wine when this occured. Also, I am talking about one of those makeshift kid-pools that you buy at toys r us. good times all around.

Anyway, there is this famous line in a CSN & Y song that goes "Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now". But in all respect to David Crosby, I would like to be reminded of certain things, and one of those things are the exciting and fun times brought on by the "open house."

the workout routine.

Many many people (or about 7) have been asking me to update this damn site already. Some people have said things like "Fades, please update the blog...I have nothing to do at work now." My response to you people is to do your work and stop reading this rant. But, for all of thos who are unemployed or still in college, or just refuse to get back to doing your boring jobs, here is a chance to read all about the first ever "ari feder workout routine."

The U of Penn has a gym that is free for undergrads and costs money for people in grad school, such as myself. Last year, I used this as the excuse in my head for never going to the gym. I would tell myself things like "why should I shell out 200 bucks, if the undergrad kids dont have to!" Meanwhile, I would shell out 200 bucks and perhaps much more on dvds, cds, beer, scotch, and other assorted illegal items. But since this "too expensive to go to the gym" excuse was only going on in my head, there was no one to point out the obvious logical flaws.

Anyway, as this year rolled around, and my belly began to expand to record proportions, I decided that even I must admit that I can afford the 200 bucks. So I went to the gym, paid the fee AND... did not step in to the gym for about a month after I had paid. Then I began to realize that no matter what I do, this gym was gonna be charging me the 200 bucks. I could go only 1 time or I could go 1 billion times and it would be the same 200 bucks. So I decided in my head that I better start getting my money's worth and hitting the gym. At first I would just go inside the actual building and walk around for 5 minutes or so. I did this for a few weeks, but only to justify that I had paid the large fee. But the problem with this was that it wasn't helping my belly shrink in size and I wasn't regaining the "six-pack" I once possessed in 8th grade. Actually, if you think about it, in like 6th-8th grade, it seems that all the male children are either really fat, or skinny with six-packs or skeleton-like bodies. There are no avg. kids who have "pot bellies", b/c I guess that comes later when you get married or when you are single and have terrible eating habits. Anyway, I'm not suggesting that some pervert go to a 6th grade class and ask all the boys to take off their shirts, but I am pretty curious about this.

I have to admit that I always looked down upon the people who worked out all the time. In yeshiva in Israel, we had a work out room, and it seems like some people would spend every night in there. I would think to myself that those people are wasting time and they should be learning or something. But now, those people are probably all physically fit, so who is laughing now? Maybe no one is. I never liked that expression, b/c why does someone always have to be laughing?

In terms of selecting the workout routine that is actually perfect for my odd body, this was quite a difficult task. I obviously wanted to flatten out my beer belly, so the first machine I looked towards was the torture chamber thing that you hang upside down on and do sit-ups. Each time you do the sit up your stomach feels like it is about to be torn open. OK- the machine is probably not upside down, but it is on a 90 degree angle or 45 degree angle or some type of angle. By the way, I never knew how to measure angles, and I hated it when they told us to bring those protracters in to class. Did anyone know how to use those things? I just used them to draw big circles, and then I made the circles into people with really big heads. Not much help with angles though.

My next task was to shrink my large expanding buttocks but I do not know of any machine in the gym that is geared to shrink a butt. So instead I try and lift the weights. There are alot of macho men who are lifting these huge weights, so it is a bit embarrasing when I stand next to them and go with the 12.5 weights. Sometimes there are also women next to me who are lifting much heavier weights, and they laugh at me and call me a little weinie. But this is all good for my "anavah" so its ok.

Finally, I like to always finish my workout routines with a run on the treadmill. There is not much to say about this other than I always feel like I am about to collapse at the end of the run. Also one time I got tangled in my own I-pod nano-nano wire while running very fast and almost killed myself while alot of people stared at me like I had just escaped from a mental institution.
But if I really have just escaped from a mental institition would I come straight to a gym to run on a tread-mill? I think not.

The last thing I need to mention about this gym workout routine is that in the mens locker room everyone is naked for a prolonged period of time. I understand that some dudes like to shower there but it seems like they also prolong the nakedness time more than neccessary. Like there is no reason to just stand around naked and take a drink from the water fountain as far as I am concerned. Anyway, I gotta go hit that gym..