"'Mr. Brando, would you please do us the honor of reading the next passage from the Haggada?' he asked. Marlon replied, 'It would be my pleasure.'"
Brando rose and delivered the passage "as if he were reading Shakespeare on Broadway. Mouths fell open and eyes focused on the speaker with an intensity any rabbi would covet. When he was done, I think people actually paused, wondering if they should applaud."
Next... the rabbi approached another member of our table: "Mr. Dylan, would you do us the honor of singing us a song?"
April 7, 2009
"I will never forget the sight of our table... with Brando on his left and that childhood friend, who just happened to be Dylan, on his right."
"At first... the Seder progressed normally without anyone noticing anything out of the ordinary. But after about 45 minutes, 'the rabbi figured out that ours was not your average Seder table.'"
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16 comments:
If Sammy Davis Jr. had been there, they would have had a song and a dance.
Was this before or after Brando said "We've seen the nigger, and the greaseball. We've seen the chink. We've seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap. We have seen the wily Filipino. We've seen everything. But we never saw the kike because they knew perfectly well that that's where you draw the wagons around."
Don't want him at my dinner table. Cedarford can make those reservations.
Gee, I wonder what the Rabbi would have asked for if porn star Nina Hartley, also Jewish, would have been in attendance?
"Sure, Dylan responded, "how about All Along The Whatevertower":
♪ ♫
hhmmmmmmm
♪ ♫
"There must be some way out of here," said the singer to the rabbi,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Clergy, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my songs,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth
So, I'm outta here, pronto."
Bob Dylan jealousy raises its head again. The guy's never hurt my feelings by being a more gifted songwriter than me. So what he is also a descendant of Abraham who partakes of his spiritual inheritance. His gifts have only added to my life and not subtracted from my life. "Thanks" would be an appropriate response.
Ma nishtana ha-lahylah ha-zeh mi-kol ha-layloht?
(Why is this night different from all other nights?)
Because we've nabbed Marlon Brando for our seder table!
In a way it makes sense that these two quirky geniuses would meet under such odd circumstances.
According to a trashy book written by an ex Brando girlfriend that I once looked at in a book store (before the Internet, I had the habit of checking "Dylan" in the indexes of books) Dylan and Brando met the first time at a party. Dylan flirted with both Brando and the girlfriend, but Brando was only interested in the girlfriend. I doubt if the girlfriend' memory served her well.
fcai are you dating Maxine?
fcai's litany of taboo words reminds me of Dorothy Parker telling the young Norman Mailer when she met him at a party, "So you're the man who can't spell fuck."
fcai is Maxine
On a lighter note...at the suggestion of a fellow commenter, I just ordered two of the Willie Nelson CDs he recommended, Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages. These disks are really cheap on Amazon right now. The two combined were less than $12.
I expected that kind of response - I quoted Brando being a fool and others start name calling. Don't kill the messenger, you "progressives".
And remember, anti-semitism is a large part of your being - you should revere Brando for what he said. I find him revolting.
JAL@ 2:16 Maxine is much classier.
I agree - anyone who would quote a cultural hero using bad language must be as vile as Maxine. Brando was god before Obama got here.
Full text of "My Seder with Brando":
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1238562930817&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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