Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for January 10, 2013

That meshuggenah Arlo, always kvetching.

Hey Homer, . . . You forgot the ‘Vay’, . . . (May the vay be with you!).

Gen Colin Powell speaks Yiddish … not many people know that.

I can see I’ve entered the Borscht Belt. For anyone interested in learning Yiddish, check out How to Speak Yiddish by Leo Rosten. It’s fun!

Let’s see. Eddie Cantor. Milton Berle. SId Caesar. Jack Benny. Carl Reiner. Mel Brooks. Alan King. Danny Kay. The Three Stooges. The Marx Brothers. And on and on. (Wikipedia lists over 200, though not all of that era.)

And for those of us who grew up on picture books: http://www.amazon.com/Yiddish-Dick-Jane-Ellis-Weiner/dp/0316159727

I now know that a schlemiel is someone who always spills soup, and a schlimazel is someone it always lands on.

it’s so cute when the goyim use yiddish…

Thanks to MAD magazine, I learned how to spell all those Yiddish words I heard from Mel Brooks. Farshteyn? (And Ashburn, “seit nicht meshugga” is one of my favorite phrases!)

מייַן הונט האט קיין נאָז

Or someone who grew up on Mad (esp. the Kurtzman issues). An orthodox friend of mine one told me that use more Yiddish than any 3 friends of hers on Long Island. So, nu?

Arlo may know some Yiddish, but he’s still the ultimate goy. That’s not all bad, I’d say the same of the honorable Colin Powell. But only a goy would let himself be used as the chump mouthpiece of Busch, Rumsfeld, et cetera.

For some reason I thought of Lloyd Thaxton.

Re: Knowing some Yiddish: It helps to have a Jewish son-in-law.

When my eldest was little, she used to watch McHale’s Navy on TV. (Remember when you could let kids watch unsupervised?) One day she said “Oy, vey!” and I jusst turned and looked at her. “That’s an old Japanese expression”, she explained.

If you ever saw “Norma Rae”, you learned kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. She said it with the greatest inflections.

@fairportpan2 I agree about living in a large northern city. I’m in Philadelphia and learned a few useful words when I first moved here from New Jersey.

Years and years and years ago, there was a documentary on PBS about regionalisms and other words that aren’t well known everywhere. One of my favorite scenes was Southerners trying to pronounce and define “schlep”. I was hysterical.

Oh, I still miss Georgie Jessel (sp?) and all the old comedians who used to show up often on Steve Allen’s and , Mike Douglas’ show. I still call DH “Bubala.”

“The Goldbergs” show used to offer a lot of Yiddish words and phrases. I recently noticed it is still on TV as is the “Jack Benny Show”.

@doublepaw;….as I was about to mention !

Sorry, the funniest movie of all time is The Life of Brian…IMHO….

Blessed are the meek… ….What Jesus fails to understand is that it is the meek that are the problem….Big nose……

I just watched a lot of old SNL, so despite only being 30-something I can understand Arlo and most of you just fine. Though I did think a Putz was just some one when went slow on the road until corrected a few years ago (…)

The Goldbergs

Nos Nevets: Economics shouldn’t count. Alfred Nobel never established it. Besides, they never picked E. F. Shumaker.

You are right, cause I think every thing Mel Brooks does is hilarious!!

Being that JJ is from Lanett, AL, I don’t think there was a lot of exposure to the world a lot of you are referring to.

True!