More Authentic Than What?

December 3, 2001-BBQ

The Aussie BBQ at the temple last night was a lot more fun than we thought it would be. They served the usual sausage (beef) & burgers & had a damper taste off. I didn’t win, but mine looked & tasted pretty decent. The winner had raisins in it. Next time I make it, I might put chocolate chips in. Chocolate can never hurt.

They’d hired a DJ for the night & he looked like an Aussie DJ should. He had the long hair, beard, & generally unkempt look of someone who spends more time with his horse than people. He was actually a retired stage actor whose claim to fame was playing the villain in Don Quixote. He bragged that he got to rape Dulcinea eight times a week. Accompanied by a keyboard he set by punching in a set of numbers for each song, he sang Australian songs that were familiar & some that were not. They were about lost love, lost opportunities, & lost dogs. They resemble our country western tunes but are sung in the language of Oz. If you’re familiar with Waltzing Matilda you know what I mean. For some odd reason, he launched into a medley of Al Jolson oldies before detouring to English favorites. When he belted out the Lambeth Walk, lots of Brits got up & gave it a go. From what I could tell, the Lambeth Walk is just that. People walk around to the beat & at a specified time shout out, “Oy!”

Bush poets are well known here & one man recited, from memory a long, lyrical ode to a grandchild. Jokes were told (some ribald) & then the lagerphone contest began. A lagerphone is an outback musical instrument made from a stick to which has been loosely nailed as many beer caps as you can. Pounding the end of the stick on the ground jingles the bottle caps & produces the “music.” I asked a young boy if he had to drink beer to get all the caps. He sheepishly told me that he’d bought them. Australia may be unique as a place where you can buy only the beer bottle caps. I would guess that bottle caps for real lagerphones come from the macho outback tradition of emptying the bottles Aussie style. The one thing was missing from the evening was beer. The committee said they have a cooler full of beer & wine left over from another event. It went begging & they didn’t think it would be needed tonight. From the way the group danced & carried on, it wasn’t.

The music shifted to the more danceable kind & the 70+ year old set started to show their stuff. Suddenly, my ears perked up. They were playing the Chicken dance. I never thought I’d be thankful for all the bar mitzvah parties we’ve had to attend over the years! David & I joined in like pros. The line dancing took off & our lessons at the Jewish Community Center paid off. I danced some form of boot scoot, several renditions of the inevitable electric slide, & then I heard the DJ key in #149 on the keyboard. It was the Macarena. I became a dancing fool. Of course, never having had a rabbinic couple before, the group didn’t know what to expect. They ate it up.

The evening had started at 5:30pm & the DJ was booked until 8:30pm. This was a record for the Jewish community here. Usually they eat & run. Most people stayed to the end. For us, it was still early, so we went to coffee with some people who had an interest in the resolutions made by the Moetzah at the meeting in Hahndorf. As we were leaving the temple, a woman went up to David & told him that her daughter is a lesbian. That’s three out of 100 families. It’s nothing like our Akron statistics of 250+ out of 600 families who have come out to us, but it’s a start. We’ve been out in Akron since 1990 & it’s only been three months here.

When I told Syd Bruce about my ultimate Australian experience with a wallaby, he burst my bubble. He asked if the wallaby had weed on me. When I said that it hadn’t, he said that it wasn’t really authentic.

Janet Bruce had a 50% off coupon for a resort on Frasier Island so we booked it today for Dec. 17-18. Frasier is the largest sand island in the world. It’s about two hours north of here. We have to park our car on the mainland & take a catamaran to the island. We can take 4-wheel drive tours there or rent a SUV ourselves. There is a dune national park as well as fresh water lakes safe for swimming. The main animal attraction is dingoes. Since it’s so isolated, they are purebred. The dingoes are feral & are not to be fed. Small children do have to be carefully watched. Dingoes have been known to carry them off. We’ll take time to drive up the Sunshine Coast on Sunday after adult education & probably stay over along the way. David won’t have to miss services for this trip since it will be mid-week.

We also booked dinner at the Italian restaurant at Jupiter’s Casino across the street & the floor show/revue for our anniversary. We keep asking people where good Italian food is in this area & they all keep telling us it’s Andianno’s at Jupiter’s. Here’s hoping.

Toby