When I was younger I went to a Jewish ritual bath - a mikva - that the famed Rabbi the Baal Shem Tov supposedly used in Europe. To give you the full experience from his lifetime, there is no heating in the mikva, which in the Ukrainian winter, meant the water was frozen. Not metaphorically frozen. Frozen. They had installed some sort of filtration system to make sure it didn't freeze fully but there were small chunks of ice in the water.
I remember dipping my toe in and gasping. My heart almost stopped. My companions, friends far younger and wiser than I, decided not to go in. I felt that I certainly didn't travel to the depth of Ukraine for nothing and decided - using the impeccable logic only a teenager has - that if the water was too cold to wade into, I'd JUMP right in. Which I promptly did.
It was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. My whole body felt like it was attacked by a herd of wooly mammoths. Since by Jewish law for the immersion to be considered valid your head has to go underwater, I ducked underneath all whole flailing gasping and nearly dying like spider that has fallen into a toilet while flushing. One thought flashed in my mind: "so this is why the Baal Shem Tov is dead".
My friends lifted me out and wrapped me in a hot towel and rushed me to the adjoining sauna room. (That this existed should have been a red flag.) And then, while recovering from the massive shock my body's nervous system had just received - shivering shaking, and slurring my words through blue lips, I looked at friends and I told them: "That was awesome! Why don't you guys go in too?"
The well-to-do have this same experience at their Lake Tahoe mansions. Really. If you live lakeside, you have a private sauna. When done, you exit, then go through a door that exits directly into Lake Tahoe. Plunge, no steps (there is a ladder in the side to climb out).
Have you ever been to Lake Tahoe? It is fed by mountain snows, and so large the motion stops the water from freezing, unless it is very far below zero. It sucks all the heat right out of your body. If you have too much heat to start with from the sauna, you can last about a minute before you start to feel the icy fingers of death claw at your very being. Try it! It’s loads of fun.
I am told that in the sauna’s homeland, Finland, after leaving the sauna you are expected to jump straight into a small, frozen river. It’s not cold enough unless you have to break the ice going in. Finland is a country with a small population. Coincidence?
I loved your last line, Daas. Did any of them go into the mikvah? But wow. That was extreme. Glad you made it through. And thanks for the very funny take on what clearly was a terrifying plunge.
Mikva of the Ari z"l in Sfas in November at shkia. It was so late that I was the only one there. I decided I would dip 31 times. After 10 I couldn't feel my feet. I decided that 10 was enough.
A friend of mine who was born in the DP camps after the war told me his parents and an aunt would go down to a frozen River and break the ice for the tvilas mitzvah. Women are stronger than men.
The end of that story is great. It reminds me of the townsmen in ‘Huckleberry Finn’ who got ripped off at a show. The next day you could not hear anything around town but how fine that show was. They did not want to be laughed at alone.
Once again, I proclaim: Dave Barry is a NATIONAL TREASURE !!!
Our nation is better because we have him and his work to raise our spirits from the catastrophe that is our current state of existence within this country.
I didn't know he was still writing as he has been doing it so long, how can he still think so darned funny???? I had a Dave hiatus for several years but not on purpose. I am pretty sure there is a Dave book somewhere packed in a one of a few boxes of books that have traveled around the country with me.
Worth noting the Wikipedia article on the song contains the section:
"The song was performed in early 1971 by Gail Farrell and Dick Dale on The Lawrence Welk Show, which Brewer credited with giving the duo "more publicity than we could pay for." Welk described the song as a "modern spiritual" and later blamed his network ABC for forcing him to incorporate the song into the show, which would be a factor in his leaving the network that year."
I do feel the need to point out in the interest of fairness
1. "Just Lil Ole Me" posted the link 15 minutes before I did
2. I wanted to post it last week but didn't (I looked it up when my father and I were watching the show together on YouTube, although at the time the article simply said Welk was reportedly furious)
That wasn't Welk. That was Myron Floren, possibly trying not to laugh as he had to introduce the song. Very unusual for Welk not to introduce a piece, so maybe that was his way of washing his hands of it.
I know all those names too. I used to watch Lawrence Welk with my grandma. I didn’t like it at the time but I’m happy to have that memory. Don’t forget Barbara & Bobbie and Jo Ann Casale
Here's a newsflash for all you old folks (including myself) who were around to watch Welk and the polka people, Roberta Linn is alive and well living in Palm Springs!!!! And performing occasionally~love her.
I did a cold plunge once, when my dad took us on vacation to a beach in Maine. In May. It took until September for my McNuggets to return to exterior mode.
I have also done a cold plunge on a beach in Maine. It was July so I wasn't as cold as I could have been, but it was still frigid. My husband could barely put his toes in the water.
there is one other way to willingly get that cold: exploring a river passage in a cave. I helped with some biology work in a stream passage in a Kentucky cave where the underground temperature year around is 54 degrees, including the water. Even a wetsuit doesn't fully protect you. The worst part was peeling out of the wetsuit and getting into dry clothes; being soaking wet in an ambient temp of 54 degrees is not fun at all.
I was more grossed out by the lovey-dovey leering Gail was doing at Dale, who appeared relatively oblivious, and the terrifying peek into what televangelists would look like in a few years.
I have studied the posture of Dick and Gayle carefully (seven and a half viewings) and conclude that Dick Dale was the best ventriloquist ever (two voices at once!) and "Gayle" an almost life like puppet. Edgar and Charlie (ask your great-grandmother) were not a patch on those two.
I watched it last week when someone posted the link in the comments. I found it strangely compelling, unlike the Liberace video which was just hideous. I still shiver just thinking about it. I think I enjoyed One Toke because of the combination of lovely voices (love close harmony singing) and the obliviousness to what the song is actually about, especially Gail.
I too ignored the warning and am left with one question: what the hell does being one toke over the line have to do with the rest of the song? I never really listened to what I was singing, but it is truly about nothing, Sweet Jesus. Nothing. Huh. 🤔
Gail and Dale were no fools. They used their Welk show earnings to amass a sprawling business empire that now includes a chain of cannabis dispensaries called…
Why Dave, now that you and Michelle have started your journey to immortality, it only remains (excuse the expression...) for you to move onto: ant bite therapy (with a pain level said to allow you to see through time), fire cupping, cow dung purification, snake message, hot stone walking and the limpia egg ritual, where a healer rolls an egg over the body to absorb negative energy or illness. And Dave, it is then cracked afterward to reveal what it absorbed and, presumably for an extra fee, can be made into a tortilla de huevo. Think of it as MRI meets breakfast. Bon voyage.
That egg business is used by psychic frauds. They say the impurities they find (usually by palming a small black feather) can all be removed at once without more egg treatment, by your withdrawing the entire amount of your checking account in cash, and bringing it to them for treatment in a brown paper bag.
It depends on how it is used. As a cultural or personal ritual for relaxation and spiritual comfort, many find value in it. However, it does becomes a fraud if a practitioner uses it to diagnose medical illnesses, promises literal medical cures, or exploits you financially.
As a former underground utility pipe-layer, I've been up to my neck in "cranny mud". No amount of hosing-down (or in my case isopropyl alcohol sponge baths) ever made me feel 'clean' again. To this day, I splash on a quart of English Leather after my third daily shower before going to work. I use to use Axe Body Spray but the chicks just wouldn't leave me alone!
Also, with regard to death by yo-yo: As a child, I was quite proficient with Duncan Yo-yos and once, while performing the "Around the World" with my Duncan Imperial, another boy got too close and I 'clocked' him on the forehead. He went down like a ton of bricks. Naturally, I didn't hang around (in case of criminal charges) but, years later, I found out that he survived and was living a normal productive life, albeit with a permanent welt the size of Canada.
Brought back memories, Dave. I did a cold plunge once (didn't last as long as you did). Don't know how to say this diplomatically, but I learned that yes, it's true, things do get smaller. Much smaller. In fact, I thought mine had frozen and fallen off. Ran right back into the sauna.
When I was younger I went to a Jewish ritual bath - a mikva - that the famed Rabbi the Baal Shem Tov supposedly used in Europe. To give you the full experience from his lifetime, there is no heating in the mikva, which in the Ukrainian winter, meant the water was frozen. Not metaphorically frozen. Frozen. They had installed some sort of filtration system to make sure it didn't freeze fully but there were small chunks of ice in the water.
I remember dipping my toe in and gasping. My heart almost stopped. My companions, friends far younger and wiser than I, decided not to go in. I felt that I certainly didn't travel to the depth of Ukraine for nothing and decided - using the impeccable logic only a teenager has - that if the water was too cold to wade into, I'd JUMP right in. Which I promptly did.
It was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. My whole body felt like it was attacked by a herd of wooly mammoths. Since by Jewish law for the immersion to be considered valid your head has to go underwater, I ducked underneath all whole flailing gasping and nearly dying like spider that has fallen into a toilet while flushing. One thought flashed in my mind: "so this is why the Baal Shem Tov is dead".
My friends lifted me out and wrapped me in a hot towel and rushed me to the adjoining sauna room. (That this existed should have been a red flag.) And then, while recovering from the massive shock my body's nervous system had just received - shivering shaking, and slurring my words through blue lips, I looked at friends and I told them: "That was awesome! Why don't you guys go in too?"
.
Yikes.
Such an empathetic response from someone who experienced almost exactly the same thing, only HE got a heated towel!
It's a miracle any of us survived our teen years.
The well-to-do have this same experience at their Lake Tahoe mansions. Really. If you live lakeside, you have a private sauna. When done, you exit, then go through a door that exits directly into Lake Tahoe. Plunge, no steps (there is a ladder in the side to climb out).
Have you ever been to Lake Tahoe? It is fed by mountain snows, and so large the motion stops the water from freezing, unless it is very far below zero. It sucks all the heat right out of your body. If you have too much heat to start with from the sauna, you can last about a minute before you start to feel the icy fingers of death claw at your very being. Try it! It’s loads of fun.
I am told that in the sauna’s homeland, Finland, after leaving the sauna you are expected to jump straight into a small, frozen river. It’s not cold enough unless you have to break the ice going in. Finland is a country with a small population. Coincidence?
Daas, you win the interwebs today!
Oy.
I loved your last line, Daas. Did any of them go into the mikvah? But wow. That was extreme. Glad you made it through. And thanks for the very funny take on what clearly was a terrifying plunge.
Nope. Thanks for the kind words.
Cowards! Tx.
thankfully, US mikvas are typically heated…
That was hilarious
Mikva of the Ari z"l in Sfas in November at shkia. It was so late that I was the only one there. I decided I would dip 31 times. After 10 I couldn't feel my feet. I decided that 10 was enough.
A friend of mine who was born in the DP camps after the war told me his parents and an aunt would go down to a frozen River and break the ice for the tvilas mitzvah. Women are stronger than men.
They just have more insulation.
The end of that story is great. It reminds me of the townsmen in ‘Huckleberry Finn’ who got ripped off at a show. The next day you could not hear anything around town but how fine that show was. They did not want to be laughed at alone.
No offense, but I'm rather glad I'm not one of your friends.
And did they??? I'll wait........lol lol
"...they don’t change the mud between customers." An apt description of so much in life today.
Once again, I proclaim: Dave Barry is a NATIONAL TREASURE !!!
Our nation is better because we have him and his work to raise our spirits from the catastrophe that is our current state of existence within this country.
Agree. If this is not the most hilarious piece I’ve ever read, I don’t know what is.
I almost agree with you. The exploding whale is still #1 on my list so far.
I didn't know he was still writing as he has been doing it so long, how can he still think so darned funny???? I had a Dave hiatus for several years but not on purpose. I am pretty sure there is a Dave book somewhere packed in a one of a few boxes of books that have traveled around the country with me.
100 %!
Hear hear!!!
Re: "One Toke", I suspect they thought it was a religious song, "Sweet Jesus"
Worth noting the Wikipedia article on the song contains the section:
"The song was performed in early 1971 by Gail Farrell and Dick Dale on The Lawrence Welk Show, which Brewer credited with giving the duo "more publicity than we could pay for." Welk described the song as a "modern spiritual" and later blamed his network ABC for forcing him to incorporate the song into the show, which would be a factor in his leaving the network that year."
Ah, interesting backstory!
I do feel the need to point out in the interest of fairness
1. "Just Lil Ole Me" posted the link 15 minutes before I did
2. I wanted to post it last week but didn't (I looked it up when my father and I were watching the show together on YouTube, although at the time the article simply said Welk was reportedly furious)
Welk was coughing a bit during his introduction-- Perhaps he had been "toking" before the show...?
That wasn't Welk. That was Myron Floren, possibly trying not to laugh as he had to introduce the song. Very unusual for Welk not to introduce a piece, so maybe that was his way of washing his hands of it.
ABC should’ve changed the time signature and called it the, “One Toke Over the Line Polka.”
Myron-uh-Flor-en-uh on accordion could play an intro followed by the Champagne Music Makers backing the vocals.
I can almost hear Lawrence Welk counting it in with, “A one-and-a-two” and closing with his standard, “Thank-a-You Boyz-uh.”
Good story. Welk had a great gig at ABC. I’m surprised he got that upset about one song!?
They filmed the Lawrence Welk Show on the Talmadge Lot. Do you remember the nearby Talmadge Bridge?
I can’t remember L.W & Co playing anywhere else after ABC.
I know all those names too. I used to watch Lawrence Welk with my grandma. I didn’t like it at the time but I’m happy to have that memory. Don’t forget Barbara & Bobbie and Jo Ann Casale
Here's a newsflash for all you old folks (including myself) who were around to watch Welk and the polka people, Roberta Linn is alive and well living in Palm Springs!!!! And performing occasionally~love her.
I think they were on WOR in NYC. ( hannel13)
Has anyone ever remained ONE toke over the line? I'm betting not.
Yeah, that’s been an ongoing problem that science has been unable to fix.
Science has really struggled since demoting Pluto, all the discoveries notwithstanding.
Sorry, I've just really been low on my "notwithstanding" quota.
Exactly! Was thinking the same thing when they belted out Jesus!
I did a cold plunge once, when my dad took us on vacation to a beach in Maine. In May. It took until September for my McNuggets to return to exterior mode.
MerryCatholic.substack.com
I have also done a cold plunge on a beach in Maine. It was July so I wasn't as cold as I could have been, but it was still frigid. My husband could barely put his toes in the water.
there is one other way to willingly get that cold: exploring a river passage in a cave. I helped with some biology work in a stream passage in a Kentucky cave where the underground temperature year around is 54 degrees, including the water. Even a wetsuit doesn't fully protect you. The worst part was peeling out of the wetsuit and getting into dry clothes; being soaking wet in an ambient temp of 54 degrees is not fun at all.
Ooh, I had an involuntary shiver just reading your comment!
Oh, wow! That must have been an interesting experience!
Like warm plunges are where it's at anyway.
Feeling Groovy was much harder to take than “One toke…”. And why was Dale singing into Gail’s armpit.
I was more grossed out by the lovey-dovey leering Gail was doing at Dale, who appeared relatively oblivious, and the terrifying peek into what televangelists would look like in a few years.
He had one toke too many?
It was in Dale’s contract with Old Spice
Also, do a hand check on Dale's right hand placement. He was SO CLOSE!
😆😆😆😆
Never took a cold plunge, but I learned never to be the last person to take a shower in an Airbnb with a small hot water tank
That’ll do.
To go from the unnatural heat of the sauna,
Which millions of Finns have done;
Then exposing your manhood to Arctic piranha,
When everything just goes numb.
And all undertaken for the public good
Regardless of personal qualm
Is a stunt truly worthy of Florida Man
In the state of the swaying palms.
This suggests some improvements that Disney might make to increase ridership to Space Mountain,75
Where you’d roast just like toast in your cart for an hour,
Then plunge in a big ice-rimmed fountain.
You may not find your genitals
Answer your call;
And It’s truly A (Very) Small World After All.
Bravo.
Now that song is stuck in my head all day. Damn you, Disney.
You can always go back and review One Toke…
I have studied the posture of Dick and Gayle carefully (seven and a half viewings) and conclude that Dick Dale was the best ventriloquist ever (two voices at once!) and "Gayle" an almost life like puppet. Edgar and Charlie (ask your great-grandmother) were not a patch on those two.
I had the same thought!
You warned me, but I listened anyway. Now I have to poke my ears out. Or my eyes.
Or stuff both with cranny mud.
Exactly. I wonder if in future any of us will heed Dave's warnings to not listen. ...Nah.
I watched it last week when someone posted the link in the comments. I found it strangely compelling, unlike the Liberace video which was just hideous. I still shiver just thinking about it. I think I enjoyed One Toke because of the combination of lovely voices (love close harmony singing) and the obliviousness to what the song is actually about, especially Gail.
I too ignored the warning and am left with one question: what the hell does being one toke over the line have to do with the rest of the song? I never really listened to what I was singing, but it is truly about nothing, Sweet Jesus. Nothing. Huh. 🤔
Gail and Dale were no fools. They used their Welk show earnings to amass a sprawling business empire that now includes a chain of cannabis dispensaries called…
No. Seriously??
O I do so hope it’s true!
Why Dave, now that you and Michelle have started your journey to immortality, it only remains (excuse the expression...) for you to move onto: ant bite therapy (with a pain level said to allow you to see through time), fire cupping, cow dung purification, snake message, hot stone walking and the limpia egg ritual, where a healer rolls an egg over the body to absorb negative energy or illness. And Dave, it is then cracked afterward to reveal what it absorbed and, presumably for an extra fee, can be made into a tortilla de huevo. Think of it as MRI meets breakfast. Bon voyage.
He was not afraid at all to be killed in nasty ways.
Brave brave brave brave Sir Robin!
That's Sir Dave to you, peasant!
The cold plunge is said to be a gateway to cryogenics. “Come try before you die”
That egg business is used by psychic frauds. They say the impurities they find (usually by palming a small black feather) can all be removed at once without more egg treatment, by your withdrawing the entire amount of your checking account in cash, and bringing it to them for treatment in a brown paper bag.
You can fill in the rest.
I bet you think I am making that up.
It depends on how it is used. As a cultural or personal ritual for relaxation and spiritual comfort, many find value in it. However, it does becomes a fraud if a practitioner uses it to diagnose medical illnesses, promises literal medical cures, or exploits you financially.
As a former underground utility pipe-layer, I've been up to my neck in "cranny mud". No amount of hosing-down (or in my case isopropyl alcohol sponge baths) ever made me feel 'clean' again. To this day, I splash on a quart of English Leather after my third daily shower before going to work. I use to use Axe Body Spray but the chicks just wouldn't leave me alone!
Also, with regard to death by yo-yo: As a child, I was quite proficient with Duncan Yo-yos and once, while performing the "Around the World" with my Duncan Imperial, another boy got too close and I 'clocked' him on the forehead. He went down like a ton of bricks. Naturally, I didn't hang around (in case of criminal charges) but, years later, I found out that he survived and was living a normal productive life, albeit with a permanent welt the size of Canada.
This made me laugh in that wheezy way that I can’t stop!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
If you have experienced cranny mud, you may be entitled to compensation.
But we’re not looking there for it. Or there.
Ask your doctor if Cranny Mud is right for you!
That would be RFK, Jr.?
Far be it from me to call RFK, Jr. "Cranny Mud." Well, actually, close be it from me. Really close.
🤣🤣🤣
Was Cranny Mud one of the band name options?
Ahahahahahhahaaha!!!!
Brought back memories, Dave. I did a cold plunge once (didn't last as long as you did). Don't know how to say this diplomatically, but I learned that yes, it's true, things do get smaller. Much smaller. In fact, I thought mine had frozen and fallen off. Ran right back into the sauna.
Ouch!
Don CoreLeone motto: "Grab the abs; leave the cannoli."
Second motto: "Making your gluteus maximus an offer it can't refuse."