It's For You. God Calling.

Today's topic, as it often is, is God's ironic sense of humor. Readers of crankyjewishguy (CJG) will recall that a few days ago he wrote about Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers who told reporters after Game 6 of the World Series that God told him he would hit a home run in the top of the tenth inning to give Texas the lead. CJG noted that what God neglected to tell Hamilton is that in the bottom of the eleventh he was going to have the Cardinals David Freese hit a walk off home run for the win, rendering Hamilton's homer an exercise in futility.

A young Josh Hamilton with
 his hitting instructor.

Today's "God is ironic" news comes from Marshalltown, Iowa where, last night, Michelle Bachmann told an enraptured audience passing around poisonous snakes that God, presumably the same one that fixes baseball games, was "calling" her to run for President. Now, CJG admits that's a hard call not to answer. When the phone rings and it's God, you take the call. But, again, God's ironic side is very much in evidence here because what he apparently neglected to tell Ms. Bachmann is that he also created 300 million Americans more qualified than she is for the job, including many of her GOP opponents and the fourteen-year old Metal Head in your family room who has been playing Wizards and Warlocks on the flat screen TV twenty hours a day for last six years.

Whenever CJG hears people say "God told me..." or "God called me..." he wonders, in the first instance, how anyone could be so presumptuous to think God would take time from his busy schedule to call them directly when Twitter and Facebook are readily available, and, in the second instance, that this person needs to call Verizon and get a cell phone plan with more free minutes. Look, if God were really speaking or calling people directly, surely he would have called CJG by now and revealed the meaning of life or given him some winning lottery ticket numbers.

Anyway, God is telling CJG it's time to go pick up his son at school so he has to sign off now. Oh, never mind, that was Mrs. CJG, not the voice of God. They sure do sound alike though.

P.S. Breaking news on another subject CJG cares deeply about, Linday Lohan. It seems Lindsay is going back to jail, not even stopping at "GO," for violating the terms of her probation. Honestly, what is this woman's problem?

CJG is Now Facebook Friends with God!

crankyjewishguy's (CJG) wife is pretty savvy about social networking and she is trying her best to drag CJG into the 21st century. She explained to him that to build an audience for a blog you have to create lots of links and cross-links and you have to learn to use Facebook. So, CJG immediately went on God's Facebook page and "friended" him (or "liked" him). Whatever. Now, CJG is hoping that God, who has like 4 billion Facebook friends, will "friend" or "like" him back. CJG is praying God isn't too selective. For those who don't know God (so to speak), this is his Facebook picture (you think he could have put on a shirt for the photo?):

Anyway, enough about God. Yesterday, CJG and his wife drove from San Juan to CJG's hometown of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico while the boys sat in the back seat and watched Jackass 2.5 on a laptop. After all, why would you fly all the way from Boston to Puerto Rico? To look at the scenery?

As in San Juan, CJG was disappointed in the reception he received upon arriving in the town of his birth after a 57 year absence. The bagel, lox and cream cheese reception never materialized. Even Gerard Depardieu got a warmer reception in The Return of Martin Guerre and that was after the locals figured out he wasn't Martin Guerre after all but an imposter. It's not that there weren't plenty of people in the streets for CJG's homecoming. There were. Unfortunately, all of them were in cars trying to get to one mall or the other. Though Aguadilla isn't much to look at from street level, CJG and his family are staying in a clifftop condo with a spectacular view of the ocean and beach below. This makes CJG very mellow, except that the neighbor with the adjoining rooftop patio has outdoor stereo speakers that play bad music all day long. CJG guy and his college age son spent a good part of the afternoon trying to figure out if they could take out the speakers with a few well placed fastballs.

Now, it didn't take more than five minutes on the beach for CJG to be reminded that no Jew can truly get away no matter how far he travels from home. At Crash Boat Beach, a surfing spot frequented by locals, but few tourists, CJG's older son immediately ran into two guys he knows, brothers, actually, and Jewish, of course, who attend college with him at Harvard on St. Charles, otherwise known as Tulane University. And once the parents started talking they discovered that three of them, out a possible four, attended Tufts University at the same time, CJG being the exception as he is both older than the others and attended a different and, according to the infallible U.S. News and World Report college rankings, slightly more prestigious institution of extremely higher learning. 

Crash Boat Beach without people, as CJG would have preferred it.

Now CJG can be very sociable if he tries, and he enjoys chance encounters as much as the next curmudgeon, but sometimes he just wants to get away from it all. So next year he's taking the family to the Falkland Islands in February. With his luck he'll be standing in a penguin rookery and Howie Finkel, his arch nemesis from junior high school, will walk up and give him a wedgie.