I hope you all had a lovely and peaceful Passover your with your families!

I myself am just now getting back into the flow of things. Passover was pretty awesome this year. On the Saturday night that fell in the middle of Pesach I was invited over to my dear friends house for a lovely chametz-kitniyot-dairy-free meal, otherwise known as 'Slumdog Pesach.' (Indian food.) And it. Was. Amazing.

If you knew my friend Shiri, then you would know what I am talking about. She is a fabulous hostess and an incredible cook! So we had a great evening of good food and good company. Getting the opportunity to meet new people is always great and some of the conversations we had were just too hilarious to not be shared with you.  

Isreally hot?

I shared with everyone the "Are You Jewish?" story, curious if anyone else had ever had this experience themselves. One of the guys, Adam, offered his take on it being a great pick up line to use on women.

I expressed my surprise. "Really?"

"Yeah! But there's a second part to it." He nodded, obviously an authority on Jewish pick up lines.

"What do you mean?"

"It should go something like... hey, are you Jewish? Cause you isREALLY hot!" He grinned at me. "Get it? Like, Israeli hot?"

I stared at him. "Are you single?"

Adam nodded again. "Oh yes."

I thought it would only be fair to explain to him why.

A few other conversations revolved around the fact that so many of us (all good looking Jews,) were single. The girls pretty much agreed that it has a lot to do with the fact that there just aren't enough good single Jewish guys out there who want to marry Jewish girls.

Shiri for example was telling us that at her (predominantly Jewish) office they just hired a gorgeous Argentinean woman with blond hair and blue eyes... the whole shiksa package, and every guy in the office of course wants her and her body, (which rumor has it goes on for days...) And all the while, beautiful Jewish Shiri gets overlooked. It's quite tragic really.

"If you put twenty-four Jewish girls and one shiksa in a room with twenty-five Jewish guys, you would have twenty-four lonely women talking to each other."

Funny I thought to myself, but could it be true?

The sad truth

Of course it's true! I mean how many Jewish male friends do I have that are all engaged to/dating girls who are not Jewish? Why are we not good enough for them? Do we remind them too much of their mothers? Why do we remind them of their mothers? Is it because of our incessant need to feed people?

But back to the dinner party. It was a very LA affair; I mean where else (besides maybe NY) would you find a pop star, a reality show camera man, a chef, an actress, an opera singer, a lawyer and a teacher in one room eating matza and kosher l'pesach Indian food?

Yeah that's a pretty Los Angeles style Passover right there. It was so much fun.   More 'Are you Jewish' jokes and talking about everyone's experiences dating in LA made the time fly right by. After a great night of food and friends, (and being asked whether I would write about the evening,) I said goodnight and drove home thinking of all the night's various conversations and Adam's great pickup line.

Then came Tuesday night. When Passover ended, I went out to eat with some friends to break the fast. After devouring mountains of bread, we wound up going to our favorite pub afterwards, because we had gone a whole week with nothing but kosher for pesach wine... and well, we wanted real drinks.

Mmmm.

We settle into our favorite booth and warm up with Irish coffees while listening to the live duo that was playing that night. Acoustic guitar and saxophone, how can you go wrong? Saxophone is so hot! At first I was listening to the gorgeous instrument, and then I found myself looking at the man holding the gorgeous instrument. He was extremely attractive. Hmm.  I tell Natasha what I think.

In true Natasha form, she urges me to go talk to him, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Then the guitarist/singer takes a break and I figured this was my chance to talk to Mr. Saxophonist!

Mmmm again.

Alas, he puts down the sax and picks up the guitar and starts singing... OK. So he is multi-talented. I will wait.

So I wait and wait and wait for him to finish his set so I can go talk to him. But before he finishes my friends decide they are ready to go. All I can think is 'great! Another opportunity goes unclaimed!'

But as luck would have it, just as we were walking toward the door, he finished his set!

As I walk past him he thanks me for staying, and I grab his arm and say: "Oh yeah, great set!"

I smile and walk out the door, wondering why once again my nerves got the best of me. But at least I spoke to him, right?

We are approaching the parking lot when out of nowhere, Natasha's boyfriend John runs up behind me, grabs my arm for a split second, drops it like I have leprosy and mumbles "great-set" really fast with his head down before walking away.

I have always secretly thought that Johnny was a bit strange.

"What was THAT?" I yell.

He laughs. "That's what YOU did in there to the musician."

What!? No, he must be wrong.

"That is not what I did at all, I grabbed his arm and looked into his eyes!"

"No you didn't." Now Natasha gives me an odd look. "You did just what John just did! I was walking behind you and I didn't even have to stop walking, it was so fast."

"Are you serious?" I ask her.

"You were there! Don't you know what you did?"

"I made eye contact!" I acknowledge.

"For like two seconds Natalie, that doesn't count." She tells me.

I hate my friends.

Was that really how it looked? I thought it was much longer than two seconds. Time must have slowed for me. At least it felt that way.

They tease me all night. And I feel depressed. Whilst walking through Ralphs at 2AM buying dog food, bread and cake to celebrate my freedom from matzah, Natasha reminds me that it's ok. 

"He probably wasn't your soul mate anyway!" She cheerfully informs me.

And the thing is... she's right. But I can't help but wonder... where is he?

<-- Read about Natalie's adventure with the 10 Anchormen