KELSO'S 2ND SEDER 2007 -- GENIUS/GZA'S LIQUID SWORDS COMES TO LIFE

[ominous background music] [child�s voice:] �When I was little, my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire, and he was the shogun�s decapitator. He cut off the heads of one hundred and thirty one lords. It was a bad time for the empire. The shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out. People said his brain was infected by devils. My father would come home; he would forget about the killings. He wasn�t scared of the shogun, but the shogun was scared of him. Maybe that was the problem. Then one night, the shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father, but they didn�t�� [woman screaming] �That was the night everything changed�� That is the dramatic introduction to one of the single greatest rap albums of all time, Liquid Swords by Wu-Tang Clan member, Gza.

OK, now you've read the sample that precedes the first track on Liquid Swords (1995). Over the top, baroque, doggerel, foolishness, just entertainment, yeah, admit it, that's what you're thinking. And Kelso couldn't blame you if you are. But it's all true. Rap is absolutely not bullshit for white suburban consumption but it took a very tame 2nd seder to get it and Kelso didn't hear it from a Staten Island rapper. He heard it from a friend down here, a nice Jewish woman from Medellin who works in an investment bank. Mind you, now, Kelso is no stranger to night life and this woman is perhaps Kelso's straightest friend aca.

As neither of us had a seder to go to last night, we agreed to meet at the sushi place and make our own version of one. Kelso and...oh we'll call her Petra...settle in for some sushi and conversation. Oh, we talk about this and that, mostly related to finance (triple-witching hours and that sort of thing) bouncing back and forth between Spanish and English. And we move on to discussing our lives, our families, what it's like to be Jewish in this town, etc., etc. Kelso unspools the usual stories about life in various places, gambling, owning racehorses, family, the normal palaver. A pause in the the conversation and Kelso asks Petra "how is it you speak unaccented English?" Now, Kelso still hasn't quite gotten his mind around the meaning of the story he's about to relate, but to be sure, Kelso will never call himself cynical or jaded again. Despite all the twists and turns of the Kelso timeline, the gambling, the clubs, all the thugs and night-crawlers, Kelso is a grade A American Innocent.

OK, just keep in mind that this is an ultra-casual 2nd seder with an acquaintance who by appearance, bearing and approach to life could be like any Jewish woman Kelso grew up with in Manhattan. She just happens to come from Medellin, Colombia. Go back now and re-read the GZA sample........we all together now? (For the sake of simpicity we recount the tale here in English only). "Wellll," Petra says with the same tone a person might use when telling you she likes yoga and knitting, "you have to understand what Colombia is like. My father's still alive and I have one uncle who died of natural causes, but every other male member of my family was murdered." Dumbshit Kelso says something stupid like "you mean in the war, right?" "Well, kind of but not the Holocaust. In Colombia. Our family's been in Medellin since before World War II. I mean the other thing." Oh yeah, sure, yeah, the other thing. "When I was eight the Cali people came and killed two of my cousins and tried to kill my father and kidnap me but he and his men got us away and took me to America...it's only recently I don't travel with five people watching everything I do...I went to college in the States and decided to come back to Latin America and go into investment banking....I thought I'd only stay a little while but I'm happy here...I was thinking about taking a job with a bank in Canada but while the community is good, the weather's horrible. My father's back in Medellin. Things have settled down a little."

Kelso played it off all casual -- oh, if you end up in Toronto you have to go the film fesival and be sure to go to House Of Chan on a football sunday you'll see all the Jewish families; have the steak with the spring onion and ginger sauce, yada yada, but a stiff breeze would have knocked him over. Petra's not a club girl or a poker dealer or a cocktail waitress -- she's every girl Kelso knew from school days. K can't swear to it, but it's a big favorite that she's got a copy of the Spanish edition of Our Bodies, Our Selves kicking around her place somewhere and as gob-smacked as Kelso was, he remembers discussing whether egg barley was better than kasha varnishkas. And was Bellow cool despite his awful politics? It was a normal, thoroughly enjoyable conversation of the kind Kelso has a millions of times before with women and men of his cohort in New York, in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in Boston, in college.

Except for "the other thing." And if Kelso's a grade A American Innocent, what the hell does that make all the round-bellies at Knott's Berry Farm? Of course, Bush got re-elected. Of course, as Kelso-pere says "revolution's never coming to American because everybody at these football games paint their faces." Of course, the EU, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and soon Latin America make us look like a bunch of suckers. There's a whole world out there that's tougher and more gifted than we Americans are. This ain't our century. Short the fucking dollar for all you can shove in.

Off to a very poor start in Masters round one, but still chill.

Kelso's Nuts love you.