A Passover Pageant

Jeremy: There are sections of the haggadah that, quite frankly, could use a polish.
Dan: You're gonna do a rewrite on the haggadah?
Jeremy: It's not written in stone, Dan.
Dan: Actually, some of it is.
- Sports Night

I wrote a Passover pageant, for the story-telling portion of my all-Gentiles seder. It went over rather well. Enjoy, and feel free to use/re-post, with credit.

NARRATOR: Previously, in Genesis:

GOD: It sure is dark in here... claps twice Hey, that worked!

ABRAHAM: Man, I can't keep track of all these gods, can't I consolidate all my worship into one easy deity?

GOD: Sure!

ABRAHAM: Yay!

GOD: Although, not so much with the easy. Go kill your son Isaac.

ABRAHAM: What??

GOD: J/k, j/k! Chill out, theologians.

ISAAC: I'm a pretty passive figure, overall. Jacob, Esau, what are you boys doing?

JACOB: Just stealing Esau's birthright, Dad!

ESAU: Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?

RANDOM ANGEL: Me too! I am so not on Team Jacob. Let's wrestle. On a ladder. Just because.

JACOB: Whatever, I am Israel, I can do whatever I want. C'mon, wives, let's get cracking on this “descendants as plentiful as the stars” business, if you know what I mean.

JOSEPH: Hey guys! I had this dream that you were all bundles of grain and you were bowing down to me! Isn't that funny guys? Why are you throwing me in this hole? Did someone take my technicolor dreamcoat? Hey guys? Guys?

POTIPHAR'S WIFE: You there! Slave boy! How you doin'?

JOSEPH: Err...

JOSEPH'S PHAROAH: Man, these weird dreams suck. I wonder if there's anyone locked in my dungeon who can interpret them for me.

JOSEPH: Me! Me me me! So either there's going to be 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine, or you want to bone your mother. 5 cents, please.

JOSEPH'S PHAROAH: Such low rates!

JOSEPH: For you, I make a deal. Now let's talk royalties.

NARRATOR: And so Joseph became the Pharoah's chief of staff, and invited Jacob, Joseph's asshole brothers, and 70 other free-loading relatives to shlep down to Egypt and settle in the land of Goshen. Several hundred years pass, and the Hebrews, as we are now calling them for some reason, have been fruitful and multiplied. Then there came a pharoah who knew not Joseph...

PHAROAH: I know not Joseph, but I do know that all these pesky Hebrews are really ruining the neighborhood.

ROYAL BUTLER: You can't kick them out, sir; they've got rent control.

PHAROAH: Bah! Might as well make them useful, then. What are they good at?

BUTLER: Nothing very useful, sir. Comedy writing, standardized tests, and kvetching.

PHAROAH: Well, let's give them something to kvetch about. This view of the Nile would look a lot nicer with some big pointy brick things, don't you think?

NARRATOR: So the Hebrews became slaves, which wasn't exactly a picnic, so they just kept on having children so that they'd have someone to complain to.

BUTLER: Sir, the Hebrews still won't go away. They're just packing more children into their huts.

PHAROAH: They'll never give up a nice deal like Goshen as long as they have kids who can inherit it. Tell the midwives Shifrah and Puah to kill every baby boy born to a Hebrew woman.

SHIFRAH: What??

PUAH: This job blows.

SHIFRAH: I so didn't sign up for this.

PUAH: Let's tell Pharoah that the Hebrew women are unnaturally vigorous and give birth before we can get there. The ruling class always likes to hear that the disenfranchised are hardy and animalistic.

SHIFRAH: Sweet.

NARRATOR: Thanks to Shifrah and Puah, a Hebrew woman named Yochevet gave birth to a baby boy and was able to hide him from the authorities. But after a few months he was too big to hide, so with great sadness, she put the baby in a basket and floated it down the Nile. The baby's sister Miriam hid among the bulrushes to see what would happen to her little brother.

PHAROAH'S DAUGHTER: Hey look, a basket! With a baby in it! Aww, can I keep it?

MIRIAM: But you'd have to nurse it and take care of it and stuff.

P's DAUGHTER: Oh. Well, am I a princess or am I a princess? I'll hire someone.

MIRIAM: I know just the woman for the job.

NARRATOR: So Yochevet was hired to nurse her own son, which is a pretty great scam, and though Moses grew up in the court of the pharoah, he never forgot his birth mother's teachings. One day, Moses was slumming it in Goshen, and he saw a slavedriver cruelly whipping a Hebrew.

MOSES: Dude, relax.

SLAVEDRIVER: Relax? I've got production deadlines to meet, and these lazy Hebrews aren't meeting their brick-baking quota, and you're telling me to relax?

MOSES: Maybe if you were a little nicer to them...

SLAVEDRIVER: “Nice” doesn't get you bargain rate pyramids, mister. Or did you never think about where all your fancy papyrus comes from?

NARRATOR: He hadn't, actually, and so Moses did what any privileged young man would do when confronted with the source of his privilege – blamed someone else and killed the slavedriver.

MOSES: Uh oh.

NARRATOR: So he skedaddled the hell out of Egypt and had a nice long wander in the desert, before coming across a lovely shiksa named Zipporah.

ZIPPORAH: Hey, stranger. New to this strange land?

MOSES: Sure am.

NARRATOR: And Moses spent a couple decades chilling with the Bedouins. Meanwhile, things kinda sucked for the Hebrews.

ALL: Grumble grumble grumble grumble

NARRATOR: But God heard their grumbling. One day, Moses was chilling with his sheep at the foot of Mount Sinai, when the mountain went all lightning-y. When Moses reached the summit, he found a bush that burned with flame, yet was not consumed.

MOSES: Awe-some.

GOD: Moses, Moses.

MOSES: Here I am!

GOD: Take off your shoes. I just vacuumed the holy ground.

MOSES: Who are you?

GOD: I want you to go into Egypt and tell Pharoah to let my people go.

MOSES: Okay great, but who are you?

GOD: I Am Who I Am.

MOSES: But who should I tell Pharoah has sent me?

GOD: I Am Who I Am.

MOSES: That's... not very grammatical.

GOD: No, it's tetragrammatical! Zing!

MOSES: Oh god.

GOD: Yes?

MOSES: Listen, can't you get someone else to do this? I'm busy. I have to... shampoo my sheep.

GOD: Moses.

MOSES: No seriously. I am slow of tongue. I mean, sloooww offff toooongggguuuueeee...

GOD: Get your brother Aaron to talk for you. He was always the cute one.

NARRATOR: Moses went back to Egypt and found Aaron, who was in fact the cute one, and they marched in to Pharoah's palace and said:

AARON: Let my people go!

PHAROAH: No.

AARON: Oh. Please?

P's DAUGHTER: Okay!

PHAROAH: No.

MOSES: Psst, Aaron! Try the staff thing.

NARRATOR: Aaron raised his staff over the Nile, and the water turned to blood. Or red like blood. Depending who you ask. Either way, for seven days and nights it was pretty nasty stuff. But the Pharoah's magicians were also able to turn water into red stuff, so Pharoah was unimpressed.

PHAROAH: Moses, Moses, Moses. What else have you got?

NARRATOR: Next, Aaron summoned up a plague of frogs. Hundreds, thousands of frogs, hopping all over Egypt on their little frog legs. But the magicians could pull frogs out of their hat too, and Pharoah's heart was hardened. Next came gnats, which are really gross.

PHAROAH: Ew ew ew! Make them go away! Make them go away and you can leave!

NARRATOR: But God hardened Pharoah's heart, which is one of those problematic translation things that I'm just gonna skip right over, and everyone went back to the drawing board. There were flies, and cattle disease, and boils. Then shit got real. It hailed great big hailstones that burst into flame. Locusts came and nommed all the crops. And Moses stretched out his hand and--

MOSES: claps twice

NARRATOR: --drew a darkness over Egypt for three days.

BUTLER: Okay, sir? I'm covered in boils, there's nothing to eat, and I keep walking into frog carcasses because I can't see where I'm going. Let those people go.

PHAROAH: Sorry, my heart's been hardened. Out of my hands.

AARON: Alright, but listen. This last plague's not going to be pretty.

NARRATOR: God spoke to Moses and Aaron, and gave them a shopping list which has changed little in five thousand years, with the same old bitter herbs and unleavened bread, along with a nice dab of lamb's blood for the doorway so that the angel of death would pass over their house. And at midnight, the angel of death swept through the land of Egypt, and slew the first-born of all the Egyptians.

PHAROAH: Get out! Out out out! Scram! Beat it!

AARON: Kthxbai!

BUTLER: You're not going to harden your heart again, right sir?

PHAROAH: Well... I do have all these annoying unfinished pyramids... And that Sphinx could sure use a nose.

BUTLER: Which you'll want the Israelites for, obviously! ...It's funny because they have big noses.

PHAROAH: To the chariots!

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the Israelites had reached the Red Sea.

MOSES: Huh.

MIRIAM: This doesn't look good. Do we ford the river?

PHAROAH: I'm coming for you, Israel!

MOSES: I guess we're not waiting to see if conditions improve. Onwards!

NARRATOR: And Moses raised his staff and parted the sea, and the children of Israel walked across on dry land. But when Pharoah's chariots tried to follow, their wheels got stuck in the mud, and when the last Israelite reached the bank the waters came crashing back down, drowning the Egyptians.

MIRIAM: Hurrah! Now what?

MOSES: I have to climb this mountain, brb.

NARRATOR: The Israelites, however, were not very patient.

ISRAELITE 1: Where's Moses?

ISRAELITE 2: I'm bored!

ISRAELITE 3: Can we eat yet?

AARON: Hey guys! You know what would pass the time? Why don't you give me all your gold and jewelry, and I'll build a giant shiny cow!

ISRAELITES: Yaaaaay!

MIRIAM: Why do slaves have gold?

AARON: We looted the Egyptians on our way out.

MIRIAM: Seriously? That doesn't seem very under-doggy of us...

AARON: Listen, do you want to hear one of the lesser-known stories where our guys forcibly circumcise our enemies? Or do you want to make a shiny cow?

MIRIAM: Moo.

MOSES: I am back! I am back and I have brought you these two stone tablets, which contain the – oooh, shiny! [drops the tablets] Uh oh. Hope I saved the receipt...

GOD: [face-palm]

NARRATOR: But God gave the children of Israel another chance and gave the law to Moses again. But as punishment, the corrupted former slaves had to die off before they could enter the Promised Land. Forty years of wandering later, they finally reached their new homeland. Unfortunately some other people lived there already, but that's not a very pleasant story and these four glasses of wine aren't going to drink themselves, so let's just pretend the Israelites made friends with their new neighbors and nothing troublesome or morally squicky ever happened in the land of Israel ever again. The end!

Today I learned that the only way to survive hell-week - nay, hell-fortnight - is to give myself one lovely treat per day. And no, television and naps (unless in the hammock) and shameless facebook stalking don't count; must be somewhat more special.

After failing to follow this rule on Friday and Saturday, and crashing horribly, I started over with a wonderful-as-ever post-church brunch on Sunday. Yesterday featured a lovely stroll in the Arboretum, and today? Today I read a new Sherlock Holmes story.

I've actually read just a small percentage of the Holmes canon, despite being a fan. Once I realized how much I loved them, and how finite was the proper Conan Doyle canon, I decided to parcel out the original 24* over as much of my life as possible. So I only read new ones when I really, really need it. (I am allowed to reread A Scandal in Bohemia as much as I'd like). Delayed gratification - I has it.

That being said, "A Case of Identity" is a bit rubbish.



*Yes I know there's the post-Reichenbach stories, but I've not touched those yet

Today I learned a whole ton about World's Fairs. Like, way more than I could write up here. Because I also learned that when my homework is awesome, I will go above and beyond. Watch a half hour of vintage Coney Island footage, you say? See you in four hours...

So we learned last week that the word panorama originally referred to the Imax 360 of the 19th century, and only subsequently did the suffix -orama get applied as an indicator of great scale and awesomeness. Keep this in mind as I tell you about the 1939 World's Fair's Futurama - the awesomest thing to be called Futurama until that other Futurama.

The Futurama was, first of all, the grand-daddy of the Disney-style dark ride: a narrated trip in moving seats through a vivid diorama (there's that suffix again), in this case depicting the world in twenty years, as envisioned by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors. The principal feature of this world is the existence of an interstate highway system - build us these roads, GM told taxpayers, and we'll sell you the cars to drive on them. The thing is that although GM's argument worked, we didn't follow their instructions very well. Bel Geddes designed a utopic highway system that was carefully calibrated for ideal traffic flow - the rural elevated highways depicted in the early parts of the ride have seven lanes, with two transition lanes on a lower level, bringing drivers safely from 25 to 50 to a cruising speed of 100 mph(!).

But of course, the system we actually built was not so idyllic. Dan Howland of The Journal of Ride Theory sums it up in one of my favorite quotes on the topic: "If we lived in the Futurama, we'd be home by now."

I highly recommend this film of the Futurama itself: http://www.archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940 Highlights include the dirigible hanger in the airport (floating in a pool of water, so it can easily rotate to suit the wind direction!), and the odd reference to the Gloria Patri at the end. If you watch it, please talk to me about it - we didn't talk about it at all in class, so it is not out of my system.

NYT Fail

In the NY Times Book Review tomorrow, a review of the book "Digital Barbarism" begins as follows:

One of the more trenchant cartoons of the Internet era features a stick-figure man typing furiously at his keyboard. From somewhere beyond the panel floats the irritated voice of his wife.

“Are you coming to bed?”

“I can’t,” he replies. “This is important.”

“What?”

“Someone is wrong on the Internet.”

Anyone familiar with, well, the internet will immediately recognize this as the work of everyone's internet crush Randall Munroe, in xkcd #386.


But uncredited.

The article in question, which can be found here, is about copyright in the internet age, fair use, and outraged internet denizens. Fail.

Also note the interesting assumptions the article's author makes about the relationship and gender of the xkcd characters.

Jenny noted that the article was written by a Ross Douthat, which must clearly be the pseudonym of xkcd's black hat guy. Douthat is pretty much as close to douche-hat as one can print in the NY Times, so I'm gonna go with this explanation. Stay tuned to next week's book review for an extended series on velociraptors.


Major fail, NYT.

Little Einsteins; or, the decline of civilization

I am a big supporter of children’s television, but I have long been skeptical of preschool programming. With the very notable exception of Sesame Street, which is designed to be awesome for parents as well as toddlers, television for preschoolers is largely inscrutable to grownups. There’s just no accounting for the taste of 2-year-olds. Probably because they shouldn’t be watching tv at all.

Often, preschool programs employ the “interactive” model of Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer, in which the viewer is asked direct questions by a protagonist who blinks far too infrequently for comfort. On some level I eagerly anticipate the art that will someday be created by a generation whose concept of the fourth wall was demolished so early on – in my day, kids’ tv only got as meta as the seriously over-branded Where’s Waldo, which froze the action intermittently so we could run up to the screen and, you know, find Waldo. But on the whole, these “interactive” shows (and I will never ever call them interactive without a liberal dose of scare quotes) are labeled as educational, while being benign at best – and, far too often, actively idiotic.

Today I watched Little Einsteins. You might have heard of the Baby Einstein brand. The tv version is a Dora-style show on the Disney channel that promotes arts literacy or something. [Note that the actual baby Einstein was deemed to be no Einstein; irony is an undeveloped muscle in the world of preschool programming].

Now, I have no quibbles about the value of arts literacy. I myself once wrote a pitch about talking paintings, though largely to cannibalize art puns from a failed project about singing paintings. And then I discovered that Sesame Street had already done it, as there is no good idea that wasn’t done first and better by the Muppets. Twice.

My quibble is not with the end, but the means. The thought process behind the Baby Einstein franchise is that context-less exposure to Mozart and Picasso at an early age will stay in the system – like acid – and conveniently resurface sixteen years later in the presence of a Harvard admissions officer.

In practice, this means assigning each episode a painting and symphony (in the episode I watched, “Go West, Young Train,” these were a Navajo basket and a phrase from Bizet’s L’Arlsienne Suite #2), and randomly inserting them into a Dora-style problem-solving adventure. But the problem is not at all related to the art. A little red train in the Old West was on its way to a hoe-down, you see, and its bag of goodies – including three violins that ghost-bowed the Bizet, because what’s a hoe-down without some French ballet scoring? – was stolen by an evil jet plane.

Sure, whatever. How about that art? Well, the Navajo basket was not woven into the events, but served as a backdrop. The little red train chased the evil jet into a cave (don’t think too hard, now), and the cave happened to look like the basket. Not that the basket was used as a map or anything. The idea is to divorce the art from its context, remember? They just went into a cave that happened to resemble that basket we saw in the opening credits.

On the music side of things, four measures of Bizet are sprinkled liberally through the soundtrack. A time-honored way to exploit the public domain teach classical music, though Bugs Bunny was a bit more willing to get past the opening phrases. But Little Einsteins goes one better than “What’s Opera, Doc” and uses the Dora model to teach real live music vocabulary too.

Dora’s claim to fame is, of course, the Spanish words. Her dialog is punctuated with random Spanish exclamations (“clap your hands mas rapido!”) that may or may not increase children’s comfort with bilingualism, depending on who sponsored the study. But when Little Einsteins borrows this technique, the result is dialog like this:

“The little red train is going andante, but the evil jet is going allegro! Help the little red train go more allegro!”

What. the. fuck.

Let’s ignore the fact that words like andante and allegro are completely useless for anyone who isn’t, say, sightreading a score or writing liner notes. This vocabulary is not only completely useless, but decontextualized to the point of meaninglessness. Tempo and velocity are NOT THE SAME THING. You can’t “go allegro”! You don’t walk allegro any more than you play the piano at 55 mph. Granted, I have had several conductors fond of obliterating traditional boundaries of units of measure (“the sopranos are two octaves behind and a golf course sharp!” – Dr. Jameson Marvin). But this is ridiculous.

Programs like Little Einsteins will not make your kid smart. They will quite possibly make your kid stupider. But at least they’ll be able to hum four measures of non-Carmen Bizet. And that’s more than you can.