,<\/span> plays all over.\u00a0 Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’ve played in 19 states and Canada.\u00a0 Missouri plus Kansas, six times.\u00a0 What?<\/p>\nThis month some of us are doing shows in Cleveland Heights.\u00a0 Convenient for us.\u00a0 How about for you?\u00a0 Where do you live?\u00a0 Seriously, write in.\u00a0 The person who lives the furthest from Cleveland wins an award.\u00a0 Not sure what.<\/p>\n
—
\n FEBRUARY SCHEDULE<\/small><\/span><\/strong>
\nGigi’s,\u00a0 7 p.m. tomorrow (Tues. Feb. 3), Cleveland Hts.
\nBert Stratton & Irwin Weinberger play standards and klezmer.<\/p>\nNighttown,\u00a0 7 p.m.Wed., Feb 25, Cleveland Hts.
\nAn evening of social commentary, plumbing tips and music.
\nKlezmer Guy Trio (Tamar Gray, Alan Douglass and Bert.)\u00a0 Prose, standards, Motown and klezmer.
\n—
\nLastly, here’s<\/span><\/strong> a post about Yiddishe Cup’s show in New York City, in keeping with the thank-you-NYT<\/em> theme . . .<\/p>\nHICK YIDS BLOW NY LIDS<\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/p>\nYiddishe Cup<\/strong><\/span> played New York. We rented a van at LaGuardia Airport and drove to a hotel in Elmhurst, Queens, which was like Cleveland except a lot more Asians. The hotel was between a transmission shop and a Burger King.<\/p>\n![\"hotel-dreck1\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/hotel-dreck1.jpg\" "\\"hotel-dreck1\\"")
New York, New York<\/p><\/div>\n
We played the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts.\u00a0 Who knows why. Maybe we got the gig because no East Coast band was doing klezmer comedy like us.<\/p>\n
In Brooklyn — <\/strong><\/span>on our way to the gig — I saw a fender bender. The driver called out, “Would you be a witness?”<\/p>\n“No, I’m from Ohio,” I said.<\/p>\n
My musician buddies wondered: Why the schmuck-itude and the ‘I’m from Ohio’?<\/p>\n
Here’s why:\u00a0 I was daydreaming about our imminent “Midwest Yids Blow NY Lids” headline in the New York<\/em> Post<\/em>.\u00a0 Maybe a Post <\/em>reporter was hiding in our van to write us up.\u00a0 Also, I was preoccupied with not denting our <\/em>ride — a 15-passenger rental van.\u00a0 I was weaving through very dense borough traffic, and the last thing I wanted, right before showtime, was to talk about dents with cops and witnesses.<\/p>\nWe did Catskill <\/strong><\/span>comedy tunes at the concert. The audience — primarily AK<\/em>s — loved us.\u00a0 I thought we were going to play for young people.\u00a0 Aren’t there a lot of young people in Brooklyn?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 But they were not at our show.\u00a0 And no reporter showed up, even though a New York Jewish Week<\/em> critic had written: “Yiddishe Cup is a band that was made for a hip Jewish New York audience.\u00a0 It’s a wildly funny amalgam of Mickey Katz, Spike Jones, PDQ Bach and straight-ahead klezmer.”<\/p>\n![\"yc-in-nyc-jewish-week-4_21_061\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/yc-in-nyc-jewish-week-4_21_061-300x282.jpg\" "\\"yc-in-nyc-jewish-week-4_21_061\\"")
“Think of that — American Jews who have never been to Brooklyn.” — New York Jewish Week<\/p><\/div>\n
The crowd was mostly elderly Flatbush residents.\u00a0 I brought out some 1957 Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cards and gave the audience a quiz:<\/p>\n
What was<\/strong><\/span> Duke Snider’s real first name?<\/p>\n![\"pee-wee-reese-1957\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/pee-wee-reese-1957-209x300.jpg\" "\\"pee-wee-reese-1957\\"")
What was Pee Wee Reese’s real first name?<\/p>\n
What was Al Walker’s nickname?<\/p>\n
The audience got every answer right.\u00a0 One man even guessed Duke Snider’s height correctly (6-1). [Answers: Edwin Snider, Harold Reese, Dixie Walker.]<\/p>\n
I talked about<\/strong><\/span> Cleveland.\u00a0 I told the crowd I had gone to high school with Eric Carmen of the Raspberries.\u00a0 That’s what New Yorkers wanted to hear — who I went to high school with. New Yorkers like to say “I went to Sheepshead Bay with Larry David” or “I went to Eramus with Sedaka.”\u00a0 If they don’t say that often, they feel like Midwesterners.<\/p>\nWe did\u00a0 New York our way. Next stop, Columbus, Ohio.<\/p>\n
—
\nListen here<\/strong><\/a><\/span> to the comedy tunes we played in New York.<\/span><\/p>\nThis post, “Hick Yids Blow NY Lids,” originally ran 5\/4\/11.\u00a0 The Brooklyn concert was in 2006.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome, New York Times readers. This blog is primarily an amusing word pile, with illustrations by Ralph Solonitz.\u00a0 There are also videos and the occasional Yiddishe Cup tune.\u00a0 No recipes! The Times has published six of my op-eds lately. Most of my stuff is about music and real estate.\u00a0 But here’s one more about nursing […]<\/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-22631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22631"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22651,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22631\/revisions\/22651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"bad](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/bad-gig.jpg\")
<\/a>Most of<\/strong><\/span> my stuff is about music and real estate.\u00a0 But here’s one more about nursing homes — about when I almost got the hook at a nursing-home gig.\u00a0 Click Bad Gig<\/a>.<\/p>\n