A bit of nostalgia for the old folks, ( as Frank zappa says on one of his albums). Rumor among the few surviving 55 year old ex- Bar Ilan students who reeked havoc in Kiriat Ono in the seventies has it that Bilious William, our long lost musical flatmate, may actually move his butt from the Goldarne Medina, and come to visit us in Israel for the first time since he boarded the plane in '79.
I will see him face to face, and will have to account for using bits of his life as source material when I ran out of ideas for this column. Bill W actually emailed me to request that I keep his identity private and not tell anybody, even tho everyone we knew from those days is locked away from internet access, that he's really Bernie Stollar of Moose Jaw, Manitoba.

One of the triggers that sent me hurtling down the time toilet was a song I watched on TV tonight. I was separating whites from coloreds when my son called me to see Aharon Razel performing his 'Krembo' song. I have provided the link and instructions for you to access a different version of the same song; it's worth it.

Krembos were part of our first years in Israel, along with smoky busses, asseemonim, and Makolet men and makolet ladies with numbers on their arms and hoarse voices, counting eggs one by one in Yiddish, and charging us extra for the plastic bags they wrapped the food in. Aints, tsvai… The very idea of a Krembo was abhorrent to us snot- nosed Amerrrika-im, spoiled by memories of the confections we left behind and could only get when somebody came back from a visit to the 'old' country: Reese's Cups, Oreos, Mars Bars, real peanut butter. Who wanted to eat an enormous stale marshmallow, coated in cloying chocolate that melted in your hand, not in your mouth, glued to a piece of cardboard? Decades later, preparing for the birthday parties of our five year old kids, I would cringe if I had to buy whole trays of these monstrosities. Back then, we would visit local makolets, and, when the owners were trying to fish out pickles from the pickle barrel – using what appeared to be live bait -- poke our fingers thru the aluminum foil of the Krembos like Bart Simpson poking eyes out of a mutant squirrel. That we were college students in our early twenties somehow did not deter us, and we did other things that we would rather not remind each other about, like the time with the birthday present..

The point is, that everybody almost from those days became famous except us. Well, I didn't have much claim to fame, but Bilious was in a rock band imported from America, and they got a manager and did the discotheque circuit in 1971. And quite a few nobodies from back then eventually had their shot at being somebody. The jerk across the street who grabbed your guitar like a deranged gibbon: Maaaa? Zeh Hashmalleee Zeh? ... became the greatest name in Middle Eastern pop music in the eighties. Your retard manager eventually morphed into a billionaire media mogul.
That skinny thing of indeterminate sex that sat across from you waiting for gigs became Zvika Pik. The community centre folk theatre guy you did a show with turned into Super Story teller Yossi Alfi, father of teen idol Guri Alfi. You were at the Bris. You could go to a Shalom Achshav party ( we didn't make political di stink tions back then,) and not even realize you were getting it on with a future Minister of Education. And so on: so many casual acquaintances became professors, artists, poets, national leaders, noted criminals, and often, the latter two at the same time..

Even the Krembos.

Go to this site, scroll down and press the tab "Tarboot" תרבות on the left. Then click on the guy who has a giant Krembo over his head. Take your time. The song is well worth listening to, ( unless you don't know Hebrew). In fact, tonight it was played live on the Kirshenbaum- Yaron London show with the two old geezers shaking it like a couple of aging muppets.
http://www.inn.co.il/TV/

Even the Krembo finally has a hit.

And, here in my obscurity, all I can do is sing the closing number,

Somewhe-e-e-e-e-e-e-r-r-r-r-r-e,
up with the Krem-bo
Ratings fly,
Old pals get rich and famous,
Why oh why... can't I ?????

/ Silverberg, sept 24, 07