Today Marks an Important Anniversary.

So, it's Sept. 11 again, and it seems like an appropriate time to remember something that happened a few years ago.

Well, yeah, that too. We mean, six years ago, when we were all clammy with fear and despair and body counts were rising and dire reports were raging and the newscasters and Republican politicians tried very hard to conceal their boners, we had an inkling this date would, you know, go down in infamy.

But 9/11/01 was also the day Sera and Simon's better half, Julia, had a date to drink tea together, and they decided — amid the shockwaves of that rough beast smashing into America's Jerusalem — not to cancel. Chado Teahouse was closed, even though they said they'd be open, so Sera and Jules proceeded to Elixir, where their disbelief was mingled with conversation about a host of other topics. The sense that "everything has changed" hadn't yet sunk in.

Sera came back to Julia and Simon's dingbat apartment in North Hollywood and they watched cable news reports of the unfolding nightmare; Simon, newly stricken with Hepatitis A (a delightful story in its own right), was stretched out on the couch, viewing the horrible footage with a literally jaundiced eye.

But despite the surreal terror of it all, there's a nugget of sweetness at the heart of this dreadful memory. Because we all became much closer, dearer friends that day.

Indeed, it was such a milestone in the history of our bonding that Sera came over to Julia and Simon's house five years later to commemorate the anniversary. And on that night, in addition to recalling the disorienting events of that prior 9/11, we proceeded to celebrate our friendship anew with quite a bit of champagne.

Out of that joyous round of toasts on 9/11/06 came a great deal of squealing, uproarious laughter and the first tenuous steps down the road that became this blog.

As we've mentioned in the past, Sera and Simon first envisioned a book, but stupid, stupid literary people were for some inconprehensible reason not prepared to cut us an enormous, debt-annihilating check. So, after a couple of weeks, we turned the scribblings engendered by our bubbly blowout into the nascent Jewy bleatings you've come to know and love.

So, to reiterate: 9/11 is, in addition to everything else, the anniversary of the birth of the VHJ. It's also a sacred holiday that honors a miraculous friendship for which we're hugely, incredibly grateful.

In a way, it was a foregone conclusion that right-wingers would see the fiery death of thousands of our people as an opportunity to shove their wretched Christo-fascist vision down our collective gullet. And it was probably inevitable that terror alerts would eventually become fodder for Jay Leno and that the "war" would simply be a new frame for the standard U.S. policy of blowing up whatever stood in the way of the oil supply. The solemnity of those first freakish hours and days gave way mostly to a bitter but not entirely un-hilarious comprehension of the frailty of our own system and the venal unworthiness of our so-called leaders.

But what are you gonna do, lay down and die? Not these Jews.

We don't laugh at the tragedy so many people are reliving today, but we go on laughing in spite of it. And we're able to do so in large part because we have some fantastic fuckin' friends.