Seder Dos

"Shotgun celebration?"

I'm laying on the ground panting. I just got my ass kicked in basketball by a bunch of 22 year olds. My friend Matt has a black eye, I have a sprained ankle and a bunch of kids born after Toy Story came out are laughing at me.

One of the young bucks throws me a beer and some keys then does an extended cheers about having sex or something. I beat all the young kids at the beer chug, at least I'm still good at something.

"I don't know if it's going to last." Pipes in one of the children.

We had just run to the grocery store and bought 10 cases of Coors Light.

"There are 10 of us, and you have to assume we are each going to drink 25 beers. That only leaves 50 beers for the rest of the guests."

I should set the scene a bit. I am in Granite Bay, California for my friend's annual Seder dinner. I'm still not entirely sure what Seder is, but I know it has to do with Passover, which is somehow connected to Easter. It seems that these holidays would be treated with reverence and seriousness.

Not in this household.

Last Tuesday I was sent a picture of Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street.

"This year's Seder theme."

Past themes have included Hawaiian shirts, tuxedos; hell I had to dress up as a duck one year,

To call this family progressive would be a bit of an understatement. Not only do I find myself wearing blue suspenders, and slicking back my hair like a bad Barry Melrose impersonator, I also have been appointed the Special Effects coordinator of the weekend.

In my case, that means I am manning the smoke machine.

Yes, we have a industrial sized fog machine at a religious dinner.

During the pregame board meeting (Paul's dad, brothers, sister and everyone's friends) lock themselves in the movie theater and go over the schedule of events. It's essentially like a television production meeting except everyone is ripping shots and no one is allowed to leave until they have had at least five.

I was primarily focused on the drinking element of the board meeting as my job seemed simple enough, 'hit the button.' But when I was paying attention I remember people discussing speeches, dramatic skits and of course a grand finale that called for gas and fire. The fact that we were all approaching black out status didn't concern anyone because we had a real life firefighter with us.

It should be noted that he was the only one opposed to an open flame.

After a case of 5 hour energy was presented to all of the members of the board, we did one more shotgun and made our way to the dining room where there was a full bottle of red wine in front of every place setting.

Now it was my time to shine. I filled that room with so much smoke that a skittish elderly man started shouting 'fire!' I'm not sure if this indicates that I was an excellent or terrible special effects supervisor.

From the smoke, our friend Dave emerged, doing a full WWE style entrance to the song 'Born in the USA.' Dave is a firefighter and former Marine that was blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Now he kicks off every Seder with an electric guitar performance of The National Anthem.

Everyone stands and chants his name for 3 minutes after the performance and now it's time for the dinner to begin.

There are a few greetings and then we begin reading from the Seder book. I'm sure it has a cool Jewish name, but it's essentially the story of Moses. At some point in the story a person enters the room dressed as the evil pharaoh. He is of course loudly booed. In fact someone even throws a beer at him.

Paul's sister Liat and his mother Anat, now dressed in Moses costumes rush in and stab pharaoh with a sword, killing him. At this point in the dinner everyone cheers and a young man in a duck costume comes in the house to pump up the crowd and remove the dead body of the Pharaoh.

Now again, there was a LOT of wine involved so I may be misremembering the order but eventually during Seder there is singing. At this portion of the dinner four people who had been posing as normal dinner guests (friends of Liat and her husband Jake) stand up and reveal themselves to be a traditional Israeli band. They pull instruments out of hiding places and play a full set of Passover themed music.

The reactions of the crowd ranges from moderate surprise to full on shock. I am told that I have to cool out with the smoke because it is giving some of the more senior members of the table extreme anxiety.

As the band finishes their set, it is finally time to eat. But before we can feast there is one more surprise. Out on the front patio there is a large stuffed duck, my friend Matt pours gas on it and lights it on fire, then our Marine in full firefighter garb rushes outside to extinguish the fire to thundering cheers. The Matriarch Anat brings in a flaming duck for us to eat and confetti cannons launch to signify the grand finale. I think lasers were involved, I began my second bottle of wine.

The night quickly spiraled into something more akin to a wedding reception than a holy service. Paul convinced the band to play the song 'Shout' and by the time I snapped out of my brown out. I was dancing on a table with my shirt off beer showering to Zack Brown Band's 'Chicken Fried.'

After the adults (those born before 1980) retire for the evening, Seder Dos begins. This is essentially just a bunch of guys in their 20s and 30s drinking beer in a garage eating leftovers. In fact I'm sure it's what they did in high school for fun.

The kid who played Pharaoh is now crying in the corner on the phone asking his mom to pick him up because he's too drunk. Someone is passed out in a trash can. And the overserved f*ckboy that found the afikoman is telling Anat that the price is going to be four tickets to the opera.

What kind of asshat wants four tickets to the opera? The type of guy that says 'Hi my name is ___ I went to Duke."

Duke boy gets kicked out of the house like we are angry frat boys rallying against random dudes and I find myself losing 7 games of Civil War in a row to some kid ironically wearing a Metallica shirt.

I glance down and it's only 11pm. I feel like it should be 5 o clock in the morning. I did have a 6am flight, so I've been awake for quite some time. I scour my options. I can no longer hold my alcohol well, I'm sore from basketball and I may have a broken foot from trying to kickbox a heavy bag. The one thing I do have on these young guns though is experience.

First one to pass out always gets a bed.

I think I missed the award ceremony. I won MVP for my performance at my first Seder but this year the Andrew McIvor Memorial MVP trophy went to Liat for procuring a band. And when I woke up in a bed wearing someone else's clothes, using a towel as a blanket I didn't find it strange at all.

In the movie theater there were bodies everywhere. Some were still in costume, others spooning each other for warmth. The stench was that of a frat house on Sunday mornings. I wandered around the house and found more and more of my clothing. Apparently when I am at the Bird house, I feel completely comfortable just shedding articles and throwing them in random corners.

I thanked Dick and Anat as I prepared for a 6 hour drive back to Los Angeles, but not before stopping to spend $30 on snacks at Safeway.

(Jalapeno kettle chips, sour jelly bellys, coconut water, smart water, kombucha, sour patch kids, teriyaki jerky, gum, Rockstar, Gobstoppers, Slim Jim, Goldfish)

I returned a few texts.

"How was Seder?"

How do I encapsulate that experience in a short text?

Do I talk about the pinata? Do I lead with the duck costume? Will normal folks think it is strange that we had a two hour pregame before playing basketball and that people were already vomiting at 6pm?

'We're just excited to see each other,' is how I always excuse our sometimes immature behavior. Life is short, in fact we lost someone unexpectedly this year. You never know if a trip with a close friend will be the last, so I aim to treat it that way.

I'm not feeling 100% today and that drive home REALLY sucked. I mean to the point that I was cramping up and making Matt pull over so I could stretch.

But back to the question...how was Seder?

Seder was fucking fantastic and I hope I'm lucky enough to be invited back next year.