Feelin’ Funny: Mordechai Schmutter

What did you give your wife for Chanukah this year? I gave mine a migraine.

Part 1

SCENE 1:

Interior of a cave in the times of the Yevanim.  Three Yidden – Azzi, Berish, and Chanina – are sitting around a table when a trio of Greek soldiers bursts in, wearing togas and armor and brandishing spears.  The Greek soldiers have names too, but we’ll give their English approximations.

Okay, so you made it to the vort of your friend or your neighbor or your neighbor’s friend, or whatever! 

There are all these articles written on how to make a vort – what to do beforehand, what to prep, how to set up, whether to rent a hall or do it in a house – but there are never really articles for the people showing up at the simcha.  Especially the people who don’t really want to be there.  I mean, they’re happy for the baalei simcha, but… I don’t want to have to go to your stuff.

Part 2

The story so far: In the times of the Yevanim, a group of soldiers bursts into a cave to find its occupants – three Yidden alphabetically named Ashi, Berish, and Chanina for the convenience of anyone who ends up reading their tale thousands of years later – playing dreidel.  Feeling silly for bursting in like that, the soldiers leave, except for one soldier – Oblivious – who decides to be nice and play a game of dreidel with the oilam.  The Yidden realize that he’s trying to be nice, but they do want to get rid of him ASAP so they can go back to learning before the lights go out.  First their plan is to tell him he won after his first gimmel, but he calls them on it, so they switch to just “make him win as quickly as possible.”  But then when he’s having a good time and announces that if he wins, everyone absolutely HAS to come to his house for a meal, the plan changes and now they’re trying to make him lose. 

Every year, I write an article about the Ig Nobel Prizes – a real, live ceremony wherein mostly scientists receive awards for studies that sound silly, but actually have awesome applications for real life, if the scientists will someday figure out what those are.