<\/p>\n
I was<\/strong><\/span> in a comedy show in Cuba. I passed by a beach and saw a company picnic — a group of off-duty cops. There was a comedian entertaining the troops. There were about 75 people. It was Christmas day, 2017. The picnic shelter was just like a Metroparks’ shelter. The comedian was cracking the folks up. I said to him in Spanish, \u201cYou can make fun of me. I speak some Spanish and I’m a gringo.\u201d He brought me on mic and asked where I was from. I said. “From the north, near Canada.\u201d I didn\u2019t think \u201cOhio\u201d would mean anything. I said, \u201cI\u2019m not like the Cuban-Americans in the first row here.\u201d There were several well-dressed Cuban-Americans, on vacation, up front. The comedian said to me, “You’re puro<\/em> gringo.\u201d Yep, that\u2019s me.<\/p>\n When he asked if I liked Cuba, I said I was enchanted with it. (It’s a hellhole to live\u00a0 in but great to visit.) He said I should stay in Cuba and teach him English, and he would teach me how to use Cuban currency, which is complicated; there’s one currency for locals and another for tourists\u00a0 The currency joke got him some laughs. You had to be there. \u201cTu me ensenas ingles y yo te enseno la moneda nacional.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n He talked about the bathroom. He said, \u201cWhat time is it? 3:15 pm? We have a record! There\u2019s still soap in the bathroom!\u201d Laughs. \u201cHola, todo el mundo. Me pueden decirme que hora es? 3:15. Senores, tenemos un record! Son las 3:15 de la tarde y todavia nadie se ha robado el jabon del bano.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n There\u2019s a<\/strong> <\/span>shortage of everything in Cuba, including soap. In Cleveland, I have a shortage of Spanish \u00e1ccent marks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was in a comedy show in Cuba. I passed by a beach and saw a company picnic — a group of off-duty cops. There was a comedian entertaining the troops. There were about 75 people. It was Christmas day, 2017. The picnic shelter was just like a Metroparks’ shelter. The comedian was cracking the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28977"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29025,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28977\/revisions\/29025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}