Saperstein's Authentic Irish Pub, O'Brien's Genuine Matzoh Ball Mix, Save the Little Matzohs

Okay okay different font, and this is regnaD kciN, Vleeptron's European Affairs Correspondent, with a short addendum to previous report on GAE and NA and Saperstein's Authentic Irish Pub, just two blocks west of the Hollyhead-Dublin ferry terminal in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

On behalf of Vleeptron Intergalactic News (VIN), we would like to say Grazcha to our stringer, Pat's Pub, on the ground hoovering up the big weekend referendum news in Helvetia, and photographing the billboards of Thun. (If I were Swiss, I would vote NA. I don't trust those GAE types. They all drive stretch limos and got blonde Scandinavian trophy wives named Annika. Say NA to GAE.)

Ah, fuck, we would just like to say Grazcha. We have never said Grazcha before. For anything. To anybody. Grazcha. Grazcha.

Saperstein's is my favorite pub in Dublin, and I would be there for tonight's Chieftains show, but recent rises in the cost of aviation fuel due to the Ninth Crusade currently raging in the Middle East between Christendom and Islam (but I think we're finally gonna win this time if Congress hurries up and passes the new Supervolunteering Act) have forced me to cut back on the trips to Europe on my second-hand Concorde, and also I have had to let Philippe and Kevin, my unemployed Concorde pilot and co-pilot, go. They have tickets to fly the Airbus, so I am hoping they will soon find new employment. (But I think since I told them I would have to let them go, they have been spending a lot of Happy Hours in the VIP Fly Hi Room at Miami International Airport. Should I be concerned? They're really nice boys, I know they'll be fine, they can drink responsibly. And I know they would never drive a car in that condition.)

Speaking of alcoholic beverages, Saperstein's has Guinness Stout on draught. I have to fucking drink it from the bottle over here in the Colonies, but that's okay with me. In South and Mesoamerica, Guinness has a nasty looking bulldog on the label, and locals order "Cabeza de Perro," Dog's Head beer. The natives go apeshit over the bulldog in Sud and Meso. (I like mine frio.) It may not be the Elixir of Life, but it will do fine till I can get back to Prague, which has a gazillion litres of the Elixir of Life, by the bucket, all for free, if you know where to look. And I do. So eat your hearts out, I am going to live and stay young forever, no plastic surgery, no Rogaine. I brought a Thermos of it back from my last trip with my Nephew.

The Super Stop & Shop in Hadley, Massachusetts, on the other hand, has confused and nervous Jewish Lesbians in the Kosher Food aisle around the time of the annual moveable Festival of Passover/Pesach (consult your Lunar Calendar or DespicableTeacher for exact date).

As usual, I was a day or three late to buy the ingredients necessary to make my very special Best Fucking Matzoh Ball Chicken Soup in the Melkweg, for our annual Cowardly Bachelors' and Bachelorettes' Passover Seder. (Passover is actually an elaborate dinner meal served in somebody's home, often Grandma's.)

I hate always being late to buy the ingredients, because then all the Famous Brands of Passover Food have been hosed and denuded off the Stop & Shop Kosher Food shelves by the local Horde o' Early Jews, and all that's left for me are the Off-Brands, brands of this crap I never heard of before, and odd, screwy brands imported from Israel which claim to be 30% Holier than American brands, blessed by Real Israeli Orthodox Rabbis and yaddeau yaddeau yaddeau. It's suck to be late to buy the stuff you need to make the soup.

So the two Lesbians were in front of me staring at the denuded shelves, and talking in anxious and confused tones. For some mysterious reason known only to Sherlock Bernstein, they were not going to Grandma's for Passover Seder. (Seder means "order," the order of things the Haggadah tells you to do for the Festival Dinner. Haggadah means ... oh, the hell with it, we'll be here all night. Google.)

"Whaddya need?" Sherlock Bernstein asked the nice young Lesbians, who he took a wild guess were U-Mass students, cause the Super Stop & Shop is 1 mile (1.60934400579467 kilometers) from the U-Mass campus (and from the wonderful chain-link-fence Labyrinth with all the used condoms and beer cans and broken bottles in it, but no jive, it is a great fucking Labyrinth, a real Little Kid Terrorizer).

For reasons they did not want to go into in detail in the Kosher Food aisle with a loopy but helpful stranger, Grandma's was Not An Option this Passover, so they had determined to try to re-create Seder at their apartment. (No Pizza for this mystery, even if you're Swedenborgian and wouldn't know a Haggadah if it flew up your Tuchas.) But they were college girls and so didn't know how to boil water let alone cook the essential dishes for every Passover Seder (roast hedgehog, braided trouser snake, baked Alaska, etc.).

"Which one of these things should we buy to make Matzoh Balls?" Lesbian B asked.

"Jeez," I replied, "don't you guys know anything? There's only one brand to use. Everybody uses O'BRIEN'S GENUINE MATZOH BALL MIX!"

(After Louis had mopped up all the sarcasm, irony and mirth from Aisle 5, I handed them a box of Maneschewitz Matzoh Meal -- in certain circles, a product as famous and beloved as Cabeza de Perro -- and showed them the Matzoh Ball recipe on the side. Follow it slavishly, you'll end up with perfect Matzoh Balls every time.)

Passover is believed to be the world's oldest continuously celebrated religious festival, so a lot of the dishes you always eat at Passover are ancient, and never change, generation to generation.

But in the last few years I've been thinking about not cooking or eating Matzoh Balls anymore, because I have slowly and sadly come to the conclusion that it is not right, that it is actually cruel to castrate all the little Matzohs every year just for a religious tradition. I was surprised that in the UK, the FAWC did not include this in its Kosher/Halaal complaints to The Queen. Please send Comments and help me know what to do about this.

Okay okay now you got to check out this sign on the automatic glass front doors of the Super Stop & Shop (Open 24 Hours 7 Days etc.) in Hadley Massachusetts. And you got to remember I studied Symbolic Logic at Expensive Greek Revival U.:

WE SELL KOSHER AND NON-KOSHER FOOD

I swear to God one of these night I am going to sneak up there at 4 am with a razor and when I sneak away again, that sign will have been logically minimalized the way the Logic Professor taught us, and it will henceforth say:

WE SELL ............................... FOOD