CRANBERRY SAUCE!
Out of nowhere now, TOM was completely losing it, jumping up and down, fluttering madly, his wings kicking up food and gunk everywhere. Especially this gelatinous crimson substance that was so inorganic it still had grooves from sitting in a metal can.
ELSIE
So? Cranberry sauce … so what?
SHALOM
Don’t you mean an-cray erry-bay auce-say?
TOM
So what, you ask me. So what, she asks. So what. I will tell you so what. Every Thanksgiving next to the dead bird, next to the murdered turkey—they set the cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce is a traitor. Cranberry sauce is the enabler of Thanksgiving. Cranberry sauce is the Benedict Arnold of condiments. Cranberries grow in a bog and they should stay in a bog. What’s a bog?
SHALOM
APPLESAUCE!
ELSIE
Oh shit, here we go again.
Now I had a turkey jumping up and down yelling “Cranberry sauce!” and a pig still fixated on bacon and newly worried that ork-pay ops-chay might be lurking near the apple auce-say—all he needed was a slice of omato-tay to send him squealing over the edge. And I was wondering if I was the last animal on earth to realize that humans eat us all and not only that, they throw most of us out without even eating us, throw us away like worthless garbage. I mean, if I’m gonna be killed for food, at least eat me and poop me out and let me rejoin the circle of nature. Don’t kill me for no reason at all. And that’s when I saw it—a half-eaten hamburger. And that’s when I lost it too. I started mooing like a banshee. The entire country was mad and it was making me mad. I thought, This is what it’s like to be a mad cow.
27
KOSHER KORNER
Shalom was in bad shape. Pigs don’t bounce back so fast, not known for their resiliency are pigs. They tend to roll in the deep mud. We had a few hours to kill before we had to be at the airport and we needed to pick up a few things, so I decided we should find Little Israel, the part of town that was heavily Jewish. I thought Shalom might be happy to get a taste of the world he was about to enter.
We found the neighborhood and popped into a clothing store to buy a couple of raincoats and some glasses and hats as disguises. I say “buy,” but we actually stole. It was easy, no one expects a cow or a pig or a turkey to steal a pair of Ray-Bans (product placement) and velvet shorts like the guy from AC/DC, so they look right through you and do not see you. People see what they think they’ll see and unless you do something really stupid, you can be invisible. Then we went into a bookstore and lifted some books on Judaism for Shalom and a Star of David for him to wear around his neck and a yarmulke for his head.
Shalom was perking up, smiling at the men walking by in the big fur hats and the women in the drab, colorless clothes. He started nodding at folks, and saying “My people!” and “Shalom, brother, Shabbat shalom” and a bunch of words I didn’t understand. People took a wide berth around him. The pig was right, these people did not want to touch him. They looked at him like he was crazy, and I’m not sure they were wrong.
A couple of wiseass kids flew by on their bikes, almost clipping us, and Shalom yelled, “You little schmucks!” He started using those foreign words, he called it Yiddish, but it sounded a lot like pig German, and I think he made it up like pig Latin. He spoke this Yiddish at passersby and a strange new accent subtly and then not so subtly took over his voice, like he was from Poland by way of Brooklyn. He said the kids were “meshuga.” At one point he yelled out: “Remember the six million!” He started complaining about the “goyim,” and that he was going to find himself a “shiksa.” I thought, Isn’t that a type of razor to shave with? A Schick? (Product placement.) What did I know, there aren’t a lot of Jewish animals in upstate New York outside the Catskills.
Shalom started dancing the hora and singing “If I were a rich pig,
Out of nowhere now, TOM was completely losing it, jumping up and down, fluttering madly, his wings kicking up food and gunk everywhere. Especially this gelatinous crimson substance that was so inorganic it still had grooves from sitting in a metal can.
ELSIE
So? Cranberry sauce … so what?
SHALOM
Don’t you mean an-cray erry-bay auce-say?
TOM
So what, you ask me. So what, she asks. So what. I will tell you so what. Every Thanksgiving next to the dead bird, next to the murdered turkey—they set the cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce is a traitor. Cranberry sauce is the enabler of Thanksgiving. Cranberry sauce is the Benedict Arnold of condiments. Cranberries grow in a bog and they should stay in a bog. What’s a bog?
SHALOM
APPLESAUCE!
ELSIE
Oh shit, here we go again.
Now I had a turkey jumping up and down yelling “Cranberry sauce!” and a pig still fixated on bacon and newly worried that ork-pay ops-chay might be lurking near the apple auce-say—all he needed was a slice of omato-tay to send him squealing over the edge. And I was wondering if I was the last animal on earth to realize that humans eat us all and not only that, they throw most of us out without even eating us, throw us away like worthless garbage. I mean, if I’m gonna be killed for food, at least eat me and poop me out and let me rejoin the circle of nature. Don’t kill me for no reason at all. And that’s when I saw it—a half-eaten hamburger. And that’s when I lost it too. I started mooing like a banshee. The entire country was mad and it was making me mad. I thought, This is what it’s like to be a mad cow.
27
KOSHER KORNER
Shalom was in bad shape. Pigs don’t bounce back so fast, not known for their resiliency are pigs. They tend to roll in the deep mud. We had a few hours to kill before we had to be at the airport and we needed to pick up a few things, so I decided we should find Little Israel, the part of town that was heavily Jewish. I thought Shalom might be happy to get a taste of the world he was about to enter.
We found the neighborhood and popped into a clothing store to buy a couple of raincoats and some glasses and hats as disguises. I say “buy,” but we actually stole. It was easy, no one expects a cow or a pig or a turkey to steal a pair of Ray-Bans (product placement) and velvet shorts like the guy from AC/DC, so they look right through you and do not see you. People see what they think they’ll see and unless you do something really stupid, you can be invisible. Then we went into a bookstore and lifted some books on Judaism for Shalom and a Star of David for him to wear around his neck and a yarmulke for his head.
Shalom was perking up, smiling at the men walking by in the big fur hats and the women in the drab, colorless clothes. He started nodding at folks, and saying “My people!” and “Shalom, brother, Shabbat shalom” and a bunch of words I didn’t understand. People took a wide berth around him. The pig was right, these people did not want to touch him. They looked at him like he was crazy, and I’m not sure they were wrong.
A couple of wiseass kids flew by on their bikes, almost clipping us, and Shalom yelled, “You little schmucks!” He started using those foreign words, he called it Yiddish, but it sounded a lot like pig German, and I think he made it up like pig Latin. He spoke this Yiddish at passersby and a strange new accent subtly and then not so subtly took over his voice, like he was from Poland by way of Brooklyn. He said the kids were “meshuga.” At one point he yelled out: “Remember the six million!” He started complaining about the “goyim,” and that he was going to find himself a “shiksa.” I thought, Isn’t that a type of razor to shave with? A Schick? (Product placement.) What did I know, there aren’t a lot of Jewish animals in upstate New York outside the Catskills.
Shalom started dancing the hora and singing “If I were a rich pig,
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