When you tell people you’re going to Detroit they often give you that “are you crazy?” look and wish you to come back alive or at least unhurt. Pictures of abandoned and destroyed post-apocalyptic Detroit’s ruin-porn make their rounds on the internet, interspersed with scary crime statistics and sad economic news. A person with common sense would probably avoid Detroit, but clearly I am not that person. During a college visit to the nearby Ann Arbor, I set aside two days to check out Detroit because how could I not. Detroit is awesome. And we came back alive and even unhurt, if you don’t count a parking ticket, which did hurt a lot.

This sign bothered me for weeks. According to the Wikipedia “@” is pronounced “at” in this country and anything from “snail” to “strudel” everywhere else.

So what is it: Ashcroft, Ashcraft, Ashcratft, Ashcrstrudelft? Is it a little light bulb under the “@”? What is trying to say?

Yours truly kcm€€sha.

Not much original material on this here blog lately, but I couldn’t pass up this old Jewish joke short film presented at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

*Warning: The movie contains one NSFW word, depending on where you W. This blog is not responsible for you not getting the joke, just enjoy the music.

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I had various ideas for a post about Jewish War Veterans during the Jewish American Heritage month, but none of them worked out so I just went to the Jewish Community Center and took some (low quality) photos of the displays presented by the Jewish War Veterans MO/KAN Post 605.

For a professional online exhibit on the subject please visit: Jewish Veterans of World War II.

When I was growing up® there was an old joke (which I may have told here before, but I only remember about three of these so I have to recycle): An American is walking around in Moscow and falls into an unmarked open manhole. He screams: “I can’t believe some idiot left a manhole open here without any warnings! Where were the cones, tape, warning red flags?”
An old Russian passer-by says “When you were crossing the border did you see a giant red flag?”
“Yes” -American replies,
“That was your warning!” (I need to brush up on my dialogue punctuation, but you get the idea)
Few Americans who comment here have actually been to Russia and they will confirm that being a foreigner there is like running a plow through a minefield, you never know when it’s gonna blow, but you are pretty sure it will, sooner or later. The only protection is your wallet but you can’t just go around openly paying people off, it’s an art. Apparently at there are enough foreigners who have not mastered the art of bribery to have a special international prison described by one unfortunate victim in his book Zone 22 ( I am pretty sure the same book is published in the US as Tomorrow You Go Home: One Man’s Harrowing Imprisonment in a Modern-Day Russian Gulag)

I haven’t read the book yet, I am waiting for my turn at the library, but there are plenty of blurbs around to suggest that if you don’t know what you are doing you may come back from Russia with a couple of prison tattoos instead of Matryoshkas for your girlfriend.
If I like the book I may review it in a few weeks.