From 8 to Love

Hi, Mishpuchah. Sorry it's take so long to shake off the weird combination of euphoria and horror (euphorror?) that followed the election and cobble together a post.

On the one hand, welcome to the Obama era, right? Lots of good stuff is going to happen! Yay!

On the other, what the fuck's up with passing Prop 8, Cali? (For our readers in Bahrain and Dublin who've been out of the loop, California narrowly passed a ballot initiative that changed our consititution to ban gay marriage.) That's some bullshit. And though the writing is on the wall, historically speaking, and 8 will be invalidated either by a court or by another popular vote (possible slogan for the counter-initiative: This time it's even more personal), we'd be lying if we said we weren't stung by this loss, this disgusting slap in the face to our friends.

So, let's review just a bit of recent history. Gay people turn their queer eye on your crappy fashion and make you prettier so you can get laid and advise you on turning your dump of a living room into a suburban palace and pepper your lame-ass sitcom with witty dialogue and produce your awards shows and write your speeches and take your temperature and administer your company and engineer your buildings and you're all, like, what have you done for me lately? Let's face it: If the gays ever go on strike, the straight world will end up curled up in a fetal position on the floor in about 14 hours. But their pursuit of happiness? Talk to the fuckin' hand.

But ranting gets us nowhere, and there's enough of it going on.

This whole struggle is about love. Those of us who argued against 8 - and we get it, we could've been louder, clearer and more effective - were motivated by the heart.

So we're going to shine our Jew-light on love. We're going to start telling love stories - gay, straight, whatevs. Relationships and valentines and ooey-gooey tales of romance. Bring it on. Because no matter what anybody says, love is love.

Tell us your love stories.

Life Is Too Short Not To.

We have a headache. Which is to be expected, considering that less than twenty-four hours ago, we consumed a MASTERFUL AND GENIUS SEVEN-COURSE MEAL WITH WINE PAIRINGS. No, we didn't go to some schmancy Zagat-touted restaurant. This event of worldwide importance transpired at the homey abode of Simon's lovely sis-in-law Jo. All 84 plates of wonder were created by VHJ-inner-circleite Matt. Sime and Sera, when not moaning in full-mouthed ecstasy, kept exchanging burning glances that clearly said, "We must blog about this immediately. The world needs to know."

The chef at work.

We don't know about you, but we love us some food porn. Also, we enjoy reading about other people's personal lives. This post is for you if you are like us. It's a glimpse into the VHJ's near-n-dearest at their boho best. (If you aren't into fatty meals or candid snaps of folks you've never met, this post will bore you to tears; sorry; come back later; love you, mean it.)

You've heard of Matt before. He is the one who, when Sera was feeling like emo crap in a bucket of suck, arrived at her pad bearing pasta maker, bacon, Gorgonzola and cream. He's a fine writer, but more pertinent to this here blogversation is his blessed food-related obsessive-compulsive disorder. Matt owns a cookbook written by the psychotic genius who chefs the French Laundry, which is one of those restaurants that require reservations six months in advance. The cookbook talks about cutting little squares of meat "against the grain," fridging fresh fish in exactly the position in which they swam at the moment of their demise, and other frankly weird shit. Many of the recipes start with unseemly bits of offal, and end four days later. Not joking.

Most of us would treat such a cookbook as a novelty item, a glimpse into the inner-mindfuck of a true artist we could never imagine emulating. Matt, on the other hand, sees a fun challenge. He's the foodie equivalent of those crazy bastards who decide they want to swim the English channel.

As you can see, Matt likes to eat.

Matt called Sera up a few months ago and told her he hankered to engineer a feast for twelve. It would be a bit of work, he said with hilarious calm. Would she pitch in her producer's mind for drama and help him create an evening so cool, Oprah would beg to film it for a segment concerning the joie-de-vivreiest Angelenos in the history of ever? Strategy meetings ensued; invitations zipped into the hot little hands of our lucky, lucky jury; and the harmonic convergence of this weekend was the orgiastic, drunkarific result.

Our motley tribe descended upon Jo's, dressed to the nines. Here is the part we recommend to all of you. This is the thing that life is too short (and also waaaaaay too long) not to do: next time you plan a soiree, do mention to your friends that there's no such thing as overdressed.

We know, we know, there's no way in hell you're cooking that much. We understand; when supper's left to us, we usually end up serving pizza and cupcakes. Not everyone is lucky enough to know a cook as talented and maniacal as Matt. But even if your dinner party was catered by drive-thru, it shouldn't stop you from requiring festive attire. Believe us when we say you will derive special pleasure from dining in your finest. You will rediscover the deep hotness of your friends. Also, drunk people are more fun to watch when they're dressed to give an acceptance speech.

So, we mingled in the candlelight, champers-tipsy and newly re-in-love with one another. Simon rocked the orange velveteen blazer and pearl tie-bar. Lovely Wife Julia donned black silk, platform heels and a sideways tiara.

Power couple.

Jo poured her Semitic loveliness into a sparkly gown previously worn by a chanteuse at Cannes.

Sparkly Jo with longtime companion, Wiener.

Dinda and Mollie came as that couple at the cocktail party who make you reconsider swinging as a lifestyle.

Mols and Dinda, on the drive over. You know you want them.

Shana wore a blue crocheted flower in her hair; her Brit beau Dave, natty vest and rocker hair.

Intercontinental love in action.

Michael mixed thrift-store finds with designer duds in that envy-making way that overworked, sleep-deprived, yet nevertheless supermodelesque production designers do.

Matt's Very Hot Musician bro Andy wore a hat that made us reappraise our previous dismissal of Abraham Lincoln as unsexy.

Matt's girlfriend-cum-sous chef Lindsay wore her slinkster dress from Junior Prom, because it still fits, bitches.

Sera wore silver leather flowers in her hair and a capelet fashioned from 100% muppet fur.

Sera as rejected Dorothy Parker's Vicious Circle candidate.

So, we ate a lot. We took pictures of that, too, which we will share here for your droolification.

First, Matt served a soul-crushingly delish amuse-bouche of hamhock paté (sounds gross, tastes like a three-picture deal making artistic horror movies executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro - oh, and you get final cut on the films, and also James McAvoy/Natalie Portman will wake you each morning with a loving round of oral sex. Actually, as good as that all sounds? The paté was better).

Then he served us soup we would gladly kill for. Matt's initial inspiration for the whole event was Sera's offhanded remark that she quite liked the onion soup at Doughboy's, a hipsterlicious Hollywood bakery. "Dude, I can make an onion soup that will make you believe in Jesus," Matt shot back. And so he concocted a heavenly liquid requiring several days of simmering and several pounds of asiago - hands-down the best fucking soup Sera's ever tasted (and, full disclosure, very nearly enough to make her consider emailing Christ an application for the position of Personal Savior).

We strongly suggest someone get this soup on the table for the next Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. If anything can get 'em in the mood to lay down arms, it's a still-bubbling bowlful of broth, spongy bread, and ooey-gooey cheese.

If memory serves, right around the soup course was the first time Jo burst into tears of joy. This behavior would continue throughout the evening, as new and miraculous taste sensations were set before her sparkling bosom.

Many charming toasts were made, and glasses of wine were imbibed. We can't remember how many. More than four but less than all the wine in the world. Matt and Lindz split their time between the table and the roasting-hot kitchen, from whence nirvanic smells wafted. They emerged bearing skate - the fish, not the wheeled shoe - in a vertical sculpture of garlic and pan-seared lemon slice on a nest of oniony delight. Several people proposed marriage to Matt. When he gently refused, we offered to be his slave forever, as long as he cooked us skate every day.

Next came this complicated ravioli-esque pasta dish we can't recall the name of. Redolent of cheese, bursting with sweet buttery goodness, many members of our group decided that they would rather eat pasta created by Matt than anything else they could think of. Yes, including that.

Jules with her pasta plate.

After that, a palate-cleansing grapefruit-tarragon sorbet which Sera failed to photograph on account of she was shrieking with laughter and already so full she feared it was a mistake not to rent forklifts to get people back to their cars after the party.

The Very Hot Jews like meat. We like it so much that we suddenly realized we weren't really that full when Matt set before us a dish of lamb so beautiful we wanted to bronze it. It tasted just as good as you imagine.

Plating the meat course, sexily.

Then we took a much-needed breather - from the food, if not the drink, since Matt took that moment to bust out an epic bottle of dessert wine - and exchanged funny and embarrassing personal stories. Not to harp on the whole dress-up thing, but wearing spangly getups tends to jog one's formal-event memory banks. Visions of Sadie Hawkins Dances past pop into one's head. Michael charmed us with tales of helping his date - a girl! - make her dress. Sera recalled being helpfully informed that her prom dress made her look like a stripper. (It so didn't, at least in comparison to the stuff she started wearing later in life.) Tuxedo war stories abounded. Recollections of exotic travels punctuated by sumptuous meals that lead inevitably to heinous, gut-annihilating food poisoning. Life - isn't she grand?

Finally, Matt served dessert. He ended with another paté, the perfect symmetry of which seemed to soothe that OCD part of his brain. It was made of dense, dark, spiritually enlightening chocolate in a créme anglaise with pistachios. We all had seconds. Plates and fingers were licked. Groans of delight and overindulgence filled the air. Everyone swore they'd take a bullet for Matt, because protecting his gift had become the purpose of our lives.

Dessert, by the time Sera remembered to snap a pic of it.

And then, weary, some of us sloshed enough to require a cab, we collapsed into satiated heaps.

And that, handsome readers, is how the VHJ party. L'Chaim!

Dance Dance Revolution!

Happy Jew Year, you luscious hunks of readership you. On the first mewling day of this baby-fresh year I went to visit Sime and Lovely Wife Julia. Armed with a bottle of bubbly and a screener of a Very Important Movie which we never got to because of the yakking and the noshing and the sipping and the kvelling, I plopped onto their comfy leather couch and launched into a tale of Just Where I've Been for the last week.

I told you before about Esalen, the shiny butterfly paradise by the sea – so replete with Human Potential. The week of Xmas, I slid up the 101 and back into the arms of my Big Sur hideaway for seven days of organic food, crazy hot springs action, sleepless nights whispering with my NYC Shiksa Queen roomie "P", and several hours a day of dancing my ass off. Not just any dancing - ecstatic dancing. Dance as a spiritual practice. That's right, I said it: when I get jiggy, I'm not just being Very Hot and Jewish, I'm also being Deep. I'm Tapping In. I'm Communing. I'm doing loads of stuff just begging to be capitalized and hyperlinked.

Man, dancing is the shit. Not, like, choreographed dancing. That kind of dancing is, well, hard. It makes you feel stupid if you can't get it right, as Sime will tearfully confess if you ever get him started on his adolescent "performance workshop" phase. It might make you look stupid even if you do get it right. Britney Spears spent a lot of time with choreography, and we all know what that led to.

My kind of dancing is more about gettin' loose to the beat at hand. Sweating it up with like-minded revelers who just want to reach that feeling of not being in their heads for ten or fifteen minutes of the long and harried day. Grooving like I'm alone in my living room, except with a bunch of other people also jigging their way through their own private Idaho. Like the Classic Rock Singalong, 'cept you don't even need a lyric sheet.

Maybe you want me to say I've found the cure - the cure to stress, and feeling separate from one's peeps, and loneliness, and sorrow. Maybe you want me to say the cure is dancing. But I am not here to lie to the Very Hot. Therefore I will tell you the truth. Here is the truth:

I have found the cure. The cure is dancing.

This is especially fortuitous as Sime and I have been endeavoring to come up with a good catchphrase for the new year. A curmudgeonly writer friend of mine, a Spicy Hebe With Dreadlocks, fired me an email declaring he was "all about the Hate in '08." His first target: Diablo Cody. You might be next.

This alarmed me. Because it is easy to slip into the hatin'. Not just when a chick with the hipster-ironic version of your backstory nails a massive hole-in-one with her first screenplay (worry not, dear reader; I live by the golden rule: don't hate the player, hate the game. And, since I don't hate the game, we're right back where we left off in my admittedly difficult to follow train of thought). It's easy to reach for a big bloody bag of O, Negative in the absence of something to hold onto. Hence the need for millions of Starbucks, one on every corner. The cynical bastards of the world require a black, bitter cup o' overpriced joe to nurse along with their vehement disdain.

The Very Hot Jews wish for you to avoid the Hate in '08. We love you too much to see you flail down the shame spiral of mysanthropy. So we're sharing our new slogan with you - Simon declared it, after I told him of my mystical Esalen adventure (which, by the way, also involves being busted by Institute authorities in the middle of the night for doing something I cannot tell you about on this blog because, well, I'd rather you use your imagination but I will say:

1. It wasn't illegal but was definitely frowned upon in that location and context, and


2. The other busted individual was another dancer and even Jewish, which I know would matter to some of you if you knew what we were doing which you don't so go wash your brain out with soap).

This isn't going to be much of a reveal, considering all of the above. But the VHJ would like to gently but firmly suggest you Dance It Out In '08.

Seriously, my brothers. Obviously, my sisters. We Jewy types can talk a thing to death. Poor horses - maybe if they were kosher our people wouldn't spend so much time beating dead ones. If you're like me, on any given day you can Freud yourself into a self-reflective stupor before your first hit of latte kicks in. You can Jung yourself silly. You can dive into your worried mind and turn every damn stone, then freak out over each tiny pillbug of insecurity revealed beneath.

A certain amount of this is a good idea. The unexamined life, etc. Also, if you didn't worry at all, something bad would surely happen that could easily have been prevented if you'd just let your neurotic imagination run wild for a few minutes. Sure, Joan Didion would call this magical thinking. But as your mom will gladly remind you, the worrying brain acts as a giant backwards magnet that repels disaster.

Plus, some of us – like for instance both halves of this here blogging duo – need to camp out in our hot little minds so that we can produce scripts and ad copy and other written things that pay our mortgages. Our calling requires extended rappelling into the scary, solemn, Stygian reaches of the grayest of gray matter. Not to get all neo-Cartesian on your ass, but, as Simon likes to say: We think, therefore we are ... paid. (Or, if you like, Cogito ergo fork over my sum.)

So, yeah, I'm not entirely disparaging the notion of living like a hermit in one's own head, as Death Cab For Cutie so alterna-rockishly put it.

But. You have a body. You're in it right now, like it or not. You may regard it as a brainstand or head pedestal, but it still requires loving care. You don't get to dump it for a sleeker model. You don't get to leave it and go flying around visiting Jennifer Love Hewitt, at least until you get hit by a stray bullet and die without getting to tell your family something real important. It is sitting there right now, a dumb lump of muscle and bone and possibly THC-saturated adipose tissue, listening to all your thoughts. I'm sorry, but it is. That's why your back does that ow-y thing when you're stressed. That's why your shoulders have meandered up into your ears and why when you can't pay your bills you weirdly discover you also can't take a shit ... look, enough examples, I don't really want to get quite this into your business.

I'm just saying. Your body is a wonderland and you're totally missing the ride.

Hey, at least it isn't a picture of John Mayer.

2008 is unlikely to be quiet and contemplative. There's an election coming up - you can tell by the look of horror on Simon's face. Gas prices are still zooming (and you know by now I mean that less in terms of shelling out at the pump and more in terms of all the kids coming back from the war minus limbs. Or not coming back at all). Most of L.A. is gonna be out of work soon if this strike doesn't resolve. Apple will come out with something new and shiny you need to have. Beyoncé will release something loud and cursedly catchy. JLo will have her babies and the ruckus caused will only be superceded by Jamie Lynn having her baby. (BTW, WTF with THAT story? I leave civilization for a week, and when I come back not only is Benazir Bhutto dead, but Britney's sister is preggers by some old, disgusting fucktard who is inexplicably being protected from public stoning?!)

Anything could happen at any time, people. And everyone I know has this uneasy sense that in '08, if it can happen, it will. Get flood insurance. Get fire insurance. Get meteor insurance.

Or hey, maybe I'm projecting. Maybe 2008 is merely unlikely to be cool, calm and collected for moi. My industry is in a supercalifragalistic clusterfuck; I'm elbow-deep in a bunch of time-consuming projects; I'm suddenly, out of nowhere, developing crushes on living and eligible humans in my close vicinity (as opposed to comfortably rolling my eyes at every dude I meet, because when you're as busy as I am it's easier to apply your idle crush-ology to that pillhead doctor with a limp on that show where he's all mean and sexy all the time); the gaping maw of the VHJ blog will never cease demanding wordy sacrifice; my goddaughter is orbiting ever closer to adolescence, a situation which requires constant vigilance; I don't want to fall behind on the Y:The Last Man comics; and if I don't stay on top of things with Mojo, he'll eat something that makes him fart like a hurricane.

So, shit's gonna happen. And when it does (and when it doesn't, even) I'm gonna Dance It Out. So is Sime, and if you're lucky you'll get to watch, because his "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" dance is legend. Most of my friends will be Dancing It Out too. Are you one of my friends? If you are, do this for me: pull up your iTunes or go to your radio or whatevs, and play that funky music, Person Of Whatever Race(s).

It doesn't matter if you're tired, if you threw out your back chasing your diabetic cat around with a syringe in your hand, or if you're in a wheelchair and can only dance with your arms and your eyebrows. It doesn't matter if your only prior experience on the dance floor was swaying imperceptibly between chugs of Heineken.

This isn't a competition. It will not be televised. No British suckwads will wittily deride your efforts. It's for you. It's a way to be down with reality for a hot second. Reality feels like loud sounds all around you that you cannot control so you might as well enjoy. It feels like that noise's percussion vibrating your soles. It's other people's smells and their secret vulnerability that peeks out to say yo when you move with them. It's the stick of sweat on your nape, the ache in your knees, the jagged impulse that wants your pelvis to swing thataway, ASAP. It's a world populated by lots of other ordinary miracles like you, moving through their days in the best way they can, trying at worst not to cause bodily injury and at best to feel pretty damn great. You don't want to dance, you say, because your dance is lame? Let me rephrase the question: You think you're the only one of us trying to be all perfect? I sympathize, but you oughtta know - perfection is sooooo '07. In '08, we dance.

You will likely feel self-conscious, at first. Even if you've knocked back a coupla gin fizzes or called in your ancestors with a wand of white sage or whatever you use to launch the rocket of disinhibition. You'll be hyper-aware of your "stock" moves. Nighmarish recollections of teenage embarrassment might caper before you like red-eyed demons. But gradually, the part of you that really wants and needs to move will show up and go all Saturday Night Fever and your body will take it from there. And the euphoria that rushes out of the center of your being? That's the real hotness, as opposed to the coiffed, airbrushed and artfully scented substitute the world tries to sell us 24/7.

Dancing is the human equivalent of pressing Ice Crush on your blender. Juices get stirred. Everything blends and gets smooth. And, yes, you become more and more delicious.

That's your mandate. Go forth and Dance It Out. You're not allowed to be cynical of it till you try it twice. When have we led you wrong? The VHJs exist to aid you. We're bringing you gold here.

Happy 2008. Batten down the hatches. See ya on the dance floor.

No, You're Very Hot.

Wow. Thanks for all the love, guys. We're so touched by the show of support for the Very Hot On-Strike half of this duo.

Before Sera became a screenwriter, if you'd asked her to name five writers, she'd have said, "Matt Damon... Ben Affleck... um..." So we are as surprised as we are verklempt that the online world is so replete with writer-friendly mensches (both Hebraic and Scintillatingly Attractive Non-).

So thanks ever so for the kind words, sweet comments, mash notes, and Wiccan contract-negotiation candle rituals. You make us proud to be types who type.

P.S. (added on Thurs., November 8) Thank you to the show fans who brought the fruit to the picket line! The writing staff of my show will be out there this morning, at the Warner Bros Studio Gate 5. Some of us will probably be out there next week too, on the morning shift that goes till 1 pm. Feel free to come and join the picket line, if that sounds like a bitchin' good time to ya. We're out there commingling with Pushing Daisies, Gossip Girl, Mad TV, ER, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Smallville, and other very hot shows. Yes, actors stop by too. Yes, they're fucking gorgeous. Plus assorted luminaries; I got to meet Garry Marshall on the line yesterday, which was pretty cool. He's a spry guy, and does it get better than Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and the best rainbow-suspendered alien show ever, Mork and Mindy? The answer, my very hot friends, is nyet.

P.P.S. If you think the logo above is cute, get it on a t shirt here. We didn't put it up there to shill it - we found it googling for an appropriate image to open this little postlet with - but we do like to give credit where due.

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Breaking: Simon Gets Older, Hotter.

The Very Hot Jews are in need of Advil and a fatty breakfast this morning, my friends, because last night we celebrated the birth of our masculine half.

Many knuckle-bitingly attractive Jews (and reasonably appealing Gentiles, we might add) attended the festivities, several bacon-themed gifts were bestowed, and a methuselah of mysterious mixed beverage called "Geisha's Kiss" was consumed.

We thought you might enjoy some photographic proof of Simon's ever-deepening hottitude. Snaps by smoldering Hebe Josh Pickering. (Just goes to show you, your mama was right when she said, "Honey, some things you leave to professionals.")

Oh, and the mustache, while slightly reminiscent of the trademark lip-garnish of He To Whom We Stick It, is emphatically not a Hitler 'stache. If we cut it in half, maybe. As it is, it's a hirsute hybrid of Inspector Clouseau, You Bet Your Life-era Groucho and a smidge of Edgar Allan Poe; on this chart, it probably falls somewhere between "box car" and "business man."

Let's just say that a ride on this puppy'll cost you more than five cents.

Speaking of which: When Sera wears it? Extremely porn-o-rific. Who knew she bore such a striking resemblance to generously endowed tribesman Ron Jeremy?

Unsurprisingly, Sime's Semitic goddess wife looks positively edible rocking the Coffee Strainer Of Hotness:

We wanted to photograph each party attendant In 'Stache Delicto, but it stopped sticking. Plus everyone was in the hot tub by then.

We don't offer this slideshow merely as proof that the Yin and Yang of VHJ are genuine pals and more than a partnership forged by Hollywood dealmakers, or to vouchsafe that our communication is not always by IM. We present these photos as a tribute to the most important thing in life: Having a loving mishpuchah.

Because when you come right down to it, there's nothing quite like having friends who just "get you," friends who can detect your tiniest eyebrow movement and chime in with "I know, right?"

This is what it's all about. We are blessed.

The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

The Very Hot Jews planned not to wish you a happy Valentine's Day, because we think too highly of you.

In our not-so-humble opinion, Valentine's Day is about as fantastic as month-old bologna — an opportunity for creatively challenged, time-crunched lovers to buy each other mass-produced cards inscribed with tooth-achingly hackneyed verse. (We suspect, by the by, that said treacly messages are written by Third World sweatshop workers earning mere pennies per sentiment.)

It is no less than an agonizing grade-school popularity contest wherein Garfield valentine cards stand in for votes cast.

It is no more than a caloric orgy for the single folk who buy themselves a giant velevet heart full of chocolates because, damn it, they deserve one, even if they don't have some lame boyfriend to buy one for them that they don't even get around to eating because they're too busy having crazy, passionate sex with him until they both pass out (not that Sera would do that).

It is, furthermore (to the best of Wikipedia's knowledge), a commemoration of this canonized dude named St. Valentine from the Roman era who died rather than give up his passionate Christianity. So, yeah, not our cup of tea, and by cup we mean pint, and by tea we mean beer.

The Very Hot Jews were all set to ignore Valentine's Day, but then it occured to us: We love you.

Seriously, we love you. We love you for reading our weird little blog. We love you for posting your comments, and directing your friends to our site, and erecting small yet intricate shrines to us in your bedrooms. And even if you do none of the things listed in the previous sentence, we still love you. We love you just for laughing at us.

You know what we love you almost as much as? Bacon.

That is why we're taking this opportunity to share our love of bacon with you.

It probably bears mentioning that the Very Hot Jews are super-secular when it comes to the antique dietary laws of the Hebrews. No Kosher bacon, turkey bacon, vegan soy facon or other pig-free palimpsests for us.

Simon, in particular, believes that the manna from heaven referred to in Exodus must have rained down in crispy pink strips. He even subscribes to the exclusive Bacon of the Month Club. At times, his eyes glazing over slightly, he dreams aloud of "Judaism 2.0," with its more modern attitude toward Farmer John products and pornography.

Sera may be a more fickle lover of that sweetest of breakfast meats, but she did have an entire plate of bacon for breakfast this morning — so clearly, when it's on between her and bacon, it's on.

And so we present to you on this, the occasion of St. Valentine sitting in a jail cell waiting to get his head chopped off by the Romans, Simon's sestina on the tender and intimate subject of his Passion of the Pork.

Bacon Sestina

I’ve gripped with trembling fingers luscious pork
The golden, tender flesh of long-banned swine
Reflecting all the while upon the law
Forbidding me from chewing on this fat.
What hateful ancient dictum could declare
A fatwa on this salty meat so crisp?

Myself, I’d best try making my thoughts crisp,
With clarity proclaiming love of pork
And with my greasy lips proudly declare
My gratitude to tasty slaughtered swine
For offering so selflessly its fat
and savory self – there oughta be a law!

Well, so there is. But I’ll defy that law
And any that would bar me from this crisp
Deliciousness, bestreaked with tender fat.
Jehovah would not quarantine the pork,
Brave product of the noble trotting swine.
And this I’ll toward bright heaven now declare!

And as I scan the buffet, too, declare
That flavor is its own unbending law.
And so atop the pantheon go swine,
Their pinkly marbled pieces done up crisp;
A true apotheosis of the pork,
Illuminated manuscripts of fat.

All days, not just one Tuesday, should be fat,
We pleasure-loving creatures now declare,
With Mardi Gras beads fashioned out of pork!
For chewy, crunchy lust is now my law,
And never was a morning ever crisp
That lacked a heaping helping of the swine.

I’ll slap the face of any human swine
Who asks me if I want to chew the fat
But fails to serve me anything that’s crisp —
Then runs to his accountant, to declare
Deductions, loss and income, per the law,
Of which old Caesar makes his barreled pork.

Such metaphors do insult to this pork.
Let us instead heap blessings on the swine!
Speak not to me of the Mosaic law;
All renderings are useless, but for fat.
Let skillets, with their cracklings, declare
Your ban on trayf has been burned to a crisp.

O noble fat! O skillet's sizzling law!
Declare me but an acolyte of swine.
Crisp logic fails — all falls in thrall to pork.