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Sunday, April 07, 2013

"Last week, on The Bible..."

With the Bible ended and our brackets busted, our thoughts turn to the swelling spring -- flowers, showers, and the new season of Mad Men.  A nation takes solace in the fact that evil Duke has been defeated for another year.

For some reason, hearing the phrase, "Last week, on the Bible..." never failed to crack me up.  At the same time, the promo for the final installment that said, "The Bible ends tonight," kind of freaked me out a little.  Let's just say I was more thankful than usual to see the sun rise that next morning.

I wonder if the History Channel has considered the limitless possibilities for Biblical reality-show spinoffs.  Real Concubines Of Gomorrah.  Joshua & Caleb Take Canaan.  Pimp My Chariot.   So You Think You Can Prophesy?  Cash Camel.  Survivor: The Flood.  Lamech Is 147 & Single.  Mesopotamia's Got Talent.

Sticking with our odd Jewish/Christian religious theme, I went to see Jerry Seinfeld... on Good Friday.  I received the tickets as a birthday gift, and was pretty excited to see "An Evening With Jerry Seinfeld" printed on them.  However, that was a little misleading.  Turns out it's an evening with Jerry Seinfeld and like three thousand other people.

Our seats were in row Y of the balcony, which meant there was only one row in the entire arena farther from the stage than us.  So it was more like An Evening With Nosebleeds... and this mysterious Jerry Seinfeld voice booming from somewhere in the vast darkness below.

Nonetheless, it was good to relax for a solid ninety minutes and watch someone else trying to be funny for a change.  The opening act, Tom Papa, provided non-stop laughs.  I actually thought he upstaged Seinfeld a little.  Also disappointed that there was no "If anyone has any can't miss ideas for new sitcoms, please meet Jerry backstage at this time" announcement.  So I didn't get to pitch my brilliant show idea, which I cannot share with you at this time for nebulous reasons.

After the show, we ate at Chic-fil-A.  They were piping some religious-sounding music through the speakers.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Continuing with our new "joke" theme, I did have one April Fools' Joke (Is it fools, fools', or fool's?) played on me -- by Nephew Bone.  He called me Monday.

"Hey Uncle Bone, it's snowing!"

"It's snowing at your house?"

"It's snowing at everybody's house, Uncle Bone!"

"Oh no!  Are we gonna build a snowman?"

"Ha ha, April Fools!"

Can't believe I fell for that one.  (He says, knowing he'd fall for it a thousand times more.)  Plus, Nephew Bone has verbal apraxia, so the words are a struggle and a lot of them aren't clear, which increases the heart-melt a hundredfold.

I got him a toy golf set for Easter.  I figure it's never too early to gauge his interest/try to nudge him forcefully down the path I have chosen for him.  Work with me people, I'm trying to groom a future golf partner here.

He was way more interested in hiding the eggs this year than hunting them.  Of course, then he runs around the yard directing you and pointing to where he hid the next egg. Which actually wouldn't be a bad quality to have in a golf partner. "Hey, Uncle Bone.  Your ball's over here.  In this briar patch.  Behind this hundred-year-old oak tree.  Again."

Once in awhile you have an epiphanic moment where you realize life is not at all how and what you thought it might be. It's not necessarily worse or better, just different.  Far different.

I had such a moment when I found myself squatting and pretending to "lay" a turquoise-colored Easter egg in an attempt to make a 4-year-old laugh.  In all my forethought, scheming and dreaming, I somehow never saw that coming.

Life: The biggest April Fools' Joke of all.

"I'm April's fool / I play by her rules / She treats me any old way she wants to..."

18 comments:

  1. Loved this. Loved it!
    Funny, sentimental without being yucky and well written.

    Too many ideas to talk about but the third to last paragraph had to be my favorite!

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  2. LOL! Your Bible reality show spinoff titles had me laughing out loud...brilliant! If only Jerry had called you backstage - he would've loved those (and probably stolen them for his act, just saying). :)

    Your nephew sounds adorable...but then so do your interactions with him. You're both lucky to have each other! I would've loved to have seen video of the egg laying - that would've made this post pretty darn near perfect. :D

    Life always throws us, doesn't it? Have a great week, Bone.

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  3. That's a good April Fools joke!

    DH tried to tell us there was a deer in our backyard...and we fell for it! @@ The thing is we have seen deer in the neighbor's yard. They just don't jump into our yard because they can't tell what's on the other side of the fence.

    so did Jerry do the Ovaltine bit?

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  4. Guess you didn't have to go the Y (MCA) if you went to Y at the concert...don't mind me, I just woke up from a nap. Even as I stare at that beyond bad joke, I can't make myself delete it. Moving on.

    Sounds like Nephew Bone takes after his Uncle, playing pranks on people. I, for one, am glad you're his favorite target. Sounds like karma.

    And whoever was there and didn't video you "laying" that egg is probably mad at themselves...that would have been YouTube gold. (Which then would have allowed you to say you laid the "golden" egg.)

    (I need to stop now. Really.)

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  5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0qm0KUPeD8

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  6. Pia - Thanks! Without being well written? lol I know what you meant. At least I'm telling myself I know what you meant.

    Sherri B - Thank you. When Lamech Is 147 & Single becomes a mega-hit, we'll all know whose idea it really was.

    Renee - You should've told him you saw Joe DiMaggio in Dinky Donuts. Oh well, you can pull that on him next year.

    Nope, no Ovaltine. Though he did do quite a bit of material I'd heard before. And I hadn't seen him in ten years.

    TC - I think you need some more sleep :)

    Renee - That's GOLD, Jerry! Gold!!!

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  7. I stopped by to congratulate you on your Honorable Mention in last week's Limerick-Off. Great job! Thanks! Limerick of the Week 108

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  8. O<G I'm sorry. As you're the best writer I have ever been privileged to know you know how I meant it!

    I tend to read your posts four or five times because I enjoy them so much and hope your writing will rub off on me

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  9. It would be OK to see Seinfeld. Even in nosebleed seats.

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  10. The Bible wasn't bad but I already knew how it ended.

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  11. Ha! Brilliant. And I'm quite sure the faux laying of turquoise eggs would amuse more than a 4 year old! I love the fact that you specified the colour in your account of it :)

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  12. Those reality show ideas are hilarious.

    Your nudging of your nephew reminds me a little of my husband. When I pointed out that our son always uses his spoon with his left hand and seems to be a lefty his first response was "Ugh, we can't share clubs." Between his dad and his grandfathers I can't believe our 14 month old doesn't have any clubs yet.

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  13. My husband hides Easter eggs like your nephew. He led the sweetie-pies around the yard pointing them out. (they humored him.)

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  14. I didn't watch the Bible on TV, figuring someone else was taking a good book and ruining it in a movie...

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  15. I'm 10 times Nephew Bone's age (egads!) and I laughed just at the mental image of you laying a turquoise egg.

    Just to rub it in again, some of our brackets were never quite busted. ;-)

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  16. I guess I'm more than a little bit disappointed that there's no photographic evidence of your egg laying.

    Don't go gettin' my hopes up like that.

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  17. Madeleine - Thanks! I've tried for so long!

    Pia - How much am I paying you to say this? :)

    MarkD60 - Yeah, it's not like at a concert where you want to be close because you're hoping to make eye contact with the lead singer.

    Ed - That's the problem with those historical films.

    J Adamthwaite - Thanks. I thought the color was an important part of the story :)

    Actonbell - And you are probably the world's funnest uncle.

    That's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

    Wow. I like their cow advertising campaign, and the lemonade is good, but a vacation day? I mean, maybe if it was a Krispy Kreme...

    Ally - I asked him yesterday if he'd been practicing with the clubs I got him. He said yes, but I got the feeling he would've answered yes to just about any question I asked.

    Heidi - I seem to remember egg hunting being a bit more challenging when I was a kid. My parents and uncles and aunts would hide eggs up in trees, across the road, wherever. We'd be out there looking all afternoon. Then again, maybe that was the point.

    Sage - Nice one. I only watched parts of a couple of episodes. It stayed fairly close to the original, best I could tell.

    Murf - You and me both. Congrats on your bracket. Hey, what was the score of our last Words With Friends game again? ;-)

    Jocelyn - Actually, now that you mention it, I can't believe my sister didn't snap a picture and put it on Facebook or something.

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  18. Watching "The Bible" on tv reminded me of this class I took in college called "The Bible as Literature." When you read the book in the context of a literary work rather than the basis of the faith of billions of people, you start to view it a little bit differently. Like, how you realize that in the Old Testament, women weren't portrayed very well and God was kind of an asshole. I feel like The History Channel did a decent job of condensing the "stories" down to keep an audience entertained and educated. Except the fact that the actors all spoke with English or American accents.

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